prompt:
Chapter: I

HE solemnly finished the last copy of the American Magazine, while his
wife sighed, laid away her darning, and looked enviously at the lingerie
designs in a women's magazine. The room was very still.

It was a room which observed the best Floral Heights standards. The gray
walls were divided into artificial paneling by strips of white-enameled
pine. From the Babbitts' former house had come two much-carved
rocking-chairs, but the other chairs were new, very deep and restful,
upholstered in blue and gold-striped velvet. A blue velvet davenport
faced the fireplace, and behind it was a cherrywood table and a tall
piano-lamp with a shade of golden silk. (Two out of every three houses
in Floral Heights had before the fireplace a davenport, a mahogany table
real or imitation, and a piano-lamp or a reading-lamp with a shade of
yellow or rose silk.)

On the table was a runner of gold-threaded Chinese fabric, four
magazines, a silver box containing cigarette-crumbs, and three
"gift-books"--large, expensive editions of fairy-tales illustrated by
English artists and as yet unread by any Babbitt save Tinka.

In a corner by the front windows was a large cabinet Victrola. (Eight
out of every nine Floral Heights houses had a cabinet phonograph.)

Among the pictures, hung in the exact center of each gray panel, were
a red and black imitation English hunting-print, an anemic imitation
boudoir-print with a French caption of whose morality Babbitt had always
been rather suspicious, and a "hand-colored" photograph of a Colonial
room--rag rug, maiden spinning, cat demure before a white fireplace.
(Nineteen out of every twenty houses in Floral Heights had either a
hunting-print, a Madame Feit la Toilette print, a colored photograph of
a New England house, a photograph of a Rocky Mountain, or all four.)

It was a room as superior in comfort to the "parlor" of Babbitt's
boyhood as his motor was superior to his father's buggy. Though there
was nothing in the room that was interesting, there was nothing that
was offensive. It was as neat, and as negative, as a block of artificial
ice. The fireplace was unsoftened by downy ashes or by sooty brick; the
brass fire-irons were of immaculate polish; and the grenadier andirons
were like samples in a shop, desolate, unwanted, lifeless things of
commerce.

Against the wall was a piano, with another piano-lamp, but no one used
it save Tinka. The hard briskness of the phonograph contented them;
their store of jazz records made them feel wealthy and cultured; and all
they knew of creating music was the nice adjustment of a bamboo needle.
The books on the table were unspotted and laid in rigid parallels;
not one corner of the carpet-rug was curled; and nowhere was there
a hockey-stick, a torn picture-book, an old cap, or a gregarious and
disorganizing dog.

II

At home, Babbitt never read with absorption. He was concentrated enough
at the office but here he crossed his legs and fidgeted. When his story
was interesting he read the best, that is the funniest, paragraphs to
his wife; when it did not hold him he coughed, scratched his ankles and
his right ear, thrust his left thumb into his vest pocket, jingled his
silver, whirled the cigar-cutter and the keys on one end of his watch
chain, yawned, rubbed his nose, and found errands to do. He went
upstairs to put on his slippers--his elegant slippers of seal-brown,
shaped like medieval shoes. He brought up an apple from the barrel which
stood by the trunk-closet in the basement.

"An apple a day keeps the doctor away," he enlightened Mrs. Babbitt, for
quite the first time in fourteen hours.

"That's so."

"An apple is Nature's best regulator."

"Yes, it--"

"Trouble with women is, they never have sense enough to form regular
habits."

"Well, I--"

"Always nibbling and eating between meals."

"George!" She looked up from her reading. "Did you have a light lunch
to-day, like you were going to? I did!"

This malicious and unprovoked attack astounded him. "Well, maybe it
wasn't as light as--Went to lunch with Paul and didn't have much chance
to diet. Oh, you needn't to grin like a chessy cat! If it wasn't for me
watching out and keeping an eye on our diet--I'm the only member of this
family that appreciates the value of oatmeal for breakfast. I--"

She stooped over her story while he piously sliced and gulped down the
apple, discoursing:

"One thing I've done: cut down my smoking.

"Had kind of a run-in with Graff in the office. He's getting too darn
fresh. I'll stand for a good deal, but once in a while I got to assert
my authority, and I jumped him. 'Stan,' I said--Well, I told him just
exactly where he got off.

"Funny kind of a day. Makes you feel restless.

"Wellllllllll, uh--" That sleepiest sound in the world, the terminal
yawn. Mrs. Babbitt yawned with it, and looked grateful as he droned,
"How about going to bed, eh? Don't suppose Rone and Ted will be in till
all hours. Yep, funny kind of a day; not terribly warm but yet--Gosh,
I'd like--Some day I'm going to take a long motor trip."

"Yes, we'd enjoy that," she yawned.

He looked away from her as he realized that he did not wish to have
her go with him. As he locked doors and tried windows and set the heat
regulator so that the furnace-drafts would open automatically in the
morning, he sighed a little, heavy with a lonely feeling which perplexed
and frightened him. So absent-minded was he that he could not remember
which window-catches he had inspected, and through the darkness,
fumbling at unseen perilous chairs, he crept back to try them all over
again. His feet were loud on the steps as he clumped upstairs at the end
of this great and treacherous day of veiled rebellions.

III

Before breakfast he always reverted to up-state village boyhood, and
shrank from the complex urban demands of shaving, bathing, deciding
whether the current shirt was clean enough for another day. Whenever he
stayed home in the evening he went to bed early, and thriftily got
ahead in those dismal duties. It was his luxurious custom to shave while
sitting snugly in a tubful of hot water. He may be viewed to-night as a
plump, smooth, pink, baldish, podgy goodman, robbed of the importance of
spectacles, squatting in breast-high water, scraping his lather-smeared
cheeks with a safety-razor like a tiny lawn-mower, and with melancholy
dignity clawing through the water to recover a slippery and active piece
of soap.

He was lulled to dreaming by the caressing warmth. The light fell on the
inner surface of the tub in a pattern of delicate wrinkled lines which
slipped with a green sparkle over the curving porcelain as the clear
water trembled. Babbitt lazily watched it; noted that along the
silhouette of his legs against the radiance on the bottom of the tub,
the shadows of the air-bubbles clinging to the hairs were reproduced
as strange jungle mosses. He patted the water, and the reflected light
capsized and leaped and volleyed. He was content and childish. He
played. He shaved a swath down the calf of one plump leg.

