“What are the Hudson Tubes and where do they take you?” he asked.
The woman laughed. “They take you to New Jersey, of course,” she said.
“Is that over there?” Boris asked, pointing across the Hudson. “And do they really go under the Hudson River?”
“Yes, to be sure they do. Where do you want to go?” she answered and then Boris remembered what he had been hunting for. “I want to go to a wide green country where there is grass everywhere. But every way I walk in New York I come to water. I know because I’ve walked east and I’ve walked west and I’ve walked north and I’ve walked south,” he said, feeling a little like crying for he was very tired and he was only a little boy too. The woman smiled and she looked nice when she smiled. “You see, boy,” she said, “New York is an island, so of course, you come to water every way you walk. And it’s so full of people that there isn’t any wide green country left,—except the Parks of course.”
“Yes, I know the Parks,” said Boris, “but that isn’t quite what I mean!”
The woman smiled again. “There is a wide green country when you get out of the island,” she said. “You’ll find it some day I’m sure,” and then the woman hurried away. Boris was very, very tired. So he took the subway home. When he came in his mother called out, “Did you find the wide green country, Boris?”
“No,” said Boris, “I couldn’t, you see. Because what do you think New York is?”
“What do I think New York is, Boris? Why, it’s the biggest city in the world!”
“That’s not what I mean. What do you think it is? What is it built on I mean?”