s, so that I want to make the best use
of it."

"Suppose you come along with me, then," said his new acquaintance, who
was none other than the Chief of the Information Division, "and I'll
show you round myself as far as I can spare the time. It so happens that
there are a lot of scattering things I want to look after through the
building to-day, and if you don't mind my leaving you alone, once in a
while, I'll take you through systematically. Where do you want to
begin?"

"Right at the very start," rejoined Hamilton "I always think the
beginning is the most important part, and I'd hate to lose any of it."

"All right," said his conductor good-humoredly; "if you want it all, you
shall have it. I notice, too," he said, as they walked along the hall
and out of the door to the well-kept lawns that stretch between the main
building and the sea wall, "that you're in good time, for there's a
barge just pulling in."

"The barge is from one of the liners that came in this morning, I
suppose?" queried the lad.

"Yes, one of the Hamburg boats," his guide replied.

"Are those barges run by the immigration authorities?"

"No," was the answer, "those are owned or managed by the steamboat
companies. They bring all the steerage passengers who can't show that
they are citizens, and all the cabin passengers who are being detained."

"Cabin passengers," echoed Hamilton in surprise; "I didn't think any
cabin passengers came to Ellis Island. All second cabin, I suppose?"

"Not a bit of it," answered the immigration official; "there's quite a
sprinkling of first-class passengers as well. Why, during a period of
three months recently, nearly three thousand cabin passengers were
detained on the island here, and I suppose twenty per cent of them had
come over in the first-class saloon."

"But why should any first-class passengers be stopped and shipped to
Ellis Island?" queried the boy. "I don't understand. I thought Ellis
Island was to keep out people who were paupers, or diseased, or were
undesirable citizens!"

[Illustration: THE BIGGEST LINER IN THE WORLD COMING IN. Ocean steamship
with thousands of immigrants on board entering New York harbor; the
Statue of Liberty in the distance. (_Brown Bros._)]

"That's just exactly what it is for," the other replied, "but the United
States government doesn't think that having money enough to pay for a
first-class passage makes every man a desirable citizen! A first-class
berth is no ins