"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. The home manufacture of ostrich feathers first gave Hamilton a clear insight into poverty. Four or five rooms each occupied by a family of several persons he entered in one tenement, and in each he found three or four people working over ostrich plumes, working nervously at high speed, afraid to stop, even for a moment. He noted conditions carefully, and was amazed to find that each of the little strands was wired--he had always supposed that plumes grew upon the ostrich the way that they are sold. In one such family dejection seemed to have reached its lowest ebb. The window looked out on a court,--a court that was never cleaned and where all manner of rubbish was thrown. Although it was morning and a brilliant, sunshiny day, the light within was so dim that it was hard to work by; yet with characteristic shiftlessness the window had not been washed for months and diminished still further the little light there was; a mattress in the opposite corner from a shaky cooking gas-burner showed that this room was the entire home. [Illustration: TAKING THE CENSUS IN A CITY. Enumerator at a doorway, entering in his portfolio the details of a household.] "Where is your husband?" asked the boy, noting on the schedule a man's name as head of the family. "In hospital--perhaps dead. See!"