 CHAPTER XIII It was by accident that Bavit had his opportunity to address the S-A-R-E-B. The S-A-R-E-B. As its members called it, with the universal passion for mysterious and important sounding initials, was the State Association of Real Estate Boards, the organization of brokers and operators. It was to hold its annual convention at Monarch, Zenith, chief rival among the cities of the state. Bavit was an official delegate. Another was Cecil Roundtree, whom Bavit admired for his picturesque speculative building, and hated for his social position, for being present at the smartest dances on Royal Ridge. Roundtree was chairman of the convention program committee. Bavit had growled to him, "'Makes me tired the way these doctors and profs and preachers put on lugs about being professional men. A good realtor has to have more knowledge of finesse than any of them.'" "'Right you are,' I say. Why don't you put that into a paper and give it at the S-A-R-E-B,' suggested Roundtree. "'Well, if it would help, you're making up the program. Tell you, the way I look at it is this. First place, we ought to insist that folks call us realtors, not real estate men. Sounds more like a regular profession. Second place? What is it distinguishes a profession from a mere trade, business, or occupation? What is it? Why, it's the public service and the skill, the trained skill and the knowledge and all that, whereas the fellow that merely goes out for the jack never considers the public service and trained skill and so on. Now, as a professional, rather that's perfectly bully, perfectly cooking. Now you write it in a paper,' said Roundtree, as he rapidly and firmly moved away. II However accustomed to the literary labors of advertisements and correspondence, Babbot was dismayed on the evening when he sat down to prepare a paper which would take a whole ten minutes to read. He laid out a new fifteen-cent school exercise book on his wife's collapsible sewing table, set up for the event in the living room. The household had been bullied into silence. Verona and Ted requested to disappear, and Ticca threatened with ''If I hear one sound out of you, if you holler for a glass of water one single solitary time, you better not. That's all.'' Mrs. Babbot sat over by the piano, making a knock-down and gazing with respect while Babbot wrote in the exercise book to the rhythmical wriggling and squeaking of the sewing table. When he rose, damp and jumpy, and his throat dusty from cigarettes, she marveled, ''I don't see how you can just sit down and make up things right out of your own head.'' ''Ah, it's a training and constructive imagination that a fellow gets in modern business life.'' He had written seven pages, were of the first page set forth. Illustration abitted consists of several doodles and, one, a profession. Two, not just a trade crossed out. Three, skill and vision. Three, should be called realtor and not just real estate man. The six other pages, rather like the first. For a week he went about looking important. Every morning, as he dressed, he thought aloud, ''Jever, stop to consider, Myra, that before a town can have buildings or prosperity or any of these things, some realtor has got to sell them the land. All civilization starts with him. Do you ever realize that?'' After the athletic club, he led unwilling men aside to inquire. Say, if you had to read a paper before a big convention, would you start in with the funny stories or just kind of scatter them all through?'' He asked Howard Littlefield for a set of statistics about real estate sales, something good and impressive. And Littlefield provided something exceedingly good and impressive. But it was to T. Charmoldy Frank, that babbit, most often turned. He caught Frank at the club every noon and demanded, while Frank looked hunted and invasive. ''Hey, Tom, you're a shark on this writing thing. How would you put this sentence? See here in my manuscript. Manuscript now, where the deuce is that?'' ''Ah, yes, here. Would you say, we ought not also to alone think or we ought also not to think alone or?'' One evening, when his wife was away, and he had no one to impress, Babbit forgot about style, order, and other mysteries and scrawled off what he really thought about the real estate business and about himself. And he found a paper written. When he read it to his wife, she yearned. ''Why, dear, it's splendid, beautifully written, and so clear and interesting. And such splendid ideas. Why, it's just, it's just splendid.'' Next day, cornered Charmoldy Frank encrode. ''Well, son, I finished it last evening. Just lambed it out. I used to think you writing guys must have had a hard job making up pieces, but Lord, it's a cinch. Pretty soft for you, fellas. You certainly earn your money easy. Some day, when I get ready to retire, guess I'll take to writing and show you boys how to do it. Always used to think I could write better stuff and more punch and originality than all this stuff you see printed. And now I'm dog-gone-sure of it.'' He had four copies of the paper typed in black with gorgeous red title, had them bound in a pale blue manila, and affably presented one to old Ira Runyon, the managing editor of the Advocate Times, who said, ''Yes, indeed, yes.'' He was very glad to have it, and he certainly would read it all through, as soon as they could find time. Mrs. Babbitt could not go to Monarch. She had a woman's club meeting. Babbitt said he was very sorry. Three. Besides the five official delegates to the convention, Babbitt, Roundtree, W.A. Rogers, Alvin Thayer, and Albert Wing, there were fifty unofficial delegates, most of them with their wives. They met at the Union Station for the midnight train to Monarch. All of them, save Cecil Roundtree, who was such a snob that he never wore badges, displayed celluloid buttons the size of dollars and lettered, ''We zoom for Zenith.'' The official delegates were magnificent with silver and magenta ribbons. Martin Lumsum's little boy Willie carried a tassel banner inscribed, ''Zenith, the Zip City, Zeal, Zest, and Zowie, one million in nineteen thirty-five.'' As the delegates arrived, not in taxi cabs, but in the family automobile driven by the oldest son or by cousin Fred, they formed impromptu processions through the station waiting room. It was a new and enormous waiting room, with marble pilasters and fire-spiriscos depicting the exploration of the Chalusa River Valley by Pierre-Emer Fortrault in seventeen forty. The benches were shelves of ponderous mahogany. The new stand a marble kiosk with brass grill. Down the echoing spaces of the hall, the delegates paraded after Willie Lumsum's banner. The men waving their cigars, the women, conscious of their new frocks and strings of beads, all singing to the tune of all dag-zine, the official city-song written by Chum Frank, ''Good ol' Zenith, our kin with kith, wherever we may be, hats in the ring, we blithely sing of thy prosperity.'' Warren will be the broker, who had a gift of verse for banquets and birthdays, had added to Frank's city-song a special verse for the Realtor's Convention. ''Oh, here we come, the fellows from Zenith, the zip city. We wish the state, in real estate, there's none so live as we.'' Babbit was stirred to hysteric patriotism. He leaped on a bench shouting it to the crowd. ''What's the matter with Zenith? She's all right.'' ''What's best old town in the USA?'' ''Rena...'' Patient poor people waiting for the midnight train stared in unenvious wonder. Italian women and shawls, old weary men with broken shoes, roving roadsways, boys in suits, which had been flashy when they were new, but which were faded now and wrinkled. Babbit perceived that as an official delegate, he must be more dignified. With Wing and Rogers, he tramped up and down the cement platform beside the waiting pull-mans. Motor-driven baggage truck and red-cat porters carrying bags sped down the platform with an agreeable effect of activity. Ark lights glared and stammered overhead. The glossy yellow sleeping car shone impressively. Babbit made his voice to be measured and lordly. He thrust out his abdomen and rumbled. ''We got to see to it that the convention lets the legislature understand just where they get off in this matter of taxing, realty transfers.'' Wing uttered approving grunts, and Babbit swelled, gloated. The blind of a pull-man compartment was raised, and Babbit looked into an unfamiliar world. The occupant of the compartment was Lucille McKelvie, the pretty wife of the millionaire contractor. Possibly, Babbit thrilled, she was going to Europe. On the seat beside her was a bunch of orchids and violets, and a yellow paper-bound book, which seemed foreign. While he stared she picked up the book, then glanced out the window as though she was bored. She must have looked straight at him, and he had met her, but she gave no sign. She languidly pulled down the blind, and he stood still, a cold feeling of insignificance in his heart. But on the train his pride was restored by meeting delegates from Sparta, Pioneer, and other smaller cities of the state who listened respectfully, when as a magnifico, from the metropolis of Zenith. He explained politics and the value of a good sound business administration. They fell joyfully into chop-talk, the purest and most rapturous form of conversation. How'd this fellow round-tree make out with his big apartment hotel he was going to put up? What'd he do? Get out bonds to finance it? Ask a Spartan broker. Well, I'll tell you, said Babbit. Now, if I'd been handling it. So, Ibert Wing was joining. I hired this shop window for a week and put up a big sign. Toward town for tiny tots, and stuck in a lot of doll houses and some dinky little trees. And then down at the bottom, baby liked this dolly dail. But Papa and Mama will prefer our beautiful bungalows. And you know that certainly got folks talking. And first week we sold. The trucks sang lickety-lick, lickety-lick as the train ran through the factory district. Furnaces spurted flame and power hammers were clanging, red lights, green lights, furious white lights rushed past. And Babbit was important again and eager. For he did a voluptuous thing. He had his clothes pressed on the train. In the morning, half an hour before they reached Monarch, the porter came to his berth and whispered, There's a drawn room vacant, sir. I'll put your suit in there. In tan autumn overcoat over his pajamas, Babbit slipped down the green curtain lined aisle to the glory of his first private compartment. The porter indicated that he knew Babbit was used to a man-servant. He held the ends of Babbit's trousers that the beautifully sponged garment might not be soiled, filled a bowl in private washroom and waited with a towel. To have a private washroom was luxurious. However, in livening up Pullman's smoking compartment was by night. Even to Babbit it was depressing in the morning. When it was jammed with fat men and woollen undershirts, every hook filled with wrinkled cottony shirts, the leather seat piled with dingy toilet kits and the air nauseating with the smell of soap and toothpaste. Babbit did not ordinarily think much of privacy, but now he reveled in it, reveled in his valet, and purred with pleasure as he gave the man a tip of a dollar and a half. He rather hoped that he was being noticed, as in his newly pressed clothes, with the adoring porter carrying his suitcase, he disembarked at Monarch. He was to share a room at the Hotel Sedgwick with W. A. Rogers, that shrewd, rustic-looking Zenith dealer in farmlands. Together they had a noble breakfast with waffles and coffee, not in exiguous cups, but in large pots. Babbit grew expansive and told Rogers about the art of writing. He gave a bellboy a quarter to fetch a morning newspaper from the lobby and sent Tinka a