Part 3
Suddenly Boris remembered what he had come for. He was looking for the wide green country, for a place where grass grew everywhere. “This is the funniest thing in the world,” he thought scratching his head. “Wherever I walk in New York I come to water. So many people and water on every side of them! How do they ever get out?” As soon as he thought of this, he began to look around. Across the East River he could see a giant bridge leaping from New York over to another city and on the bridge were trains and cars shooting back and forth and autos and horses and people. “So that is the way they get out!” he thought.
Then he looked to the west, to the Hudson River. “No bridges there!” he said. “It’s too wide.” Then he suddenly remembered the ferry boat that had brought him from Ellis Island. “Ferry boats, of course,” he thought. And sure enough there were ferry boats and ferry boats going back and forth from New York to the other side and to the little islands out in the harbor too!
Now Boris walked along thinking hard about all this water all around New York. Just then he noticed a lot of people coming up out of a hole in the sidewalk. “The Subway,” he thought, for you remember he had been on the subway. But the name over the steps didn’t spell “subway.” He looked at it for a long time. At last he could read it. “Hudson Tubes” it said. Hudson Tubes? What could that mean? Boris wanted to know. So he walked right up to a woman coming out of the hole.
“What are the Hudson Tubes and where do they take you?” he asked.
The woman laughed. “They take you to New Jersey, of course,” she said.
“Is that over there?” Boris asked, pointing across the Hudson. “And do they really go under the Hudson River?”
“Yes, to be sure they do. Where do you want to go?” she answered and then Boris remembered what he had been hunting for. “I want to go to a wide green country where there is grass everywhere. But every way I walk in New York I come to water. I know because I’ve walked east and I’ve walked west and I’ve walked north and I’ve walked south,” he said, feeling a little like crying for he was very tired and he was only a little boy too. The woman smiled and she looked nice when she smiled. “You see, boy,” she said, “New York is an island, so of course, you come to water every way you walk. And it’s so full of people that there isn’t any wide green country left,—except the Parks of course.”
“Yes, I know the Parks,” said Boris, “but that isn’t quite what I mean!”
The woman smiled again. “There is a wide green country when you get out of the island,” she said. “You’ll find it some day I’m sure,” and then the woman hurried away. Boris was very, very tired. So he took the subway home. When he came in his mother called out, “Did you find the wide green country, Boris?”
“No,” said Boris, “I couldn’t, you see. Because what do you think New York is?”
“What do I think New York is, Boris? Why, it’s the biggest city in the world!”
“That’s not what I mean. What do you think it is? What is it built on I mean?”
“What is it built on? On good sound rock I suppose!”
Boris laughed and laughed. “No, no,” he said. “I mean it’s an island. Every way you walk, if you walk long enough, you come to water. Now isn’t that the funniest thing?” And Boris’s mother thought it was funny too.
“So many people and all to live on an island!” she kept saying to herself. “I should think it would make them a lot of work!”
And Boris who remembered the bridges and the ferry boats and the “tubes” thought so too!
Boris, he went out to walk
To find the country wide
And he walked west and west he walked
But he found the Hudson wide!
And so he turned himself about
And walked the other way
And he walked east and east he walked
And there East River lay!
But Boris he went out again
To find the country wide
And he went north and north he went
To Harlem River’s side.
Again he turned himself about
And went the other way
And he went south and south he went
And there the harbor lay!
Then Boris scratched his head and thought:
“Whatever way I go
There’s always water at the end
Whatever way I go!
New York must be an island
An island it must be
So many people all shut in
By rivers and by sea!
They’ve bridges and they’ve ferry boats
Across the top to go;
They’ve subways and they’ve Hudson tubes
To burrow down below
To get things in, to get things out
How busy they must be!
In that enormous big New York
On rivers and on sea!”
SPEED
This story is a definite attempt to make the child aware of a new relationship in his familiar environment.
The verse is for the older children. The story has lent itself well to dramatization.