 Chapter 8 of Babbitt. The great events of Babbitt Spring were the secret buying of real estate options in Linton, for certain street-traction officials, before the public announcement that the Linton Avenue car-line would be expanded, and a dinner, which was, as he rejoiced to his wife, not only a regular society spread, but a real, sure enough, high-brow affair, with some of the keenest intellects and the brightest bunch of little women in town. It was so absorbing an occasion that he almost forgot his desire to run off to Maine with Paul Razling, though he had been born in the village of Catawaba. Babbitt had risen to that metropolitan social plane on which hosts have as many as four people at dinner without planning it for more than an evening or two. But a dinner for twelve, with flowers from the florists and all the cut glass out, staggered even the Babbits. For two weeks they studied, debated, and arbitrated the list of guests. Babbitt marveled. Of course we're up to date ourselves, but still, think of us entertaining a famous poem like Chum Fink, a fellow that on nothing but a poem or so every day and just writing a few advertisements, pulls down fifteen thousand berries a year. Yes, and Howard Littlefield, do you know the other evening Eunice told me her papa speaks three languages? said Mrs. Babbitt. Ah, that's nothing, so do I, American baseball and poker. I don't think it's nice to be funny about a matter like that. Take how wonderful it must be to speak three languages that's so useful, and with people like that, I don't see why we invite the Orville Joneses. Well now, Orville is a mighty up-and-coming fellow. Yes, I know, but a laundry? I'll admit a laundry hasn't got the class of poetry or real estate, but just the same Orvie is mighty deep. Ever start him spilling about gardening? Say, that fellow can tell you the name of every kind of tree and some of their Greek and Latin names, too. Besides, we owe the Joneses a dinner. Besides, Garsh, we got to have some boob for audience when a bunch of hot air artists like Frank and Littlefield get going. Well, dear, I meant to speak of this. I do think that as a host, you ought to sit back and listen and let your guests have a chance to talk once in a while. Oh, you do, do you? Sure, I talk all the time, and I'm just a businessman. Oh, sure, I'm no PhD like Littlefield and no poet, and I haven't anything to spring. Let me tell you, just the other day, your darn chump Frank comes up to me at the club begging to know what I thought about the Springfield School bond issue. And who told him? I did. You bet your life, I told him. Let on me, I certainly did. He came up and asked me, and I told him all about it. You bet. And he was darn glad to listen to me. Duty as a host. I guess I know my duty as a host and let me tell you. In fact, the Orville Joneses were invited. Two. On the morning of the dinner, Mrs. Babbitt was resting. Now, George, I want you to be sure and be home early tonight. Remember, you have to dress. Uh, I see by the advocate that the Presbyterian General Assembly is voted to quit the inter-church world movement that George, did you hear what I said? You must be home in time to dress tonight. Dress, hell, I'm dressed now. Think I'm going down the office in my BVDs? I will not have you talking indecently before the children. And you do have to put on your dinner jacket. I guess you mean my tux, I'll tell you. All the dog-gone nonsensical nuisances I was ever invented. Three minutes later, after Babbitt had wailed, I don't know whether I'm going to dress or not, in a manner which showed that he was going to dress. The discussion moved on. Now, George, you mustn't forget to call it back is on the way home and get ice-cream. Their delivery wagon is broken down and I don't want to trust them to send it by. All right, you told me that for breakfast. I don't want you to forget. I'll be working my head off all day long training the girl that's to help with the dinner. Oh, nonsense anyway, hiring an extra girl for the feed. Matilda could perfectly well. And I have to go out and buy flowers and fix them and set the table, and order the salted almonds and look at the chickens and arrange the children to have their supper upstairs and I simply must depend on you to go to Vecchia's for ice-cream. All right. Gosh, I'm going to get it. All you have to do is go in and say you want the ice-cream that Mrs. Babbitt ordered yesterday by phone, and it will be all ready for you. At ten-thirty she telephoned him, not to forget the ice-cream from Vecchia's. He was surprised and blasted then by a thought. He wondered whether floral heights dinners were worth the hideous toil involved, but he repented the sack-religion, the excitement of buying the materials for cocktails. Now this was the manner of obtaining alcohol under the reign of righteousness and prohibition. He drove from the severe rectangular streets of the modern business center into the tangled byways of Old Town. Jagged blocks filled with sooty warehouses and lofts on into the Arbor, once a pleasant orchard, but now a morass of lodging houses, tenements, and brothels. Exquisite shivers chilled up his spine and stomach, and he looked at every policeman with intense innocence as one who loved the law and admired the force, and longed to stop and play with them. He parked his car, a block from the Healy Hanson saloon, worrying. All right. If anybody did see me, they'd think I was out here on business. He entered a place curiously like the saloons of anti-prohibition days, with a long, greasy bar with sawdust in front and streaky mirror behind, a pine table at which a dirty old man dreamed over a glass of something which resembled whiskey, and with two men at the bar drinking something which resembled beer, and giving that impression of forming a large crowd which two men always given a saloon, the bartender, a tall pale swede with a diamond in his lilac scarf. Sturded babbit as he stocked plumply up to the bar and whispered, I had a friend of Hanson sent me here. I'd like to get some gin. The bartender gazed down on him in a manner of an outraged bishop. I guess you've got the wrong place, my friend. We sell nothing but soft drinks here. He cleaned the bar with a rag which would itself have done with a little cleaning, and glared across his mechanically moving elbow. The old dreamer at the table petitioned the bartender. Say, Oscar, listen. Oscar did not listen. Ah, say, Oscar, listen, will you? Say, listen. The decayed and drowsy voice of the loafer, the agreeable stink of beer-dregs, threw a spell of initiation over Babbit. The bartender moved brimly toward the crowd of two men. Babbit followed him as delicately as a cat, and weadled. Say, Oscar, I want to speak to Mr. Hanson. What do you want to see him for? I just want to talk to him. Here's my card. It was a beautiful card, an engraved card, a card in the blackest black and the sharpest red, announcing that Mr. George F. Babbit was a state's insurance rents. The bartender held it as though it weighed ten pounds, and read it as though it were a hundred words long. He did not bend from his episcopal dignity, but he growled. I'll see if he's around. From the back room, he brought an immensely old young man, a quiet, sharp-eyed man in tan silk shirt, chuckered vest hanging open, and burning brown trousers. Mr. Healy Hanson, Mr. Hanson said only, eh? But his implacable and contemptuous eyes queried Babbit's soul, and he seemed not at all impressed by the new dark gray suit for which, as he had admitted to every acquaintance at the athletic club, Babbit had paid a hundred and twenty-five dollars. Glad to meet you, Mr. Hanson. Say, uh, I'm George Babbit of the Babbit Thompson Realty Company. I'm a great friend of Jake Hoffitz. Well, what of it? Say, uh, I'm going to have a party, and Jake told me you'd be able to fix me up with a little gin. An alarm, an obsequiness, as Hanson's eyes grew more bored. You, uh, telephone to Jake about me if you want to. Hanson answered by jerking his head to indicate the entrance to the back room and strolled away. Babbit, mellowed dramatically, crept into an apartment containing four round tables, eleven chairs, a brewery calendar, and a smell. He waited. Thrice, he saw, Healy Hanson, sauntered through humming hands and pockets, ignoring him. By this time, Babbit had modified his valiant morning bow. I won't pay one cent over seven dollars a quart. Two. I might pay ten. On Hanson's next weary entrance, he besought. Could you fix that up? Hanson scowled and greeted. Just a minute. Pete's sake, just a minute. In growing meekness, Babbit went on waiting till Hanson casually reappeared with a quart of gin. What is euphemistically known as a quart in his disdainful long white hands? Twelve bucks. Snap. They, uh, uh, say, uh, Captain Jake thought you'd be able to fix me up for eight or nine a bottle. Nope. Twelve. This is the real stuff smuggled from Canada. This is none of your natural spares with a drop in June of her extract. The honest merchant said virtuously. Twelve bones if he wanted. Of course, he understand. Just doing his in ways a friend of Jake's. Jersey understand. Babbit gratefully held out twelve dollars. He felt honored by contract with greatness as Hanson yawned, stuffed the bills uncounted into his radiant vest and swaggered away. He had a number of titulations out of concealing the gin bottle under his coat and out of hiding it in his desk. All afternoon he snorted and chuckled and gurgled over his ability to give the boys a real shot in the arm tonight. He was, in fact, so exhilarated that he was within a block of his house before he remembered that there was a certain manner mentioned by his wife of fetching ice cream from Vekias. He explained, Uh, darn it. And drove back. Vekia was not a caterer. He was the caterer of Cena. Most coming out parties were held in the white and gold ballroom of the Macian Vekia. At all nice teas, the guest recognized the five kinds of Vekia sandwiches and the seven kinds of Vekia cakes. And all really smart dinners ended as on a resolving cord, Vekia, Neapolitan ice cream in one of the three reliable molds. Melon mold, the round mold like a layer cake, and the long brick. Vekia shop had pale blue woodwork, tracery of plaster roses, attendance in frilled aprons, and glass shelves of kisses, with all the refinement that inheries in whites of eggs. Babbit felt heavy, thick, amid this professional daintiness, and as he waited for the ice cream, he decided, with hot prickles at the back of his neck, that a girl customer was giggling at him. He went home in a touchy temper. The first thing he heard was his wife's agitated, George, did you remember to go to Vekia's and get ice cream? Say, look here, do I ever forget to do things? Yes, often. Well, no, it's darn seldom I do, and it certainly makes me tired after going into a pink tea joint like Vekia's, and having to stand around looking at a lot of half-naked young girls, all rouged up like they were sixty and eating a lot of stuff that simply ruins their stomachs. Oh, it's too bad about you. I have noticed how you hate to look at pretty girls. With a jar, Babbit realized that his wife was too busy to be impressed by that moral indignation, with which males rule the world, and he went humbly upstairs to dress. He had an impression of a glorified dining room, of cut glass, candles, polished wood, lace, silver roses, with the odd swelling of the heart suitable to so grave a business as giving a dinner. He slew the temptation to wear his plated dress shirt for the fourth time, took out an entirely fresh one, tightened his black bow, and rubbed his patent leather pumps with a handkerchief. He glanced with pleasure at his garnet and silver studs. He smoothed and