prompt:
Chapter: I

HE tried to explain to his wife, as they prepared for bed, how
objectionable was Sheldon Smeeth, but all her answer was, "He has such
a beautiful voice--so spiritual. I don't think you ought to speak of him
like that just because you can't appreciate music!" He saw her then as a
stranger; he stared bleakly at this plump and fussy woman with the broad
bare arms, and wondered how she had ever come here.

In his chilly cot, turning from aching side to side, he pondered of
Tanis. "He'd been a fool to lose her. He had to have somebody he could
really talk to. He'd--oh, he'd BUST if he went on stewing about things
by himself. And Myra, useless to expect her to understand. Well, rats,
no use dodging the issue. Darn shame for two married people to drift
apart after all these years; darn rotten shame; but nothing could bring
them together now, as long as he refused to let Zenith bully him into
taking orders--and he was by golly not going to let anybody bully him
into anything, or wheedle him or coax him either!"

He woke at three, roused by a passing motor, and struggled out of bed
for a drink of water. As he passed through the bedroom he heard his wife
groan. His resentment was night-blurred; he was solicitous in inquiring,
"What's the trouble, hon?"

"I've got--such a pain down here in my side--oh, it's just--it tears at
me."

"Bad indigestion? Shall I get you some bicarb?"

"Don't think--that would help. I felt funny last evening and yesterday,
and then--oh!--it passed away and I got to sleep and--That auto woke me
up."

Her voice was laboring like a ship in a storm. He was alarmed.

"I better call the doctor."

"No, no! It'll go away. But maybe you might get me an ice-bag."

He stalked to the bathroom for the ice-bag, down to the kitchen for ice.
He felt dramatic in this late-night expedition, but as he gouged the
chunk of ice with the dagger-like pick he was cool, steady, mature;
and the old friendliness was in his voice as he patted the ice-bag into
place on her groin, rumbling, "There, there, that'll be better now."
He retired to bed, but he did not sleep. He heard her groan again.
Instantly he was up, soothing her, "Still pretty bad, honey?"

"Yes, it just gripes me, and I can't get to sleep."

Her voice was faint. He knew her dread of doctors' verdicts and he
did not inform her, but he creaked down-stairs, telephoned to Dr.
Earl Patten, and waited, shivering, trying with fuzzy eyes to read a
magazine, till he heard the doctor's car.

The doctor was youngish and professionally breezy. He came in as though
it were sunny noontime. "Well, George, little trouble, eh? How is
she now?" he said busily as, with tremendous and rather irritating
cheerfulness, he tossed his coat on a chair and warmed his hands at
a radiator. He took charge of the house. Babbitt felt ousted and
unimportant as he followed the doctor up to the bedroom, and it was the
doctor who chuckled, "Oh, just little stomach-ache" when Verona peeped
through her door, begging, "What is it, Dad, what is it?"

To Mrs. Babbitt the doctor said with amiable belligerence, after his
examination, "Kind of a bad old pain, eh? I'll give you something to
make you sleep, and I think you'll feel better in the morning. I'll come
in right after breakfast." But to Babbitt, lying in wait in the lower
hall, the doctor sighed, "I don't like the feeling there in her belly.
There's some rigidity and some inflammation. She's never had her
appendix out has she? Um. Well, no use worrying. I'll be here first
thing in the morning, and meantime she'll get some rest. I've given her
a hypo. Good night."

Then was Babbitt caught up in the black tempest.

Instantly all the indignations which had been dominating him and the
spiritual dramas through which he had struggled became pallid and
absurd before the ancient and overwhelming realities, the standard and
traditional realities, of sickness and menacing death, the long night,
and the thousand steadfast implications of married life. He crept back
to her. As she drowsed away in the tropic languor of morphia, he sat on
the edge of her bed, holding her hand, and for the first time in many
weeks her hand abode trustfully in his.

He draped himself grotesquely in his toweling bathrobe and a pink and
white couch-cover, and sat lumpishly in a wing-chair. The bedroom was
uncanny in its half-light, which turned the curtains to lurking robbers,
the dressing-table to a turreted castle. It smelled of cosmetics, of
linen, of sleep. He napped and woke, napped and woke, a hundred times.
He heard her move and sigh in slumber; he wondered if there wasn't some
officious brisk thing he could do for her, and before he could quite
form the thought he was asleep, racked and aching. The night was
infinite. When dawn came and the waiting seemed at an end, he fell
asleep, and was vexed to have been caught off his guard, to have been
aroused by Verona's entrance and her agitated "Oh, what is it, Dad?"

His wife was awake, her face sallow and lifeless in the morning light,
but now he did not compare her with Tanis; she was not merely A Woman,
to be contrasted with other women, but his own self, and though he might
criticize her and nag her, it was only as he might criticize and nag
himself, interestedly, unpatronizingly, without the expectation of
changing--or any real desire to change--the eternal essence.

With Verona he sounded fatherly again, and firm. He consoled Tinka, who
satisfactorily pointed the excitement of the hour by wailing. He ordered
early breakfast, and wanted to look at the newspaper, and felt somehow
heroic and useful in not looking at it. But there were still crawling
and totally unheroic hours of waiting before Dr. Patten returned.

"Don't see much change," said Patten. "I'll be back about eleven, and
if you don't mind, I think I'll bring in some other world-famous
pill-pedler for consultation, just to be on the safe side. Now
George, there's nothing you can do. I'll have Verona keep the ice-bag
filled--might as well leave that on, I guess--and you, you better beat
it to the office instead of standing around her looking as if you were
the patient. The nerve of husbands! Lot more neurotic than the women!
They always have to horn in and get all the credit for feeling bad when
their wives are ailing. Now have another nice cup of coffee and git!"

Under this derision Babbitt became more matter-of-fact. He drove to the
office, tried to dictate letters, tried to telephone and, before the
call was answered, forgot to whom he was telephoning. At a quarter after
ten he returned home. As he left the down-town traffic and sped up the
car, his face was as grimly creased as the mask of tragedy.

His wife greeted him with surprise. "Why did you come back, dear? I
think I feel a little better. I told Verona to skip off to her office.
Was it wicked of me to go and get sick?"

He knew that she wanted petting, and she got it, joyously. They were
curiously happy when he heard Dr. Patten's car in front. He looked out
of the window. He was frightened. With Patten was an impatient man
with turbulent black hair and a hussar mustache--Dr. A. I. Dilling,
the surgeon. Babbitt sputtered with anxiety, tried to conceal it, and
hurried down to the door.

