Do we truly understand the essential significance

Of what is known as “our hometowns”?

They seem to be the only way of looking at

An individual’s cradle and of looking at

Every nation at large by searching not for the exotic

But for the common human values,

By penetrating beneath the superficial quaintness

Of manners and looking for real courtesy;

By seeing beneath the strange men’s costumes

And looking for real manhood and fatherhood,

Womanhood and motherhood; by observing

The boys’ naughtiness and studying

The girls’ daydreams. These boyish naughtiness

And these girlish daydreams and the ring

Of children's laugh and the patter of children's feet

And women’s weeping and grief of men—

They are all alike all over the world, and only thru

The grief of men and women’s weeping

Can we truly understand any foreign individual

And every foreign nation as they really are.

The differences are only in the forms

Of individual conduct and public activity so far.

This is the true basis of all personal appreciation

And sound international appraisal in the meantime.