postcard. Papa wishes you were here to bat around with him. Five. The meetings of the convention were held in the ballroom of the Allen House. In an anti-room was the office of the chairman of the Executive Committee. He was the busiest man in the convention. He was so busy, he got nothing done whatever. He sat at a market table, in a room littered with crumpled paper and all day long, town boosters and lobbyists and orators who wished to lead debates, came and whispered to him, whereupon he looked big and said rapidly, Yes, yes, that's fine idea. We'll do that. And instantly forgot all about it. Lighted a scar and forgot that, too. While the telephone rang mercilessly, and about him men kept beseeching. Say, Mr. Chairman, say, Mr. Chairman. Without penetrating his exhausted hearing. In the exhibit room were plans of the new suburb of Sparta, pictures of the New State Capitol at Gallup-Divache, and large ears of corn with the label Nature's Gold from Shelby County, the garden spot of God's own country. The real convention consisted of men muttering in hotel bedrooms or in groups amid the bad spotted crowd in the hotel lobby. But there was a show of public meetings. The first of them opened with a welcome by the mayor of Monarch. The pastor of the first Christian church of Monarch, a large man, with a long damp frontal lock informed God that the real estate men were here now. The venerable, many magnetic realtor Major Carlton took, read a paper in which he denounced cooperative stores, William A. Larkin of Eureka, gave a comforting prognosis of the prospects for increased construction, and reminded them that plate glass prices were two points lower. The convention was on. The delegates were entertained incessantly and firmly. The Monarch Chamber of Commerce gave them a banquet, and the Manufacturers Association, an afternoon reception at which a chrysanthemum was presented to each of the ladies, and to each of the men, a leather billfold inscribed from Monarchs, the mighty motor-mart. Mrs. Crosby-Nolton, wife of the manufacturer of fleet-wing automobiles, opened her celebrated Italian garden and served tea. Six hundred real estate men and wives ambled down the automobile paths. Perhaps three hundred of them were quietly inconspicuous, perhaps three hundred vigorously exclaimed, this is pretty slick, eh? Syrup Tishelsey picked the late Asters and concealed them in their pockets, and tried to get near enough to Mrs. Nolton to shake her lovely hand. Without request, the Zenith delegates, except Roundree, gathered round a marble dancing nymph and sang, Here we come, the fellows from Zenith, the Zip City. It chanced that all the delegates from Pioneer belonged to the brotherly and protective order of Elks, and they produced an enormous banner lettered B-P-O-E, Best People on Earth, Boost Pioneer. Oh, Eddie! Nor was Gallup Davenged the state capital to be slighted. The leader of the Gallup Davenged delegation was a large, reddish, roundish man. But active, he took off his coat, hurled his broad black felt hat on the ground, rolled up his sleeves, climbed upon the sundial, spat and bellowed, We'll tell the world and a good lady who's giving the show this afternoon, that the baniest burg in this man's state is Gallup Davenged. You boys can talk about your zip, but just let me murmur that old Gallup has the largest proportion of home-owning citizens in the state. And when folks own their own homes, they ain't starting labor troubles, and they're raising kids instead of raising hell. Gallup Davenged the town for homie folks, the town that eats them alive. Oh, Bosco, we'll tell the world. The guest drove off, the garden shivered into quiet. But Mrs. Crosby-Nolton sighed as she looked at the marble seat, warm from five hundred summers of amphiliy. On the face of a wingsfinks, which supported it, someone had drawn a mustache and lead pencil. Crumpled paper napkins were dumped among the Mitchellments. Daisy's, on the walk, like shredded lovely flesh, were the petals of the last gallant rose. Cigarette stubs floated into goldfish pool, trailing an evil stain, as they swelled and disintegrated. And beneath the marble seat, the fragments carefully put together. It was a smashed teacup. Six As they rode back to the hotel, Babbit reflected, Mara would have enjoyed all this social agony. For himself, he cared less for the garden party than for the motor tours which the Monarch Chamber of Commerce had arranged. Indicatively, he viewed water reservoirs, suburban trolley stations, and tanneries. He devoured the statistics which are given to him, and marveled to his roommate, W. A. Rogers. Of course it is talented in the patch on Zenith. It hasn't got our outlook on natural resources. But did you know? I never did till to-day that they manufactured 763 million feet of lumber last year. What do you think of that? He was nervous as the time for reading his paper approached. When he stood on the low platform before the convention, he trembled and saw only a purple haze. But he was in earnest, and when he finished the formal paper, he talked to them, his hands in his pockets, his spectacle face, a flashing disc, like a plate set up on edge in the lamp light. They shouted, That's the stuff! And in the discussion afterwards, they reflected with impressiveness to our friend and brother, Mr. George F. Babbitt. He had in 15 minutes changed from a minor delegate to a personage almost as well known as that diplomat of business, Cecil Roundtree. After the meeting, delegates from all over the state said, How are you, brother Babbitt? 16 complete strangers called him George and three men took him into corners to confine. I'm glad you had the courage to stand up and give the profession a real boost. Now I've always maintained. Next morning with tremendous casualness, Babbitt asked the girl at the hotel newsstand for the newspaper from Zenith. There was nothing in the press, but in the advocate times on the third page, he gasped. They had printed his picture and a half column account. The heading was sensation in that annual Len men's convention, G. F. Babbitt, prominent zip town realtor, key notar in fine address. He murmured reverently, I guess some of the folks on Floral Heights will sit up and take notice now, pay a little attention to old Georgie. Seven. It was the last meeting. The delegations were presenting the claims of their several cities to next year's conventions. Orators were announcing that Gallup de Vache, the capital city, the site of Fremont College, and the upholst knitting works is the recognized center of culture and high-class enterprise, and at Hamburg, the big little city with a logical location where every man is open-handed and every woman a heaven-born hostess throws wine to you, her hospitable gates. In the midst of these more diffident invitations, the golden doors of the ballroom opened with a battling of trumpets and a circus parade rolled in. It was composed of the Zenith Brokers, dressed as cow-punchers, bear-back riders, Japanese jugglers. At the head was big worn would-be in the bearskin and gold and crimson coat. Alva drum-major behind him, as a clown, feeding a brass drum, extraordinarily happy and noisy, was babbit. Worn would-be, leaped to the platform, made merry play of his baton, and observed, Oyses and girlsies, the time has come to get down to cases. A died-in-the-wool Zenithite sure loves his neighbors, but we've made up our minds to grab this convention off our neighbor Bergs like we've grabbed the condensed milk business and the paper-box business and... Harry J. Barnhill, the convention chairman, hinted, We're grateful to you, Mr. Uhhh, but you must give the other boys a chance to hand in their bids now. A fog-hoeing voice blared, Enriga will promise free motor rides through the prettiest country. Running down the aisle, clapping his hands, a lean bald young man cried, I'm from Sparta. Our Chamber of Commerce has wired me they've set aside eight thousand dollars of real money for entertainment at the convention. A cleric-looking man rose to clamor. Money talks. Move, we accept the bid from Sparta. It was accepted. Eight. The Committee on Resolutions were reporting. They said that whereas Almighty God in his beneficent mercy had seen fit to remove to a spear of higher usefulness some thirty-six realtors of the state the past year, therefore it was the sentiment of this convention assembled that they were sorry God had done it, that the Secretary should be and hereby was instructed to spread these resolutions on the minutes and to console the bereaved families by sending them each a copy. A second resolution authorized the President of the S-A-R-E-B to spend fifteen thousand dollars in lobbying for sane tax measures in the state legislature. This resolution had a good deal to say about menaces to sound businesses and clearing the wheels of progress from ill-advised and short-sighted obstacles. The Committee on Committees reported and with startled awe, Babbot learned that he had been appointed a member of the Committee on Turin's Titles. He rejoiced. I said it was going to be a good year. George, you old son, you've got big things ahead of you. You're a natural born orator and a good mixer and zowee. Nine. There was no formal entertainment provided for the last evening. Babbot had planned to go home, but that afternoon the Jared Sossingers of Pioneer suggested that Babbot and W.A. Rogers have tea with them at the Chattelupa Inn. Teas were not known to Babbot, his wife, and he earnestly attended them at least twice a year, but they were sufficiently exotic to make him feel important. He sat at a glass-covered table in the art room of the inn, with its painted rabbits and bottles lettered in birch bark and waitresses being artistic in Dutch caps. He ate insufficient lettuce sandwiches and was lively and naughty with Mrs. Sassenberger, who was as smooth and large-eyed as a cloak model. Sassenberger and he had met two days before, so they were calling each other Georgie and Sassy. Sassberger said prayfully, Say, boys, before you go, seeing this is the last chance, I've got it up in my room, and Miriam here is the best little mixiologist in the Stados Unitos, like us Italians, eh? With wide-flowering gestures, Bajbot and Rogers followed the Sassenbergers to the room. Mrs. Sassenberger shrieked, Oh, how terrible! When she saw that she had left a chemise of sheer lavender crepe on the bed, she tucked it into a bag while Babbot giggled. Don't mind us, we're a couple of little devils. Sassenberger telephoned for ice and a bellboy who brought it said, frosty and unprompted, highball glasses or cocktail. Miriam Sassenberger mixed the cocktails in one of those dismal, nakedly white water-pitchers which exist only in hotels. When they had finished the first round, she proved by intoning, Thank you, boys, could stand another? You got a dividend coming. That though she was but a woman, she knew the complete and perfect right of cocktail drinking. Outside, Babbot hinted to Rogers, Hey, W. A. Old Rooster, it comes over me that I could stand it if we didn't go back to the Lovin' Wives. This handsome, a bend. But just kind of stayed in Monarch and threw a party, eh? George, you speak with the tongue of wisdom and shivers shivers. Hell, Wing's wife has gone to Pittsburgh. Let's see if we can't gather him in. At half past seven they sat in the room with Albert Wing and two upstate delegates, their coats were off, vest open, their faces red, their voices emphatic. They were finishing a bottle of corrosive bootleg whiskey and imploring the bellboy. There, son. Can you get us more of this embalming fluid? They were smoking large cigars and dropping ashes and stubs on the carpet. With winded guffaws, they were telling stories. They were in fact males in a happy state of nature. Babbot