Dr. Patten was profusely casual: "Don't want to worry you, old man, but
I thought it might be a good stunt to have Dr. Dilling examine her." He
gestured toward Dilling as toward a master.

Dilling nodded in his curtest manner and strode up-stairs Babbitt
tramped the living-room in agony. Except for his wife's confinements
there had never been a major operation in the family, and to him surgery
was at once a miracle and an abomination of fear. But when Dilling and
Patten came down again he knew that everything was all right, and he
wanted to laugh, for the two doctors were exactly like the bearded
physicians in a musical comedy, both of them rubbing their hands and
looking foolishly sagacious.

Dr. Dilling spoke:

"I'm sorry, old man, but it's acute appendicitis. We ought to operate.
Of course you must decide, but there's no question as to what has to be
done."

Babbitt did not get all the force of it. He mumbled, "Well I suppose we
could get her ready in a couple o' days. Probably Ted ought to come down
from the university, just in case anything happened."

Dr. Dilling growled, "Nope. If you don't want peritonitis to set in,
we'll have to operate right away. I must advise it strongly. If you say
go ahead, I'll 'phone for the St. Mary's ambulance at once, and we'll
have her on the table in three-quarters of an hour."

"I--I Of course, I suppose you know what--But great God, man, I can't
get her clothes ready and everything in two seconds, you know! And in
her state, so wrought-up and weak--"

"Just throw her hair-brush and comb and tooth-brush in a bag; that's
all she'll need for a day or two," said Dr. Dilling, and went to the
telephone.

Babbitt galloped desperately up-stairs. He sent the frightened Tinka out
of the room. He said gaily to his wife, "Well, old thing, the doc thinks
maybe we better have a little operation and get it over. Just take a few
minutes--not half as serious as a confinement--and you'll be all right
in a jiffy."

She gripped his hand till the fingers ached. She said patiently, like a
cowed child, "I'm afraid--to go into the dark, all alone!" Maturity was
wiped from her eyes; they were pleading and terrified. "Will you stay
with me? Darling, you don't have to go to the office now, do you? Could
you just go down to the hospital with me? Could you come see me this
evening--if everything's all right? You won't have to go out this
evening, will you?"

He was on his knees by the bed. While she feebly ruffled his hair, he
sobbed, he kissed the lawn of her sleeve, and swore, "Old honey, I
love you more than anything in the world! I've kind of been worried by
business and everything, but that's all over now, and I'm back again."

"Are you really? George, I was thinking, lying here, maybe it would be a
good thing if I just WENT. I was wondering if anybody really needed me.
Or wanted me. I was wondering what was the use of my living. I've been
getting so stupid and ugly--"

"Why, you old humbug! Fishing for compliments when I ought to be packing
your bag! Me, sure, I'm young and handsome and a regular village
cut-up and--" He could not go on. He sobbed again; and in muttered
incoherencies they found each other.

As he packed, his brain was curiously clear and swift. He'd have no more
wild evenings, he realized. He admitted that he would regret them. A
little grimly he perceived that this had been his last despairing fling
before the paralyzed contentment of middle-age. Well, and he grinned
impishly, "it was one doggone good party while it lasted!" And--how much
was the operation going to cost? "I ought to have fought that out with
Dilling. But no, damn it, I don't care how much it costs!"

The motor ambulance was at the door. Even in his grief the Babbitt who
admired all technical excellences was interested in the kindly skill
with which the attendants slid Mrs. Babbitt upon a stretcher and carried
her down-stairs. The ambulance was a huge, suave, varnished, white
thing. Mrs. Babbitt moaned, "It frightens me. It's just like a hearse,
just like being put in a hearse. I want you to stay with me."

"I'll be right up front with the driver," Babbitt promised.

"No, I want you to stay inside with me." To the attendants: "Can't he be
inside?"

"Sure, ma'am, you bet. There's a fine little camp-stool in there," the
older attendant said, with professional pride.

He sat beside her in that traveling cabin with its cot, its stool, its
active little electric radiator, and its quite unexplained calendar,
displaying a girl eating cherries, and the name of an enterprising
grocer. But as he flung out his hand in hopeless cheerfulness it touched
the radiator, and he squealed:

"Ouch! Jesus!"

"Why, George Babbitt, I won't have you cursing and swearing and
blaspheming!"

"I know, awful sorry but--Gosh all fish-hooks, look how I burned my
hand! Gee whiz, it hurts! It hurts like the mischief! Why, that damn
radiator is hot as--it's hot as--it's hotter 'n the hinges of Hades!
Look! You can see the mark!"

So, as they drove up to St. Mary's Hospital, with the nurses already
laying out the instruments for an operation to save her life, it was
she who consoled him and kissed the place to make it well, and though
he tried to be gruff and mature, he yielded to her and was glad to be
babied.

The ambulance whirled under the hooded carriage-entrance of the
hospital, and instantly he was reduced to a zero in the nightmare
succession of cork-floored halls, endless doors open on old women
sitting up in bed, an elevator, the anesthetizing room, a young interne
contemptuous of husbands. He was permitted to kiss his wife; he saw a
thin dark nurse fit the cone over her mouth and nose; he stiffened at a
sweet and treacherous odor; then he was driven out, and on a high stool
in a laboratory he sat dazed, longing to see her once again, to insist
that he had always loved her, had never for a second loved anybody else
or looked at anybody else. In the laboratory he was conscious only of a
decayed object preserved in a bottle of yellowing alcohol. It made him
very sick, but he could not take his eyes from it. He was more aware of
it than of waiting. His mind floated in abeyance, coming back always
to that horrible bottle. To escape it he opened the door to the right,
hoping to find a sane and business-like office. He realized that he was
looking into the operating-room; in one glance he took in Dr. Dilling,
strange in white gown and bandaged head, bending over the steel table
with its screws and wheels, then nurses holding basins and cotton
sponges, and a swathed thing, just a lifeless chin and a mound of white
in the midst of which was a square of sallow flesh with a gash a little
bloody at the edges, protruding from the gash a cluster of forceps like
clinging parasites.

He shut the door with haste. It may be that his frightened repentance of
the night and morning had not eaten in, but this dehumanizing interment
of her who had been so pathetically human shook him utterly, and as he
crouched again on the high stool in the laboratory he swore faith to his
wife . . . to Zenith . . . to business efficiency . . . to the Boosters'
Club . . . to every faith of the Clan of Good Fellows.

