ic Stefansson, of Amundsen. Just now he
works as a longshoreman. But give him a fair chance, and his son's son
will turn out to be the first Admiral of the Federal Fleet of Commerce
that is to be,--a fleet of swift government freighters that shall knit
closely together our ports with all the ports of the Seven Seas.
Gentlemen, I present to you the ancestor of an Admiral!"

Pinckney chuckles and nudges Mr. Hubbard. Yonson bats his stupid eyes
once or twice, and lets himself be pushed back.

"Go on," says J. Q., scowlin'. "I suppose you'll produce next the
grandfather of a genius who will head the National Pie Bureau of the
next century?"

"Not precisely," says Eggy, beckonin' up a black-haired, brown-eyed
Polish Jewess. "A potential grandmother this time. She helps an aunt who
conducts a little kosher delicatessen shop in a Hester-st. basement. Her
granddaughter is to organize the movement for communal dietetics, by
means of which our children's children are all to be fed on properly
cooked food, scientifically prepared, and delivered hot at a nominal
price. She will banish dyspepsia from the land, make obsolete the
household drudge, and eliminate the antique kitchen from twenty million
homes. Perhaps they will put up a statue in her memory."

"Humph!" snorts Mr. Hubbard. "Is that one of H. G. Wells' silly dreams?"

"You flatter me," says Eggy; "but you give me courage to venture still
further. Now we come to the Slav." He calls up a thin, peak-nosed,
wild-eyed gink who's wearin' a greasy waiter's coat and a coffee-stained
white shirt. "From a forty-cent table d'hote restaurant," goes on
Eggleston. "An alert, quick-moving, deft-handed person--valuable
qualities, you will admit. Develop those in his grandson, give him the
training of a National Academy of Technical Arts, bring out the
repressed courage and self-confidence, and you will produce--well, let
us say, the Chief Pilot of the Aero Transportation Department, the man
to whom Congress will vote an honorary pension for winning the first
Washington-to-Buenos Ayres race in a three-hundred-foot Lippmann
Stabilized quadroplane, carrying fifty passengers and two tons of mail
and baggage."

Mr. Hubbard gazes squint-eyed at the waiter and sniffs.

"Come, now, who knows?" insists Eggy. "These humble people whom you so
despise need only an opportunity. Can we afford to shut them out? Don't
we need them as much as they need us?"

"Mr. Ham," says J. Q., shuttin' his ja