patted his ankles, transformed by silk socks from the sturdy shanks of George Babbit to the elegant limbs of what is called a club man. He stood before the pure glass, viewing his trim dinner coat, his beautiful triple braided trousers, and murmured in lyric beatitude, By golly, I don't look bad. I certainly don't look like Catawaba. If the Hicks back home could see me in this rig, they'd have a fit. He moved majestically down to mix the cocktails. As he chipped ice, as he squeezed oranges, as he collected vast doors of bottles, glasses and spoons at the sink and in the pantry, he felt as authoritative as the bartender at Healy-Hanson Saloon. True, Mrs. Babbit said he was underfoot, and Matilda and the maid hired for the evening, rushed by him, elbowed him, shrieked. Pleased to open the door, as they trotted through with trays. But in his high moment he ignored them. Besides the new bottle of gin, his cellar consisted of one half bottle of bourbon whiskey, a quarter of a bottle of Italian vermouth, and approximately one hundred drops of orange bitters. He did not possess a cocktail shaker. A shaker was proof of dissipation, the symbol of a drinker, and Babbit disliked being known as a drinker, even more than he liked to drink. He mixed by pouring from an ancient gravy-boat into a handleless picture. He poured with noble dignity, holding his olympics high, beneath the powerful Mazda Globe, his face hot, his shirt front a glaring white, the coppers sink a scoured red gold. He tasted the sacred essence. Now, by golly, if that isn't pretty near one fine old cocktail, kind of a Bronx and yet like a Manhattan, mm, hey, Myra, want a little nip before the folks come? Bustling into the dining room, moving each glass a quarter of an inch, rushing back with resolution, implacable on her face, her gray and silver lace party frock, protected by a denim towel, Mrs. Babbit glared at him and rebuked him. Certainly not. Well, in a loose, jacquoise manner, I think the old man will. The cocktail filled him with a whirling exhilaration beyond which he was aware of devastating desires to rice places in fast motors, to kiss girls, to sing, to be witty. He sought to regain his lost dignity by announcing to Matilda, I'm going to stick to this picture of cocktails in the refrigerator. Be sure you don't upset any of them. Yeah. Well, be sure now, don't go putting anything on the top shelf. Yeah, well, be, he was dizzy. His voice was thin and distant. Wee, with enormous impressiveness he commanded. Well, be sure now. And minced into the safety of the living room, he wondered whether he could persuade a slowest bunch of my run of little fields to go someplace to have dinner and raise cane and maybe dig up some more booze. He perceived that he had gifts of profligacy which had been neglected. By the time the guests had come, including the inevitable late couple for whom the others waited, with painful immubility, a great gray emptiness had replaced the purple swirling in Babbit's head. And he had to force the tumultuous greeting suitable to a host on floral heights. The guests were Howard Littlefield, the doctor of philosophy who furnished publicity and comfort and economics to the street traction company, virtual gunch, cold dealer, equally powerful in the elk, and in the Boosters Club. Eddie Swanson, the agent for the Javelin Motor Car, who lived across the street and Orville Jones, owner of the Lully White Laundry, which justly announced itself the biggest, busiest, bulliest cleaneries shop in Zenith. But naturally the most distinguished of all was T. Charmarly Fink, who was not only the author of Polenimus, which syndicated Dilly in sixty-seven leading newspapers, gave him one of the largest audiences of any poet in the world, but also an optimistic lecturer and the creator of ads that add. Despite the searching philosophy and high morality of his verses, they were humorous and easily understood by any child of twelve, and it added a neat air of pleasantry to them that they were set not as verse, but as prose. Mr. Frank was known from coast to coast, as Chum. With them were six wives more or less, it was hard to tell, so early in the evening as at first glance they all looked alike, and as they all said, Oh, isn't this nice? In the same tone of determined liveliness. To the eye the men were less similar, Little Field, a hedge-galler, tall and horse-faced. Chum Frank, a trifle of a man, with soft and mouselike hair, advertising his profession as poet by a silk cord on his eyeglasses. Virgil Gunch, broad with coarse black hair, imbrossed Eddie Swanson, a bald and bouncing young man, who showed his taste for elegance by an evening waistcoat of figured black silk with glass buttons. Orville Jones, a steady-looking stubby, not very memorable person with a hemp-colored toothbrush mustache. Yet they were also well fed and clean. They all shouted, Evening Georgie, with such robustness that they seemed to be cousins. And the strange thing is that longer one knew the women, the less alike they seemed. While the longer one knew the men, the more alike their bold patterns appeared. The drinking of the cocktails was as canonical at right as the mixing. The company waited uneasily, hopefully agreeing in a strained manner that the weather had been rather warm and slightly cold, but still Babbit said nothing about drinks. They became despondent. But when the late couple, the Swanson, had arrived, Babbit hinted, Well, folks, you think we could stand breaking the lullo? They looked at Chum Frank, the recognized lord of language. Frank pulled at his eyeglass cord as if a bell-rope. He cleared his throat and said that which was the custom. I'll tell you, George, I'm a law abiding man, but they do say Verge Gunch is a regular Yeg. And of course he's bigger than I am, and I just can't figure out what I'd do if he tried to force me into anything criminal. Gunch was roaring. Well, I'll take a chance. When Frank held up his hand and went on, so Verge knew insist, Georgie, I'll park my car on the wrong side of the street because I take it for granted that's the crime you're hitting at. There was a great deal of laughter Mrs. Jones asserted. Mr. Fink is simply too killing. You'd think he was so innocent. Babbit clamored, How did you guess it, Chum? Well, you all just wait a moment while I go out and get the keys to your cars. Through a froth of merriment he brought the shining promise, the mighty tray of glasses with the cloudy yellow cocktails in the glass pitcher in the center. The men babbled, Oh, gosh, have a look. And this gets me right where I live, and let me at it. But Chum Frank, a traveled man and not unused to woes, was stricken by the thought that the potion might be merely fruit juice, with a little natural spirits. He looked timid as Babbit a moist and a static almaner, held out a glass. But as he tasted it, he plied, Oh, man, let me dream on. It ain't true, but don't wake in me. Just let me slumber. Two hours before Frank had completed a newspaper lyric beginning, I sat alone and groused and thunk, and scratched my head and sighed and wonk, and groaned. There are still boot-a-back who like the old-time gin-mil-back, that den that makes a sage aloon, the violent smelly old saloon. I'll never miss her poison booze whilst the bubbling spring I can use that leaves my head at merry morn as clear as any babe newborn. Babbit drank with the others. His moment's depression was gone. He perceived that these were the best fellows in the world. He wanted to give them a thousand cocktails. Think you could stand another? He cried. The wives refused with giggles with the men, speaking in a wide, elaborate, enjoyable manner, gloated. Well, sooner than have you get sore, me Georgie. You got a little dividend coming, said Babbit to each of them, and each in tone. Squeeze it, Georgie, squeeze it. When beyond hope the picture was empty, they stood and talked about prohibition. The men leaned back on their heels, put their hands in their trousers' pocket, and proclaimed their views with the booming profidity of a prosperous male repeating a thoroughly hackneyed statement about a matter of which he knows nothing whatever. Now, I'll tell you, said Virgil Gunch, the way I figured is this, and I can speak by the book because I've talked to a lot of doctors and fellows that ought to know, and the way I see it is that it's a good thing to get rid of the saloon, but they ought to let a fellow have beer and light wines. Howard Littlefield observed, What isn't generally recognized is that it's a dangerous proposition to invade the rights of personal liberty. Now, take this for instance. The King of Bavaria, I think it was Bavaria, yes, Bavaria it was, in 1862, March 1862. He issued a proclamation against public grazing of livestock. The peasantry had stood for over taxation without the slightest complaint, but when this proclamation came out they rebuilt. Or it may have been Saxony, but it just goes to show the dangers of invading the rights of personal liberty. That's it, no one got a right to invade personal liberty, said Orville Jones. Just the same, you don't want to forget prohibition is a mighty good thing for the working class. Keep them from wasting their money and lowering their productiveness, said Virgil Grunch. Yes, that's all, but the trouble is the manner of enforcement insisted Howard Littlefield. Congress didn't understand the rights system. Now, if I'd been running the thing, I'd have arranged it so the drinker himself was licensed, and then we could have taken care of the shiftless workman. Keep him from drinking, and yet not have interfered with the rights, with the personal liberty of fellows like ourselves. They bobbed their heads, looked admiringly at one another, and stated, that's so, that wouldn't be a stunt. I ain't no worries me, as a lot of these guys will take to cocaine, sighed Eddie Swanson. They bobbed more violently and groaned, that's so, there is danger of that. Chum Frank chanted, we'll say I got a hold of a swell new recipe for homemade beer the other day. You take, Gunch interrupted. Wait, let me tell you mine. Littlefield snorted, beer rats. Things to do to ferment cider. Jones insisted, I've got the recipe that does the business, Swanson begged. Oh, say let me tell you the story. But Frank went on resolutely. You take and save the shells from peas, and pour six gallons of water on a bollow of shells, and boil the mixture till Mrs. Babbitt turned them with yearning sweetness. Frank hastened to finish even his best beer recipe, and she said gaily, didn't her served? There was a good deal of friendly argument among the men as to which should go in last. And while they were crossing the hall from the living room to the dining room, Richard Gunch made them laugh by thundering, if I can't sit next to Myra Babbitt and hold her hand to the table, I won't play, I'm going home. In the dining room they stood embarrassed while Mrs. Babbitt fluttered. Now, let me see. Oh, I was going to have some nice hand-painted place cards for you, but... Oh, let me see. Mr. Frank, would you sit here? The dinner was in the best style of women's magazine art, whereby the salad was served in hollowed apples, and everything but the invincible fried chicken resembled something else. Ordinarily the men found it hard to talk to the women. Flirtation was an art unknown on floral heights, and the realms of offices and of kitchens had no alliances, but under the inspiration of cocktails conversation was violent. Each of the men still had a number of important things to say about prohibition, and now that each had a loyal listener in his dinner-partner he burst out. I'm on the place where I can get all the hooch I want and eat a quart. Did you read about this fellow that went and paid a thousand