Then a nurse was soothing, "All over! Perfect success! She'll come out
fine! She'll be out from under the anesthetic soon, and you can see
her."

He found her on a curious tilted bed, her face an unwholesome yellow but
her purple lips moving slightly. Then only did he really believe that
she was alive. She was muttering. He bent, and heard her sighing, "Hard
get real maple syrup for pancakes." He laughed inexhaustibly; he beamed
on the nurse and proudly confided, "Think of her talking about maple
syrup! By golly, I'm going to go and order a hundred gallons of it,
right from Vermont!"

II

She was out of the hospital in seventeen days. He went to see her each
afternoon, and in their long talks they drifted back to intimacy. Once
he hinted something of his relations to Tanis and the Bunch, and she was
inflated by the view that a Wicked Woman had captivated her poor George.

If once he had doubted his neighbors and the supreme charm of the Good
Fellows, he was convinced now. You didn't, he noted, "see Seneca Doane
coming around with any flowers or dropping in to chat with the Missus,"
but Mrs. Howard Littlefield brought to the hospital her priceless wine
jelly (flavored with real wine); Orville Jones spent hours in picking
out the kind of novels Mrs. Babbitt liked--nice love stories about New
York millionaries and Wyoming cowpunchers; Louetta Swanson knitted a
pink bed-jacket; Sidney Finkelstein and his merry brown-eyed flapper of
a wife selected the prettiest nightgown in all the stock of Parcher and
Stein.

All his friends ceased whispering about him, suspecting him. At the
Athletic Club they asked after her daily. Club members whose names he
did not know stopped him to inquire, "How's your good lady getting on?"
Babbitt felt that he was swinging from bleak uplands down into the rich
warm air of a valley pleasant with cottages.

One noon Vergil Gunch suggested, "You planning to be at the hospital
about six? The wife and I thought we'd drop in." They did drop in. Gunch
was so humorous that Mrs. Babbitt said he must "stop making her laugh
because honestly it was hurting her incision." As they passed down the
hall Gunch demanded amiably, "George, old scout, you were soreheaded
about something, here a while back. I don't know why, and it's none of
my business. But you seem to be feeling all hunky-dory again, and why
don't you come join us in the Good Citizens' League, old man? We have
some corking times together, and we need your advice."

Then did Babbitt, almost tearful with joy at being coaxed instead of
bullied, at being permitted to stop fighting, at being able to desert
without injuring his opinion of himself, cease utterly to be a domestic
revolutionist. He patted Gunch's shoulder, and next day he became a
member of the Good Citizens' League.

Within two weeks no one in the League was more violent regarding the
wickedness of Seneca Doane, the crimes of labor unions, the perils of
immigration, and the delights of golf, morality, and bank-accounts than
was George F. Babbitt.

I

THE Good Citizens' League had spread through the country, but nowhere
was it so effective and well esteemed as in cities of the type of
Zenith, commercial cities of a few hundred thousand inhabitants, most
of which--though not all--lay inland, against a background of
cornfields and mines and of small towns which depended upon them for
mortgage-loans, table-manners, art, social philosophy and millinery.

To the League belonged most of the prosperous citizens of Zenith. They
were not all of the kind who called themselves "Regular Guys." Besides
these hearty fellows, these salesmen of prosperity, there were the
aristocrats, that is, the men who were richer or had been rich for more
generations: the presidents of banks and of factories, the land-owners,
the corporation lawyers, the fashionable doctors, and the few young-old
men who worked not at all but, reluctantly remaining in Zenith,
collected luster-ware and first editions as though they were back in
Paris. All of them agreed that the working-classes must be kept in their
place; and all of them perceived that American Democracy did not imply
any equality of wealth, but did demand a wholesome sameness of thought,
dress, painting, morals, and vocabulary.

In this they were like the ruling-class of any other country,
particularly of Great Britain, but they differed in being more vigorous
and in actually trying to produce the accepted standards which all
classes, everywhere, desire, but usually despair of realizing.

The longest struggle of the Good Citizens' League was against the
Open Shop--which was secretly a struggle against all union labor.
Accompanying it was an Americanization Movement, with evening classes in
English and history and economics, and daily articles in the newspapers,
so that newly arrived foreigners might learn that the true-blue and
one hundred per cent. American way of settling labor-troubles was for
workmen to trust and love their employers.

The League was more than generous in approving other organizations
which agreed with its aims. It helped the Y.M. C.A. to raise a
two-hundred-thousand-dollar fund for a new building. Babbitt, Vergil
Gunch, Sidney Finkelstein, and even Charles McKelvey told the spectators
at movie theaters how great an influence for manly Christianity the
"good old Y." had been in their own lives; and the hoar and mighty
Colonel Rutherford Snow, owner of the Advocate-Times, was photographed
clasping the hand of Sheldon Smeeth of the Y.M.C.A. It is true
that afterward, when Smeeth lisped, "You must come to one of our
prayer-meetings," the ferocious Colonel bellowed, "What the hell would
I do that for? I've got a bar of my own," but this did not appear in the
public prints.

The League was of value to the American Legion at a time when certain of
the lesser and looser newspapers were criticizing that organization of
veterans of the Great War. One evening a number of young men raided
the Zenith Socialist Headquarters, burned its records, beat the
office staff, and agreeably dumped desks out of the window. All of the
newspapers save the Advocate-Times and the Evening Advocate attributed
this valuable but perhaps hasty direct-action to the American Legion.
Then a flying squadron from the Good Citizens' League called on the
unfair papers and explained that no ex-soldier could possibly do such
a thing, and the editors saw the light, and retained their advertising.
When Zenith's lone Conscientious Objector came home from prison and was
righteously run out of town, the newspapers referred to the perpetrators
as an "unidentified mob."

II

In all the activities and triumphs of the Good Citizens' League Babbitt
took part, and completely won back to self-respect, placidity, and the
affection of his friends. But he began to protest, "Gosh, I've done my
share in cleaning up the city. I want to tend to business. Think I'll
just kind of slacken up on this G.C.L. stuff now."

He had returned to the church as he had returned to the Boosters' Club.
He had even endured the lavish greeting which Sheldon Smeeth gave him.
He was worried lest during his late discontent he had imperiled his
salvation. He was not quite sure there was a Heaven to be attained, but
Dr. John Jennison Drew said there was, and Babbitt was not going to take
a chance.

