down whole Lilliputian worlds of infant prodigies.

At twenty-one, when Leon Kantor played a Sunday-night concert, there was
a human queue curling entirely around the square block of the
opera-house, waiting its one, two, even three and four hours for the
privilege of standing-room only.

Usually these were Leon Kantor's own people pouring up from the lowly
lands of the East Side to the white lands of Broadway, parched for
music, these burning brethren of his--old men in that line, frequently
carrying their own little folding camp-chairs, not against weariness of
the spirit but of the flesh; youth with Slavic eyes and cheek-bones.
These were the six-deep human phalanx which would presently slant down
at him from tiers of steepest balconies and stand frankly emotional and
jammed in the unreserved space behind the railing which shut them off
from the three-dollar seats of the reserved.

At a very special one of these concerts, dedicated to the meager purses
of just these, and held in New York's super-opera-house, the
Amphitheater, a great bowl of humanity, the metaphor made perfect by
tiers of seats placed upon the stage, rose from orchestra to dome. A
gigantic Colosseum of a cup, lined in stacks and stacks of faces. From
the door of his dressing-room, leaning out, Leon Kantor could see a
great segment of it, buzzing down into adjustment, orchestra twitting
and tuning into it.

In a bare little room, illuminated by a sheaf of roses just arrived,
Mrs. Kantor drew him back by the elbow.

"Leon, you're in a draft."

The amazing years had dealt kindly with Mrs. Kantor. Stouter, softer,
apparently even taller, she was full of small new authorities that could
shut out cranks, newspaper reporters, and autograph fiends. A
fitted-over-corsets black taffeta and a high comb in the greying hair
had done their best with her. Pride, too, had left its flush upon her
cheeks, like two round spots of fever.

"Leon, it's thirty minutes till your first number. Close that door. Do
you want to let your papa and his excitement in on you?"

The son of Sarah Kantor obeyed, leaning on his short, rather narrow form
in silhouette against the closed door. In spite of slimly dark evening
clothes worked out by an astute manager to the last detail in boyish
effects, there was that about him which defied long-haired precedent.
Slimly and straightly he had shot up into an unmannered, a short, even
a bristly-haired young manhood, disqualifying by