dollars for ten cases of red-eye that proved to be nothing but water? Seems the fellow was standing on the corner and the fellow comes up to him. They say there's a whole raft of stuff being smuggled across at Detroit. What I always say is, what a lot of folks don't realize about prohibition. And then when you get all this awful poison stuff, wood, alcohol, and everything, of course I believe in it on principle, but I don't propose that have anybody tell me what I got to think and do. No American will ever stand for that. But they all felt that it was rather in bad taste for Orwell Jones and he not recognized as one of the wits of the occasion anyway to say, in fact, the whole thing about prohibition is this. It isn't the initial cost. It's a humidity. Not till the one required topic had been dealt with did the conversation become general. It was often, and admittedly, said a Virgil Gunch. Gee, that fellow can get away with murder while he can pull our raw one in mixed company, and all the ladles will lamp their heads off, but me, gosh, if I crack anything that's just the least bit off color, I get razed for fair. Now, Gunch, delighted them by crying to Mrs. Eddie Swanson, youngest of the women, Luetta, I managed to pinch Eddie Dorky out of his pocket and what say you we sneak across the street when folks aren't looking. Got something with a gorgeous leer? Often important to tell you, the women wriggled and Babbitt was stirred to like naughtiness. Say, folks, I wish I dared to show you a book I borrowed from Doc Pattern. Now, George, the idea, Mrs. Babbitt warned him. This book, racy in the word, it's some kind of anthropological report about customs in the South Seas, and what it doesn't say. It's a book you can't buy. Burge, I'll lend it to you. Me first, insisted Eddie Swanson, sound spicy. Orville Jones announced, say, I heard a good one the other day about a couple of Swedes and their wives. And in the best Jewish accent, he resolutely carried the good one to a slightly disinfected ending. Gunch capped it. But the cocktails waned, the seekers dropped back into cautious reality. Chump Fink had recently been on a lecture tour among the small towns, and he chuckled, awful good to get back to civilization. I certainly been seeing some hick towns, I mean. Towards the folks there are the best on earth, but gee whiz, those Main Street bergs are slow. And you fellas can't hardly appreciate what it means to be here with a bunch of live ones. You bet, exalted Orville Jones, they're the best folks on earth, those small town folks, but oh mama, what conversation. Why, say, they can't talk about anything but the weather and the Neo-Ford. By Hackleman. That's right, they all talk just about the same things, said Eddie Swanson. Don't they, though? They just say the same things over and over, said Virgil Gunch. Yes, it's really remarkable. They seem to lack all power of looking at things impersonally. They simply go over and over the same talk about Fords and the weather and so on, said Howard Littlefield. Still, if that, you can't blame them. They haven't got any intellectual stimulus such as you get up here in the city, said Chump Fink. Bars, that's right, said Babbit. I don't want you high brows to get stuck on yourself, but I must say it keeps a fellow right up on his toes to sit with a poet and with Howard, the guy that put the con in economics, but these small town boobs with nobody but each other to talk to, no wonder they get so sloppy and uncultured in their speech and so balled up in their thinking. Orville Jones commented, and then take our other advantages, the movies, for instance. Those Japville sports think they're all get out if they have one change of bill a week, where here in the city you got your choice of a dozen different movies any evening you want to name. Sure, the inspiration we get from rubbing up against high-class hustlers every day and getting jam-full of ginger, said Eddie Swanson. Same time, said Babbit. No sense excusing those Rube-Bergs too easy, fellow's own fault if he don't show the initiative to up and beat it to the city, like we done did. And just speaking of in confidence among friends, they're jealous as a devil of a city man. Every time I go up to Catawaba, I have to go around apologizing to the fellows I was brought up with because I've more or less succeeded and they haven't. And if you talk natural to them the way we do here and show finesse and what you might call a broad point of view, why they think you're putting on the side. There's my own half-brother Martin, runs the little old general storm a dad used to keep. Say, I'll bet he don't know there is such a thing as a tux, as a dinner jacket. If he was to come up here now, he'd think we were a bunch of, uh, why, gosh, I swear he wouldn't know what to think. Yes, sir, they're jealous. Jump, Frank agreed. That's so, but what I mind is their lack of culture and appreciation of the beautiful. If you'll excuse me for being highbrow, now I like to give a high-class lecture and read some of my best poetry. Not the newspaper stuff, but the magazine things. But say, when I get in the tall grass, there's nothing we'll take but a lot of cheesy old stories and slang and junk that if any of us were to indulge in it here, he'd get the gate so fast it would make his head swim. First a gun summed up. Fact is, we're mighty lucky to be living among a bunch of city folks that recognize artistic things and business bunch equally. We'd feel pretty glum if we got stuck in some main street burg and tried to wise up the old Codgers to a kind of life we're used to here. But by golly, there's this you've got to say for him. Every small American town is trying to get population and modern ideals. And darn if a lot of them don't put it across, somebody starts planning a rubed crossroads, telling how he was here in 1900 and it consisted of one muddy street, count them, one, and nine hundred human clams. Well, you go back there in 1920 and you find pavement in a swell little hotel and a first-class lady's ready-to-wear shop? Real perfection, in fact. You don't want to just look at what these small towns are. You want to look at what they're aiming to become. And they all got an ambition that in the long run is going to make them the finest spots on earth. They all want to be just like Zenith. Three. However intimate they might be with Teacher Maraldi Cenk as a neighbor, as a borrower of lawnmowers and monkey wrenches. They knew that he was also a famous poet and a distinguished advertising agent, that behind his easiness were sultry literary mysteries, which they could not penetrate. But tonight, in the gin-evolved confidence, he admitted them to an arcanum. I've got a literary problem that's worrying me to death. I'm doing a series of ads for the Ziko car and I want to make each of them a real little gem, regular stylistic stuff. I'm all for this theory that perfection is the stunt, or nothing at all. And these are as tough things as I've tackled. You might think it would be harder to do my poems. All these heart topics, home and fireside and happiness, but they're cinches. You can't go wrong on them. And you know what sentiments any decent go-ahead fellow must have if he plays the game. And you stick right to him. But the poetry of industrialism? Now there's a literary line where you've got to open up new territory. Do you know the fellow who's really the American genius? The fellow who you don't know his name, and I don't either. But his work ought to be preserved so future generations can judge our American thought and originality to date. Why the fellow that writes the Prince Albert Tobacco adds. Just listen to this. It's P.A. that jam such joy in chimney pipes. Say, bet you've often bent an ear to that spill of speech about hopping from five to fifty per by stepping on her a bit. Guess that's going some, all right. But just among ourselves, you'd better start a rapid whiz system to keep tabs as to how fast you'll buzz from low smoke spirits to tip top high. Once you line up behind a chimney pipe, it's all aglow with such a peach of a pal Prince Albert. Prince Albert is John on a job. Always joyously moreish in flavor. Always delightful, cool and fragrant. For a fact, you never hooked such a double decked copper riveted two-fisted smoke enjoyment. Go to a pipe. Speedo quick like you light on a good thing. Why packed with Prince Albert? You can play a joyously jimmy straight across the boards, and you know what that means. Now that, Carole Motor Agent Eddie Swanson, that's what I call he literature, that Prince Albert fellow. Oh gosh, there can't be just one fellow that writes him must be a big bore to a classy ink slingers in conference. But anyway, now him, he doesn't write for long-haired pikers. He writes for regular guys. He writes for me. And I tip my beanie to him. The only thing is, I wonder if it sells the goods. Of course, like these poets, this Prince Albert fellow, lets his idea run away with him. It makes elegant reading, but it don't say nothing. I never go out and buy Prince Albert tobacco after reading it. Because it doesn't tell me anything about the stuff. It's just a bunch of fluff. Frank Faisting. Well, you're crazy. Have I got to sell you the idea of style? Anyway, that's the kind of stuff I'd like to do for the Ziko, but I simply can't, so I decided to stick to the straight poetic. And I took a shot at a highbrow ad for the Ziko. How do you like this? The long white trail is calling. Calling? And it's over the hills and far away for every man or woman that has red blood in his veins and on his lips the ancient song of the buccaneers. It's a way with dull drudging and a fig for care, speed, glorious speed. It's more than just a moment's exhilaration. It's life for you and me. This great new truth the makers of Ziko Car have considered as much as price and style. It's fleet as the antelope, smooth as the glide of a swallow, yet powerful as the charge of a bull-elephant. Class breathes in every line. Listen, brother, you'll never know what the high art of hiking is till you try. Life's zipping a zest. The Ziko. Yes, Frank Mused? That's got an elegant color to it if I do say so, but it ain't got the originality of spill of speech. The whole company side with sympathy and admiration. End of Chapter 8 Chapter 9 of Babbit. The Sleeper Vox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Mike Vendetti, MikeVendetti.com. Babbit. By Sinclair Lewis. Chapter 9 One. Babbit was fond of his friends. He loved the importance of being host and shouting, "'Certainly you're going to have some more chicken. The idea!' And he appreciated the genius of T. Charmolundi Fink. But the figure of the cocktails was gone, and the more he ate, the less joyful he felt. Then the amnesty of the dinner was destroyed by the nagging of the Swansons. In floral heights and the other prosperous sections of zenith, especially in the young married set, there were many women who had nothing to do, though they had few servants, yet with gas stoves, electric ranges, and dishwashers, and vacuum cleaners, and tile kitchen walls. Their houdns were so convenient that they had little housework, and much of their food came from bakeries and delicatessens. They had but two, one, or no children, and despite the myth that the Great War had made work respectable, their husbands objected to their wasting time and getting a lot of crank ideas, and unpaid social work, and still, more to their causing, a rumor by earning money that they were not adequately supported. They worked perhaps two hours a day, and the rest of the time they ate chocolates, went to the motion pictures, went window shopping, went in gossiping, twos and threes to card parties, read magazines thought timorously of the lovers who