“I’m a New Yorker all the way through,” the lad continued, “and I want to feel that I’m right in the whirl of things, where there is so much to do that you can’t crowd it into a day, where the fun is at the same speed as the work.  No backwaters for me, I want to be right out in the center.  I don’t say that I’m going to win, but I want to be a game sport and try my strength with the rest of the crowd in the current, sink or swim.  It’s all right to say that the heart of the nation is Washington, and the backbone is the farm, but its nerve center is here,—­right here in New York.  America’s the wonder of the world, all right, but all there is to it is capital plus brains, and New York is the furnace that melts them down into that quickness and grip on things we call the American spirit.  Millions from every race of the world come here, and the Statue of Liberty is the first symbol, and the skyscrapers of lower New York the first reality they see of the Land of Promise.”

“How about the inside of these great shells of structure?”

“No such office buildings in the world,” the boy answered enthusiastically.  “The salt winds from over three thousand miles of ocean blow around them; in their steel walls there are lots of windows; lightning speed elevators make the top floor easier to get at than the second story of a dark, old-fashioned staircase building; and I’ve heard that the marble mosaic entrances of the larger of them put the Italian palaces to shame.  I don’t know Europe, but I do know New York, and I believe, Mr. Burns, if you knew it as I do, you’d be as proud of it too.”

The Inspector looked at the boy quietly.

“You’re wrong,” he said soberly, “in thinking that I don’t know New York.  To-morrow morning you do a little work in a section of the city in which you have probably never been, and I think we’ll hear less tall talk.  If you could count the tens of thousands of families who live in rooms with nothing but court windows; if you could find out in how many thousand families children are toiling under sweatshop conditions till far into the night; if you were to ask the tuberculosis district nurses what conditions they find, you might then do a little thinking on your own account.  It’s only right you should be proud of New York, but you’d better see both sides before you are sure of yourself.  Now, I suppose you’re going home?”

“Yes, sir,” said Hamilton, a little taken aback by his friend’s rebuke.

“Call at my hotel early to-morrow morning and I’ll start you on a ‘Seeing New York’ trip of a new kind.”  And turning off sharply, the Inspector swung himself aboard a passing cross-town car.

Nine o’clock the next morning found Hamilton in one of the worst districts he had ever seen.  Thronged as it was, the boy was sufficiently conscious of his difference from the people he met to feel uncomfortable.  He had one of the schedules that had been filled out during the enumeration of the city, and the Inspector had bidden him verify certain portions of it which were either confusing or slightly incorrect.  This was to be done in a dozen or so districts, and if the information was found to be adequate, showing that the enumerators’ work had been faithfully done, there would be no need for further inspection.