One evening when he was walking past Dr. Drew's parsonage he impulsively
went in and found the pastor in his study.

"Jus' minute--getting 'phone call," said Dr. Drew in businesslike tones,
then, aggressively, to the telephone: "'Lo--'lo! This Berkey and Hannis?
Reverend Drew speaking. Where the dickens is the proof for next Sunday's
calendar? Huh? Y' ought to have it here. Well, I can't help it if
they're ALL sick! I got to have it to-night. Get an A.D.T. boy and shoot
it up here quick."

He turned, without slackening his briskness. "Well, Brother Babbitt,
what c'n I do for you?"

"I just wanted to ask--Tell you how it is, dominie: Here a while ago I
guess I got kind of slack. Took a few drinks and so on. What I wanted
to ask is: How is it if a fellow cuts that all out and comes back to his
senses? Does it sort of, well, you might say, does it score against him
in the long run?"

The Reverend Dr. Drew was suddenly interested. "And, uh, brother--the
other things, too? Women?"

"No, practically, you might say, practically not at all."

"Don't hesitate to tell me, brother! That's what I'm here for. Been
going on joy-rides? Squeezing girls in cars?" The reverend eyes
glistened.

"No--no--"

"Well, I'll tell you. I've got a deputation from the Don't Make
Prohibition a Joke Association coming to see me in a quarter of an
hour, and one from the Anti-Birth-Control Union at a quarter of ten." He
busily glanced at his watch. "But I can take five minutes off and pray
with you. Kneel right down by your chair, brother. Don't be ashamed to
seek the guidance of God."

Babbitt's scalp itched and he longed to flee, but Dr. Drew had already
flopped down beside his desk-chair and his voice had changed from
rasping efficiency to an unctuous familiarity with sin and with the
Almighty. Babbitt also knelt, while Drew gloated:

"O Lord, thou seest our brother here, who has been led astray by
manifold temptations. O Heavenly Father, make his heart to be pure,
as pure as a little child's. Oh, let him know again the joy of a manly
courage to abstain from evil--"

Sheldon Smeeth came frolicking into the study. At the sight of the two
men he smirked, forgivingly patted Babbitt on the shoulder, and
knelt beside him, his arm about him, while he authorized Dr. Drew's
imprecations with moans of "Yes, Lord! Help our brother, Lord!"

Though he was trying to keep his eyes closed, Babbitt squinted between
his fingers and saw the pastor glance at his watch as he concluded with
a triumphant, "And let him never be afraid to come to Us for counsel and
tender care, and let him know that the church can lead him as a little
lamb."

Dr. Drew sprang up, rolled his eyes in the general direction of Heaven,
chucked his watch into his pocket, and demanded, "Has the deputation
come yet, Sheldy?"

"Yep, right outside," Sheldy answered, with equal liveliness; then,
caressingly, to Babbitt, "Brother, if it would help, I'd love to go into
the next room and pray with you while Dr. Drew is receiving the brothers
from the Don't Make Prohibition a Joke Association."

"No--no thanks--can't take the time!" yelped Babbitt, rushing toward the
door.

Thereafter he was often seen at the Chatham Road Presbyterian Church,
but it is recorded that he avoided shaking hands with the pastor at the
door.

III

If his moral fiber had been so weakened by rebellion that he was not
quite dependable in the more rigorous campaigns of the Good Citizens'
League nor quite appreciative of the church, yet there was no doubt of
the joy with which Babbitt returned to the pleasures of his home and of
the Athletic Club, the Boosters, the Elks.

Verona and Kenneth Escott were eventually and hesitatingly married.
For the wedding Babbitt was dressed as carefully as was Verona; he was
crammed into the morning-coat he wore to teas thrice a year; and with a
certain relief, after Verona and Kenneth had driven away in a limousine,
he returned to the house, removed the morning coat, sat with his aching
feet up on the davenport, and reflected that his wife and he could have
the living-room to themselves now, and not have to listen to Verona and
Kenneth worrying, in a cultured collegiate manner, about minimum wages
and the Drama League.

But even this sinking into peace was less consoling than his return to
being one of the best-loved men in the Boosters' Club.

IV

President Willis Ijams began that Boosters' Club luncheon by standing
quiet and staring at them so unhappily that they feared he was about
to announce the death of a Brother Booster. He spoke slowly then, and
gravely:

"Boys, I have something shocking to reveal to you; something terrible
about one of our own members."

Several Boosters, including Babbitt, looked disconcerted.

"A knight of the grip, a trusted friend of mine, recently made a trip
up-state, and in a certain town, where a certain Booster spent his
boyhood, he found out something which can no longer be concealed. In
fact, he discovered the inward nature of a man whom we have accepted as
a Real Guy and as one of us. Gentlemen, I cannot trust my voice to say
it, so I have written it down."

He uncovered a large blackboard and on it, in huge capitals, was the
legend:

George Follansbee Babbitt--oh you Folly!

The Boosters cheered, they laughed, they wept, they threw rolls at
Babbitt, they cried, "Speech, speech! Oh you Folly!"

President Ijams continued:

"That, gentlemen, is the awful thing Georgie Babbitt has been concealing
all these years, when we thought he was just plain George F. Now I want
you to tell us, taking it in turn, what you've always supposed the F.
stood for."

Flivver, they suggested, and Frog-face and Flathead and Farinaceous and
Freezone and Flapdoodle and Foghorn. By the joviality of their insults
Babbitt knew that he had been taken back to their hearts, and happily he
rose.

"Boys, I've got to admit it. I've never worn a wrist-watch, or parted
my name in the middle, but I will confess to 'Follansbee.' My only
justification is that my old dad--though otherwise he was perfectly
sane, and packed an awful wallop when it came to trimming the City
Fellers at checkers--named me after the family doc, old Dr. Ambrose
Follansbee. I apologize, boys. In my next what-d'you-call-it I'll see
to it that I get named something really practical--something that sounds
swell and yet is good and virile--something, in fact, like that
grand old name so familiar to every household--that bold and almost
overpowering name, Willis Jimjams Ijams!"

He knew by the cheer that he was secure again and popular; he knew that
he would no more endanger his security and popularity by straying from
the Clan of Good Fellows.

V

Henry Thompson dashed into the office, clamoring, "George! Big news!
Jake Offutt says the Traction Bunch are dissatisfied with the way
Sanders, Torrey and Wing handled their last deal, and they're willing to
dicker with us!"