sighed, I don't know how it strikes you, Hellions, but personally, I like this busting loose for a change and kicking over a couple of mountains and climbing up the North Pole and waving the Aurora Borealis around. The man from Spartus, a grave-intense youngster, babbled, I guess I'm good a husband is to run the mill, but, God, I do get so tired of going home every evening and nothing to see but the movies. That's why I go out and drill with the National Guard. I guess I got the nicest little wife in my burg but, say, know what I wanted to do as a kid? Know what I want to do? Want to be a big chemist? That's what I want to do, but Dad chased me out on the road selling kitchenware. And here I'm settled down. Settled for life. Not a chance. Oh, who in the devil started this funeral talk? How about another little drink? Another drink or a run? Yeah, cut the snobs up, said W. A. Rogers, genuinely. The boys know I'm the village songster. Come on, now sing up. Sett the old Abadiah to the young Abadiah. I'm a dry Abadiah. I am dry. Say the young Abadiah to the old Abadiah so am I. Abadiah so am I. After dinner at the Moorish Grill Room of the Hotel Sedgwick, somewhere, somehow, they seem to have gathered in two other comrades, a manufacturer of flypaper and a dentist. They all drank whiskey from tea cups and they were humorous and never listened to one another except when W. A. Rogers kitted the Italian waiter. Eh, Giuseppe, you said innocently. I want a couple of fried elephant seers. Sorry, sir, we haven't any. Huh, no elephant seers? What do you know about that? Rogers turned to babbit. Pedro says the elephant seers are all out. Well, I'll be switched, said the man from Sparta with difficulty hiring these laughter. Well, in that case, Carl, just bring me a hunk of steak and a couple of bushels of french fried potatoes and some peas, Rogers went on. I spoke back in dear sunny old Italians. Get their fresh garden peas on the can. No, sir, we have mighty nice peas in Italy. Where's that a fact? George, did you hear that? They get their fresh garden peas on the garden in Italy. By golly, you live and learn, don't you? Antonio, you certainly do live and learn if you live long enough to keep your strength, all right? Giobaldi, just shoot me that steak with about two printer reams of french fried spuds or the promenade deck Comprehensivuse Micheal Vigangeloni. After Albert Wing admired, gee, you certainly did have that poor dangle going, W.A. He couldn't make you out of it all. In the Monarch, Harold Babbit found an advertisement which he read aloud to applause and laughter. Oh, Connie Theatre. Shake the old dogs to the rolicing wrens, the banniest bevy of beauty of his babing beauties in Burlesque. Pete Muti and his old gee kids. This is a straight-steer, Benny, the painless chicklets of the rolicing wrens or the cuddlest bunch that ever hit town. Steer the feet, get the cardboard, and twist the pupils to the PDQ-est show ever. You'll get a 111% on your kale and the funfest. The Carloza sisters are sure some lookers and will give you a run for your gelt. John Silverstein is one of the pepper lads and slips you a dose of real laughter. Shoot the up and downs to Jackson and West Graceful Trappers. They run one, two under the wire. Proven and Adams will blow the blues in their high-skit pooch-mon. Something doing boys, listen to what the hip-bird twitters. Sound like a juicy show to me, let's take it in, said Babbit. But they put off departure as long as they could. They were safe while they sat here, legs firmly crossed under the table, but they felt unsteady. They were afraid of navigating the long and slippery floor of the grill room, under the eyes of the other guests, and two attentive waiters. When they did venture, tables got in their way, and they sought to cover embarrassment by a heavily jocularity at the coat room. As the girl handed out their hats, they smiled at her and hoped that she, a cool and expert judge, would feel that they were gentlemen. They croaked at one another, oh, the bum lid, and you take the good one, George, I'll take what's left. And the Czech girl, they stammered, better come along, sister, high-widened, fancy evening head. All of them tried to tip her, urging one another, no, no, wait, I got it, I got it. Among them, they gave her three dollars. 11. Lamboyantly smoking cigars, they sat in a box at the burlisk show, their feet up on the rail, while a chorus of twenty dobbed worries and, in extinguishably respectable grand-arms, swung their legs in the more elementary chorus-line evolutions, and a Jewish comedian made vicious fun of Jews. In the interstices, they met other lone delegates, a dozen of them winning taxicabs, out to Bright Blossom Inn, where the blossoms were made of dusty paper festooned along a room low and stinking like a cow stable no longer widely used. Here Whiskey was served openly in glasses. Two or three clerks who, on payday, longed to be taken for millionaires, she visually danced with telephone girls and manicure girls in the narrow space between the tables. Fantastically worlded the professionals, a young man in sleek evening clothes, and a slim mad girl in emerald silk, with amber hair flung up as jaggedly as flames. Babbitt tried to dance with her. He shuffled along the floor, too bulky to be guided. His steps, unrelated to the rhythm of the jungle music, and in his staggering would have fallen had she not held him up with supple, kindly strength. He was blind and deaf from prohibition-era alcohol. He could not see the tables, the faces, but he was overwhelmed by the girl and her young, pliant warmth. When she had firmly returned him to his group, he remembered by a connection quite untraceable, that his mother's mother had been scotch, and with head thrown back, eyes closed, wide mouth, indicating ecstasy, he sang very slowly and richly, locked loman. But that was the last of his mellowness and jolly companionship. The man from Sparta said he was a bum singer, and for ten minutes Babbitt quarreled with him in a loud, unsteady, heroic indignation. They called for drinks till the manager insisted that the place was closed. All the while Babbitt felt a hot, raw desire for more brutal amusements. When W. A. Rogers drawled, what say we go down the line and look over the girls? He agreed savagely. Before they went, three of them secretly made appointments with the professional dancing girl who agreed. Yes, sir, yes, sir, sure, darling, to everything they said, and amuletly forgot them. As they drove back through the outskirts of Monarch, down streets of small brown wooden cottages of workmen, characterless to cells as they rattled across warehouse districts, which by drunken night seemed vast and perilous, as they were born toward the red lights and violent automatic pianos and the stocky women whose simpered Babbitt was frightened. He wanted to leap from the taxi cab, but all his body was a murky fire and he groaned, too late to quit now, and knew that he did not want to quit. There was, they felt, one very humorous incident on the way, a broker from many magnetic said, Monarch is a lot sportier than Zenith. You Zenith tightwads haven't got any choice like these here, Babbitt rage. Ah, it's a dirty lie. Nothing you can't find in Zenith. Believe me, we got more houses and hooch parlors, and all kinds of dives in any burg in the state. He realized they were laughing at him. He desired to fight and forgot it in such musty, unsatisfying experiments as he had not known since college. In the morning, when he returned to Zenith, his desire for rebellion was partially satisfied. He had retrograded to a shame-faced contentment. He was irritable. He did not smile when W. A. Rogers complained. Oh, what a head. I certainly do feel like the wrath of God this morning. I know what was the trouble. Somebody went and put alcohol in my booze last night. Babbitt's excursion was never known to his family, nor to any one in Zenith, save Rogers and Wing. It was not officially recognized even by himself. If it had any consequences, they have not been discovered. END OF CHAPTER XI This autumn, a Mr. W. G. Harding of Marion, Ohio, was appointed president of the United States, but Zenith was less interested in the national campaign than in the local election. Seneca Doane, though he was a lawyer and a graduate of the state university, was a candidate for mayor of Zenith on an alarming labor ticket. To oppose him, the Democrats and Republicans united on Lucas Prout, a mattress manufacturer with a perfect record for sanity. Mr. Prout was supported by the banks, the Chamber of Commerce, all the decent newspapers, and George F. Babbitt. Babbitt was precinct leader on Floral Heights, but his district was safe and he longed for stouter battling. His convention paper had given him the beginning of a reputation for oratory, so the Republican Democratic Central Committee sent him to the Seventh Ward in South Zenith to address small audiences of workmen and clerks and wives uneasy with their new votes. He acquired a fame enduring for weeks. Now and then a reporter was present at one of his meetings and the headlines, though they were not very large, indicated that George F. Babbitt had addressed a cheering throng and distinguished men of affairs had pointed out the fallacies of Doane. Once in the Rotary Review section of the Sunday Advocate Times, there was a photograph of Babbitt and a dozen other businessmen, with the caption, Leaders of Zenith, Finance and Commerce, who back Prout. He deserved his glory. He was an excellent campaigner. He had faith. He was certain that if Lincoln were alive, he would be electioneering for Mr. W. G. Harding, unless he came to Zenith and electioneered for Lucas Prout. He did not confuse audiences by subtly subtleties. Prout represented honest industry. Seneca Doane represented whining laziness, and you could take your choice. With his broad shoulders and vigorous voice, he was obviously a good fellow and rarest of all. He really liked people. He almost liked common workmen. He wanted them to be well paid and able to afford high rents, though naturally they must not interfere with the reasonable profits of stockholders. Thus nobly endowed and keyed high by the discovery that he was a natural orator, he was popular with audiences, and he raged through the campaign renowned, not only in the seventh and eighth wards, but even in parts of the sixteenth. Two. Proutered in his car, they came driving up to Turavan Hall, South Zenith, Babbit, his wife, Verona, Ted, and Paul and Zila Reisling. The hall was over a delicatessen shop in a street, banging with trawling cars and smelling of onions and gasoline and fried fish. A new appreciation of Babbit built all of them, including Babbit. Don't know how you keep it up. Talking to three bunches in one evening, wish I had your strength, said Paul, and Ted exclaimed to Verona, oh man certainly does know how to kid these roughnecks along. Men in black satin shirts, their faces new-washed, but with a hint of grime under their eyes, were loiting on the barred stairs up to the hall. Babbit's party politely edged through them and into the white washed room, at the front of which was Adias, with a red plush throne and pine altar, painted watery blue as used nightly to the grand masters in supreme pontitates of unimaginable lodges. The hall was full as Babbit pushed through the fringe. Standing at the back, he heard the precious tribute. That's him, the chairman bustled down the center aisle with an impressive, the speaker? Already, sir? Uh, let's see, what's the name, sir? Then Babbit slid into a sea of eloquence. Ladies and gentlemen of the sixteenth ward, there is one who cannot be with us here tonight. A man, then whom there is no more stalwart trojan. In all the political arenas, I refer