"The census-taker?" one old man said, when Hamilton called. "Come right
in the office and sit down. Now tell me what I can do for you," and when
the boy mentioned the principal items of the schedule, the manufacturer
spent a good hour working over the books with his office force to get
out the figures desired. When Hamilton thanked him, he replied:

"I'm an American, Mr. Noble, and one of the stones they moved from the
old churchyard of the Old Center Church and that bore the date 1681 was
the tombstone of my direct ancestor. I think you'll find most of the New
England stock proud of the United States and only too glad to do
anything they can to help the government in its census or anything else
for the good of the country."

"I'm sure of it," the boy said heartily, "but there's mighty few of that
old type left. There's not ten per cent of the people in the country now
that are real bred-in-the-bone Americans."

"It is a pity," the old man said, shaking his head, "and the worst of it
is that even that ten per cent lives principally in the country. It's
the cities that influence the progress of the nation. We talk about
making these foreigners over into our idea of what Americans should be,
and we forget that all the time they are influencing us to become the
kind of Americans they think we ought to be."

"I guess that's true," the boy said, "because in New York, where my
folks live, the old New Yorkers seem entirely strange and out-of-place
in the dash and glitter."

"Of course," the New Englander replied. "The real Americans are plain,
solid people; it's the Jewish strain in New York that has brought about
the display of wealth, and to the large number of Southern Europeans are
due the colors, the lights, the music, the public dining, and all the
rest of it. It may be the American of to-day, but it isn't what
Americanism meant a few years ago."

"A good deal of New York life does seem foreign in a kind of way," said
Hamilton, "and I'm glad," he added, as he closed his portfolio, "that
the Census Bureau put me at work in one of the old-fashioned towns
first."

As the boy went on in his work he came to find how thoroughly the spirit
of Yale was felt in the town. Almost all the leading business men were
Yale graduates, and instead of displaying the "town and gown" hostility
of some university places, New Haven was inordinately proud of its
college. Of course, even in such a town, there was quite a proportion of