The drain-pipe was dripping, a dulcet and lively song: drippety drip
drip dribble, drippety drip drip drip. He was enchanted by it. He looked
at the solid tub, the beautiful nickel taps, the tiled walls of the
room, and felt virtuous in the possession of this splendor.

He roused himself and spoke gruffly to his bath-things. "Come here!
You've done enough fooling!" he reproved the treacherous soap, and
defied the scratchy nail-brush with "Oh, you would, would you!" He
soaped himself, and rinsed himself, and austerely rubbed himself; he
noted a hole in the Turkish towel, and meditatively thrust a finger
through it, and marched back to the bedroom, a grave and unbending
citizen.

There was a moment of gorgeous abandon, a flash of melodrama such as he
found in traffic-driving, when he laid out a clean collar, discovered
that it was frayed in front, and tore it up with a magnificent yeeeeeing
sound.

Most important of all was the preparation of his bed and the
sleeping-porch.

It is not known whether he enjoyed his sleeping-porch because of the
fresh air or because it was the standard thing to have a sleeping-porch.

Just as he was an Elk, a Booster, and a member of the Chamber of
Commerce, just as the priests of the Presbyterian Church determined his
every religious belief and the senators who controlled the Republican
Party decided in little smoky rooms in Washington what he should think
about disarmament, tariff, and Germany, so did the large national
advertisers fix the surface of his life, fix what he believed to be
his individuality. These standard advertised wares--toothpastes, socks,
tires, cameras, instantaneous hot-water heaters--were his symbols and
proofs of excellence; at first the signs, then the substitutes, for joy
and passion and wisdom.

But none of these advertised tokens of financial and social success was
more significant than a sleeping-porch with a sun-parlor below.

The rites of preparing for bed were elaborate and unchanging. The
blankets had to be tucked in at the foot of his cot. (Also, the reason
why the maid hadn't tucked in the blankets had to be discussed with Mrs.
Babbitt.) The rag rug was adjusted so that his bare feet would strike it
when he arose in the morning. The alarm clock was wound. The hot-water
bottle was filled and placed precisely two feet from the bottom of the
cot.

These tremendous undertakings yielded to his determination; one by
one they were announced to Mrs. Babbitt and smashed through to
accomplishment. At last his brow cleared, and in his "Gnight!" rang
virile power. But there was yet need of courage. As he sank into sleep,
just at the first exquisite relaxation, the Doppelbrau car came home.
He bounced into wakefulness, lamenting, "Why the devil can't some people
never get to bed at a reasonable hour?" So familiar was he with the
process of putting up his own car that he awaited each step like an able
executioner condemned to his own rack.

The car insultingly cheerful on the driveway. The car door opened and
banged shut, then the garage door slid open, grating on the sill, and
the car door again. The motor raced for the climb up into the garage and
raced once more, explosively, before it was shut off. A final opening
and slamming of the car door. Silence then, a horrible silence filled
with waiting, till the leisurely Mr. Doppelbrau had examined the state
of his tires and had at last shut the garage door. Instantly, for
Babbitt, a blessed state of oblivion.

IV

At that moment In the city of Zenith, Horace Updike was making love to
Lucile McKelvey in her mauve drawing-room on Royal Ridge, after their
return from a lecture by an eminent English novelist. Updike was
Zenith's professional bachelor; a slim-waisted man of forty-six with
an effeminate voice and taste in flowers, cretonnes, and flappers. Mrs.
McKelvey was red-haired, creamy, discontented, exquisite, rude, and
honest. Updike tried his invariable first maneuver--touching her nervous
wrist.

"Don't be an idiot!" she said.

"Do you mind awfully?"

"No! That's what I mind!"

He changed to conversation. He was famous at conversation. He spoke
reasonably of psychoanalysis, Long Island polo, and the Ming platter
he had found in Vancouver. She promised to meet him in Deauville, the
coming summer, "though," she sighed, "it's becoming too dreadfully
banal; nothing but Americans and frowsy English baronesses."

And at that moment in Zenith, a cocaine-runner and a prostitute were
drinking cocktails in Healey Hanson's saloon on Front Street. Since
national prohibition was now in force, and since Zenith was notoriously
law-abiding, they were compelled to keep the cocktails innocent
by drinking them out of tea-cups. The lady threw her cup at the
cocaine-runner's head. He worked his revolver out of the pocket in his
sleeve, and casually murdered her.

At that moment in Zenith, two men sat in a laboratory. For thirty-seven
hours now they had been working on a report of their investigations of
synthetic rubber.

At that moment in Zenith, there was a conference of four union officials
as to whether the twelve thousand coal-miners within a hundred miles
of the city should strike. Of these men one resembled a testy and
prosperous grocer, one a Yankee carpenter, one a soda-clerk, and one
a Russian Jewish actor. The Russian Jew quoted Kautsky, Gene Debs, and
Abraham Lincoln.

At that moment a G. A. R. veteran was dying. He had come from the
Civil War straight to a farm which, though it was officially within
the city-limits of Zenith, was primitive as the backwoods. He had never
ridden in a motor car, never seen a bath-tub, never read any book save
the Bible, McGuffey's readers, and religious tracts; and he believed
that the earth is flat, that the English are the Lost Ten Tribes of
Israel, and that the United States is a democracy.

At that moment the steel and cement town which composed the factory of
the Pullmore Tractor Company of Zenith was running on night shift to
fill an order of tractors for the Polish army. It hummed like a million
bees, glared through its wide windows like a volcano. Along the high
wire fences, searchlights played on cinder-lined yards, switch-tracks,
and armed guards on patrol.

At that moment Mike Monday was finishing a meeting. Mr. Monday, the
distinguished evangelist, the best-known Protestant pontiff in America,
had once been a prize-fighter. Satan had not dealt justly with him. As
a prize-fighter he gained nothing but his crooked nose, his celebrated
vocabulary, and his stage-presence. The service of the Lord had been
more profitable. He was about to retire with a fortune. It had been well
earned, for, to quote his last report, "Rev. Mr. Monday, the Prophet
with a Punch, has shown that he is the world's greatest salesman of
salvation, and that by efficient organization the overhead of spiritual
regeneration may be kept down to an unprecedented rock-bottom basis. He
has converted over two hundred thousand lost and priceless souls at an
average cost of less than ten dollars a head."

