SEVERAL countries together are called an “Empire.” So New York State is often called the Empire State, because it has as many people, who do as much business and make as much money, as several countries put together.

Down at the corner of New York State is New York City, the second largest city in the World, with more shops, more hotels, more people, and more money than any other city on this side of the World, and with more tall buildings than on any side of the World. It was named after a city across the ocean called York, but New York is now hundreds of times bigger than old York. It is the city of millionaires and millions who are not. People from all over the world come to New York hoping to be millionaires too. Some used to think the streets were paved with gold, and were disappointed when they found them just asphalt.

The main part of New York City is on an island which the Indians called Manhattan. White men bought it from the Indians and paid them about 24 for the whole island—not in money, for the Indians didn't know what money was, but in beads and ornaments worth 24. A piece of ground only large enough to stand on would now cost many times more than what the whole island once cost. That may seem a big price for a small piece of ground, but a plot of ground is not like a sheet of paper, without thickness. The owner owns everything above and below the ground—down to the center of the earth and up to the sky. That is why men in New York build buildings up to the sky—“sky-scrapers” we call them—for a fifty-story building takes up no more land than a one-story building.

To me there is nothing in the World made by the hand of man more wonderful than New York's giant buildings. They are marvelous, magnificent, awe-inspiring, stupendous, amazing, overpowering, thrilling, Brobdingnagian. Have you read “Gulliver's Travels”? Brobdingnag was the land of the giants. They stand unmoved by thunder and lightning, by wind, storm, or tempest, and they look down on their creaters—mites of men who, with their hands of only five fingers, have built them. New York's motto is “Excelsior,” which means “Higher,” and that is the motto of its builders. There is a saying, “Great oaks from little acorns grow,” and one of the greatest of these buildings—sixty stories high—was built from the nickels and dimes made by Woolworth's Five and Ten Cent Stores. The most marvelous building of all is called the Empire State Building. It is one hundred and two stories high, taller than any other building in New York City, or in America, or in the whole World.