Babbitt was pleased in the realization that the last scar of his
rebellion was healed, yet as he drove home he was annoyed by such
background thoughts as had never weakened him in his days of belligerent
conformity. He discovered that he actually did not consider the Traction
group quite honest. "Well, he'd carry out one more deal for them, but
as soon as it was practicable, maybe as soon as old Henry Thompson died,
he'd break away from all association from them. He was forty-eight; in
twelve years he'd be sixty; he wanted to leave a clean business to his
grandchildren. Course there was a lot of money in negotiating for the
Traction people, and a fellow had to look at things in a practical way,
only--" He wriggled uncomfortably. He wanted to tell the Traction group
what he thought of them. "Oh, he couldn't do it, not now. If he offended
them this second time, they would crush him. But--"

He was conscious that his line of progress seemed confused. He wondered
what he would do with his future. He was still young; was he through
with all adventuring? He felt that he had been trapped into the very
net from which he had with such fury escaped and, supremest jest of all,
been made to rejoice in the trapping.

"They've licked me; licked me to a finish!" he whimpered.

The house was peaceful, that evening, and he enjoyed a game of pinochle
with his wife. He indignantly told the Tempter that he was content to do
things in the good old fashioned way. The day after, he went to see the
purchasing-agent of the Street Traction Company and they made plans for
the secret purchase of lots along the Evanston Road. But as he drove to
his office he struggled, "I'm going to run things and figure out things
to suit myself--when I retire."

VI

Ted had come down from the University for the week-end. Though he no
longer spoke of mechanical engineering and though he was reticent about
his opinion of his instructors, he seemed no more reconciled to college,
and his chief interest was his wireless telephone set.

On Saturday evening he took Eunice Littlefield to a dance at Devon
Woods. Babbitt had a glimpse of her, bouncing in the seat of the car,
brilliant in a scarlet cloak over a frock of thinnest creamy silk. They
two had not returned when the Babbitts went to bed, at half-past eleven.
At a blurred indefinite time of late night Babbitt was awakened by
the ring of the telephone and gloomily crawled down-stairs. Howard
Littlefield was speaking:

"George, Euny isn't back yet. Is Ted?"

"No--at least his door is open--"

"They ought to be home. Eunice said the dance would be over at midnight.
What's the name of those people where they're going?"

"Why, gosh, tell the truth, I don't know, Howard. It's some classmate of
Ted's, out in Devon Woods. Don't see what we can do. Wait, I'll skip up
and ask Myra if she knows their name."

Babbitt turned on the light in Ted's room. It was a brown boyish room;
disordered dresser, worn books, a high-school pennant, photographs of
basket-ball teams and baseball teams. Ted was decidedly not there.

Mrs. Babbitt, awakened, irritably observed that she certainly did not
know the name of Ted's host, that it was late, that Howard Littlefield
was but little better than a born fool, and that she was sleepy. But
she remained awake and worrying while Babbitt, on the sleeping-porch,
struggled back into sleep through the incessant soft rain of her
remarks. It was after dawn when he was aroused by her shaking him and
calling "George! George!" in something like horror.

"Wha--wha--what is it?"

"Come here quick and see. Be quiet!"

She led him down the hall to the door of Ted's room and pushed it gently
open. On the worn brown rug he saw a froth of rose-colored chiffon
lingerie; on the sedate Morris chair a girl's silver slipper. And on the
pillows were two sleepy heads--Ted's and Eunice's.

Ted woke to grin, and to mutter with unconvincing defiance, "Good
morning! Let me introduce my wife--Mrs. Theodore Roosevelt Eunice
Littlefield Babbitt, Esquiress."

"Good God!" from Babbitt, and from his wife a long wailing, "You've gone
and--"

"We got married last evening. Wife! Sit up and say a pretty good morning
to mother-in-law."

But Eunice hid her shoulders and her charming wild hair under the
pillow.

By nine o'clock the assembly which was gathered about Ted and Eunice
in the living-room included Mr. and Mrs. George Babbitt, Dr. and Mrs.
Howard Littlefield, Mr. and Mrs. Kenneth Escott, Mr. and Mrs. Henry
T. Thompson, and Tinka Babbitt, who was the only pleased member of the
inquisition.

A crackling shower of phrases filled the room:

"At their age--" "Ought to be annulled--" "Never heard of such a thing
in--" "Fault of both of them and--" "Keep it out of the papers--" "Ought
to be packed off to school--" "Do something about it at once, and what I
say is--" "Damn good old-fashioned spanking--"

Worst of them all was Verona. "TED! Some way MUST be found to make you
understand how dreadfully SERIOUS this is, instead of standing AROUND
with that silly foolish SMILE on your face!"

He began to revolt. "Gee whittakers, Rone, you got married yourself,
didn't you?"

"That's entirely different."

"You bet it is! They didn't have to work on Eu and me with a chain and
tackle to get us to hold hands!"

"Now, young man, we'll have no more flippancy," old Henry Thompson
ordered. "You listen to me."

"You listen to Grandfather!" said Verona.

"Yes, listen to your Grandfather!" said Mrs. Babbitt.

"Ted, you listen to Mr. Thompson!" said Howard Littlefield.

"Oh, for the love o' Mike, I am listening!" Ted shouted. "But you look
here, all of you! I'm getting sick and tired of being the corpse in this
post mortem! If you want to kill somebody, go kill the preacher that
married us! Why, he stung me five dollars, and all the money I had in
the world was six dollars and two bits. I'm getting just about enough of
being hollered at!"

A new voice, booming, authoritative, dominated the room. It was Babbitt.
"Yuh, there's too darn many putting in their oar! Rone, you dry up.
Howard and I are still pretty strong, and able to do our own cussing.
Ted, come into the dining-room and we'll talk this over."

In the dining-room, the door firmly closed, Babbitt walked to his son,
put both hands on his shoulders. "You're more or less right. They all
talk too much. Now what do you plan to do, old man?"

"Gosh, dad, are you really going to be human?"

"Well, I--Remember one time you called us 'the Babbitt men' and said we
ought to stick together? I want to. I don't pretend to think this isn't
serious. The way the cards are stacked against a young fellow to-day, I
can't say I approve of early marriages. But you couldn't have married a
better girl than Eunice; and way I figure it, Littlefield is darn lucky
to get a Babbitt for a son-in-law! But what do you plan to do? Course
you could go right ahead with the U., and when you'd finished--"

"Dad, I can't stand it any more. Maybe it's all right for some fellows.
Maybe I'll want to go back some day. But me, I want to get into
mechanics. I think I'd get to be a good inventor. There's a fellow that
would give me twenty dollars a week in a factory right now."

