Stand on the busiest corner of New York City and detain the first 500 people who pass either on foot or in any variety of vehicle. Line them up and look them over. Say that they roughly correspond, person for person, with each of our first American ancestors, and we shall not be far wrong. There will be, most likely, a very few of exceptional ability, and a very few scoundrels, the great majority will be passably good citizens, mediocre and commonplace. If it be objected that many of those hypothetically drawn into our net on the metropolitan corner may be foreigners, the obvious reply is, that every single one of our first colonial ancestors was a foreigner.

Page 11 Family Pride
Jacobus, Donald. Genealogy As Pastime And Profession. New Haven, Conn., The Tuttle, Morehouse and Taylor company, 1930