Of the larger cities of the land, only Zenith had hesitated to submit
its vices to Mike Monday and his expert reclamation corps. The more
enterprising organizations of the city had voted to invite him--Mr.
George F. Babbitt had once praised him in a speech at the Boosters'
Club. But there was opposition from certain Episcopalian and
Congregationalist ministers, those renegades whom Mr. Monday so finely
called "a bunch of gospel-pushers with dish-water instead of blood, a
gang of squealers that need more dust on the knees of their pants and
more hair on their skinny old chests." This opposition had been
crushed when the secretary of the Chamber of Commerce had reported to a
committee of manufacturers that in every city where he had appeared, Mr.
Monday had turned the minds of workmen from wages and hours to higher
things, and thus averted strikes. He was immediately invited.

An expense fund of forty thousand dollars had been underwritten; out on
the County Fair Grounds a Mike Monday Tabernacle had been erected,
to seat fifteen thousand people. In it the prophet was at this moment
concluding his message:

"There's a lot of smart college professors and tea-guzzling slobs in
this burg that say I'm a roughneck and a never-wuzzer and my knowledge
of history is not-yet. Oh, there's a gang of woolly-whiskered book-lice
that think they know more than Almighty God, and prefer a lot of Hun
science and smutty German criticism to the straight and simple Word
of God. Oh, there's a swell bunch of Lizzie boys and lemon-suckers and
pie-faces and infidels and beer-bloated scribblers that love to fire off
their filthy mouths and yip that Mike Monday is vulgar and full of mush.
Those pups are saying now that I hog the gospel-show, that I'm in it
for the coin. Well, now listen, folks! I'm going to give those birds a
chance! They can stand right up here and tell me to my face that I'm a
galoot and a liar and a hick! Only if they do--if they do!--don't faint
with surprise if some of those rum-dumm liars get one good swift poke
from Mike, with all the kick of God's Flaming Righteousness behind the
wallop! Well, come on, folks! Who says it? Who says Mike Monday is a
fourflush and a yahoo? Huh? Don't I see anybody standing up? Well, there
you are! Now I guess the folks in this man's town will quit listening to
all this kyoodling from behind the fence; I guess you'll quit listening
to the guys that pan and roast and kick and beef, and vomit out filthy
atheism; and all of you 'll come in, with every grain of pep and
reverence you got, and boost all together for Jesus Christ and his
everlasting mercy and tenderness!"

At that moment Seneca Doane, the radical lawyer, and Dr. Kurt Yavitch,
the histologist (whose report on the destruction of epithelial cells
under radium had made the name of Zenith known in Munich, Prague, and
Rome), were talking in Doane's library.

"Zenith's a city with gigantic power--gigantic buildings, gigantic
machines, gigantic transportation," meditated Doane.

"I hate your city. It has standardized all the beauty out of life. It
is one big railroad station--with all the people taking tickets for the
best cemeteries," Dr. Yavitch said placidly.

Doane roused. "I'm hanged if it is! You make me sick, Kurt, with your
perpetual whine about 'standardization.' Don't you suppose any other
nation is 'standardized?' Is anything more standardized than England,
with every house that can afford it having the same muffins at the same
tea-hour, and every retired general going to exactly the same evensong
at the same gray stone church with a square tower, and every golfing
prig in Harris tweeds saying 'Right you are!' to every other prosperous
ass? Yet I love England. And for standardization--just look at the
sidewalk cafes in France and the love-making in Italy!

"Standardization is excellent, per se. When I buy an Ingersoll watch or
a Ford, I get a better tool for less money, and I know precisely what
I'm getting, and that leaves me more time and energy to be individual
in. And--I remember once in London I saw a picture of an American
suburb, in a toothpaste ad on the back of the Saturday Evening Post--an
elm-lined snowy street of these new houses, Georgian some of 'em, or
with low raking roofs and--The kind of street you'd find here in Zenith,
say in Floral Heights. Open. Trees. Grass. And I was homesick! There's
no other country in the world that has such pleasant houses. And I don't
care if they ARE standardized. It's a corking standard!

"No, what I fight in Zenith is standardization of thought, and, of
course, the traditions of competition. The real villains of the piece
are the clean, kind, industrious Family Men who use every known brand of
trickery and cruelty to insure the prosperity of their cubs. The worst
thing about these fellows is that they're so good and, in their work
at least, so intelligent. You can't hate them properly, and yet their
standardized minds are the enemy.

"Then this boosting--Sneakingly I have a notion that Zenith is a better
place to live in than Manchester or Glasgow or Lyons or Berlin or
Turin--"

"It is not, and I have lift in most of them," murmured Dr. Yavitch.

"Well, matter of taste. Personally, I prefer a city with a future so
unknown that it excites my imagination. But what I particularly want--"

"You," said Dr. Yavitch, "are a middle-road liberal, and you haven't
the slightest idea what you want. I, being a revolutionist, know exactly
what I want--and what I want now is a drink."

VI

At that moment in Zenith, Jake Offutt, the politician, and Henry T.
Thompson were in conference. Offutt suggested, "The thing to do is to
get your fool son-in-law, Babbitt, to put it over. He's one of these
patriotic guys. When he grabs a piece of property for the gang, he makes
it look like we were dyin' of love for the dear peepul, and I do love to
buy respectability--reasonable. Wonder how long we can keep it up, Hank?
We're safe as long as the good little boys like George Babbitt and all
the nice respectable labor-leaders think you and me are rugged patriots.
There's swell pickings for an honest politician here, Hank: a whole city
working to provide cigars and fried chicken and dry martinis for us,
and rallying to our banner with indignation, oh, fierce indignation,
whenever some squealer like this fellow Seneca Doane comes along!
Honest, Hank, a smart codger like me ought to be ashamed of himself if
he didn't milk cattle like them, when they come around mooing for it!
But the Traction gang can't get away with grand larceny like it used
to. I wonder when--Hank, I wish we could fix some way to run this fellow
Seneca Doane out of town. It's him or us!"

At that moment in Zenith, three hundred and forty or fifty thousand
Ordinary People were asleep, a vast unpenetrated shadow. In the slum
beyond the railroad tracks, a young man who for six months had sought
work turned on the gas and killed himself and his wife.

At that moment Lloyd Mallam, the poet, owner of the Hafiz Book Shop,
was finishing a rondeau to show how diverting was life amid the feuds of
medieval Florence, but how dull it was in so obvious a place as Zenith.