"Well--" Babbitt crossed the floor, slowly, ponderously, seeming a
little old. "I've always wanted you to have a college degree." He
meditatively stamped across the floor again. "But I've never--Now, for
heaven's sake, don't repeat this to your mother, or she'd remove what
little hair I've got left, but practically, I've never done a single
thing I've wanted to in my whole life! I don't know 's I've accomplished
anything except just get along. I figure out I've made about a quarter
of an inch out of a possible hundred rods. Well, maybe you'll carry
things on further. I don't know. But I do get a kind of sneaking
pleasure out of the fact that you knew what you wanted to do and did
it. Well, those folks in there will try to bully you, and tame you down.
Tell 'em to go to the devil! I'll back you. Take your factory job, if
you want to. Don't be scared of the family. No, nor all of Zenith. Nor
of yourself, the way I've been. Go ahead, old man! The world is yours!"

Arms about each other's shoulders, the Babbitt men marched into the
living-room and faced the swooping family.

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

completion: One night Babbitt lies awake, bemoaning his fate. He chastises himself for having lost Tanis; he is sorry that his relationship with his wife is such a poor one. He recognizes that he and Myra have no chance for reconciliation unless he ends his rebellion against conformity, but his pride will not allow him to be bullied into changing his views. About three o'clock that morning, Babbitt discovers that his wife is ill. He tries to help her, but Myra's abdominal pains continue to increase. Terrified, Babbitt calls the doctor. When he arrives, the physician gives Myra a sedative and promises to return the following day. Babbitt sits at his wife's bedside all night, holding her hand and frantically hoping for her recovery. In the morning, the doctor returns, accompanied by a specialist. After a brief examination, they announce that the patient has acute appendicitis and that an immediate operation is required. Myra has an old-fashioned fear of hospitals and becomes very upset. Babbitt stays with her in the ambulance and in her room, cheering her up, pleading for her forgiveness and affirming that he loves her. To his great joy, the operation is a success. Afterwards, Babbitt determines to return to a normal way of life. He visits Myra every day at the hospital, and, together, they review all their past mistakes and make plans for the future. To Babbitt's surprise, the Gunches and the Littlefields, as well as other old friends, are concerned about Myra and visit her at the hospital. They behave in a friendly manner toward Babbitt also. People on the street and the Athletic Club often ask about her, and he begins to appreciate the warm and genuine human values of the world he was fighting against. When Gunch casually asks him to join the League, Babbitt eagerly accepts. Within a few weeks, Babbitt has regained his old position in the community. Once more, he is an active and vocal spokesman of the red-blooded middle-class way of life; once more, he is a vocal opponent of Seneca Doane, labor unions, immigrants, and immorality. Meanwhile, the Good Citizens' League spreads throughout the country, making inroads into other commercial cities similar to Zenith. All the prosperous citizens and business leaders become members, devoting themselves to the establishment of solid, middle-class American life. In Zenith, Babbitt takes an active part in all these activities, and, not surprisingly, he soon regains the esteem of his old friends. He returns to his church, even though he is never completely convinced of the wisdom of Dr. Drew. Most of all, Babbitt takes pleasure once more in attending all the meetings and social affairs of the Elks, the Boosters, and the Athletic Club. Everything returns to normal. Verona and Escott are married, and the Street Traction Company allows Babbitt to handle its next crooked real-estate deal. During a vacation weekend, Ted and Eunice are secretly married, and Ted make plans to leave the university in order to take a better-paying factory job. When the two families involved learn about the wedding, they are shocked and irate. Everyone vehemently opposes the actions of the two rash young people. Babbitt speaks to Ted privately, however, and promises to support the boy's decision. He does not approve of having Ted's incomplete education or of his early marriage, but, Babbitt says, at least Ted is doing what he really wants to do. The most important thing, Babbitt says, is to be unafraid of the conventions and influences of the outside world and to do what one sees as the right course for himself. Babbitt says that he is sorry that he learned this lesson so late in his own life.


prompt:
Chapter: THE towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of
steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as
silver rods. They were neither citadels nor churches, but frankly and
beautifully office-buildings.

The mist took pity on the fretted structures of earlier generations: the
Post Office with its shingle-tortured mansard, the red brick minarets
of hulking old houses, factories with stingy and sooted windows, wooden
tenements colored like mud. The city was full of such grotesqueries, but
the clean towers were thrusting them from the business center, and
on the farther hills were shining new houses, homes--they seemed--for
laughter and tranquillity.

Over a concrete bridge fled a limousine of long sleek hood and noiseless
engine. These people in evening clothes were returning from an all-night
rehearsal of a Little Theater play, an artistic adventure considerably
illuminated by champagne. Below the bridge curved a railroad, a maze
of green and crimson lights. The New York Flyer boomed past, and twenty
lines of polished steel leaped into the glare.

In one of the skyscrapers the wires of the Associated Press were closing
down. The telegraph operators wearily raised their celluloid eye-shades
after a night of talking with Paris and Peking. Through the building
crawled the scrubwomen, yawning, their old shoes slapping. The dawn mist
spun away. Cues of men with lunch-boxes clumped toward the immensity of
new factories, sheets of glass and hollow tile, glittering shops where
five thousand men worked beneath one roof, pouring out the honest wares
that would be sold up the Euphrates and across the veldt. The whistles
rolled out in greeting a chorus cheerful as the April dawn; the song of
labor in a city built--it seemed--for giants.

II

There was nothing of the giant in the aspect of the man who was
beginning to awaken on the sleeping-porch of a Dutch Colonial house in
that residential district of Zenith known as Floral Heights.

His name was George F. Babbitt. He was forty-six years old now, in
April, 1920, and he made nothing in particular, neither butter nor shoes
nor poetry, but he was nimble in the calling of selling houses for more
than people could afford to pay.

His large head was pink, his brown hair thin and dry. His face was
babyish in slumber, despite his wrinkles and the red spectacle-dents on
the slopes of his nose. He was not fat but he was exceedingly well fed;
his cheeks were pads, and the unroughened hand which lay helpless upon
the khaki-colored blanket was slightly puffy. He seemed prosperous,
extremely married and unromantic; and altogether unromantic appeared
this sleeping-porch, which looked on one sizable elm, two respectable
grass-plots, a cement driveway, and a corrugated iron garage. Yet
Babbitt was again dreaming of the fairy child, a dream more romantic
than scarlet pagodas by a silver sea.

