During my second week, on learning that the society needed license inspectors to take the place of the men who had gone to the front, I determined to apply. When told by a man in the office that the positions were for men only, I did not change my mind. Up I marched to Mr. Horton’s office. “Well,” said Mr. Horton, the manager, “we never have had a woman inspector. Still, I don’t know any reason why a woman shouldn’t hold the position. Do you know what the salary is?” “No, sir.” Mr. Horton smiled. “Do you know what the duties are?” “No, sir.” Mr. Horton smiled again. “Most of your work will be in the tenements, from house to house. Often from flat to flat. You’ll have to go wherever there is a dog—to see if it is licensed, healthy, and well cared for.” It so happened that I did know all this. That was my reason for wanting the job—it would take me into the tenements, to meet tenement-dwellers face to face as fellow human beings. I would see the homes from which the men and girls, my fellow workers for so many months, come. At last I was going into the tenements, stepping into a more dense section of the underbrush, where I would get at least glimpses of the heart of the jungle. CHAPTER XV THE HEART OF THE JUNGLE The tenements of New York City! The change that I made—working with tenement-dwellers and living in rooming-houses to working in and living in the tenements—was like that experienced by a hunter when stepping from the outskirts to the depths of a jungle—a jungle abounding in treacherous quicksands and infested by the most venomous and noisome creatures of the animal kingdom—a swamp in which any misstep may plunge you into the choking depths of a quagmire or the coils of a slimy reptile. But there are two great differences between the jungles of civilization and those created by nature. In nature’s works there is always beauty—however noxious the creature, however venomous the reptile, there is always beauty. The tenements of New York City are monstrously hideous. In nature’s jungles the evolution is always upward from protoplasm to that most perfect of animals—man made in the image of his Maker. In the jungles of civilization the evolution is always downward—from man to beast, to reptile, and to that most noisome of living creatures, the human worm. In the tenements of New York City we see the forced decivilization of representatives of all the civilized peoples. In it there exist thousands more afflicted than Lazarus, thousands possessed of more devils than the Master cast out of the man of Gadarenes, thousands in whom the light of human intelligence will never even flicker. It is the greatest of all earthly hells. It is the product of human greed.