Part 30 (1/2)

”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 gla.s.ses 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 cla.s.ses, 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 heroic Stefansson, of Amundsen. Just now he works as a longsh.o.r.eman. 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. bas.e.m.e.nt. 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 s.h.i.+rt. ”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 Was.h.i.+ngton-to-Buenos Ayres race in a three-hundred-foot Lippmann Stabilized quadroplane, carrying fifty pa.s.sengers 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 jaws grim, ”my motto is, 'America for Americans!'”

”And mine,” says Eggy, facin' him defiant, ”is 'Americans for America!'”

”You're a scatterbrained visionary!” snaps J. Q. ”You and your potential grandfather rubbis.h.!.+ What about the grandsons of good Americans? Do you not reckon them in at all in your----”

”Whe-e-e-e! Whoop!” comes from the hall, the front office door is kicked open joyous, and in comes a tall, light-haired, blue-eyed young gent, with his face well pinked up and his hat on the back of his head. He's arm in arm with a shrimpy, Frenchy lookin' party wearin' a silk lid and a frock coat. They pushes unsteady through Eggy's ill.u.s.trious ancestor bunch and comes to parade rest in the center of the stage.