never appeared, and accumulated a splendid restlessness, which they got rid of by nagging their husbands. The husbands nagged back. Of these naggers, the Swansons were perfect specimens. Throughout the dinner, Eddie Swanson had been complaining publicly about his wife's new frock. It was he submitted too short, too low, too immodestly thin, and much too expensive. He appealed to babbit. Honest, George, what do you think of that reg, Loretta, went and bought? Don't you think it's the limit? What's eating you, Eddie? I called a swell little dress. Oh, it is, Mr. Swanson. It's a sweet frock, Mrs. Babbit protested. There now, do you see, Smarty, you're such an authority on clothes, Loretta raged, while the guests ruminated and peeped at her shoulders. It's all right now, said Swanson. I'm authority enough so I know it was a waste of money, and it makes me tired to see you not wearing out a whole closet full of clothes you got already. I've expressed my idea about this before, and you know good and well you don't pay the least bit of attention. I have to camp on your trail to get you to do anything. There was much more of it, and they all assisted, but Babbit, everything about him was dim except his stomach, and that was the bright scarlet disturbance. Had too much grub on to eat our stuff, he groaned, while he went on eating, while he gulped down a chill and gluttonous slice of ice cream brick and coconut cake as oozy as shaving cream. He felt as though he had been stuffed with clay, his body was bursting, his throat was bursting, his brain was hot mud, and only with agony did he continue to smile and shout as became a host of floral heights. He would, except for his guests, have fled outdoors and walked off the intoxication of food, but in the haze which filled the room they sat forever talking, talking, while he agonized. Garned full to be eating all this, not another mouthful, and discovered that he was again tasting the sickly welter of melted ice cream on his plate. There was no magic in his friends, he was not uplifted. One Howard Littlefield produced from his treasure-house of scholarship, the information that the chemical symbol for raw rubber is C10H16, which turns into isoprene, which is 2C5H8. Suddenly, without precedent, Babbitt was not merely bored but admitting that he was bored. It was estacy to escape from the table, from the torture of a street chair, and lull on the Davenport in the living-room. The others, from their fitful unconvincing talk, their expressions of being slowly and painfully smothered, seemed to be suffering from the toil of social life and the horror of good food as much as himself, all of them accepted with relief the suggestion of bridge. Babbitt recovered from the feeling of being boiled, he wanted bridge. He was again able to endure Virgil Gunch's inexorable heartiness, but he pictured loafing with Paul Reisling beside a lake in Maine. It was as overpowering and imaginative as homesickness. He had never been to Maine, yet he beheld the shrouded mountains of the tranquil lake of evening. That boy Paul's worth all these balahoe and highbrows put together, he muttered, and I'd like to get away from everything. Even Loeta Swanson did not browse him. Mrs. Swanson was pretty in point. Babbitt was not an analyst of women, except as to their taste in furnished houses to rent. He divided them into real ladies, working women, old cranks, and fly chickens. He mooned over their charms, but he was of opinion that all of them saved the women of his own family were different and mysterious. Yet he had known by instinct that Loeta Swanson could be approached. Her eyes and lips were moist, her face tapered from a broad forehead to a pointed chin, her mouth was thin but strong and avid, and between her brows were two out-curving and passionate wrinkles. She was thirty perhaps or younger. Gossip had never touched her, but every man naturally and instantly rose to flirtationous when he spoke to her, and every woman watched her with stilled blankness. Between games sitting on the Davenport, Babbitt spoke to her with the requisite gallantry that's Sonra's Floral Heights gallantry, which is not flirtation but a terrified flight from it. You're looking like a soda found tonight, Loeta. Am I? Old Eddie kind of on the rampage? Yes, I get so sick of it. Well, when you get tired of hubby, you can run off with Uncle George. If I ran away, oh well. Anybody ever tell you your hands are awful pretty? She looked down at them. She pulled the lace of her sleeves over them, but otherwise she did not hit him. She was lost in unexpressed imaginings. Babbitt was too languid this evening to pursue his duty of being a captivating, though strictly moral, male. He ambled back to the bridge-tables. He was not much thrilled when, Mrs. Fink, a small twittering woman proposed that they try to do some spiritualism and table-tipping. You know, Chum can make the spirits come. Honest, he just scares me. The ladies of the party had not emerged all evening, but now as the sex given to things of the spirit while the men warred against base-things material, they took command and cried, Oh, let's! In the dimness the men were rather solemn and foolish, but the good wives quivered and adored as they sat about the table, they laughed. Now you be good, or I'll tell! When the men took their hands in the circle, Babbitt tingled with a slight return of interest in life as Luetta Swanson's hand closed on his with quiet firmness. All of them hunched over intent. They startled as someone drew a strained breath. In a dusty light from the hall they looked unreal. They felt disembodied. Mrs. Gunch squeaked, and they jumped with unnatural joculty, but at Frank's hiss they sank into subdued awe. Suddenly, incredibly, they heard a knocking. They stared at Frank's half-revealed hands and found them lying still. They wiggled and pretended not to be impressed. Frank spoke with gravity. Is someone there? A thud. Is one knocked to be the sign for yes? A thud. And two for no? A thud. Now, ladies and gentlemen, shall we ask the guy to put us into communication with the spirit of some great one passed over? Frank mumbled. Mrs. Orville Jones begged, Oh, let's talk to Dante. We studied him at the reading circle. You know who he was, Orby? Certainly I know who he was, the Wap-Poet. Where do you think I was raised? From her insulted husband. Sure, the fellow that took the cook's tour to hell. I have never waded through his poetry, but we learned him about him at the U, said Babbit. Page, Mr. Dundee, intoned Eddie Swanson. You ought to get him easy, Mr. Frank. You and he being fellow poets, said Luella Swanson. Fellow Poets, rats! Where'd you get that stuff, protested Virgil Gunch? I suppose Dante showed a lot of speed for an old timer. Not that I've actually read him, of course, but to come right down to hard facts he wouldn't stand a one, two, three, if he had to buckle down to practical literature and turn out a poem for the newspaper syndicate every day like Chum does. That's so, from Eddie Swanson. Those old birds could take their time. Judas Priest, I could write poetry myself if I had a whole year to do it, and just wrote about that old-fashioned junk like Dante wrote about. Frank demanded, I should now. I'll call him. Old laughing eyes emerge forth from the, uh, the ultimate and bring hither the spirit of Dante, that we mortals may list to his words of wisdom. You forgot to give him the address, 1558 Brimstone Avenue. Fiery Heights, hell! Grench chuckled, but the others felt that this was irreligious, and besides, probably it was just Chum making the knocks, but still, if there did happen to be something to all this, be exciting to talk to an old fellow belonging to way back in early years. A thud. The spirit of Dante had come to the parlor of George F. Babbit. He was, it seemed, quite ready to answer the questions. He was glad to be with them this evening. Frank spelled out the messages by running through the alphabet till the spirit interpreter knocked at the right letter. Littlefield asked in a learned tone, Do you like it in paradise, Miss Ehrer? We are very happy on the higher plain, Signora. We are glad that you are studying this great truth of spiritualism, Dante replied. The circle moved with an odd creaking of stays and shirt fronts. Suppose, suppose, were there were something to this. Babbit had a different worry. Suppose Chum Frank was really one of those spiritualists. Chum had, for a literary fellow, always seemed to be a regular guy. He belonged to the Chatham Road Presbyterian Church, and went to the boosters' lunches and liked cigars and motors and racy stories. But suppose that secretly, after all, you never could tell about the darn eyebrows, and being out and out spiritualist would be almost like being a socialist. No one could long be serious in the presence of virtual gunch. Ask Dante how Jack Shakespeare and old verge. The guy they named after me are getting long, and don't they wish they could get into the movie game? He blared and instantly all was mirth. Mrs. Jones shrieked, and Eddie Swanson desired to know whether Dante didn't catch cold with nothing on but his wreath. The pleased Dante made humble answer. But, babbit, the cursed discontent was torturing him again, and heavily, in the impersonal darkness, he pondered. I don't. We're all so flip and think we're so smart. There'd be a fellow like Dante. I wish I'd read some of his pieces. I don't suppose I ever will now. He had, without explanation, the impression of a slaggy cliff, and on it, in silhouette against menacing clouds, a lone and austere figure. He was dismayed by a sudden contempt for his surest friends. He grasped Loretta Swanson's hand and found the comfort of human warmth. Habit came, a veteran warrior, and he shook himself. But that deuces the matter with me this evening. He patted Loretta's hand to indicate that he hadn't meant anything improper by squeezing it, and demanded a frank, say, see if you can get old Dante to spiel of some of his poetry. Talk up to him. Tell him. When I go to a senior, come savant, we gets to get our little poem, senior. Two. The lights were switched on. The women sat on the front of their chairs in the determined suspense whereby a wife indicates that as soon as the present speaker was finished she is going to remark brightly to her husband. Well, dear, I think perhaps it's about time for us to be saying good night. For once, Babbit did not break out in blustering efforts to keep the party going. He had. There was something he wished to think out. But the physical research that started him off again. Why don't they go home? Why didn't they go home? Though he was impressed by the profoundity of the statement, he was only half enthusiastic when Howard Littlefield lectured, the United States is the only nation in which the government is a moral ideal and not just a social arrangement. True, true, they were never going home. He was usually delighted to have an inside view of the momentous world of motors. But tonight he scarcely listened to Eddie Swanson's revelation. If you want to go above the javelin glass, the Zico is a mighty good buy a couple weeks ago, and mind you, this was a fair square test. They took a Zico stock touring car. And they slid up, they touted some out of hill on high, and fellow told me, Zico's good boat, but were they planning to stay all night? They really were going with a flutter of, ah, we did have the best time. Most aggressively friendly of all was Babbit. Yet as he burbled he was reflecting, I got through it, but for a time there I didn't hardly think I'd last out. He prepared to taste the most delicate pleasure of the host, making fun of his guests in the relaxation of midnight. As the door closed he yawn volupturously, chest