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finger to the page. I bent down, and saw it was our building! Before the improvements, before they tore down the shacks in front and installed the toilets and the running water and the airshaft.
    â€œHe came to our tenement and he began writing these reports and taking pictures,” Marm said. “The streets of the city were filled with chickens and pigs that would eat the trash people threw out the windows. There were no sweepers back then, nobody paid attention to how dirty our buildings were. Not until Jacob Riis wrote about us.”
    My mind raced as I stared at the pictures with new eyes—I thought of the job.
    Marm said, “I don’t even think there was a Department of Health back then.” She went to the window and lookedout and said, “The streets were horrifying—with horse manure piled as high as ten feet in some places. Ten feet of manure. That’s higher than our ceiling.”
    I stood beside her, looking out.
    â€œIt wasn’t easy, making changes,” Marm said. “Homes had to be demolished, some people disappeared, some were even arrested.”
    I wonder if things are so different now. Despite the beginning chill of autumn, I can still smell the rubbish in the bins underneath our window; across the street, our fishmonger still throws the innards onto the cobblestones; our neighbors still fall ill with sicknesses they pass to each other, our girls still die in childbirth.
    But ten feet of manure, we don’t suffer from that. If the city has changed so much in the years since Marm was a girl, how might I help to change it further? It seems a never-ending task, keeping after the thousands of people who live in this city, making sure they have clean streets and good health and decent places to live. It seems, finally, just the sort of job I’ve been looking for, one that is far bigger than me.

September 25, 1906
    I had my interview this morning. I was very nervous, and I’m not sure how well I did. The day started poorly—drizzling, the mucky streets threatening the cleanliness of my boots and skirt bottom. I had to walk halfway across town to where I could catch the crowded streetcar up to 14th Street. From there, I hurried over to Union Square, to the department’s squat brick building. Just inside, people pushed past as I dabbed my wet face, trying to muster my confidence. I strode purposefully into the wide hall, though I wasn’t sure where I was going. On the first door to the left, stencilled on the glass, I saw his name, my interviewer, Mr. George Soper, Sanitary Engineer. I stood for a moment, trying to gather my nerve. Across the hall, behind a windowed doorway, I could see the busy activity of men who thankfully took no notice of me.
    I knocked and entered my interviewer’s office. He was sitting behind his desk and looked remarkably like Mr. Robert Peary, even down to his dark mustache and the part in his hair and the very straight line of his jaw.
    He indicated the coatrack; I hung my damp hat and cape. He bowed his head and said, “Please take a seat.”
    To his right was a desk; on it, a brand-new Remington typing machine. I sat behind it. The size of the deep wooden desk nearly overwhelmed me—I wondered if I had what it took to fill the position. I felt as if my mouth were stuffed with rags, and my back soaked by rain showers.
    â€œPlease type these paragraphs,” he said, handing me a sheet of paper. He took out a pocket watch. He nodded, and I swallowed the nugget of fear in my throat.
    My clothes felt tight and my hands weak as I performed on the stiff new keys. In one minute, he stopped me. He pulled the page out of the machine. He glanced at it, laid it on his desk, and sat down.
    I stared at the strong bone of his jaw, the muscle flexing there. I looked at his smoothly oiled hair, his crisp bowtie. I wondered what sort of home he lived in, and what his wife might look like, if he had one.
    Beneath his brow,