And at that moment George F. Babbitt turned ponderously in bed--the
last turn, signifying that he'd had enough of this worried business of
falling asleep and was about it in earnest.

Instantly he was in the magic dream. He was somewhere among unknown
people who laughed at him. He slipped away, ran down the paths of a
midnight garden, and at the gate the fairy child was waiting. Her
dear and tranquil hand caressed his cheek. He was gallant and wise and
well-beloved; warm ivory were her arms; and beyond perilous moors the
brave sea glittered.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: While Babbitt and Myra sit in the living room, the narrator once again gives us a description of their tasteful-yet-unoriginal home decor. Lewis puts it best when he writes, "Though there was nothing in the room that was interesting, there was nothing that was offensive. It was as neat, and as negative, as a block of artificial ice" . In other words, the place is just blah. It's totally the same as the living room of anyone else living on their street. We imagine a lot of beige going on. Babbitt sits with Myra and makes an offhand remark about women being unable to form regular eating habits. But Myra calls him out for eating a huge lunch that day. Babbitt is taken aback at being contradicted, but he quickly invents some excuse for himself and weasels away from the argument. Babbitt talks for a moment about how he has felt downcast at certain points that day. But Mrs. Babbitt yawns and doesn't seem to listen very closely. Before going to bed for the night, Babbitt draws a warm bath and gets into it. While he's inspecting his clothes for the next day, he finds one of his collars frayed and tears it up with a happy feeling of rebellion. Once all of that is done, Babbitt heads to bed. He's disturbed once by the sound of his neighbor's car coming home. Then he falls asleep. The narrator takes us on a panoramic journey around Zenith while Babbitt is asleep. In some other part of town, a rich woman named Lucile McKelvey is being seduced by a man who isn't her husband. Bit by bit, the narrator shows us how the seducer tries to flatter his way into Mrs. McKelvey's bedroom. Meanwhile, in another part of town, a cocaine dealer and a prostitute are having drinks together in a bar. These are definitely the sorts of people that authors were not supposed to show in novels back in 1922. The narrator then tells us about a boxer-turned-preacher named Mike Monday who is busy bullying all of the people in Zenith into accepting Christianity as their path to salvation. Meanwhile, the left-wing lawyer Seneca Doane is sitting down with a doctor and criticizing all of the horrible aspects of Zenith, especially all of its modern "conveniences." This is the first time we ever hear a character in the book outright criticize the kind of things--like technology and progress--that Babbitt loves so much. Meanwhile, Babbitt's father-in-law and business partner, Henry Thompson, is scheming with a politician named Jake Offut about how to swindle a land deal that'll make them both a lot of money. Of course, they both want Babbitt to broker the deal in order to make it look respectable. Finally, back in the Babbitt house, George Babbitt is asleep and dreaming of the fairy child, who makes him feel "gallant and wise and well-beloved" .


prompt:
Chapter: I

THE great events of Babbitt's 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
extended, and a dinner which was, as he rejoiced to his wife, not only
"a regular society spread but a real sure-enough highbrow 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 Riesling.

Though he had been born in the village of Catawba, 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 of twelve, with flowers from the florist's and all the
cut-glass out, staggered even the Babbitts.

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 poet like Chum Frink, 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.

"Huh! 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. Think how
wonderful it must be to speak three languages, and so useful and--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, Orvy is mighty deep. Ever start him spieling 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, gosh, we got to have some boob for audience, when a
bunch of hot-air artists like Frink and Littlefield get going."

"Well, dear--I meant to speak of this--I do think that as 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 business
man--oh sure!--I'm no Ph.D. like Littlefield, and no poet, and I haven't
anything to spring! Well, let me tell you, just the other day your darn
Chum Frink 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! Little 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 and--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.

II

On the morning of the dinner, Mrs. Babbitt was restive.

"Now, George, I want you to be sure and be home early tonight. Remember,
you have to dress."

"Uh-huh. I see by the Advocate that the Presbyterian General Assembly
has voted to quit the Interchurch World Movement. That--"

"George! Did you hear what I said? You must be home in time to dress
to-night."

"Dress? Hell! I'm dressed now! Think I'm going down to the office in my
B.V.D.'s?"

"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 tell you, of all the doggone nonsensical
nuisances that was ever invented--"

Three minutes later, after Babbitt had wailed, "Well, 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 in at Vecchia's on the way home
and get the 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 before breakfast!"

"Well, 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--"

"All nonsense, anyway, hiring an extra girl for the feed. Matilda could
perfectly well--"

"--and I have to go out and buy the flowers, and fix them, and set
the table, and order the salted almonds, and look at the chickens, and
arrange for the children to have their supper upstairs and--And I simply
must depend on you to go to Vecchia's for the ice cream."

"All riiiiiight! Gosh, I'm going to get it!"

"All you have to do is to 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 to 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 sacrilege in 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 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
Healey Hanson's saloon, worrying, "Well, rats, if anybody did see me,
they'd think I was here on business."

He entered a place curiously like the saloons of ante-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 whisky, 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 give in a saloon. The bartender, a tall pale
Swede with a diamond in his lilac scarf, stared at Babbitt as he stalked
plumply up to the bar and whispered, "I'd, uh--Friend of Hanson's sent
me here. Like to get some gin."

The bartender gazed down on him in the manner of an outraged bishop.
"I guess you 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.

"Aw, say, Oscar, listen, will yuh? Say, lis-sen!"

The decayed and drowsy voice of the loafer, the agreeable stink of
beer-dregs, threw a spell of inanition over Babbitt. The bartender moved
grimly toward the crowd of two men. Babbitt followed him as delicately
as a cat, and wheedled, "Say, Oscar, I want to speak to Mr. Hanson."

"Whajuh wanta 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. Babbitt was Estates,
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, checked vest hanging open, and
burning brown trousers--Mr. Healey Hanson. Mr. Hanson said only "Yuh?"
but his implacable and contemptuous eyes queried Babbitt'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) Babbitt had
paid a hundred and twenty-five dollars.

"Glad meet you, Mr. Hanson. Say, uh--I'm George Babbitt of the
Babbitt-Thompson Realty Company. I'm a great friend of Jake Offutt's."