out, shoulders wiggling, and turned cynically to his wife. She was beaming. Oh, it was nice, wasn't it? I know they enjoyed every minute of it. Don't you think so? He couldn't do it. He couldn't mock. It would have been like sneering at a happy child. He lied ponderously. You bet, best party this year. Buy a long shot. Wasn't a dinner good and honestly I thought the fried chicken was delicious. You bet, fried to the queen's taste, best chicken I've tasted in her acunes age. Didn't Matilda fry it beautifully? And don't you think the soup was simply delicious? It certainly was. It was corking. Best soup I've tasted since heck was a pup. But his voice was seeping away. They stood in the hall under the electric light in its square box like shade of red glass bound with nickel. She stared at him. Why, George, you sound as if you hadn't really enjoyed it. Sure did. Of course I did. George, what is it? Oh, I'm kind of tired, I guess. Been pounding pretty hard at the office. Need to get away and rest up a little. Well, we're going to Maine in just a few weeks now, dear. Yeah. Then he was pouring it out nakedly. Robbed of that reticence. Myra, I think it'll be a good thing for me to get up there early. But you have this man you have to meet in New York about business. What man? Oh, sure him. Oh, that's all off. But I want to hit Maine early. Get in a little fishing, catch me a big trout by a gully. A nervous artificial lamp. Well, why don't we do it? Verona and Matilda can run the house between them. And you and I can go any time if you think we can afford it. But that's—I've been feeling so jumpy lately. I thought maybe it might be a good thing if I got kind of off by myself and sweat it out of me. George, don't you want me to go along? She was too wretchedly in earnest to be tragic, or gloriously insulted, or anything save dumpy and defenseless and fleshed to the red steaminess of a boiled beet. Of course I do. I just meant— Remembering that Paul Reisling had predicted this, he was as desperate as she. I mean, sometimes it's a good thing for an old grouch like me to go off and get it out of his system. He tried to sound parental. Then when you and the kids arrived, I figured maybe I might skip up to Maine just a few days ahead of you. I'd be ready for a real bat. See how I mean? He coaxed her with large, booming sounds with affable smiles like a popular preacher blessing an Easter congregation, like a humorous lecturer compelling his stint of eloquence, like all perpetrators of masculine wiles. She stared at him. The joy of festival drained from her face. Do I bother you when we go on vacations? Do I add anything to your fun? He broke. Suddenly, dreadfully, he was hysterical. He was a yelping baby. Yes, yes, hell yes! But can't you understand? I'm shot to pieces. I'm all in. I got to take care of myself—I got to. I'm sick of everything and everybody I got to. It was she who was mature and protective now. Why, of course, you shall run off by yourself. Why don't you get Paul to go along and you boys just fish and have a good time? She patted his shoulder, reaching up to it, while he shook with palsy helplessness. And in that moment was not merely by habit fond of her, but clung to her strength. She cried cheerly. Now upstairs you go and pop into bed. We'll fix it all up. I'll see to the doors. Now skip. For many minutes, for many hours, for a bleak eternity, he lay awake, shivering, reduced to primitive terror. Comprehending that he had won freedom and wondering what he could do with anything so unknown and so embarrassing as freedom. 10. No apartment house in Zenith had more resolutely experimented in condensation than the revel-stroke arms, in which Paul and Zilla Riesling had a flat. By sliding the beds into low closets, the bedrooms were converted into living rooms. The kitchens were cupboards each containing an electric range, copper sink, a glass refrigerator, and, very intermittently, a Balkan mate. 11. Everything about the arms was excessively modern, and everything was compressed, except the garages. The babbits were calling on the Rieslings at the arms. It was a speculative venture to call on the Rieslings. Interesting and sometimes disconcerning. Zilla was an active, strident, full-blown, high-blossom blonde. When she condescended to be good-humored, she was nervously amusing. Her comments on people were saltily satiric and penetratively of accepted hypocrisies. But so, you said, and look sheepish. She danced wildly and called on the world to be merry. But in the midst of it she would turn indignant. She was always becoming indignant. Life was a plot against her, and she exposed it furiously. She was affable tonight. She merrily hinted at Orville Jones' war to pay, that Mrs. T. Charmaldi Frank's singing resembled a fort going into high, and that the Honorable Otis Diebel, Mayor of Zenith, and candidate for Congress, was a flatulent fool. Which was quite true. The babbits and Rieslings sat doubtfully on stone-hard, brocade chairs in the small living-room of the flat, with its mantle unprovided with a fireplace, and its strip of heavy-guilt fabric upon a glaring new player-piano till Mrs. Riesling shrieked. Come on, let's put up some pep in it. Get out your fiddle, Paul! And I'll try to make Georgie dance decently. The babbits were inertist. They were plotting for the escape to Maine, but when Mrs. Babbit hinted with plump smilingness, does Paul get as tired after the winter's work as Georgie does? Then Zilia remembered an injury, and when Zilia Riesling remembered an injury, the world stopped till something had been done. Does he get tired? No, he doesn't get tired. He just goes crazy. That's all. You'd think Paul so reasonable. Oh, yes, and he loves to make out. He's a little lamb, but he's stubborn as a mule. Oh, if you had to live with him, you'd find out how sweet he is. He just pretends to be meek so he can have his own way. And me? I get the credit for being a terrible old crank, but if I didn't blow up once in a while, and get something started, we'd die of dry rot. He never wants to go any place, and why last evening just because the car was out of order, and that was his fault too, because he ought to have taken it to the service station and had the battery looked at, and he didn't want to go down to the movies on the trolley. But we went, and then there was one of those impudent conductors, and Paul wouldn't do a thing. I was standing on a platform waiting for the people to let me into the car, and this beast of a conductor hollered at me. Come on, you move up. Why, I've never had anybody speak to me that way in all my life. I was so astonished, I just turned to him and said, I thought there must be some mistake, and so I said to him, perfectly pleasant. Well, are you speaking to me? And he went on and bellowed at me. Yes, I was. You're keeping the whole car from starting. He said, and then I saw he was one of those dirty, ill-bred hogs that kindness is wasted on, and so I stopped and looked right at him. And I said, I beg your pardon? I am not doing anything of a kind. I said, it's the people ahead of me who won't move up, I said. And furthermore, let me tell you, young man, that you're a low-down, foul-mouthed, impertinent skunk. I said, and you're no gentleman. I certainly intend to report you and we'll see, I said, whether a lady is to be insulted by any drunken bum that chooses to put on a ragged uniform. And I thank you, I said, to keep your filthy abuse to yourself. And then I waited for Paul to show that he was half a man and come to my defense. And he just stood there and pretended he hadn't heard a word. And so I said to him, well, I said, Ah, cut it, cut it, Jill. Paul groaned, we all know I'm mollycoddle and you're a tender bud. And let's let it go with that. Let it go? Celia's face was wrinkled like the Medusa. Her voice was a dagger of corroded brass. She was full of the joy of righteousness and bad temper. She was a crusader. And like every crusader, she exalted in the opportunity to be vicious in the name of virtue. Let it go? If people knew how many things, I'd let go. Oh, quit being such a bully. Yes, a fine figure you'd cut if I didn't bully you. You'd lie in bed till noon and play your idiotic fiddle till midnight. You're born lazy and you're born shiftless and you were born cowardly, Paul Riesling. Oh, now don't say that, Celia. You don't mean a word of it, protested Mrs. Babbitt. I will say that and I mean every last word of it. Oh, now, Celia, the idea. Mrs. Babbitt was maternal and fussy. She was no older than Celia, but she seemed so at first. She was placid and puffy and mature, whereas Celia at forty-five was so bleached and tight corseted that she knew only that she was older than she looked. The idea of talking to poor Paul like that. Poor Paul is right. We're both poor. We'd be in the poor house if I didn't jazz him up. Why now, Celia? Georgie and I were just saying how hard Paul's been working all year. And we were thinking it would be lovely if the boys could run off by themselves. I've been coaxing George to go up to Main ahead of the rest of us and get the tired out of his system before we come. And I think it would be lovely if Paul could manage to get away and join him. At this exposure of his plot to escape, Paul was startled out of impassivity. He rubbed his fingers, his hands twitched. Celia braked, Yes, you're lucky. You can let George go and not have to watch him. Fat old George never peeps at another woman hasn't got the spunk. The hell I haven't! Babbit was fervently defending his priceless immorality. When Paul interrupted him and Paul looked dangerous, he rose quickly. You said to Celia, I suppose you imply I have a lot of sweethearts. Yes, I do. Well then, my dear, since you asked for it, there hasn't been a time in the last ten years why I haven't found some nice little girl to comfort me. And as long as you continue your amubility, I shall probably continue to deceive you. It isn't hard. You're so stupid. Celia glabbered, she howled. Words could not be distinguished in her slaver of abuse. Then the bland George F. Babbit was transformed. If Paul was dangerous, if Celia was a snake-locked fury, if the neat emotions suitable to the revels-like arms had been slashed into raw hatreds, it was Babbit who was the most formal veil. He leaped up. He seemed very large. He seized Celia's shoulder. The cautions of the broker were wiped from his face and his voice was cruel. I've had enough of this damn nonsense. I've known you for twenty-five years, ill, and I never knew you to miss a chance to take your disappointments out on Paul. You're not wicked. You're worse. You're a fool. And let me tell you that Paul is the finest boy God ever made. Every decent person is sick and tired of your taking advantage of being a woman and springing every mean innuendo you can think of. Who the hell are you that are person-like Paul? Should have to ask your permission to go with me. You act like you were a combination of Queen Victoria and Cleopatra. You fool. Can't you see how people snicker at you and sneer at you? Celia was sobbing. I've never, I've never, I've never been talked like this done all my life. No, but that's the way they talk behind your back always. They say you're a scolding woman, oh, by God. That cowardly attack broke her. Her eyes were blank. She wept. But Babbit glared stolidly. He felt that he was the all-powerful official in charge. That Paul and Mrs. Babbit looked on him with awe. That he alone could handle this case. Still arrived, she begged. Oh, they don't. They certainly do. I've been a bad woman. I'm terribly sorry. I'll kill myself. I'll do anything. Oh, what do you want? She abased herself completely. Also, she enjoyed it to the connoisseur of scenes. Nothing is