“We’re just building one in here,” the supervisor replied, leading the way into a little partitioned-off section of the room, “that has an uncanny ingenuity.  This machine feeds itself with cards, verifies and tabulates at an incredible speed.  It took some time to perfect all the adjustments, but it is running finely now, and it will simplify the work of the next census amazingly, just as the machines you saw have made the old hand punching machines of former times seem very cumbersome.  But this one,” he added, “is a gem.”

[Illustration:  PIN-BOX AND MERCURY CUPS.  Details of mechanism which almost magically detects mistakes in any census card. (Courtesy of the Bureau of the Census.)]

“It’s a little like magic, it seems to me,” said Hamilton, “to think of every person in this whole country being registered on a card with a lot of little holes in it, and practically the whole history on it.  It certainly is queer.”

“There is something mysterious in it,” the chief answered with a laugh.  “One feels as though all the secrets of the United States were boxed up and in the storage vaults of the building.  But the magician is the Director.  He is the man whose spells have woven this web of organization, whose skill and knowledge have unlocked commercial secrets, and whose perception has always seen the essential fact.”

“It’s great work to have a share in,” the boy declared enthusiastically.

“To make us all feel that,” his superior replied “is the chiefest spell of the Director of the Census.”

CHAPTER VIII

THE CENSUS HEROES OF THE FROZEN NORTH

“This is surely one blazing day,” said Hamilton one day early in June, as after the noon hour, he settled back at his work on the punching machine.

“We’ll cool you off all right,” responded the foreman, who was coming up at the moment and heard the boy’s remark, “for I understand they’re looking for editors on the Alaskan schedules.  A big batch of them has just arrived and I happen to know that your name has been recommended.  Mr. Cullern asked me to send you to him just as soon as you came in.”

“I should like that above all things,” Hamilton replied, “partly because I’ve always been interested in Alaska, and also because this work has got a little monotonous.  I hadn’t thought of the Alaskan census,” he continued, “and that’s strange too; I should think census-taking up in that country must have been full of excitement and adventure.”

“Probably it was,” responded his friend, “but you won’t find any thrilling yarns on the schedules; they’ll be just like any other schedules, I should imagine, only that the occupations will be of a different variety.  But you had better go along and see the chief.”

Hamilton went gladly, thinking that no matter how formal the schedules might be that dealt with Alaska they could not help but show to some extent the character of the conditions in which they had been secured and the difficulties attaching to work in that isolated land.