to our leader, the honorable Lucas Prout, standard bearer of the city and county of Zenith. Since he is not here, I trust that you will bear with me as a friend and neighbor, as one who is proud to share with you the common blessing of being a resident of the great city of Zenith. I tell you in all candor, honestly, and sincerity, how the issues of this critical campaign appear to one plain man of business. To one who brought up to the blessings of poverty and of manual labor has, even when fate condemned him to sit at a desk. Yet never forgotten how it feels by heck to be up at five-thirty and at the factory with the old dinner pail in his hardened mitt when the whistle blew at seven, unless the owner sneaked in ten minutes on us and blew it early, laughter. To come down to the basics and fundamental issues of this campaign, the great error in sincerity promulgated by Seneca Dome. There were workmen who jeered young Seneca workmen for the most part foreigners, Jews, Swedes, Irishmen, Italians, but the older men, the patient, bleach, stoop carpenters, and mechanics cheered him. And when he worked up to his antecedent of Lincoln, their eyes were wet. Modestly, visibly, he hurried out of the hall on delicious applause and sped off to his third audience of the evening. "'Ted, you're better drive,' he said. "'Kind of all in and after that spiel.' "'Well, Paul, how'd it go? Did it get him?' "'Bully corking, you had a lot of pet.'" Mrs. Babbitt worshiped. "'Oh, it was fine, so clear and interesting, and such nice ideas. When I hear you orating, I realize. I don't appreciate how profoundly you think and what a splendid brain and vocabulary you have. Just blend it.'" But Verona was irritating. "'Dad,' she worried. "'How do you know that public ownership of utilities and so on and so forth will always be a failure?' Mrs. Babbitt reproved. "'Rone, I think you should see and realize that your father's all worn out with orating. It's no time to expect him to explain these complicated subjects. I'm sure when he's rested, he'll be glad to explain it all to you. Now, let's all be quiet and give Papa a chance to get ready for his next speech. Just think right now they're gathering in Maccabee Temple and waiting for us.'" Mr. Lucas Prout in sound business defeated Mr. Seneca Done and Class Rule, and Zenith was again saved. Babbitt was offered several minor appointments to distribute amongst poor relations. But he preferred advanced information about the extension of paved highways, and this a grateful administration gave to him. Also, he was one of only 19 speakers at the dinner with which the Chamber of Commerce celebrated the victory of righteousness. His reputation for oratory established. At the dinner of the Zenith Real Estate Board, he made the annual address. The Advocate Times reported this speech with unusual fullness. One of the liveliest banquets that has recently been pulled off occurred last night in the annual Get Together Fest of the Zenith Real Estate Board, held in the Venetian Ballroom of the O'Hurne House. Mine host, Gil O'Hurne, had as usual done himself proud, and those assembled feasted on such an assemblage of plates as could be rivaled nowhere west of New York, if there, and washed down the plenteous feed with a cup which inspired but did not inebriate in the shape of Cider from the farm of Chandler Mott, President of the Board, and who acted as witty and efficient chairman. As Mr. Mott was suffering from slight infection and sore throat, G. F. Babbitt made the principal talk. Besides outlining the progress of touristing real estate titles, Mr. Babbitt spoke in part as follows. In rising to address you with my impromptu speech carefully tucked into my vest pocket, I am reminded of the story of two Irishmen, Mike and Pat, who were riding on the Pullman. Both of them, I forgot to say, were sailors in the Navy. It seems Mike had the lower berth in by and by. He heard a terrible racket from the upper, and when he yelled up to find out what the trouble was, Pat answered, I shouldn't be heading now. Can I ever get a night's sleep at all, at all? I've been trying to get her in this darn little hammock ever since eight bells. Now, gentlemen, standing up here before you, I feel a good deal like Pat, and maybe after I've spealed along for a while, I may feel so darn small that I am able to crawl into a Pullman hammock with no trouble at all. Gentlemen, it strikes me that each year at this annual occasion, when friend and foe get together and lay down the battleaxe and let the waves of good fellowship wap them up, the flowery slopes of amnesty, it behooves us standing together eye to eye and shoulder to shoulder as fellow citizens of the best city in the world to consider where we are both as regards ourselves and the common well. It is true that even with our 361,000 or practically 362,000 population, there are, by the last census, almost a score of larger cities in the United States. But gentlemen, if by the next census we do not stand at least 10th, then I'll be the first to request any knocker to remove my shirt and eat the same with the compliments of G. F. Babbit Esquire. It may be true that New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia will continue to keep ahead of us in size, but aside from these three cities, which are notoriously so overgrown that no decent white man, nobody who loves his wife and kitties, and God's good out-of-doors and likes to shake the hand of his neighbors and greeting would want to live in them. And let me tell you right here and now, I wouldn't trade a high-class Zenith acreage development for the whole length and breadth of Broadway or State Street. Aside from these three, it's evident to anyone with a head for facts that Zenith is the finest example of American life and prosperity to be found anywhere. I don't mean to say we're perfect. We've got a lot to do in the way of extending and paving the motor, Boulevard, for believe me, it's the fellow with four to ten thousand years, say, in an automobile and a nice little family in a bungalow on the edge of town that makes the wheels of progress go round. That's the type of fellow that's ruling America today. In fact, it's the ideal type to which the entire world must stand. If there's to be a decent, well-balanced Christian, go ahead, future for this little old planet. Once in a while, I just naturally sit back and size up this solid American citizen with a whale of a lot of satisfaction. Our ideal citizen, I picture him first and foremost as being busier than a bird dog. Not wasting a lot of time in daydreaming or going to society teas or kicking about things that are none of his business, but putting the zip into some store or profession or art. At night he lights up a good cigar and climbs into a little old bus and maybe cusses the carburetor and shoots out home. He mows the lawn or sneaks in some practice putting, and then he's ready for dinner. After dinner he tells the goodies of story or takes the family to the movies or plays a few fists the bridge or reads the evening paper, and a chapter or two of some good lively western novel if he has a taste for literature, and maybe the folks next door drop in and they sit and visit about their friends and the topics of the day. Then he goes happily to bed, his conscience clear, having contributed his might to the prosperity of the city and to his own bank account. In politics and religion, this saint citizen is the canniest man on earth, and in the arts he invariably has the natural taste which makes him pick out the best every time. In no country in the world will you find so many reproductions of the old masters and the well-known paintings on parlor walls as in these United States. No country has anything like our number of photographs with not only dance records and comic, but also the best operas such as Verdi rendered by the world's highest paid singers. In other countries art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture painter is indistinguishable from any other decent businessman, and I for one am only too glad that the man who has the rare skill to season his message with interesting reader matter and who shows both purpose and pep in handling his literary wares has a chance to drag down his fifty thousand bucks a year to mingle with the biggest executive on terms of perfect equality and to show as big a house as Swalakar as any captain of industry. But mind you it's the appreciation of the regular guy who I have been depicting which has made this possible and you got to hand as much credit to him as to the authors themselves. Finally, but most important, our standardized citizen even if he is a bachelor is a lover of the little ones, a supporter of the hearthstone which is the basic foundation of our civilization. First, last, and all the time. And the thing that most distinguishes us from the decayed nations of Europe. I have never yet toured Europe and as a matter of fact I don't know that I care to such an awful lot as long as there's our own mighty cities and mountains to be seen. But the way I figured out there must be a good many of our own sort of folks abroad. Indeed, one of the most enthusiastic Rotarians I ever met boasted the tenets of one hundred percent pep in a burr that smacked a Bonnie Scotland. And all ye bonny braids, bonny broons. But same time one thing that distinguishes us from our good brothers, the hustlers over there, is they're willing to take a lot off the snobs and journalists and politicians while the modern American businessman knows how to talk right up for himself, knows how to make it good and plenty clear that he intends to run the works. He doesn't have to call in some high brow hired man when it's necessary for him to answer the crooked critics of the sane and efficient life. He's not dumb. Like the old fashioned merchant he's got a vocabulary and a punch. With all modesty I want to stand up here as a representative businessman and gently whisper. Here's our kind of folks. Here's the specifications of the standardized American citizen. Here's the new generation of American fellows with hair on their chests and smiles in their eyes and adding machines in their offices. We're not doing any boasting but we like ourselves first rate and if you don't like us look out. Better get undercover before the cyclone hits town. So in my clumsy way I have tried to sketch the real he-man. The fellow was zipping bang and because Zenith has so large a proportion of such men that it's most stable the greatest of our cities. New York also has its thousands of real folks but New York is cursed with unnumbered foreigners. So are Chicago and San Francisco. Oh we have a golden roster of cities Detroit and Cleveland with their renowned factories Cincinnati with its great machine tool and silk products Pittsburgh and Birmingham with their steel Kansas City and Minneapolis and Omaha that open their bountiful gates on the bosom of the ocean like Wheatlands and countless other magnificent sister cities for by the last sentence there were no less than 68 glorious American Bergs with a population of over 100,000 and all these cities stand together for power and purity and against foreign ideas and communism. Atlanta with Hartford Rochester with Denver Milwaukee with Indianapolis Los Angeles with Wisconsin Portland Maine and Portland Oregon a good live wire from Baltimore or Seattle or Duluth the twin brother of every like fellow booster from Buffalo or Akron Fort Worth or Okaloosa but it's here in Zenith the home for manly men and womenly women and bright kids that you find the largest proportion of these regular guys and that's what sets it in a class by itself. That's why Zenith will be remembered in history as having set the pace for a civilization that shall endure when the old time killing