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."

"Does Uncle Silas write policies? I thought the companies themselves
did that."

"No. Mr. Osgood has a young man in his office--his name is Reed--who
does nothing else. And every time a policy is written by Mr. Reed and
signed by Mr. Osgood or Mr. Cole and delivered to the assured, this
peculiar document, the daily report, is made up and sent in to this
office. It is really a complete description of the policy which has
just been written."

"But there must be thousands!"

"Of course. One for every policy every agent issues. We get more than
two hundred a day in this office."

"That's why Uncle Silas said I ought to go to a home office to see
things properly. That's what he meant--it's the center of everything.
I begin to understand."

Smith, glancing at her, perceived that there was no question of her
interest now.

"Here they come, the daily reports," he continued, "and we open
them--dailies from Chicago, San Antonio, Butte, Lenox, Jersey City,
Tampa, Bangor. Dailies in English, a few in Spanish, quite a number in
French, for a few of our Canadian agents speak nothing else. This
current of dailie