"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." In alarm, in obsequiousness, as Hanson's
eyes grew more bored, "You 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. Babbitt melodramatically crept into
an apartment containing four round tables, eleven chairs, a brewery
calendar, and a smell. He waited. Thrice he saw Healey Hanson saunter
through, humming, hands in pockets, ignoring him.

By this time Babbitt had modified his valiant morning vow, "I won't pay
one cent over seven dollars a quart" to "I might pay ten." On Hanson's
next weary entrance he besought "Could you fix that up?" Hanson scowled,
and grated, "Just a minute--Pete's sake--just a min-ute!" In growing
meekness Babbitt 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," he snapped.

"Say, uh, but say, cap'n, Jake thought you'd be able to fix me up for
eight or nine a bottle."

"Nup. Twelve. This is the real stuff, smuggled from Canada. This is
none o' your neutral spirits with a drop of juniper extract," the honest
merchant said virtuously. "Twelve bones--if you want it. Course y'
understand I'm just doing this anyway as a friend of Jake's."

"Sure! Sure! I understand!" Babbitt gratefully held out twelve dollars.
He felt honored by contact with greatness as Hanson yawned, stuffed the
bills, uncounted, into his radiant vest, and swaggered away.

He had a number of titillations 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 to-night." He was, in fact, so exhilarated that he was within a
block of his house before he remembered that there was a certain
matter, mentioned by his wife, of fetching ice cream from Vecchia's. He
explained, "Well, darn it--" and drove back.

Vecchia was not a caterer, he was The Caterer of Zenith. Most coming-out
parties were held in the white and gold ballroom of the Maison Vecchia;
at all nice teas the guests recognized the five kinds of Vecchia
sandwiches and the seven kinds of Vecchia cakes; and all really smart
dinners ended, as on a resolving chord, in Vecchia Neapolitan ice cream
in one of the three reliable molds--the melon mold, the round mold like
a layer cake, and the long brick.

Vecchia's shop had pale blue woodwork, tracery of plaster roses,
attendants in frilled aprons, and glass shelves of "kisses" with all the
refinement that inheres in whites of eggs. Babbitt felt heavy and 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 Vecchia's and get the ice cream?"

"Say! Look here! Do I ever forget to do things?"

"Yes! Often!"

"Well now, it's darn seldom I do, and it certainly makes me tired, after
going into a pink-tea joint like Vecchia'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've noticed how you hate to look at pretty
girls!"

With a jar Babbitt realized that his wife was too busy to be impressed
by that moral indignation with which males rule the world, and he
went humbly up-stairs to dress. He had an impression of a glorified
dining-room, of cut-glass, candles, polished wood, lace, silver, roses.
With the awed swelling of the heart suitable to so grave a business as
giving a dinner, he slew the temptation to wear his plaited dress-shirt
for a 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
Babbitt to the elegant limbs of what is called a Clubman. He stood
before the pier-glass, viewing his trim dinner-coat, his beautiful
triple-braided trousers; and murmured in lyric beatitude, "By golly,
I don't look so bad. I certainly don't look like Catawba. 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 stores of bottles, glasses,
and spoons at the sink in the pantry, he felt as authoritative as the
bartender at Healey Hanson's saloon. True, Mrs. Babbitt said he was
under foot, and Matilda and the maid hired for the evening brushed by
him, elbowed him, shrieked "Pleasopn door," as they tottered through
with trays, but in this high moment he ignored them.

Besides the new bottle of gin, his cellar consisted of one half-bottle
of Bourbon whisky, 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 Babbitt disliked being known as a Drinker even more than
he liked a Drink. He mixed by pouring from an ancient gravy-boat into a
handleless pitcher; he poured with a noble dignity, holding his alembics
high beneath the powerful Mazda globe, his face hot, his shirt-front a
glaring white, the copper 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.
Ummmmmm! 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. Babbitt glared
at him, and rebuked him, "Certainly not!"

"Well," in a loose, jocose manner, "I think the old man will!"

The cocktail filled him with a whirling exhilaration behind which he
was aware of devastating desires--to rush 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 this pitcher of cocktails in the refrigerator. Be
sure you don't upset any of 'em."

"Yeh."

"Well, be sure now. Don't go putting anything on this top shelf."

"Yeh."

"Well, be--" He was dizzy. His voice was thin and distant. "Whee!" With
enormous impressiveness he commanded, "Well, be sure now," and minced
into the safety of the living-room. He wondered whether he could
persuade "as slow a bunch as Myra and the Littlefields to go some place
aft' dinner and raise Cain and maybe dig up smore 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 amiability, a great gray
emptiness had replaced the purple swirling in Babbitt's head, and he had
to force the tumultuous greetings suitable to a host on Floral Heights.

The guests were Howard Littlefield, the doctor of philosophy who
furnished publicity and comforting economics to the Street Traction
Company; Vergil Gunch, the coal-dealer, equally powerful in the Elks
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 Lily
White Laundry, which justly announced itself "the biggest, busiest,
bulliest cleanerie shoppe in Zenith." But, naturally, the most
distinguished of all was T. Cholmondeley Frink, who was not only the
author of "Poemulations," which, syndicated daily 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. Frink 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: Littlefield, a hedge-scholar,
tall and horse-faced; Chum Frink, a trifle of a man with soft and
mouse-like hair, advertising his profession as poet by a silk cord on
his eye-glasses; Vergil Gunch, broad, with coarse black hair en brosse;
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 all so
well fed and clean, they all shouted "'Evenin', Georgie!" with such
robustness, that they seemed to be cousins, and the strange thing is
that the 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 a rite 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 Babbitt
said nothing about drinks. They became despondent. But when the late
couple (the Swansons) had arrived, Babbitt hinted, "Well, folks, do you
think you could stand breaking the law a little?"

They looked at Chum Frink, the recognized lord of language. Frink pulled
at his eye-glass cord as at 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 Verg
Gunch is a regular yegg, and of course he's bigger 'n 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 Frink held up his
hand and went on, "So if Verg and you 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 hinting at!"

There was a great deal of laughter. Mrs. Jones asserted, "Mr. Frink is
simply too killing! You'd think he was so innocent!"

Babbitt 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 Frink, a traveled man and not unused
to woes, was stricken by the thought that the potion might be merely
fruit-juice with a little neutral spirits. He looked timorous as
Babbitt, a moist and ecstatic almoner, held out a glass, but as he
tasted it he piped, "Oh, man, let me dream on! It ain't true, but don't
waken me! Jus' lemme slumber!"