For years the fairy child had come to him. Where others saw but Georgie
Babbitt, she discerned gallant youth. She waited for him, in the
darkness beyond mysterious groves. When at last he could slip away from
the crowded house he darted to her. His wife, his clamoring friends,
sought to follow, but he escaped, the girl fleet beside him, and they
crouched together on a shadowy hillside. She was so slim, so white, so
eager! She cried that he was gay and valiant, that she would wait for
him, that they would sail--

Rumble and bang of the milk-truck.

Babbitt moaned; turned over; struggled back toward his dream. He could
see only her face now, beyond misty waters. The furnace-man slammed the
basement door. A dog barked in the next yard. As Babbitt sank blissfully
into a dim warm tide, the paper-carrier went by whistling, and the
rolled-up Advocate thumped the front door. Babbitt roused, his stomach
constricted with alarm. As he relaxed, he was pierced by the familiar
and irritating rattle of some one cranking a Ford: snap-ah-ah,
snap-ah-ah, snap-ah-ah. Himself a pious motorist, Babbitt cranked with
the unseen driver, with him waited through taut hours for the roar of
the starting engine, with him agonized as the roar ceased and again
began the infernal patient snap-ah-ah--a round, flat sound, a shivering
cold-morning sound, a sound infuriating and inescapable. Not till the
rising voice of the motor told him that the Ford was moving was he
released from the panting tension. He glanced once at his favorite tree,
elm twigs against the gold patina of sky, and fumbled for sleep as for a
drug. He who had been a boy very credulous of life was no longer greatly
interested in the possible and improbable adventures of each new day.

He escaped from reality till the alarm-clock rang, at seven-twenty.

III

It was the best of nationally advertised and quantitatively produced
alarm-clocks, with all modern attachments, including cathedral chime,
intermittent alarm, and a phosphorescent dial. Babbitt was proud
of being awakened by such a rich device. Socially it was almost as
creditable as buying expensive cord tires.

He sulkily admitted now that there was no more escape, but he lay and
detested the grind of the real-estate business, and disliked his family,
and disliked himself for disliking them. The evening before, he had
played poker at Vergil Gunch's till midnight, and after such holidays
he was irritable before breakfast. It may have been the tremendous
home-brewed beer of the prohibition-era and the cigars to which that
beer enticed him; it may have been resentment of return from this fine,
bold man-world to a restricted region of wives and stenographers, and of
suggestions not to smoke so much.

From the bedroom beside the sleeping-porch, his wife's detestably
cheerful "Time to get up, Georgie boy," and the itchy sound, the brisk
and scratchy sound, of combing hairs out of a stiff brush.

He grunted; he dragged his thick legs, in faded baby-blue pajamas, from
under the khaki blanket; he sat on the edge of the cot, running his
fingers through his wild hair, while his plump feet mechanically felt
for his slippers. He looked regretfully at the blanket--forever a
suggestion to him of freedom and heroism. He had bought it for a camping
trip which had never come off. It symbolized gorgeous loafing, gorgeous
cursing, virile flannel shirts.

He creaked to his feet, groaning at the waves of pain which passed
behind his eyeballs. Though he waited for their scorching recurrence, he
looked blurrily out at the yard. It delighted him, as always; it was
the neat yard of a successful business man of Zenith, that is, it was
perfection, and made him also perfect. He regarded the corrugated
iron garage. For the three-hundred-and-sixty-fifth time in a year he
reflected, "No class to that tin shack. Have to build me a frame garage.
But by golly it's the only thing on the place that isn't up-to-date!"
While he stared he thought of a community garage for his acreage
development, Glen Oriole. He stopped puffing and jiggling. His arms were
akimbo. His petulant, sleep-swollen face was set in harder lines. He
suddenly seemed capable, an official, a man to contrive, to direct, to
get things done.

On the vigor of his idea he was carried down the hard, clean,
unused-looking hall into the bathroom.

Though the house was not large it had, like all houses on Floral
Heights, an altogether royal bathroom of porcelain and glazed tile and
metal sleek as silver. The towel-rack was a rod of clear glass set in
nickel. The tub was long enough for a Prussian Guard, and above the
set bowl was a sensational exhibit of tooth-brush holder, shaving-brush
holder, soap-dish, sponge-dish, and medicine-cabinet, so glittering and
so ingenious that they resembled an electrical instrument-board. But the
Babbitt whose god was Modern Appliances was not pleased. The air of the
bathroom was thick with the smell of a heathen toothpaste. "Verona been
at it again! 'Stead of sticking to Lilidol, like I've re-peat-ed-ly
asked her, she's gone and gotten some confounded stinkum stuff that
makes you sick!"

The bath-mat was wrinkled and the floor was wet. (His daughter Verona
eccentrically took baths in the morning, now and then.) He slipped on
the mat, and slid against the tub. He said "Damn!" Furiously he snatched
up his tube of shaving-cream, furiously he lathered, with a belligerent
slapping of the unctuous brush, furiously he raked his plump cheeks
with a safety-razor. It pulled. The blade was dull. He said,
"Damn--oh--oh--damn it!"

He hunted through the medicine-cabinet for a packet of new razor-blades
(reflecting, as invariably, "Be cheaper to buy one of these dinguses and
strop your own blades,") and when he discovered the packet, behind the
round box of bicarbonate of soda, he thought ill of his wife for putting
it there and very well of himself for not saying "Damn." But he did say
it, immediately afterward, when with wet and soap-slippery fingers he
tried to remove the horrible little envelope and crisp clinging oiled
paper from the new blade. Then there was the problem, oft-pondered,
never solved, of what to do with the old blade, which might imperil
the fingers of his young. As usual, he tossed it on top of the
medicine-cabinet, with a mental note that some day he must remove the
fifty or sixty other blades that were also temporarily, piled up there.
He finished his shaving in a growing testiness increased by his spinning
headache and by the emptiness in his stomach. When he was done, his
round face smooth and streamy and his eyes stinging from soapy water,
he reached for a towel. The family towels were wet, wet and clammy and
vile, all of them wet, he found, as he blindly snatched them--his
own face-towel, his wife's, Verona's, Ted's, Tinka's, and the lone
bath-towel with the huge welt of initial. Then George F. Babbitt did
a dismaying thing. He wiped his face on the guest-towel! It was a
pansy-embroidered trifle which always hung there to indicate that the
Babbitts were in the best Floral Heights society. No one had ever used
it. No guest had ever dared to. Guests secretively took a corner of the
nearest regular towel.

