says I. "Bring that mob up here?"

"Just a few," pleads Eggy, "and for ten minutes only."

"It might be sport," suggests Pinckney.

"I'll take a chance," says I. "We can disinfect afterwards."

Eggy dashes off, and after a lively jabberin' below comes back with his
selected specimens. Not a one looks as though he'd been over more'n a
year, and some are still wearin' the outlandish rigs they landed in.
Then Eggy begins introducin' 'em. And, say, you'd hardly know him for
the same bashful, wispy party that Swifty had dragged in a little while
before. Honest, as he warms to it, he sort of swells up and straightens,
he squares his shoulders, his voice rings out confident, and his eyes
behind the thick glasses are all aglow.

"We will dispense with names," says he; "but here is a native of Sicily.
He is about thirty-five years old, and he worked in the salt mines for
something like twelve cents a day from the time he was ten until he came
over here under contract to a padrone a few months ago. So you see his
possibilities for mental development have been limited. But his muscles
have been put to use in helping dig a new subway for us. We hope,
however, that in the future his latent talents may be brought out. That
being the case, he is possibly the grandfather of the man who in 1965
will write for us an American opera better than anything ever produced
by Verdi. Why not?"

We gawps at the grandfather of the musical genius of 1965 and grins.
He's a short, squatty, low-browed party with gold rings in his ears and
a smallpox-pitted face. He gazes doubtful at Eggleston durin' the talk,
and at the finish grins back at us. Likely he thought Eggy'd been makin'
a comic speech.

"An ingenious prophecy," says Mr. Hubbard; "but unfortunately all
Italians are not Verdis."

"Few have the chance to be," says Eggy. "That is what America should
mean to them,--opportunity. We shall benefit by giving it to them too.
Look at our famous bands: at least one-third Italians. Why, nine-tenths
of the music that delights us is made for us by the foreign born! Would
you drive all those into the sea?"

"Absurd!" says Mr. Hubbard. "I referred only to the lower classes, of
course. But let's get on. What next?"

Eggy looks over the line, picks out a square-jawed, bull-headed,
pie-faced Yon Yonson, with stupid, stary, skim-milk eyes, and leads him
to the front. "A direct descendant of the old Vikings," says he, "a
fellow countryman of the hero