more enjoyable than a thorough melodramatic, egotistic humility. I want you to let Paul beat it off to main with me, Babbit demanded. Oh, can I help his going? You've just said I was an idiot. Nobody paid any attention to me. Oh, you're going to help it all right. All right. What you've got to do is cut out hitting and that the minute he gets out of your sight he'll go chasing after some petticoat. Matter of fact, that's the way you start the boy off wrong. You ought to have more sense. Oh, I will. Honestly, I will, George. I know I was bad. Will forgive me. All of you forgive me. She enjoyed it. So did Babbit. He condemned magnificently and forgave piously. And he went parading out with his wife. He was grandly explanatory to her. Kind of ashamed of Bully Zilla, but, of course, it was the only way to hand work. Gosh, I certainly did have her crawling. She said calmly, yes, you were horrid. You were showing off. You were having a lovely time thinking what a great fine person you were. Well, by golly, can you beat it? Of course I might have expected you to not stand by me. I might have expected you'd stick up for your own sex. Yes, poor Zillian, she's so unhappy. She takes it out on Paul. She hasn't a single thing to do in that little flat. And she broods too much. And she used to be so pretty and gay. And she'd be since losing it. And you were just as nasty and as mean as could be. I'm not a bit proud of you or of Paul. Boasting about his horrid love affairs. He was so coley silent, he maintained his bad temper at a high level of outrage nobility. All the four blocks home. At the door he left her in self-approving haughtiness and tramped the lawn. With a shock it was revealed to him. Gosh, I wonder if she was right. If she was partially right. Overwork must have flayed him to abnormal sensitiveness. It was one of the few times in his life when he had queried his eternal excellence. And he perceived the summer night. Smell the wet grass. Then I don't care. I've pulled it off. We're going to have our spree in for Paul. I'd do anything. Two. They were buying their main tackle at Ijams Brothers, the sporting goods mart, with the help of Willis Ijams, fellow member of the booster club. Babbitt was completely mad. He trumpeted and danced he muttered to Paul. Say, this is pretty good, eh? They'll be buying the stuff, eh? And good ol' Willis Ijams, himself coming down to on the floor to wait on us. Hey, if those fellows that are getting their kit for the North Lakes knew we were clear up in Maine, they'd have fit, eh? Well, come on, Brother Ijams. Willis, I mean. Here's your chance. We're a couple of easy marks. Let me at it. I'm going to buy out the store. He gloated on fly rods, and gorgeous rubber hip boots, on tents with celluloid windows, and folding chairs and ice boxes. He simple, hardily wanted to buy all of them. It was the Paul whom he was vaguely protecting who kept him from his drunken desires. But even Paul lightened when Willis Ijams, a salesman with poetry and diplomacy discussed flies. Now, of course you boys know, he said, the great scrap is between dry flies and wet flies. Personally, I'm for dry flies. More sporting. That's all! Lot more sporting. Fumilated babbit, who knew very little about flies, either wet or dry. Now, if you'll take my advice, George, you'll stock up well on these pale evening dims and silver sedges, and red ants. Oh, boy, there's a fly that red ant. You bet that's what it is, a fly, rejoiced babbit. Yes, sir, that red ant, said Ijams, is a real honest to God fly. Oh, I guess old Mr. Trout won't come a hustling, then I drop one of the red ants in the water. Asserted babbit, and his thick wrist made a rapturous motion of casting. Yes, and the landlocked salmon will take it too, said Ijams, who had never seen a landlocked salmon. Salmon, Trout, say, Paul, can you see Uncle George with his khaki pants on, hauling them in? Some more in about seven. Three. They were on the New York Express, incredibly bound for Maine, incredibly without their families. They were free, in a man's world, in the smoking compartment of the Pullman. Outside of the car window was a blaze of darkness. Stepped with the gold and infrequent mysterious lights. Babbit was immensely conscious into a sway and authority platter of the train, of going, of going on. Leaning toward polygrenade, gosh, pretty nice to be hiking, eh? The small room with its walls of ochre-colored steel was filled mostly with the sort of men he classified as the best fellows you'll ever meet. Real good mixers. There were four of them on the long seat, a fat man with a shrewd fat face, a knife-edged man, in a green velour hat, a very young man with an imitation amber's cigarette holder, and Babbit, facing them. On two movable leather chairs were Paul and a lanky old-fashioned man, very cunning with wrinkled bracketing his mouth. They all read newspapers or trade journals, boot and shoe journals, crockery journals, and waited for the joys of conversation. It was the very young man now making his first journey by Pullman who began it. Say, gee, I had a wild time in Zenith, he gloried. Say, if a fellow knows the ropes there, he can have as wild a time as he can in New York. Yeah, bet you simply raised the old Ned. I figured you were a bad man when I saw you get on the train. Chuckled the fat one. The others delightly laid down their papers. Well, that's all right. Guess I seen some things in the armbar you never seen, complained the boy. Oh, I'll bet you did. I bet you lapped up the malted milk like a regular little devil. Then the boy, having served his introduction, they ignored him and charged into real talk. Only Paul, sitting by himself, reading at a serial story in a newspaper, failed to join them, and all but Babbit regarded him as a snob. An eccentric, a person of no spirit. Which of them said which has never been determined? It does not matter. Since they all had the same ideas and expressed them always with the same ponderous and brassy assurance. If it was not Babbit who was delivering any given verdict, at least he was beaming on the Chancellor who did deliver it. And that, though, announced the first. There's selling quite some booze in Zenith. Guess they are everywhere. I don't know how you fellows feel about prohibition, but the way it strikes me is that it's a mighty beneficial thing for the poor sob that hasn't got any willpower, but for fellows like us it's an infringement of personal liberty. That's the fact. Congress has got no right to interfere with a fellow's personal liberty, contended the second. A man came in from the car, but as all the seats were filled he stood up while he smoked his cigarette. He was an outsider. He was not one of the old families of the smoking compartment. They looked upon him bleakly, and after trying to appear at ease by examining his chin in the mirror, he gave up and went out in silence. Just been making a trip through the South. Business condition is not very good down here, said one of the Council. The fact, not very good, eh? No, it didn't strike me they were up to normal. Not up to normal, eh? No, I wouldn't hardly say they were. The whole Council nodded, sagely indecided. Yep, not hardly up to snuff. Well, business conditions ain't what they ought to be out West neither, not by a long shot. That's the fact, and I guess the hotel business feels it. That's one good thing, though. These hotels they've been charging five bucks a day, yes, and maybe six, seven for a run room or going darn good to get four, and maybe give you a little service. That's the fact, eh, spend about hotels. I hit St. Francis in San Francisco for the first time the other day, and, say, it certainly is a first-class place. Here I, brother, that St. Francis is a swell place, absolutely a one. That's the fact, I'm right with you. It's a first-class place. Yeah, but, say, any of you fellows ever stay at Rippleton in Chicago? I don't want to knock, I believe, in boosting whenever you can, but, say, of all the rotten dumps that pass themselves off as first-class hotel. That's the worst. I'm going to get those guys one of these days, and I told them so. You know how I am? Well, maybe you don't know, but I'm accustomed to first-class accommodations, and I'm perfectly willing to pay reasonable price. I get into Chicago late the other night, and Rippleton's near the station. I've never been there before, but I says to the taxi drivers, I always believe in taking a taxi when you get in late. It may cost a little more money, but gosh, it's worth it when you got to be up early next morning and out selling a lot of crabs. And I said to him, oh, just drive me over to the Rippleton. Well, we got there, and I breezed up to the desk and says to the clerk, well, brother, got a nice room with Bath for cousin Bill? Say, you'd have thought I'd sold him a second or ask him to work on Yom Kipper. He hands me the cold-boiled stair and yaps. I don't know, friend, I'll see. And he ducks behind the rim of the jig. They keep track of the rooms on. Well, I guess he called up the credit association, American Security Lurk, to see if I was all right. He certainly took long enough. Or maybe he just went to sleep. But finally, he comes out and looks at me like it hurts him. And croaks, I ain't think I can let you have a room and Bath. Well, that's awful. Nice of you. Sorry to trouble you. How much shall I send me back? I says real sweet. It'll cost you seven bucks a day, friend, he says. Well, it was late. And anyway, it went down on my expense account. Gosh, if I'd been paying it instead of the firm, I'd be trampling the streets all night before I'd be a little hit-tamer and slick me seven, eight or big round dollars, believe me. So I let it go with that. Well, the clerk wakes a nice young bellhop, finally, at not a day over seventy-nine years old, fought at the Battle of Gettysburg, and doesn't know it's over yet. Thought I was one of the Confederates, I guess, from the way he looked at me. And Rip Van Winkle took me up to something I found out afterwards. He called it a room. But first I thought there had been some mistake. I thought they were putting me in the Salvation Army collection box at seven per each and every dime. Gosh. Yeah, I heard of the Rippleton was pretty cheesy. Now, when I went to Chicago, I always stayed at the Blackstone or the Sal, first-class places. Say, any of you fellas ever stay at Birchdale at Terhaut? How is it? Ah, at Birchdale, first-class hotel. Twelve minutes of conference on the state of hotels in South Bend, Flint, Dayton, Tulsa, Wichita, Fort Worth, Winona, Erie, Fargo, and Bootsjaw. Speaking about prices, the man in the little fur hat observed, fingering the elk tooth on his heavy watch chain. I'd like to know where they get their stuff about clothes coming down. Now, you take this suit I got on. He pinched the Chaucer Lake. Four years ago, paid $4,250 for it. And it was real sure enough value. Well, here the other day I went into a store back home and asked to see a suit. And the fellow yanks out some hand-me-downs, that honest. I wouldn't put on a hired man. Just out of curiosity asked him, what's charging for that junk? Junk, he says. What do you mean junk? That's a swell piece of goods, all wool. Like hell! It was nice vegetable wool right off the old plantation. It's all wool, says, and we get $67.94. Oh, you do, do ya? I says. Not for me, you don't. I says. I walks right out on him. You bet. I says to the wife, well, I said, as long as your strength holds out and you can go on putting a few more patches on Papa's pants, we'll just pass up buying clothes. That's right, brother. And just look at Collar Francis. Hey, wait. Fat Man protested? What's the matter with Collar's? I'm selling Collar's. You realize the cost of labor on a