Two hours before, Frink had completed a newspaper lyric beginning:

"I sat alone and groused and thunk, and scratched my head and sighed
and wunk, and groaned, There still are boobs, alack, who'd like the
old-time gin-mill back; that den that makes a sage a loon, the vile and
smelly old saloon! I'll never miss their poison booze, whilst I the
bubbling spring can use, that leaves my head at merry morn as clear as
any babe new-born!"

Babbitt 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, but the men, speaking in a wide,
elaborate, enjoyable manner, gloated, "Well, sooner than have you get
sore at me, Georgie--"

"You got a little dividend coming," said Babbitt to each of them, and
each intoned, "Squeeze it, Georgie, squeeze it!"

When, beyond hope, the pitcher was empty, they stood and talked about
prohibition. The men leaned back on their heels, put their hands in
their trousers-pockets, and proclaimed their views with the booming
profundity of a prosperous male repeating a thoroughly hackneyed
statement about a matter of which he knows nothing whatever.

"Now, I'll tell you," said Vergil Gunch; "way I figure it 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 realized is that it's
a dangerous prop'sition 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 live-stock. The peasantry had
stood for overtaxation without the slightest complaint, but when this
proclamation came out, they rebelled. 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-classes. Keeps 'em from wasting their money and
lowering their productiveness," said Vergil Gunch.

"Yes, that's so. But the trouble is the manner of enforcement," insisted
Howard Littlefield. "Congress didn't understand the right system. Now,
if I'd been running the thing, I'd have arranged it so that the drinker
himself was licensed, and then we could have taken care of the shiftless
workman--kept him from drinking--and yet not 've 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 would be the stunt."

"The thing that worries me is that a lot of these guys will take to
cocaine," sighed Eddie Swanson.

They bobbed more violently, and groaned, "That's so, there is a danger
of that."

Chum Frink chanted, "Oh, say, I got hold of a swell new receipt for
home-made beer the other day. You take--"

Gunch interrupted, "Wait! Let me tell you mine!" Littlefield snorted,
"Beer! Rats! Thing to do is to ferment cider!" Jones insisted, "I've
got the receipt that does the business!" Swanson begged, "Oh, say, lemme
tell you the story--" But Frink went on resolutely, "You take and save
the shells from peas, and pour six gallons of water on a bushel of
shells and boil the mixture till--"

Mrs. Babbitt turned toward them with yearning sweetness; Frink hastened
to finish even his best beer-recipe; and she said gaily, "Dinner is
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 Vergil Gunch made them laugh by
thundering, "If I can't sit next to Myra Babbitt and hold her hand under
the table, I won't play--I'm goin' 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. Frink, you sit there."

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 the 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 found a place where I can get all the hootch I want at eight 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 this
fellow was standing on the corner and 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 you get all this awful poison stuff--wood alcohol and
everything--"

"Course I believe in it on principle, but I don't propose to have
anybody telling me what I got to think and do. No American 'll ever
stand for that!"

But they all felt that it was rather in bad taste for Orville 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 the humidity."

Not till the one required topic had been dealt with did the conversation
become general.

It was often and admiringly said of Vergil Gunch, "Gee, that fellow can
get away with murder! Why, he can pull a Raw One in mixed company and
all the ladies 'll laugh their heads off, but me, gosh, if I crack
anything that's just the least bit off color I get the razz for fair!"
Now Gunch delighted them by crying to Mrs. Eddie Swanson, youngest
of the women, "Louetta! I managed to pinch Eddie's doorkey out of his
pocket, and what say you and me sneak across the street when the folks
aren't looking? Got something," with a gorgeous leer, "awful important
to tell you!"

The women wriggled, and Babbitt was stirred to like naughtiness. "Say,
folks, I wished I dared show you a book I borrowed from Doc Patten!"

"Now, George! The idea!" Mrs. Babbitt warned him.

"This book--racy isn't the word! It's some kind of an anthropological
report about--about Customs, in the South Seas, and what it doesn't SAY!
It's a book you can't buy. Verg, I'll lend it to you."

"Me first!" insisted Eddie Swanson. "Sounds spicy!"

Orville Jones announced, "Say, I heard a Good One the other day about
a coupla 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.

Chum Frink 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--Course the folks there are the
best on earth, but, gee whiz, those Main Street burgs are slow, and you
fellows can't hardly appreciate what it means to be here with a bunch of
live ones!"

"You bet!" exulted 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 ne-oo Ford, by
heckalorum!"

"That's right. They all talk about just the same things," said Eddie
Swanson.

"Don't they, though! They just say the same things over and over," said
Vergil 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, at that, you can't blame 'em. They haven't got any intellectual
stimulus such as you get up here in the city," said Chum Frink.

"Gosh, that's right," said Babbitt. "I don't want you highbrows to get
stuck on yourselves but I must say it keeps a fellow right up on his
toes to sit in 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, frinstance. These Yapville 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 diff'rent movies any evening you want to name!"

"Sure, and 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 Babbitt, "no sense excusing these rube burgs too easy.
Fellow's own fault if he doesn't show the initiative to up and beat it
to the city, like we done--did. And, just speaking in confidence among
friends, they're jealous as the devil of a city man. Every time I go up
to Catawba 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 'em, way we do here, and show finesse and what you might
call a broad point of view, why, they think you're putting on side.
There's my own half-brother Martin--runs the little ole general store my
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 in here now, he'd think we
were a bunch of--of--Why, gosh, I swear, he wouldn't know what to think!
Yes, sir, they're jealous!"

Chum Frink 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 out in the tall grass, there's nothing will 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."

Vergil Gunch summed it up: "Fact is, we're mighty lucky to be living
among a bunch of city-folks, that recognize artistic things and
business-punch equally. We'd feel pretty glum if we got stuck in some
Main Street burg and tried to wise up the old codgers to the kind of
life we're used to here. But, by golly, there's this you got to say for
'em: Every small American town is trying to get population and modern
ideals. And darn if a lot of 'em don't put it across! Somebody starts
panning a rube crossroads, telling how he was there in 1900 and it
consisted of one muddy street, count 'em, one, and nine hundred human
clams. Well, you go back there in 1920, and you find pavements and a
swell little hotel and a first-class ladies' 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 'em the finest
spots on earth--they all want to be just like Zenith!"

