that happens, Mr. Crane, you will understand that the world will
profit from man's secret wishes. Earth will be a far better place.
Paradise, sunken deep in every man, can be dredged out and set up
again."

"I don't know," said Jack's father, stroking his chin thoughtfully with
a finger. "Children like my son are too introverted as it is. Give them
this psychological toy you suggest, and you would watch them grow, not
into the outside world, but into themselves. They would fester. Man has
been expelled from the Garden. His history is a long, painful climb
toward something different. It is something that is probably better than
the soft and flabby Golden Age. If man were to return, he would regress,
become worse than static, become infantile or even embryonic. He would
be smothered in the folds of his own dreams."

"Perhaps," said the salesman. "But I think you have a very unusual child
here. He will go much farther than you may think. Why? Because he is
sensitive and has an imagination that only needs the proper guidance.
Too many children become mere bourgeois ciphers with paunches and round
'O' minds full of tripe. They'll stay on earth. That is, I mean they'll
be stuck in the mud."

"You talk like no insurance salesman I've ever met."

"Like all those who really want to sell, I'm a born psychologist,"
Mister shrilled. "Actually, I have an advantage. I have a Ph.D. in
psychology. I would prefer staying at home for laboratory work, but
since I can help my starving children--I am not joking--so much more by
coming to a foreign land and working at something that will put food in
their mouths, I do it. I can't stand to see my little ones go hungry.
Moreover," he said with a wave of his long-fingered hand, "this whole
planet is really a lab that beats anything within four walls."

"You spoke of famine. Your accent--your name. You're a Greek, aren't
you?"

"In a way," said Mister. "My name, translated, means gracious or kindly
or well-meaning." His voice became brisker. "The translation is apropos.
I'm here to do you a service. Now, about these monthly premiums ..."

Jack shook himself and stepped out of the mold of fascination that
Mister's glasses seemed to have poured around him. Uncas again, he
crawled on all fours from chair to divan to stool to the fallen log
which the adults thought was an easy chair. He stuck his head from
behind it and sighted along the broomstick-musket at his father. He'd
shoot that white