Often, instead of replying to my question, she would protest her regret that I was not some other variety of inspector—one who would make the Guineas up-stairs stop throwing garbage out their windows, or maybe reprove the drunken Irishwoman for cursing her. Once I let her begin on her personal woes and it meant a half-hour hold-up for me. The woes of a tenement janitor are many and various—like setting traps on the stairs whereby she may fall and break her neck, or pelting her with rotten eggs. This last was a favorite method during the war of dealing with janitors suspected of German sympathies. However high the cost of living might soar, an ample quantity of unfresh eggs could always be found among Italian tenants to chase a German janitor to her lair. Jist dogs! Once past the janitor and provided with the number and location of all the dogs in her house I made my way, knocking at the doors behind which was supposed to be a dog. “How do you do? I’m your inspector,” I would greet the person opening the door. “I’m calling on your dog.” As with the janitor this statement of my business produced a reaction pleasing enough to put the person, usually the woman head of the family, in a good humor. Almost invariably she invited me in to rest or wait while she rummaged through various boxes and tin cans, searching for her dog’s license. It was when I accepted her invitation that I got real information. Chatting about the family pet led naturally to intimate details of her family life, her neighbors, their jobs and wages. Some day, perhaps, a dog-loving writer will make a book about the exploits of dog heroes. Once he or she begins this work they will find many trails leading into the tenement homes of Greater New York. I found several real heroes among the dogs in my district. One handsome collie had saved his mistress and a six months’ old baby from being burned alive. The woman, having been unable to sleep for some time, was given a narcotic and fell asleep in the middle of the forenoon. An hour or so later she awoke: the dog was dragging her from her bed by the hair of her head. He had literally torn her night-dress into rags trying to arouse her. The room was stifling with smoke and her bed in flames. The fire was supposed to have been started by a smoker in an upper story of the apartment-house throwing the butt of his cigarette out the window and onto an awning over the woman’s window. From the awning the curtain caught, and from that her bed. In the next apartment a woman had put her six months’ old baby to sleep and had gone up-stairs to visit a neighbor. A bit of the flaming awning was blown through the window and lighting in the baby’s cradle set its pillow on fire.