III

However intimate they might be with T. Cholmondeley Frink as a neighbor,
as a borrower of lawn-mowers 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 to-night, in the gin-evolved confidence, he admitted them
to the arcanum:

"I've got a literary problem that's worrying me to death. I'm doing a
series of ads for the Zeeco Car and I want to make each of 'em a real
little gem--reg'lar 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 ever tackled. You might think it'd 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 'em; you know what sentiments
any decent go-ahead fellow must have if he plays the game, and you stick
right to 'em. But the poetry of industrialism, now there's a literary
line where you 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's future
generations can judge our American thought and originality to-day? Why,
the fellow that writes the Prince Albert Tobacco ads! Just listen to
this:

It's P.A. that jams such joy in jimmy pipes. Say--bet you've often
bent-an-ear to that spill-of-speech about hopping from five to
f-i-f-t-y p-e-r by "stepping on her a bit!" Guess that's going some, all
right--BUT just among ourselves, you better start a rapidwhiz 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 jimmy pipe that's all aglow with
that peach-of-a-pal, Prince Albert.

Prince Albert is john-on-the-job--always joy'usly more-ISH in flavor;
always delightfully cool and fragrant! For a fact, you never hooked such
double-decked, copper-riveted, two-fisted smoke enjoyment!

Go to a pipe--speed-o-quick like you light on a good thing! Why--packed
with Prince Albert you can play a joy'us jimmy straight across the
boards! AND YOU KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS!"

"Now that," caroled the motor agent, Eddie Swanson, "that's what I call
he-literature! That Prince Albert fellow--though, gosh, there can't
be just one fellow that writes 'em; must be a big board of 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 benny to him! The only thing is: I wonder if it sells the goods?
Course, like all these poets, this Prince Albert fellow lets his idea
run away with him. It makes elegant reading, but it don't say nothing.
I'd 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."

Frink faced him: "Oh, 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 Zeeco. 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 Zeeco. 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 away 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 the Zeeco 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 ZIPPINGEST ZEST--THE ZEECO!"

"Yes," Frink 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 sighed with sympathy and admiration.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: After giving us a look at one day of Babbitt's life , the narrator tells us that Babbitt spends much of his spring buying up real estate that's about to double in value because he's gotten a hot tip about the city's streetcars extending their service into a new area. As part of this wheeling and dealing, Babbitt and Myra decide to host a dinner party for twelve people. They briefly discuss the merits and pitfalls of different people they're thinking of inviting. Before going to work the next morning, Babbitt gets into a scrap with Myra about whether he'll be home in time to dress for dinner. She also wants him to make sure that he remembers to pick up some ice cream that she has ordered especially for the dinner. On his way home from work that day, Babbitt stops by an illegal speakeasy so he can pick up some liquor for the party. Of course, the guy supports prohibition politically. But he also likes booze, so he's not afraid to break his own rules to get it. Babbitt meets up with a guy named Hanson and haggles with him over the price of a bottle of gin. But he knows that Hanson is his only option, so he ends up paying what the guy asks for it. On the way home, he nearly forgets to pick up the ice cream. But he remembers at the last second. Once home, Babbitt makes up a batch of cocktails to serve his guests that evening. He has one himself and immediately feels great. But by the time his guests arrive, he feels empty and grey. He even has to fake his happy greeting when he meets them at the door. His spirits quickly return, though, once he gets to drinking with them. The group talks about prohibition while they all drink around the table. They agree that prohibition shouldn't apply to productive people like them; but they think it's a good idea to keep the working class from drinking, since it makes them less productive. One of the dinner guests, Chum Frink, tells the crowd that there's a literary problem he's dealing with. He's recently seen some ads that have blown him away to such an extent that he questions his own ability as a writer.


prompt:
Chapter: I

BABBITT was fond of his friends, he loved the importance of being host
and shouting, "Certainly, you're going to have smore chicken--the idea!"
and he appreciated the genius of T. Cholmondeley Frink, but the vigor
of the cocktails was gone, and the more he ate the less joyful he
felt. Then the amity 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 dish-washers and vacuum cleaners, and tiled kitchen
walls, their houses 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" in 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 Babbitt:

"Honest, George, what do you think of that rag Louetta went and bought?
Don't you think it's the limit?"

"What's eating you, Eddie? I call it a swell little dress."

"Oh, it is, Mr. Swanson. It's a sweet frock," Mrs. Babbitt protested.

"There now, do you see, smarty! You're such an authority on clothes!"
Louetta raged, while the guests ruminated and peeped at her shoulders.

"That'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 closetful of clothes you got already. I've expressed my idea about
this before, and you know good and well you didn'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, all but Babbitt.
Everything about him was dim except his stomach, and that was a bright
scarlet disturbance. "Had too much grub; oughtn't to eat this stuff,"
he groaned--while he went on eating, while he gulped down a chill and
glutinous slice of the ice-cream brick, and cocoanut 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 on 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, "Darn fool to be eating
all this--not 'nother 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 when Howard Littlefield
produced from his treasure-house of scholarship the information that the
chemical symbol for raw rubber is C10H16, which turns into isoprene,
or 2C5H8. Suddenly, without precedent, Babbitt was not merely bored but
admitting that he was bored. It was ecstasy to escape from the table,
from the torture of a straight chair, and loll 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 won at bridge.
He was again able to endure Vergil Gunch's inexorable heartiness. But
he pictured loafing with Paul Riesling beside a lake in Maine. It was as
overpowering and imaginative as homesickness. He had never seen Maine,
yet he beheld the shrouded mountains, the tranquil lake of evening.
"That boy Paul's worth all these ballyhooing highbrows put together," he
muttered; and, "I'd like to get away from--everything."

Even Louetta Swanson did not rouse him.

Mrs. Swanson was pretty and pliant. Babbitt was not an analyst of women,
except as to their tastes 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 (save the women
of his own family) were "different" and "mysterious." Yet he had known
by instinct that Louetta 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
outcurving and passionate wrinkles. She was thirty, perhaps, or younger.
Gossip had never touched her, but every man naturally and instantly rose
to flirtatiousness 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 sonorous Floral Heights gallantry which is not
flirtation but a terrified flight from it: "You're looking like a new
soda-fountain to night, Louetta."

"Am I?"

"Ole 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 heed 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. Frink, a small
twittering woman, proposed that they "try and 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 goodwives 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 Louetta
Swanson's hand closed on his with quiet firmness.

