"Would the cotton grower ship his cotton north to the New England mills or to Liverpool if he couldn't insure it in transportation? No; he wouldn't dare take the risk. His cotton would remain on his plantation until some venturesome buyer came, paid him cash, and carried it away with him. We should go back to the commercial dark ages." "You have crushed me, Mr. Smith," Helen said with a smile. "I will admit that insurance is indispensable." "I was in hopes that you would admit it, not because you were crushed, but because you saw." "I think I'm beginning to see," she answered. The underwriter regarded her a little doubtfully; then a whimsical smile crossed his lips, making him singularly youthful and--Helen noted--singularly attractive. By a sudden change of thought he turned toward the window. "A seaport city is a wonderful thing," he said. "Here come the keels of the world, bringing the tribute of the seven seas. It is a fine place to work, Miss Maitland, this down town New York within sight of the water and the water front. Even if you seldom get time to look at it, you have the feeling that it is there. There is never a minute, summer or winter, night or day, when those keels are not bringing argosies home to these old docks. Merely to walk along the shore front is as though one were in touch with all the world." "I've seen some of it in Boston," said the girl; "but Boston is not the port it used to be." "There are places in the world, they say--Port Said is one of them and the Cafe de la Paix in Paris is another--where all things and all people come soon or late. Those places must be the most interesting in the world." "You have never been abroad?" the girl asked. "No; I never had time. I have to get my world travel, world strangeness, world movement, as I can. And I get it pretty well, here in this office." "Here! What do you mean?" "We photograph it all, day by day." "Oh," said Helen, "you mean you get it all from the maps you showed me?" "Partly that. That is, the maps are part of it. They make the stage, the setting where the insurance drama is played. But the characters come on the stage through the medium of plain sheets of printed paper known as daily reports. The daily report is the link that unites this office to the throbbing life of a thousand cities around us." "And what is a daily report? Certainly the name of it doesn't sound romantic." "No, it doesn't. And yet the daily report is as vital a document as there is in the world." "In what way? I never heard of it before." "You never asked Mr. Osgood. He has sent us many thousand. As you know, the company receives its business from agents, scattered all through the country, at most of the important and a large number of unimportant points. In New England alone this company has nearly two hundred agents, each one writing policies when people apply for insurance."