Summary

The music editor of the New York Times prints Mr. Smedley's letter. The Bellini family gets to the newsstand early and Papa reads the letter to Mario and Mama. The station begins to fill up and people start to form a crowd around the newsstand. Mama Bellini has never seen so many people around the newsstand. She grabs a bundle of the Times and works her way through the crowd, offering the paper. In less than an hour, they are sold out of the Times. Mama presses an armload of music magazines into Papa’s hands and tells him to take them out next. Soon, all copies of Musical America are gone as well. Harry and Tucker listen from the drainpipe.

On the first day alone, almost eight hundred people are late for work because they’d stayed to listen to Chester...