ways are gone forever and the day of earnest efficient endeavor shall have dawned all round the world. Sometime I hope folks will quit handling all the credit to a lot of moth-eaten mill dude out of date old European dumps and give their proper credit to the famous Zenith spirit that clean fighting determination to win. Success that has made our little old zip city celebrated in every land and climb wherever condensed milk and pasteboard cartons are known believe me the world has fallen too long for these worn out countries that aren't producing anything but boot blacks and scenery and booze that have a got one bathroom per hundred people and then don't know a loose leaf ledger from a slip cover and it's just about time for some Zenithite to get his back up and haul her for a showdown. I'll tell you Zenith and her sister cities are producing a new type of civilization. There are many resemblances between Zenith and these other bergs and I'm darn glad of it. Their extraordinary growing and sane standardization of stores, offices, streets, hotel, clothes, and newspapers throughout the United States shows how strong and enduring type is ours. I always like to remember a piece that Tom Frank wrote for the newspaper about his lecture tours. It is doubtful familiar to many of you but if you will permit me I'll take a chance and read it. It's one of the classiest poems like if by Kipling or Ella Wheeler Wilcox's The Man Worth While and I always carry this clipping of it in my notebook. When I am out upon the road a poet with a peddler's load I mostly sing a hearty song and take a chew and hike along a handling out my samples fine of Cheerio brand a sweet sunshine and peddling optimistic pokes and stable lines of japes and jokes to Lyciums and other folks to Rotary's Kiwanis clubs and feel I ain't like other dubs and then old Major Silas Staten a brainy cuss who's always waiting he gives his tail a lively quirk and gets it quick his dirty work he fills me up with molly grubs my hair the backward way he rubs he makes me lonier than a hound on Sunday when the folks ain't around and then Bogarch I prefer to never be a lecturer a riding round in classic cars and smoking fifty cents cigars and never more I want to roam I simply want to be back home eating flapjacks hashing ham with folks who's savvy whom I am but when I get that lonely spell I simply seek the best hotel no matter in what town I be St. Paul Toledo or KC in Washington's Connecticut in Louisville or Albany and at that in it hits my dome that I am right at home if I should stand a lengthy spell in front of that first class hotel that the drummer loves to cater across from some big film theater if I should look round and buzz and wonder in what town I was I swear that I could never tell for all the crowd would be so swell in just the same fine sort of jeans they wear at home and all the queens with spiffy bonnets on their beans and all the fellows standing round to talking always I'll be bound the same good jolly kind of guff about auto's politics and stuff and baseball players of renown that nice guys talk in my hometown then when I entered that hotel I looked around and say well well for there would be some newstand some magazine and candy's grand some smokes of famous standard brand I'd find at home I'll tell and when I saw the jolly bunch come waltzing in for eats at lunch and squaring up in natty duds to platters large of french fried spuds why then I'd stand right up and ball I've never left my home at all and all replete I'd sit down beside some guy in derby brown upon a lobby chair of plush and murmur to him under rush hello bill tell me good old scout how is your stock holding out then we'd be off two solid pals a chatting like giddy gals of flippers weather home and wives large brothers stand for all our lives so when Sam Satan makes you blue good friend that's what I'd up and do for in these states where your own you never leave your home sweet home yes sir these other birds are our true partners in the great game of vital living but let's not have any mistake about this I claim that zenith is the best partner in a faster grown partner of the whole caboodle I trust I may be pardoned if I give a few statistics to back up my claims if they're old stuff to any of you yet the tidings of prosperity like the good news of the bible never become tedious to the ears of the real hustler no matter how off the sweet story is told every intelligent person knows that zenith manufacturers more condensed milk and evaporated cream or paper boxes and more lighting fixtures than any other city in the united states if not the world but it is not so universally known that we also stand second in the manufacture of patikage butter sixth in the giant realm of motors and automobiles and somewhere about third in cheese leather findings tar roofing breakfast food and overalls our greatness however lies not alone in punchful prosperity but equally in that public spirit that forward-looking idealism and brotherhood which has marked zenith ever since its foundation by the fathers we have a right indeed we have a duty toward our fair city to announce broadcast the facts about our high schools characterized by their complete plants and the finest school vinyling systems in the country bar none our magnificent new hotels and banks and the paintings and carved marble in their lobbies and the second national tower the second highest business building in any inland city in the entire country when I add that we have an unparalleled number of miles of paved streets bathroom vacuum cleaners and all the other signs of civilization that our library and art museum are well supported and housed inconvenient and roomy buildings that our park system is more than up to par with its handsome driveways adorned with grass shrubs and statuary then I give but a hint of the all around unlimited greatness of zenith I believe however in keeping the best to last when I reminded you that we have one more car for every five and seven eighth person in the city then I give a rock rib practical indication of the kind of progress and braininess which is synonymous with the name zenith but the way of the righteous is not all roses before I close I must call your attention to a problem we have to face this coming year the worst menace to sound government is not the avowed socialist but a lot of cowards who work undercover the long-haired gentry who call themselves liberals and radicals and nonpartisan and intelligentsia and god only knows how many other trick names irresponsible teachers and professors constitute the worst of this whole gang and I am ashamed to say that several of them on on the faculty of our great state university the you is my own alma mater and I am proud to be known as an alumni but there are certain instructors there who seem to think we ought to turn the conduct of the nation over to hobos and roustabouts these profs are the snakes to be scotched they and all their milk and water ilk the American businessman is generous to a fault but one thing he does demand of all teachers and lecturers and journalists if we're going to pay them our good money they've got to help us by selling efficiency and whooping it up for national prosperity and when it comes to these blab mouth fault finding pessimistic cynical university teachers let me tell you that during this golden coming year it is just as much our duty to bring influence to have these cusses fired as it is to sell all the real estate and gather in all the good shekels we can not till this is done will our sons and daughters see the ideal of american manhood and culture isn't a lot of cranks sitting around chewing the rag about their rights or wrongs but a God fearing hustling successful two-fisted regular guy who belongs to some church with pep and piety to it who belongs to the boosters or Rotarians or the Kiwanis to the Elks or Moose or red men or Knights of Columbus or any one of a score of organizations of good jolly kidding laughing sweating upstanding linda handing royal good fellows who plays hard and works hard and whose answer to his critics is a square toad boot that'll teach the grouches and smart elks to respect the he-man and get out and root for Uncle Samuel U.S.A. for babbitt promised to become a recognized orator he entertained a smoker of men's club of the chatham road presbyterian church with irish jewish and chinese dialect stories but and nothing was he more clearly revealed as the prominent citizen then in his lecture on brass tax facts on real estate as delivered before the class in sales methods at the zenith ymca the advocate times reported the lecture so fully that virtual gunch said to babbitt you're getting the one to be the classiest spellbinders in town seems as if i couldn't pick up a paper without reading about your well-known eloquence all this guff ought to bring a lot of business into your office good work keep it up uh go on and quit your kidding said babbitt feebly but at this tribute from gunch himself a man of no mean oratorical fame he expanded with delight and wondered in how before his vacation he could have questioned the joys of being a solid citizen end of chapter 14 chapter 15 of babbitt this libra vox recording is in the public domain recording by mike vendetti mike vendetti dot com babbitt by chisyn claire louis chapter 15 his march to greatness was not without disastrous stumbling fame did not bring the social advancement which the babbits deserved they were not asked to join the tonawanda country club nor invited to the dances at the union himself babbitt fretted he didn't care a fat hook for all those high rollers but the wife would kind of like to be among those present he nervously awaited his university class dinner and an evening of furious intimacy with such social leaders as charles mckelvey the millionaire contractor max kruger the banker herving tate the tool manufacturer and adalbert dobson the fashionable interior decorator theoretically he was their friend as he had been in college and when he encountered them they still called him georgey but he didn't seem to encounter them often and he never invited them to dinner with champagne and a butler at their houses on royal ridge all the week before the class dinner he thought of them no reason why they shouldn't become real tell me now two like all true american diversions and spiritual outpourings the dinner of the men of the class of 1896 was thoroughly organized the dinner committee hammered like a sales corporation once a week they sent out reminders tickler number three old man are you going to be with us at the liveliest friendship feed the alumni of the good old you have ever known the alumni of 08 turned out 60 strong are we boys going to be beaten by a bunch of skirts come on fellas let's work up some real genuine enthusiasm and all boost together for the snappiest dinner yet elegant east short ginger talks and memory shared together of the brightest gladdest days of life the dinner was held in a private room at the union club the club was a dingy building three pretentious old drawings knocked together and the entrance hall resembled a potato seller yet the babbit who was free of the magnificence of the athletic club entered with embarrassment he nodded to the doorman an ancient proud negro with brass buttons and a blue tailcoat and paraded through the hall trying to look like a member 60 men had come to dinner they made islands and eddies in the hall they packed the elevator in the corners of the private dining room they tried to be intimate and enthusiastic they appeared to one another exactly as they had in college as raw youngsters whose present mustaches baldness punches and wrinkles were jovial disguises put on for the evening you haven't changed a particle they