"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 Café 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."