The following morning, an early breakfast over, Hamilton started on the journey to his enumeration district, stopping at the office for a moment’s chat with his friend the supervisor, and receiving his good-luck wishes before he went.  The mare was a delight, being well-paced, and the horseman from whom Hamilton had bought the animal had taken a great deal of pains to get him a saddle tree that fitted him, so that the boy enjoyed every minute of the ride.  He reached the first point in his district about one o’clock, and after a hasty dinner started to work.  The place was a tiny village, containing about forty houses.

The population work, as Hamilton had expected, proved to be comparatively simple, and the first house he visited was a fair sample of the greater number of those he tabulated all through the month.  As a typical example it impressed itself upon his memory.  He began next door to the house where he had eaten dinner.  The natural privacy of a home was quite different from the public nature of a factory, and Hamilton felt a little strange as he walked up to the door and knocked.

“Good-morning,” he said, as soon as the door was opened, “I’m the census-taker and I called for the paper that was sent for you to fill in.”

“Yo’ mean dat ar big sheet o’ paper, jes’ noth’n but quest’ns?” answered the young negro woman, who appeared at the door.

“That’s it,” the boy answered, “is it all filled out and ready?”

“Lawsy, no!  Why, it would take me fo’ eveh to do all that writin’.  Ah’m no school-teacheh.  An’ besides, that’s fo’ fahmers.  An’ yo’ have anotheh jes’ like it!” she continued, noting the portfolio the boy carried.  “Ah jes’ know I can’t eveh tell yo’ all dose things.”

“This is different,” Hamilton pointed out.  “Those other questions are about farms, just as you say, but these are all about your own family.”

“Yes, sah, yes, sah.  Ah tol’ mah husban’ so when we were talkin’ about that yar farm business.  The paper in the town gave a list o’ questions, an’ Ah thought Ah would get mah Steve to help me get ready so’s Ah sh’d be able to answer yo’ rightly when yo’ come aroun’, but he jes’ said he was too tiehed to do anythin’, an’ dat ar census list is the confusin’est thing Ah eveh saw.  Ah thought Ah ought to do somethin’, an’ so Ah jes’ took a big sheet o’ wrappin’ paper an’ started to write the answers to the quest’ns on that, thinkin’ some o’ the neighbors’ children would copy it on the sheet fo’ me.  But, I tell yo’, sah, that befo’ I was half way through tellin’ what the newspaper said we had to tell, I was so mixed up that I was writin’ mahself down as mah own daughter and provin’ that the baby was twice divo’ced.”

“Then you really haven’t got anything ready at all,” said Hamilton.

“Nothin’, sah.”

“Then I’ll just have to ask you the questions, and put the answers down myself,” the boy said cheerfully.  “We might as well start right now.”