Collar is 207% above? They voted that if their old friend the Fat Man sold Collar's, then the price of Collar's was exactly what it should be. But all other clothing was tragically too expensive. They admired and loved one another now. They went profoundly into the science of business and indicated that the purpose of manufacturing a plow or a brick was so that it might be sold. To them, the romantic hero was no longer the knight, the wandering poet, the cow puncher, the aviator, nor the brave young district attorney, but the great sales manager, who had an analysis of merchandising problems on his glass top desk, whose title of nobility was Go-Gitter, and who devoted himself and all his young samurai to the cosmic purpose of selling, not of selling anything in particular, for to be anybody in particular, but pure selling. The shop talk roused Pearl real thing. Though he was a player via lens and an interestingly unhappy husband, he was also a very able salesman of tar-roofing. He listened to the fat man's remarks on the value of house organs and bulletins, as a method of javing up the boys on the road, and he himself offered one or two excellent thoughts on the use of two-cent stamps on circulars. Then he committed an offense against the holy law of the clan of good fellows. He became highbrow. They were entering a city. On the outskirts they passed a steel mill, which flared in scarlet and orange flame, but licked at the cadaverous stacks. At the iron sheath walls and sullen converters. Why, Lord, look at that. Beautiful, said Paul. You bet it's beautiful, friend. That's the Shelling Horton Steel Plant, and they tell me old John Shelling made a good three million bones out of munitions during the war. The man with the velour hat said reverently, I didn't mean it. I mean it's lovely the way the light pulls that picturesque yard, all littered with junk right out of the darkness, said Paul. They stared at him, while Babbit crowed. Paul there has certainly got to one of the great little eye for picturesque places and quaint sites and all that stuff. Had been an author or something if he hadn't gone into the roofing line. Paul looked annoyed. Babbit sometimes wondered if Paul appreciated his loyal boosting. The man with the velour hat grunted. Well, personally, I think Shelling Horton kept their works awfully dirty, bum-routing. But I don't suppose there's any law against calling them picturesque, if it gets you that way. Paul suckledly returned to his newspaper in the conversation, logically moved on to trains. What time are we getting to Pittsburgh? asked Babbit. Pittsburgh? I think we're getting into, no, that was last year's schedule. Wait a minute, let's see. Got a timetable right here. One or four on time? Yeah, sure, we must be about on time. No, we aren't. We are seven minutes late, last station. We were? Straight? Well, gosh, I thought we were right on time. Now we're about seven minutes late. Yep, that's right, seven minutes late. The porter entered a negro and white jacket with brass buttons. How late are we, George? Grawled the fat man. Dude, I don't know, sir, I think about on time, said the porter, folding towels and deftly tossing them up on the rack above the wash bowls. The council stared at him gloomily, and when he was gone they wailed. I don't know what's come over these niggers nowadays. They never give you a civil answer. That's a fact. They're getting so they don't have a single bit of respect for you. The old-fashioned coon was a fine old cuss. He knew his place. But these young dinghies don't want to be porters or cotton figures. Oh, no, they got to be lawyers, professors, and lord knows what all. I'll tell you, it's becoming a pretty serious problem. We ought to get together and show the black man yes and the yellow man his place. I haven't got one particle-brace prejudice. I'm the first one to be glad when a nigger succeeds. So long as he stays where he belongs and doesn't try to usurp the rightful authority and business ability of the white man. That's right. And another thing we got to do, said the man with the velour hat whose name was Koplinski, is to keep those damn foreigners out of the country. Thank the lord they're putting a limit on immigration. Those diggles and honkeys have got a lot to learn. This is a white man's country and they ain't wanted here. When we've assimilated the foreigners we got here now and learned them the principles of Americanism and turned them into regular folks? Well, maybe we'll let in a few more. You bet, that's a fact they observed and passed on to lighter topics. They rapidly reviewed motor-car prices, tire mileage, oil stocks, fishing, and the prospects for the wheat crop in Dakota. But the fat man was impatient at this waste of time. He was a veteran traveler in free of illusions. Already he had asserted that he was an old he-one. He leaned forward, gathered in all their attention by his expression of sly humor and grumbled, ah, hell, boys, let's cut out the formality and get down to the stories. They became very lively and intimate. Paul and the boy vanished. The others slid forward on their long seat, unbuttoned their vests, thrust their feet up on the chairs, pulled the stately brass cuspidors nearer, and ran the green window shade down on its little trolley to shut them from the uncomfortable strangeness of night. After each bark of laughter they cried, hey, did you ever hear the one about? Babbit was expansive and virile. When the train stopped at an important station, the four men walked up and down the cement platform, under the vast smoky, train-shed roof, like a stormy sky under the elevated footways, beside crates of ducks and sides of beef. In the mystery of an unknown city, they strolled abreast, old friends and well-content. At the long drawn all aboard, like a mountain, call it dusk, they hastened back into the smoking compartment and, till two in the morning, continued to drool tales, their eyes damp with cigar smoke and laughter. When they parted, they shook hands and chuckled, well, sir, it's been a great session. Sorry to bust it up, mighty glad to meet you. Babbit lay awake in the close hot tomb of his Pullman birth, shaking with remembrance of the fat man's luminary about the lady who wished to be wild. He raised the shade, he lay with a puffy arm tucked between his head and the skimpy pillow, looking out on the sliding silhouettes of trees and village lamps, like exclamation points. He was very happy. By Sinclair Lewis Chapter 11 One. They had four hours in New York between trains. The one thing Babbit wished to see was the Pennsylvania Hotel, which had been built since his last visit. He stared up at it, muttering, Twenty-two hundred rooms and twenty-two hundred baths. That's got everything in world beat. Lord, their turnover must be well, suppose price of rooms is forty-eight dollars a day? And I suppose maybe some ten and four times twenty-two hundred, say six times twenty-two hundred? Well, anyway, with restaurants and everything, say, summers between eight and fifteen thousand a day, every day. I never thought I'd see a thing like that, some town. Of course, the average fellow in Zenith has got more individual initiative than the four flushers here. But I got to hand it to New York. Yes, sir, town. You're all right. Some ways. Well, old Paulinsky? I guess we've seen everything that's worthwhile. Hell, we kill the rest of the time. Movie? But Paul desired to see a liner. I always wanted to go to Europe, and by thunder I will too, some day before I passed out. He sighed. Remember a wharf on the North River? They started to the stern of the Antiqua. And her stacks and wireless antenna lifted above the dock house, which shut her in. My golly! Babbit droned. Wouldn't it be so bad to go over to the old country and take a squint at all those ruins, in the place where Shakespeare was born, and think of being able to order a drink whenever you wanted one? Just range up to a bar and haul around a lot. Give me a cocktail. Darn the police. Not bad at all. What'd you like to see over there, Paulimus? Paul did an answer. Babbit turned. Paul was standing with clenched vids, head drooping, staring at the liner as in terror. His thin body, seen against the summer glaring planks of the wharf, was childishly meager. Again, what would you hit for on the other side, Paul? Scowling at the steamer, his breast heaving, Paul whispered, Oh, my God! While Babbit watched him anxiously, he snapped, Come on, let's get out of this. And acing down the wharf, not looking back. Ah, that's funny, considered Babbit. Boy didn't care for seeing the ocean boats after all. I thought he'd be interested in them. Two. Though he exalted and made sage speculations about locomotive horsepower, as their train climbed the main mountain ridge and from the summit he looked down the shining way among the pines. Though he remarked, Oh, my God! When he discovered that the station at Kattakumchuk, the end of the line, was an aged freight car, Babbit's moment of impassioned release came when they sat on a tiny wharf on Lake Sonskupam, awaiting the launch from the hotel. A raft had floated down the lake between the logs and the shore. The water was transparent, thin looking, flashing with minnows, a guide in black felt hat with trout flies in the band, and final shirt of a peculiar daring blue sat on a log and whittled and was silent. A dog, good country dog, black, woolly, gray, a dog rich in leisure, and in meditation, scratched and grunted and slept. The thick sunlight was lavish on the bright water. On the rim of gold green blossom boughs, the silver birches and tropic ferns and across the lake, it burned on the sturdy shoulders of the mountains. Over everything was a holy peace. Silent they loafed on the edge of the wharf, swinging their legs above the water. The immense tenderness of the place sank into Babbit. Annie murmured, I just like to sit here the rest of my life and whittle and sit and never hear a typewriter or stand graph fussing on the phone or roan and ted scrapping. Just sit. Gosh. He batted Paul's shoulder. How does it strike you old snoozer? Oh, it's darn good, Georgie. There's something sort of eternal about it. For once, Babbit understood him. Three. The launch rounded the bend at the head of the lake. Under a mountain slope they saw the little central dining shack, their hotel in the crescent of squat log cottages which served as bedrooms. They landed and endured the critical examination of the habituates, who had been at the hotel for a whole week. In their cottage, with its high stone fireplace, they hastened, as Babbit expressed it, to get some regular heatogs. They came out, Paul in an old gray suit and soft white shirt, Babbit in khaki shirt and vest, and flapping khaki trousers. It was excessively new khaki, his rimless spectacles belonged to a city office, and his face was not tanned but a city pink. He made a discordant noise in the place, but with infinite satisfaction he slapped his legs and crowed, hey, this is getting back home, eh? They stood on the wharf before the hotel. He winked at Paul and drew from his back pocket a plug of chewing tobacco, a vulgarism forbidden in the Babbit home. He took a chew, beaming him wagging his head as he tugged at it. Maybe I haven't been hungry for a wad of eating tobacco. Have some. They looked at each other in a grin of understanding. Paul took the plug, nod at it. They stood quiet, their jaws working. They solemnly spat one after the other into the placid water. They stretched voluptuously, with lifted arms and arched backs. From beyond the mountains came the shuffling sound of a far off train, a trout leaped, and fell back in a silver circle. They sighed together. Four. Yet a week before their families came, each evening