marveled the men whom they could not recall they addressed well well great to see you again old man what are you still doing the same thing someone was always starting a cheer or college song and it was always thinning into silence despite the resolution to be democratic they divided into two sets the men with dressed clothes and the men without babbit extremely in dressed clothes went from one group to the other though he was almost frankly out for social conquest he sought paul riseling first he found him alone neat and silent paul sighed i'm no good at this handshaking well look who's here bunk rats now paulibus loosen up be a mixer find us bunch of boys on earth say you seem kind of glum what's matter ah usual run in wasilia come on let's wade in and forget our troubles he kept paul beside him but worked toward the spot where charles mckelby stood warming his admirers like a furnace mckelby had been the hero of the class of 96 not only football captain and hammer thrower but debater and passable and what the state university considered scholarship he had gone on and captured the construction company once owned by the dogsworth best known pioneer family of zenith he built state capitals skyscrapers railway terminals he was a heavy shoulder big chested man but not sluggish there was a quiet humor in his eyes a sharp smooth quickness in his speech which intimidated politicians and warned reporters and in his presence the most intelligent scientist or the most sensitive artist felt thin-blooded unworldly and a little shabby he was particularly when he was influencing legislators or hiring labor spies very easy and lovable and gorgeous he was baronial he was a peer in the rapidly crystallizing american aristocracy inferior only to the haughty old families in zenith an old family is one which came to town before 1840 his power was the greater because he was not hindered by scruples by either the vice or the virtue of the older puritan tradition mckelvy was being placidly married now with the great the manufacturers and bankers the landowners and lawyers and surgeons who had chauffeurs and went to europe babbit squeezed among them he liked mckelvy's smile as much as the social advancement to be had from his favor if in paul's company he felt ponderous and protective with mckelvy he felt slight and adoring he heard mckelvy say to max cruker the banker yes we'll put up sir gerald doke babbit's democratic love for titles became a rich relish you know he's one of the biggest iron men in england max horribly well off well hello old georgey say max george babbit's getting fatter than i am the chairman shouted take your seats fellas don't make a move charlie babbit said casually to mckelvy right hello paul how's the old fiddler planning to sit anywhere special george come on let's grab some seat come on max georgey i read about your speeches in the campaign bullywork after that babbit would have followed him through fire he was enormously busy during the dinner now bumblingly cheering paul now approaching mckelvy here you're going to build some piers in brooklyn now noting how endlessly the failures of the class sitting by themselves in a weedy group looked up to him in his association with the nobility now warming himself in the society talk of mckelvy and max cruger they spoke of a jungle dance for which mona doddsworth had decorated her house with thousands of orchids they spoke with an excellent imitation of casualness of a dinner in washington at which mckelvy had met a senator a balkan princess and an english major general mckelvy called the princess jenny and let it be known that he had danced with her babbit was thrilled but not so weighted with awe as to be silent if he was not invited by them to dinner he was yet accustomed to talking with bank presidents congressman and club women who entertained poets he was bright and referential with mckelvy say charlie do you remember in junior year how we chartered a seagoing hack and chased down to riversdale to the big show madem brown used to put on remember how you beat up that hit constable to try to run us in and we pinched the pants pressing sign and took and hung it on preft morrisan's door oh gosh those were the days those mckelvy agreed were the days babbit had reached it isn't the books you study in college but the friendship you make the counts when the man at head of the table broke into song he attacked mckelvy it's a shame a shame to drift apart because our uh business activities lie in different fields i've enjoyed talking over the good old days you and missus mckelvy must come to dinner some night vaguely yes indeed like to talk to you about the growth of real estate out beyond your grainville warehouse i might be able to tip you off to a thing or two possibly splendid we must have dinner georgie just let me know and it will be a great pleasure to have your wife and you would at the house said mckelvy much less vaguely than the chairman's voice that prestigious voice which once had roused them to cheer defiance at routers from ohio or michigan or indiana whooped come on you wombants all together in a long yell babbit felt that life would never be sweeter than now when he joined with paul risling and the newly recovered hero mckevley in battle axe get an axe bax get an axe who who the you who rule three the babbit's invited the mckelvies to dinner in early december and the mckelvies not only accepted but after changing the date once or twice actually came the babbit's somewhat thoroughly discussed the details of the dinner from the purchase of a bottle of champagne to the number of salted almonds to be placed before each person especially did they mention the matter of the other guests to the last babbit held out for giving paul risling the benefit of being with the mckevlies well charlie would like paul and verge gunch better than some high flutin willy boy he insisted but mrs babbit interrupted his observation with yes perhaps i think i'll try to get some uh linnehaven oysters and when she was quite ready she invited dr jt angus the oculus and a dismally respectable lawyer named max well with their glittering wives neither agnes nor max well belong to the alks or the athletic club neither of them had ever called babbit brother or asked his opinions on carbators the only human people they invited babbit raged with little fields and howard little fields at time became so statistical that babbit longed for the refreshment of gunches well ol lemon pie face what the good word immediately after lunch mrs babbit began to set the table for the 730 dinner to the mckevlies and babbit was by order home at four but they didn't find anything for him to do and three times mrs babbit scolded do please try to keep out of the way he stood in the door of the garage his lips drooping and wished that little fielder sam doppelow or somebody would come along and talk to him he saw ted sneaking around the corner of the house what's matter old man said babbit is that you thin old one gee ma certainly is on the warpath i told her roe and i would just soon not be let in on the fiesta tonight and she bit me she says i got to take a bath too but say the babbit men will be some lookers tonight little theodore in a dress suit the babbit men babbit like the sound of it he put his arm about the boy's shoulder he was that paul risling had a daughter so that ted might marry her and your mother is kind of rouncing around all right he said and they laughed together and sighed together and dutifully went into dress mckevely's were less than 15 minutes late babbit hoped that the doppelrows would see the mckevely's limousine and the uniform chauffeur waiting in front the dinner was well cooked and incredibly plentiful and mrs babbit had brought out her grandmother's silver candlesticks babbit worked hard he was good he told none of the jokes he wanted to tell he listened to the others he started max well off with a resounding hear about your trip to yellowstone he was laudatory extremely laudatory he found opportunities to remark that dr agnes was a benefactor to humanity max well and howard littlefield profound scholars charles mckevely an inspiration to ambitious youth and mrs mckevely an adornment to the social circles of zenith marchington new york paris and numbers of other places but he could not stir them it was a dinner without a soul for no reason that was clear to babbit heaviness was over them and they spoke laboriously and unwillingly he concentrated on lucille mckevely carefully not looking at her blanched lovely shoulder and the tawny silken beard which supported her frock i supposed to be going to your pretty soon won't you he invited i'd like awfully to run over to roam for a few weeks i suppose you see a lot of pictures and music and curio and everything there no what i really go for is there's a little tartria on the villa delas garrafa where you get the best vetticini in the world oh i asked that must be nice to try that yes at a quarter to ten mckevely discovered with profound regret that his wife had a headache he said blithely as babbit helped him with his coat we must lunch together sometime and talk over the old days when the others had labored out at half past ten babbit turned to his wife pleading charlie said he had a quirk in good time and we must lunch said they wanted to have us up to their house for dinner before long she achieved oh it's been one of those quiet evenings that are often so much more enjoyable than noisy parties where everybody talks at once and doesn't really settle down to nice quiet enjoyment but from the cot on the sleeping porch he heard a weeping slowly without hope four for a month they watched the social columns and waited for a return dinner invitation as the hosts of sir gerald dope the mckevely's were headlined all the week after the babbit's dinner zenith ardently achieved sir gerald who had come to america to buy coal the newspapers interviewed him on prohibition ireland unemployment naval aviation the rate of exchange tea drinking versus whiskey drinking and psychology of american women and daily life has lived in i english country families sir gerald seemed to have heard of all these topics the mckevely's gave him a singly's dinner and miss ellenora pearl baits society editor for the advocate times rose to our highest lark note babbit read aloud at breakfast table direct to the original and oriental decorations the strange and delicious food and the personalities both of the distinguished guest and the charming hostess and the noted host never has zenith seen a more rich cheshire affair than the silent dinner dance given last evening by mr and mrs charles mckevely to sirl gerald dope me thought as we fortunate one were privileged to view that fairy and foreign scene nothing at monty carlo or the choicest ambassadorial sets of foreign capitals could be more lovely it is not for nothing that zenith is in matters social rapidly becoming known as the choosiest inland city in the country though he is too modest to admit it lord dope gives a cache to our smart quarter such as it has not received since the ever memorable visit of the earl of sitting born not only is he the british barrage but he is also on did a leader of the british metal industries as he comes from nottingham a favorite haunt of robin hood though now we are informed by lord dope a live modern city of 275 573 inhabitants and importantly as well as other industries we like to think that perhaps through his veins run some of the blood both burl red and boomy blue of the earlier lord of the good a greenwood the rogue ish robin the lovely mrs mckevely never was more fascinating than last evening in her black net gown relieved by dady bands of silver and at her exquisite waist a glowing cluster of erin ward roses babbitt said