[This book is a series of letters, from Gabriel Weltstein, in New
York, to his brother, Heinrich Weltstein, in the State of Uganda,
Africa.]

NEW YORK, Sept. 10, 1988

My Dear Brother:

Here I am, at last, in the great city. My eyes are weary with gazing,
and my mouth speechless with admiration; but in my brain rings
perpetually the thought: Wonderful!--wonderful!--most wonderful!

What an infinite thing is man, as revealed in the tremendous
civilization he has built up! These swarming, laborious, all-capable
ants seem great enough to attack heaven itself, if they could but
find a resting-place for their ladders. Who can fix a limit to the
intelligence or the achievements of our species?

But our admiration may be here, and our hearts elsewhere. And so from
all this glory and splendor I turn back to the old homestead, amid
the high mountain valleys of Africa; to the primitive, simple
shepherd-life; to my beloved mother, to you and to all our dear ones.
This gorgeous, gilded room fades away, and I see the leaning hills,
the trickling streams, the deep gorges where our woolly thousands
graze; and I hear once more the echoing Swiss horns of our herdsmen
reverberating from the snow-tipped mountains. But my dream is gone.
The roar of the mighty city rises around me like the bellow of many
cataracts.