m far away
When they were wee and small!

One of the little boys who sailed and sailed until he came to big New
York was named Boris. He came as the others did, with his father and his
mother and his sisters and his brothers. He came from a wide green
country called Russia. In that country he had never seen a city, never
seen wharves with ocean steamers and ferry boats and tug boats and
barges,--never seen a street so crowded you could hardly get through,
had never seen great high buildings reaching up, up, up to the clouds,
he thought. And he had never heard a city, never heard the noise of
elevated trains and surface cars and automobiles and the many, many
hurrying feet. He often thought of the wide green country he had left
behind, and he used to talk about it to his mother in a funny language
you wouldn't understand. For Boris and his family still spoke Russian.
But Boris was nine years old and he loved new things as well as old. So
he grew to love this crowded noisy new home of his as well as the still
wide country he had left.

[Illustration]

Now Boris had been in New York quite a while. But he hadn't been out on
the streets much. One day he said to his mother in the funny language,
"I think I'll take a walk!"

"All right," she answered, "be careful you don't get run over by one of
those queer wagons that run without horses!"

"Yes I will," laughed Boris for he was a careful and a smart little boy
and knew well how to take care of himself for all he was so little.

So Boris went out on the street. He walked to the corner and waited to
go across.

Kachunk, kachunk, kachunk went by an auto;
Clopperty, clopperty, clopperty went by a horse;
Thunk-a-ta, thunk-a-ta, bang, bang went by a truck.

He waited another minute.

Kachunk, kachunk, kachunk went by an auto;
Clopperty, clopperty, clopperty went by a horse;
Thunk-a-ta, thunk-a-ta, bang, bang went by a truck.

He stood there a long while watching this stream of autos and horses and
trucks go by and he thought:

"Dear me! dear me!
What shall I do?
The're so many things,
I'll never get through!"

Just then all the autos and the horses and the trucks stopped. They
stood still right in front of him. And Boris saw that the big man
standing in the middle of the street had put up his hand to stop them.
So he scampered across. Boris didn't know that the big man was the
traffic policeman!

[Illustration]