All of them hunched over, intent. They startled as some one drew a
strained breath. In the dusty light from the hall they looked unreal,
they felt disembodied. Mrs. Gunch squeaked, and they jumped with
unnatural jocularity, but at Frink's hiss they sank into subdued awe.
Suddenly, incredibly, they heard a knocking. They stared at Frink's
half-revealed hands and found them lying still. They wriggled, and
pretended not to be impressed.

Frink spoke with gravity: "Is some one there?" A thud. "Is one knock to
be the sign for 'yes'?" A thud. "And two for 'no'?" A thud.

"Now, ladies and gentlemen, shall we ask the guide to put us into
communication with the spirit of some great one passed over?" Frink
mumbled.

Mrs Orville Jones begged, "Oh, let's talk to Dante! We studied him at
the Reading Circle. You know who he was, Orvy."

"Certainly I know who he was! The Wop poet. Where do you think I was
raised?" from her insulted husband.

"Sure--the fellow that took the Cook's Tour to Hell. I've never waded
through his po'try, but we learned about him in the U.," said Babbitt.

"Page Mr. Dannnnnty!" intoned Eddie Swanson.

"You ought to get him easy, Mr. Frink, you and he being fellow-poets,"
said Louetta Swanson.

"Fellow-poets, rats! Where d' you get that stuff?" protested Vergil
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 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 for it,
and just wrote about that old-fashioned junk like Dante wrote about."

Frink demanded, "Hush, now! I'll call him. . . O, Laughing Eyes, emerge
forth into the, uh, the ultimates and bring hither the spirit of Dante,
that we mortals may list to his words of wisdom."

"You forgot to give um the address: 1658 Brimstone Avenue, Fiery
Heights, Hell," Gunch 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 times--"

A thud. The spirit of Dante had come to the parlor of George F. Babbitt.

He was, it seemed, quite ready to answer their questions. He was "glad
to be with them, this evening."

Frink 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 the Paradiso,
Messire?"

"We are very happy on the higher plane, Signor. We are glad that you are
studying this great truth of spiritualism," Dante replied.

The circle moved with an awed creaking of stays and shirt-fronts.
"Suppose--suppose there were something to this?"

Babbitt had a different worry. "Suppose Chum Frink was really one of
these 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 these darn highbrows; and to be an out-and-out spiritualist would
be almost like being a socialist!"

No one could long be serious in the presence of Vergil Gunch. "Ask Dant'
how Jack Shakespeare and old Verg'--the guy they named after me--are
gettin' along, 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 Babbitt--the curst 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 Louetta
Swanson's hand, and found the comfort of human warmth. Habit came, a
veteran warrior; and he shook himself. "What the deuce is the matter
with me, this evening?"

He patted Louetta's hand, to indicate that he hadn't meant anything
improper by squeezing it, and demanded of Frink, "Say, see if you can
get old Dant' to spiel us some of his poetry. Talk up to him. Tell him,
'Buena giorna, senor, com sa va, wie geht's? Keskersaykersa a little
pome, senor?'"

II

The lights were switched on; the women sat on the fronts of their chairs
in that determined suspense whereby a wife indicates that as soon as
the present speaker has finished, she is going to remark brightly to
her husband, "Well, dear, I think per-HAPS it's about time for us to
be saying good-night." For once Babbitt did not break out in blustering
efforts to keep the party going. He had--there was something he wished
to think out--But the psychical research had started them off again.
("Why didn't they go home! Why didn't they go home!") Though he
was impressed by the profundity 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--weren't they EVER going home?") He
was usually delighted to have an "inside view" of the momentous world of
motors but to-night he scarcely listened to Eddie Swanson's revelation:
"If you want to go above the Javelin class, the Zeeco is a mighty good
buy. Couple weeks ago, and mind you, this was a fair, square test, they
took a Zeeco stock touring-car and they slid up the Tonawanda hill on
high, and fellow told me--" ("Zeeco good boat but--Were they planning to
stay all night?")

They really were going, with a flutter of "We did have the best time!"

Most aggressively friendly of all was Babbitt, yet as he burbled he was
reflecting, "I got through it, but for a while there I didn't hardly
think I'd last out." He prepared to taste that most delicate pleasure of
the host: making fun of his guests in the relaxation of midnight. As the
door closed he yawned voluptuously, chest out, shoulders wriggling, 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, by a
long shot."

"Wasn't the dinner good! And honestly I thought the fried chicken was
delicious!"

"You bet! Fried to the Queen's taste. Best fried chicken I've tasted for
a coon's 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 don't sound--you sound as if you hadn't really enjoyed
it."

"Sure I did! 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." "Yuh--" Then
he was pouring it out nakedly, robbed of reticence. "Myra: I think it'd
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 golly!" A
nervous, artificial laugh.

"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 kind of got 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 flushed to the red steaminess of a boiled beet.

"Of course I do! I just meant--" Remembering that Paul Riesling 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 paternal. "Then when you and the kids
arrive--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 completing 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? Don't I add anything to your fun?"

He broke. Suddenly, dreadfully, he was hysterical, he was a yelping
baby. "Yes, 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 tell you, 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 palsied helplessness, and in that moment was not
merely by habit fond of her but clung to her strength.

She cried cheerily, "Now up-stairs 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.

Q: Can you write an appropriate summary of the above paragraphs?
A:

completion: Babbitt likes playing host to his friends. But with dinner finished, he feels like he ate too much food. To make things worse, he finds his guests getting more and more boring as the booze wears off. To deal with his boredom, Babbitt decides to sit next to one of his friends' wives on the couch and to flirt with her. To pass the time, the group gets together to have a mock seance, in which they pretend to talk to the ghost of the famous Italian poet, Dante Alighieri. The party eventually wraps up, and once everyone is gone, Mrs. Babbitt tells her husband that she thinks it went pretty well. While they're talking, Babbitt says he wants to go up to Maine on vacation by himself. He totally blows his cover about meeting someone in New York on business, and instead tells Myra that he'd just like to go up to Maine by himself. Of course, she suspects that there's something else going on, and she tries to guilt him into taking her. He holds firm, though, and just says he wants to be alone for a while. She wants to know, though, if he even wants her around on his vacations. He tries to reassure her while at the same time protecting his right to go off alone. Eventually, she gives in and tells him to have a good time. But now, Babbitt feels ashamed about his newfound freedom.