* * * *
I arrived in America full of pessimism, but I soon made friends and came to be very fond of the country and its people. The naive optimism and cheerfulness of the Americans impressed me most favorably. In this land there seemed nothing which could not be achieved by human intelligence and effort. I could not escape the contagion of this cheerful outlook on life, which, in the course of a few years, gradually cured my premature senility.
When I went to see a football game for the first time, I sat there philosophically amused by the roughness of the game and by the wild yells and cheers which seemed to me quite beneath the dignity of the university student. But, as the struggle became more and more exciting, I began to catch the enthusiasm. Then, accidentally turning my head, I saw the white-haired professor of botany, Mr. W. W. Rowlee, cheering and yelling in all heartiness, and I felt so ashamed of myself that I was soon cheering enthusiastically with the crowd.
Even during the darkest days in the first years of the Chinese Republic, I managed to keep up my good cheer. In a letter written to a Chinese friend, I said: “Nothing is hopeless except when you and I give it up as hopeless.” In my diaries, I wrote down such quotations as this from Clough: “If hopes are dupes, fears are liars.” Or this, in my own Chinese translation, from Browning:
One who never turned his back, but marched breast forward,
Never doubted clouds would break,
Never dreamed, though right were worsted, wrong would triumph, Held we fall to rise, are baffled to fight better, sleep to wake.
In January, 1914， I wrote this entry in my diary: “I believe that the greatest thing I have learned since leaving China is this optimistic philosophy of life.” In 1915 I was awarded the Hiram Corson Prize for the best essay on Robert Browning. The subject of my essay was “In Defense of Browning’s Optimism.” I think it was largely my gradually changed outlook on life that made me speak with a sense of conviction in taking up his defense.