they planned to get up early and fish before breakfast. Each morning they lay a bed till the breakfast bell pleasantly conscious that there was no efficient wives to rouse them. The mornings were cold, the fire was kindly as they dressed. Paul was distressingly clean. But Babbit reveled in a good sound dirtiness. In not having to shave till his spirit was moved to it, he treasured every grease spot and fish gale on his new khaki trousers. All morning they fished unenergetically or tramped the dim and aqueous lighted trails along the rank ferns, and moss sprinkled with crimson bells. They slept all afternoon until midnight played stud poker with the guides. Poker was a serious business to the guides. They did not gossip, they shuffled the thick greasy cards with a deft ferocity. Menacing to the sports and Joe Paradise, king of the guides, was sarcastic to loiterers who halted the game even to scratch. At midnight, as Paul and he blundered to their cottage over the pungent wet grass and pine roots confusing in the darkness, Babbit rejoiced that he did not have to explain to his wife where he had been all evening. They did not talk much, the nervous locacity and opinionation of the Zenith Athletic Club dropped from them. But when they did talk, they slipped into the naive intimacy of college days. Once they drew their canoe up to the bank of the Sasukawam water, a stream walled by the dense green of hardhack. The sun roared on the green jungle, but the shade was sleepy-piece and the water was golden and rippling. Babbit drew his hand through the cool flood and mused, We never thought we'd come to Maine together. No, we never done anything the way we thought we would. I expected to live in Germany with my granddad's people and study the fiddle. That's all. Remember how I wanted to be a lawyer? Going to politics? I still think I might have made a go at it. I kind of got the gift of gab, anyway. I can think on my feet and make some kind of a spiel on most anything. And, of course, that's the thing you need in politics, by and golly. Dad's going to law school, even if I didn't. Well, I guess it's worked out all right. Myra's been a fine wife and Zilla means well, Polybus. Yes, up here. I figure out all sorts of plans to keep her amused. I kind of feel like a life is going to be different. Now that we're getting good rest and can go back and start over again. I hope so, old boy. Shelly. Say, gosh, it's been awful nice to sit around and loaf and gamble and act regular with you along. You're horse thief. Well, you know what it means to me, Georgie. Save my life. The shame of emotion overpowered them. They cursed a little to prove. They were good, rough fellows. And in a mellow silence, Babbot whistling while Paul hummed. They paddled back to the hotel. Five. Though it was Paul who seemed overwrought, Babbot who had been the protecting big brother, Paul became clear-eyed and merry while Babbot sank into irritability. He uncovered layer on layer of hidden weariness. At first he had played nimble jester to Paul and, for him, saw it amusements. By the end of the week, Paul was nurse. And Babbot accepted favors with the condescension. One always shows a patient nurse. The day before the families arrived, the women guessed that the hotel bubbled. Oh, isn't it nice? You must be so excited. The proprietors compelled Babbot and Paul to look excited. But they went to bed early and grumpy. When Myra appeared, she said at once, Now we want you boys to go on playing around just as if we weren't here. The first evening he stayed out for poker with the guides. And she said in placid merrimous, My, you're a regular bat one. The second evening she grown sleeply. Good heavens! Are you going to be out every single night? The third evening he didn't play poker. He was tired now in every cell. Funny. Vacation doesn't seem to have done me a bit of good, he limited. Paul's frisky is a cult, but I swear I'm crankier and nervouser than when I came up here. He had three weeks in Maine. At the end of the second week, he began to feel calm and interested in life. He planned an expedition to Clam-Chem Mountain and wanted to camp overnight at Boxcar Pond. He was curiously weak yet cheerful, as though he had cleansed his veins of poisonous energy and was filling them with wholesome blood. He ceased to be irritated by Ted's infatuation with the waitress, his seventh tragic affair this year. He played catch with Ted, and with pride taught him to cast a fly in the pine shadowed silence of Scumwatt Pond. Hadn't the end, he sighed. Hang it. I'm just beginning to enjoy my vacation, but well, I feel a lot better and it's going to be one great year. Maybe the real estate board will elect me president instead of some fuzzy old-fashioned figure like Chan Mott. On way home, whenever he went into the smoking compartment, he felt guilty of desertioning his wife and angry at being expected to feel guilty. But each time he triumphed, Oh, this is going to be a great year, a great old year. End of Chapter 11 Chapter 12 of Babbit This LibriVox recording is in the public domain. Recording by Mike Vendetti. All the way home from Maine, Babbit was certain that he was a changed man. He was converted to serenity. He was going to cease worrying about business. He was going to have more interests, theaters, public affairs, reading, and suddenly, as he finished an especially heavy cigar, he was going to stop smoking. He invented a new and perfect method. He would buy no tobacco. He would depend on borrowing it. And, of course, he would be ashamed to borrow often. In a spasm of righteousness, he flung his cigar case out of the smoking compartment window. He went back and was kind to his wife about nothing in particular. He admired his own purity and decided, absolutely simple, just a matter of willpower. He started a magazine serial about a scientific detective. Ten miles on, he was conscious that he desired to smoke. He ducked his head like a turtle, going into a shell. He appeared uneasy. He skipped two pages and the historian didn't know it. Five miles later, he leaped up and sought the porter. Hey, George, have you got a... The porter looked patient. We've got a timetable. Babbit finished. At the next stop, he went out and bought a cigar. Since it was to be his last before he reached Zenith, he finished it down to an inch stub. Four days later, he again remembered that he had stopped smoking, but he was too busy catching up with his office work to keep it remembered. Two. Baseball, he determined, would be an excellent hobby. No sense of man working his fool head off. I'm going out to the game three times a week, besides. Feel ought to support the home team. He did go and support the team, and enhanced the glory of Zenith by yelling, Had a boy, and rotten. He performed the rites grouplessly. He wore a cotton handkerchief about his collar. He became sweaty. He opened his mouth in a wide loose grin, and drank lemon soda out of a bottle. He went to the game three times a week, for one week. Then he compromised by unwatching the advocate's timed bulletin board. He stood in the thickest and steamiest of the crowd. And as the boy up on the lofty platform recorded the achievements of big Bill Bosswick, the picture, Babbit remarked to complete strangers. Very nice. Good work. And hastened back to the office. He honestly believed that he loved baseball. It is true that he hadn't in 25 years himself played any baseball, except back-lot catch with Ted. Very gentle and strictly limited to 10 minutes. But the game was a custom of his clan. And it gave outlet for the homicidal and side-taking instincts, which Babbit called patriotism and love of sport. As he approached the office, he walked faster and faster, muttering, just better hustle. All about him the city was hustling, for hustling's sake. Men and motors were hustling to pass one another in the hustling traffic. Men were hustling to catch trolleys, with another trolley a minute behind. And to leave from trolleys, to gallop across the sidewalk, to hurl themselves into buildings, into hustling express elevators. Men and dairy lunches were hustling to gulp down the food, which cooks had hustled to fry. Men and barbershops were snapping. Just shamed me once over, got a hustle. Men were feverishly getting rid of visitors and offices, adorned with signs. This is my busy day. And the Lord created the world in six days. You can spiel all you got to say in six minutes. Men who had made 5,000 year before last, and 10,000 last year, were urging on nerve-yelping bodies and parched brains, so they might make 20,000 this year. And the men who had broken down immediately after making their 20,000 dollars were hustling to catch trains, to hustle through the vacations, which the hustling doctors had ordered. Among them, Babbit, hustled back to his office, to sit down with nothing much to do except see that the staff looked as though they were hustling. Three. Every Saturday afternoon he hustled out to his country club, and hustled through nine holes of golf. As a rest after the week's hustle. In Zenith it was as necessary for a successful man to belong to a country club as it was to wear linen collar. Babbit's was the outing golf and country club, a pleasant gray-shingled building, with a broad porch on a daisy-starred cliff above Lake Kenapuz. There was another, the Tonawata country club, to which belonged Charles McKevilly, Horace Updike, and the other rich man who lunched not at the athletic club, but at the union club. Babbit explained with frequency, you couldn't hire me to join the Tonawata, even if I did have 180 bucks to throw away on the initiation fee. At the outing you've got a bunch of real human fellows and the finest lot of little women in town, just as good at joshing as the men. But at the Tonawata there's nothing but the wood bees in New York get-ups drinking tea, too much dog altogether. Well, I wouldn't join the Tonawata, even if they, I wouldn't join it on a bet. When he played for five holes he relaxed a bit. His tobacco-fluttering heart beat more normally, and his voice slowed to the drawing of his hundred generations of peasant ancestors. Four. At least once a week Mr. and Mrs. Babbit and Tinka went to the movies. Their favorite motion picture was the Chateau, which had 3,000 spectators and had an orchestra of 50 pieces, which played arrangements from the operas and suites portraying a day on the farm, or a four-alarm fire in the stone rotunda decorated with crown-embroidered velvet chairs, and almost medieval tapestries. Parakeets sat on gilded Lattos columns. With exclamations of, Whoa, my golly, and you got to go some to beat this dump, Babbit admired the Chateau. As he stared across the thousands of heads, a gray plain in the dimness, as he smelled good clothes and mild perfume and chewing gum, he felt as when he had first seen a mountain and realized how very, very much earth and rock there was in it. He liked three kinds of film. Pretty bathing girls with bare legs, policemen or cowboys, and an industrious shooting of revolvers, and funny fat men who ate spaghetti. He chuckled with immense, moist-eyed sentimentality at interludes portraying puppies, kittens, and chubby babies, and he wept at deathbeds and old mothers being patient in mortgage cottages. Mrs. Babbit preferred the pictures in which handsome young women and elaborate frocks moved through sets ticketed as the drawing rooms of New York millionaires. As for Tinka, she preferred or was believed to prefer whatever her parents told her to. All his relaxations, baseball, golf, movies, bridge motoring long talks with Paul at the Athletic Club or at the Good Red Beef and Old English Chomp House were necessary to Babbit, for he was entering a year of such activity as he had never known.