bravely hope they don't invite us to meet this lord dope guy darn sight brother just have a nice quiet little dinner with charlie and the mrs at the zenith athletic club they discussed it amply i suppose we'll have to call mckevely lord chance from now on said sydney finkelstein it beats all get out meditated that man of data howard littlefield how hard it is for some people to get things straight here they call this fellow lord dope when it ought to be sir jerald babbit marbled is not a fact well well sir jerald hey that's what you call him huh well sir i'm glad to know that later he informed his salesman it's funny to go to the way some folks that just because they happened to lay up a big wad go entertain for him as foreigners don't have any more idea in a rabbit how to address him so to make him feel at home that evening as he was driving home he passed mckevely's limousine and saw sir jerald a large ruddy pop-eyed titanic englishman whose dribble of yellow mustache gave him an aspect sad and doubtful babbit drove on slowly oppressed by futility he had a sudden unexplained and horrible conviction that the mckevely's were laughing at him he betrayed his depression by the violence with which he informed his wife folks that really tend to business haven't got the time to waste on a bunch like the mckevely's this society's stuff is like any other hobby if you devote yourself to it you get in but i'd like to have a chance to visit with you and the children instead of all this idiotic chasing around they did not speak of the mckevely's again five it was a shame at this worried time to have to think about the overbrooks ed overbrook was a classmate of babbit who had been a failure he had a large family and a feeble insurance business out in the suburb of doorchester he was gray and thin and unimportant he had always been green thin and unimportant he was a person whom in any group he forgot to introduce then introduced with extra enthusiasm he had admired babbit's good fellowship in college had admired ever since his power in real estate his beautiful house and wonderful clothes it pleased babbit though it bothered him with a sense of responsibility at the class dinner he had seen poor overbrook in a shiny blue surge business suit being dividend in a corner with three other failures he had gone over and been cordial well hello young erud i hear you're writing the all insurance in doorchester now fully work they recalled the good old days when overbrook used to write poetry overbrook embarrassed him by blurting say george i hate to think of how we've been drifting apart i'll wish you and mrs babbit would come to dinner some night babbit boom i'm sure just let me know and the wife and i want to have you at our house he forgot it but unfortunately at overbrook did not repeatedly he telephoned to babbit inviting him to dinner my well go and get it over babbit grown to his wife but don't have simply amazed you the way the poor fish doesn't know the first thing about social etiquette thank you him phoning me instead of his wife sitting down and writing us a regular bid well i guess we're stuck with it that's a trouble with all this class brother hoopa doodle he accepted overbrook's next plenty of invitation for an evening two weeks off a dinner two weeks off even a family dinner never seemed so appalling till the two weeks have astoundedly disappeared and one comes dismayed to the ambushed hour they had to change the date because of their own dinner to the mckevelee's but at last they gloomily drove out to the overbrook's house in Dorchester it was miserable from the beginning the overbrooks had dinner at six thirty while the babbit's never dying before seven babbit permitted himself to be ten minutes late let's make it as short as possible i think we'll duck out quick i'll say i have to be in the office early tomorrow he planned the overbrook house was depressing it was the second story of a wooden two-family dwelling a place of baby carriages old hats hung in the hall cabbage smell in a family bible on the partler table ed overbrook and his wife were as awkward and as threadbare as usual and the other guests were two dreadful families whose name babbit never caught never desired to catch but he was touched and disconcerted by the tactless way in which overbrook praised him we're mighty proud to have old george here tonight of course you've all read about his speeches and oratory in the papers and the boy's good looking too eh but what i always think of is back in college and what a great old mixer he was and one of the best swimmers in the class babbit tried to be jovial he worked at it but he could find nothing to interest him in overbrook's temerus the blankness of the other guests were the drain stupidity of mrs overbrook with her spectacle drab skin and tight drawn hair told his best irish story and sank like soggy cake most blurry moment of all was when mr overbrook purring out of her fog of nursing eight children and cooking and scrubbing tried to be conversational i suppose you go to chicago in new york right along mr babbit she prodded well get to chicago fairly often must be awfully interesting i suppose you take in all the theaters well tell you the truth mrs overbrook thing it hits me best is a great big beef steak at dutch restaurant in the loop they had nothing more to say babbit was sorry but there was no hope the dinner was a failure at ten rousing out of the stupor of meaningless talk he said as cheerly as he could right we gotta be starting and i got a fellow coming in to see me early tomorrow as overbrook helped him with his coat babbit said nice to rub up on the old days we must have lunch together pdq mrs babbit sighed on their drive home it was pretty terrible how mr overbrook does admire you yep porka seems to think i'm a little tin archangel and the best-looking man in zenith well you're certainly not that oh georgey don't suppose we have to invite them to dinner to our house now do we oh hope not see you're not george you didn't say anything about it to mr overbrook did you oh gee no honest i didn't just made a bluff about having him to lunch sometime well oh dear i don't want to hurt their feelings but i don't see how i could stand another evening like this one and suppose somebody like dr and mrs angus came in when we had the overbrooks there and thought they were friends of ours for a week they worried we really ought to invite it and his wife poor devils but as they never saw the overbrooks they forgot them and a month or two he they said uh really was the best way just to let it slide it wouldn't be kind of them to have them here they'd feel so out of place and hard up in our house they did not speak of the overbrooks again end of chapter 15 chapter 16 of babbit this LibriVox recording is in the public domain recording by mike vendetti mike vendetti.com babbit by sinclair lewis chapter 16 the certainty that he was not going to be accepted by the mckevlies made babbit feel guilty and a little absurd but he went more regularly to the elks and a chamber of commerce luncheon he was oratorical regarding the wickedness of strikes and again he saw himself as a prominent citizen his clubs and associations were food comfortable to his spirit of a decent man in zenith it was required that he should belong to one preferably two or three of the enumerous lodges and prosperity boosting lunch clubs to the rotarians the kawanas or the boosters to the odd fellows moose masons red men woodmen owls eagles maccabees knights of pithias knights of columbus and other secret orders characterized by a high degree of hardiness sound morals and reverence for the constitution there were four reasons for joining these orders it was the thing to do it was good for business since lodge brothers frequently became customers it gave to americans unable to become jaheem rate or komodori such you cautious honorific says high worthy recording scribe and grand hu gao to add to the commonplace distinctions of colonel judge and professor and it permitted the swaddled american husband to stay away from home for one evening a week the lodge was his pizzeria or pavement cafe he could shoot pool and talk man talk be obscene and valiant babbit was what he called a joiner for all these reasons behind the gold and scarlet banner of his public achievements was the done background of office routine leases sales contracts lists of properties to rent the evenings of oratory and committees and lodges stimulated him like brandy but every morning he was sandy-tongued week by week he accumulated nervousness he was in open disagreement with his outside salesman stand the graph and once or her charms had always kept him knickerly polite to her he snarled at misbegun or changing his letters but in the presence of paul wrisling he relaxed at least once a week they fled from maturity on saturday they played golf during as a golfer you're a fine tennis player or they murdered all sunday afternoon stopping at village lunchrooms to sit on high stools at a counter and drink coffee from thick cups sometimes paul came over in the evening with his violin and even zeta was silent as the lonely man who had lost his way and forever crept down unfamiliar roads spun out his dark soul in music too nothing gave babbit more purification and publicity than his labors for the sunday school his church the chatham road presbyterian was one of the largest and richest one of the most oaken and velvety and zenith the pastor was the reverend john jennathan drew m a d d l l d the m a and a d d were from elbert university nebraska and the l l d from waterberry college oklahoma he was eloquent efficient and versatile he presided at meetings for the denunciation of unions or the elevation of domestic service and confided to the audience that as a poor boy he had carried newspapers for the sunday edition of the evening advocate he wrote editorials on the manly man's religion and the dollars and cents value of christianity which were printed in bold types surrounded by a regular reporter he often said that he was proud to be known as primarily a businessman and that he certainly was not going to permit old satan to monopolize all the pep and punch he was a thin rustic faced young man with gold spectacles and a bang of dull brown hair but when he hurled himself into oratory he glowed with power he admitted that he was too much the scholar and poet to imitate the evangelist mike mundy and he had once awakened his full to new life and to larger collections by the challenge my brother the real cheapskate is the man who won't lend to the lord he had made his church a true community center it contained everything but a bar it had a nursery a thursday evening supper with a short bright missionary lecture afterwards a gymnasium a fortnightly mulch and picture show a library of technical books for young workmen though unfortunately no young workmen ever entered the church except to wash the windows or repair the furnace in a sewing circle which made short little pants for the children of the poor while mrs drew read aloud from earnest novels though doctor drew's theology was presbyterian his church building was gracefully episcopalian as he said it had the most permeable features of those noble eclistical monuments of grand old england which stand as symbols of the eternity of faith religious and civil it was built of cheery iron spot brick in an improved gothic style and the main auditorium had indirect lighting from electric globes in lavish alabaster bowls under december morning when the babbets went to church dr john jennathan drew was unusually eloquent their crowd was immense ten brisk young ushers and mourning coats with white roses were bringing folding chairs up from the basement there was an impressive musical program conducted by sheldon smith educational director of the ymca who also sang the offeratory babbot cared less for this because some misguided person had taught young mr smith to smile smile smile while he was singing but with all the appreciation of a fellow orator he admired dr drew's sermon it had the intellectual quality which distinguished the chathen road congregation from the grubby chapels on smith street but this abundant harvest time of all of the year dr drew chanted when though stormy the sky and laborious the path to the drudging wayfarer yet the hovering and bodyless spirit swoops back or all the labors and desires of the past 12 months oh then it seems to me there are sounds behind all our apparent failures the golden chorus of greeting from those past happily on and low on the dim horizon we see behind delores clouds the mighty mass of mountains mountains of melody mountains of mirth mountains of might i certainly do like a sermon with culture and thought in it meditated babbit at the end of the service he was delighted when the pastor actively shaking hands at the door twittered oh brother babbit can you wait a jiffy want your advice sure doctor you bet drop into my office i think you like the cigars there babbit did like the cigars he also liked the office which was distinguished from other offices only by the spirited change of the familiar wall placard to this is the lord's busy day chum frank came in then william w ethorn mr ethorn was the 71 year old president of the first state bank of zenith he still wore the delicate patches of side whiskers which had been the uniform of bankers in 1870 if babbit was envious of the smart set of the mckebleys before william washington ethorn he was reverent mr ethorn had nothing to do with the smart set he was above it he was the great grandson of one of the five men who founded zenith in 1792 and he was of the third generation of bankers he could examine credits make loans promote or injure a man's business in his presence babbit breathe quickly and felt young the reverend doctor drew bounced into the room and flowered into speech i have asked you gentlemen to stay so i can put on a proposition before you the sunday school needs bucking up it's the fourth largest in zenith but there's no reason why we should take anybody's dust we ought to be first i want to request you if you will to form a committee of advice and publicity for the sunday school look it over and make any suggestions for its betterment and then perhaps see that the press gives us some attention give the public some really helpful and constructive news instead of all these murders and divorces excellent said the banker babbit and frank were enchanted to join him three if you had asked babbit what his religion was he would have answered in sonora's boosters club rhetoric my religion is to serve my fellow man to honor my brother as myself and to do my bit to make life happier for one and all if you had pressed him for more detail he would have announced i'm a member of the presbyterian church and naturally i accept its doctrines if you had been so brutal as to go on he would have protested uh there's no use discussing and arguing about religion it just stirs up bad feeling actually the content of his theology was that there was a supreme being who had tried to make us perfect but presumably and failed that if one was a good man he would go to a place called heaven babbit unconsciously pictured it as a rather like an excellent hotel with a private garden but if one was a bad man that is if he murdered or committed burglary or used cocaine or had a mistress or sold non-existent real estate he would be punished babbit was uncertain however about what he called this business of hell he explained to ted of course i'm pretty liberal i don't exactly believe in fire and brimstone hell stands to reason though that a fellow can't get away with all sorts of vice and not get nicked for it do you know what i mean upon this theology he rarely pondered the kernel of his practical religion was that it was respectable and beneficial to one's business to be seen going to services that the church kept the worst elements from being still worse and that the pastor sermons however dull they might seem at the time of taking yet had a voodooistic power which did a fellow good kept him in touch with higher things his first investigations for the sunday school advisory committee did not inspire him he liked the busy folks bible class composed the mature men and women and addressed by the old school physician dr t atkins jordan in a sparkling style comparable with that of the more refined humorous after dinner speakers but when he went down to the junior classes he was disconcerted he heard shelled in smith educational director of the ymca and leader of the church choir of pale and but strenuous young man with curly hair and a smile teaching a class of 16 year old boys smith lovingly admonished him now fellas i'm going to have a heart-to-heart talk everything at my house next thursday we'll get off by ourselves and be frank about what her secret worries you can just tell old sheldie anything like all the fellas do it the why i'm going to explain frankly about the horrible practices a kitty falls into unless he's guided by a big brother and about the perils and glory of sex old sheldie beamed damply the boys looked amused and babbitt didn't know which way to turn his embarrassed eyes less annoying but also much duller were the minor classes which were being instructed in philosophy and oriental ethnology by herna spinsters most of them met in the highly varnished sunday school room but there was an overflow to the basement which was decorated with barricose water pipes and lighted by small windows high up in the oozing wall what babbitt saw however was the first congregational church of katawaba he was back in the sunday school of his boyhood he smelled again that polite stuffiness to be found only in church parlors he recalled the case of drab's sunday school books petty a humble heroine and josephus a lad of palestine he thumbed once more of the high colored text cards which no boy wanted but no boy could throw away because they were somehow sacred he was tortured by the stumbling rote of thirty five years ago as in the vast zenith church he listened to now in gear you read that next verse what does it mean when it says it's easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye what does it teach us clearance please don't wiggle so if you had studied your lesson you wouldn't be so fidgety narrow what is the lesson jesus was trying to teach his disciples the one thing i want you to especially remember boys is the words with god all things are possible just think of that always clearance please pay attention just say with god all things are possible whenever you feel discouraged and alec will you read the next verse if you'd pay attention you wouldn't lose your place drone drone drone gigantic bees had boomed in a cazzaring of drowsiness babbot started from his open-eyed nap thanked the teacher for the privilege of listening to her splendid teaching and staggered on to the next circle after two weeks of this he had no suggestion whatsoever for the reverend dr drew then he discovered the world of sunday school journals an enormous and busy domain of weeklies and monthlies which were as technical and practical as forward looking as the real estate columns or the shoe trade magazines he bought half a dozen of them in a religious bookshop and till after midnight he read them and admired he found many lucrative tips on focusing appeals scouting for new members and getting prospects to sign up with the sunday school he particularly liked the word prospects and he was moved by the rubric the moral springs of the community's life lie deep in its sunday schools its schools of religious instruction and inspiration neglect now means loss of spiritual vigor and moral power in years to come facts like the above followed by a straight arm appeal will reach folks who can never be lapped or jollied into doing their part babbot admitted huh so i used to skin out of the old sunday school at catawab every chance i got but same time i wouldn't be where i am today maybe if it hadn't been for its training in a moral power and all about the bible great literature have to read some of it again early days how scientifically the sunday school could be organized he learned from an article in the west minister adult bible class the second vice president looks after the fellowship of the class she chooses a group to help her these become ushers everyone who comes gets a glad hand no one goes away a stranger one member of the group stands on the doorstep and invites passersby to come in perhaps most of all babbot appreciated the remarks by william h bridgeway in the sunday school times if you have a sunday school class without any pep and get up and go in it that is without interest that is uncertain in attendance that acts like a fellow with the spring fever let old dr richway write you a prescription rx invite the bunch for supper the sunday school journals were as well rounded as they were practical they neglected none of the arts as to music the sunday school times advertised that c herald loudon known to thousands through his sacred compositions had written a new masterpiece entitled yearning for you the poem by harry d curr is one of the taintiest you could imagine and the music is indescribably beautiful critics are agreed that it will sweep the country may be made into a charming sacred song by substituting the hymn words i heard the voice of jesus say even manual training was adequately considered babbot noted an ingenious way of illustrating the resurrection of jesus christ model for pupils to make a tomb with rolling door use a square covered box turned upside down pull the cover forward a little to form a groove at the bottom cut a square door also cut a circle of cardboard to more than cover the door cover the circular door and the tomb thickly with stiff mixture of sand flour and water and let it dry it was the heavy circular stone over the door the woman found rolled away on Easter morning this is a story we are to go tell in their advertisements the Sunday school journals were thoroughly efficient babbot was interested in a preparation which takes the place of exercise for sedentary men by building up depleted nerve tissue nourishing the brain and the digestive system he was edified to learn that the selling of bibles was a hustling and strictly competitive industry and as an expert on hygiene he was pleased by the sanitary communion outfit company's announcement of an improved and satisfactory outfit throughout including highly polished beautiful mahogany tray this tray eliminates all noise is lighter and more easily handled than others and is more in keeping with the furniture of the church than a tray of any other material for he dropped the pile of Sunday school journals he pondered now there's a real he-world quarking shamed i haven't sat in more fellow that's an influence in the community shame if he doesn't take part in a real burl hustling religion sort of christianity incorporated you might say but with all reverence some folks might claim these Sunday school fans are undignified and unspiritual and so on sure always some skunk to spring things like that knocking and sneering and tearing down so much easier than building up but me i certainly hand it to these magazines they've brought old george f. babbit into camp and that's the answer to the critics the more manly and practical a fellow is the more he ought to lead the enterprise in christian life me for it cut out this carelessness and boozing and ron where the devil you've been there's a fine time of night to be coming in