He was raging, "By golly, here they go and use up all the towels, every
doggone one of 'em, and they use 'em and get 'em all wet and sopping,
and never put out a dry one for me--of course, I'm the goat!--and then
I want one and--I'm the only person in the doggone house that's got
the slightest doggone bit of consideration for other people and
thoughtfulness and consider there may be others that may want to use the
doggone bathroom after me and consider--"

He was pitching the chill abominations into the bath-tub, pleased by
the vindictiveness of that desolate flapping sound; and in the midst his
wife serenely trotted in, observed serenely, "Why Georgie dear, what are
you doing? Are you going to wash out the towels? Why, you needn't wash
out the towels. Oh, Georgie, you didn't go and use the guest-towel, did
you?"

It is not recorded that he was able to answer.

For the first time in weeks he was sufficiently roused by his wife to
look at her.

IV

Myra Babbitt--Mrs. George F. Babbitt--was definitely mature. She had
creases from the corners of her mouth to the bottom of her chin, and her
plump neck bagged. But the thing that marked her as having passed the
line was that she no longer had reticences before her husband, and no
longer worried about not having reticences. She was in a petticoat now,
and corsets which bulged, and unaware of being seen in bulgy corsets.
She had become so dully habituated to married life that in her full
matronliness she was as sexless as an anemic nun. She was a good woman,
a kind woman, a diligent woman, but no one, save perhaps Tinka her
ten-year-old, was at all interested in her or entirely aware that she
was alive.

After a rather thorough discussion of all the domestic and social
aspects of towels she apologized to Babbitt for his having an alcoholic
headache; and he recovered enough to endure the search for a B.V.D.
undershirt which had, he pointed out, malevolently been concealed among
his clean pajamas.

He was fairly amiable in the conference on the brown suit.

"What do you think, Myra?" He pawed at the clothes hunched on a chair in
their bedroom, while she moved about mysteriously adjusting and patting
her petticoat and, to his jaundiced eye, never seeming to get on with
her dressing. "How about it? Shall I wear the brown suit another day?"

"Well, it looks awfully nice on you."

"I know, but gosh, it needs pressing."

"That's so. Perhaps it does."

"It certainly could stand being pressed, all right."

"Yes, perhaps it wouldn't hurt it to be pressed."

"But gee, the coat doesn't need pressing. No sense in having the whole
darn suit pressed, when the coat doesn't need it."

"That's so."

"But the pants certainly need it, all right. Look at them--look at those
wrinkles--the pants certainly do need pressing."

"That's so. Oh, Georgie, why couldn't you wear the brown coat with the
blue trousers we were wondering what we'd do with them?"

"Good Lord! Did you ever in all my life know me to wear the coat of
one suit and the pants of another? What do you think I am? A busted
bookkeeper?"

"Well, why don't you put on the dark gray suit to-day, and stop in at
the tailor and leave the brown trousers?"

"Well, they certainly need--Now where the devil is that gray suit? Oh,
yes, here we are."

He was able to get through the other crises of dressing with comparative
resoluteness and calm.

His first adornment was the sleeveless dimity B.V.D. undershirt, in
which he resembled a small boy humorlessly wearing a cheesecloth tabard
at a civic pageant. He never put on B.V.D.'s without thanking the God of
Progress that he didn't wear tight, long, old-fashioned undergarments,
like his father-in-law and partner, Henry Thompson. His second
embellishment was combing and slicking back his hair. It gave him a
tremendous forehead, arching up two inches beyond the former hair-line.
But most wonder-working of all was the donning of his spectacles.

There is character in spectacles--the pretentious tortoiseshell, the
meek pince-nez of the school teacher, the twisted silver-framed glasses
of the old villager. Babbitt's spectacles had huge, circular, frameless
lenses of the very best glass; the ear-pieces were thin bars of gold. In
them he was the modern business man; one who gave orders to clerks and
drove a car and played occasional golf and was scholarly in regard to
Salesmanship. His head suddenly appeared not babyish but weighty, and
you noted his heavy, blunt nose, his straight mouth and thick, long
upper lip, his chin overfleshy but strong; with respect you beheld him
put on the rest of his uniform as a Solid Citizen.

The gray suit was well cut, well made, and completely undistinguished.
It was a standard suit. White piping on the V of the vest added a flavor
of law and learning. His shoes were black laced boots, good boots,
honest boots, standard boots, extraordinarily uninteresting boots.
The only frivolity was in his purple knitted scarf. With considerable
comment on the matter to Mrs. Babbitt (who, acrobatically fastening the
back of her blouse to her skirt with a safety-pin, did not hear a word
he said), he chose between the purple scarf and a tapestry effect
with stringless brown harps among blown palms, and into it he thrust a
snake-head pin with opal eyes.

A sensational event was changing from the brown suit to the gray the
contents of his pockets. He was earnest about these objects. They were
of eternal importance, like baseball or the Republican Party. They
included a fountain pen and a silver pencil (always lacking a supply of
new leads) which belonged in the righthand upper vest pocket. Without
them he would have felt naked. On his watch-chain were a gold penknife,
silver cigar-cutter, seven keys (the use of two of which he had
forgotten), and incidentally a good watch. Depending from the chain was
a large, yellowish elk's-tooth-proclamation of his membership in the
Brotherly and Protective Order of Elks. Most significant of all was his
loose-leaf pocket note-book, that modern and efficient note-book
which contained the addresses of people whom he had forgotten, prudent
memoranda of postal money-orders which had reached their destinations
months ago, stamps which had lost their mucilage, clippings of verses by
T. Cholmondeley Frink and of the newspaper editorials from which Babbitt
got his opinions and his polysyllables, notes to be sure and do things
which he did not intend to do, and one curious inscription--D.S.S.
D.M.Y.P.D.F.

But he had no cigarette-case. No one had ever happened to give him
one, so he hadn't the habit, and people who carried cigarette-cases he
regarded as effeminate.

Last, he stuck in his lapel the Boosters' Club button. With the
conciseness of great art the button displayed two words: "Boosters-Pep!"
It made Babbitt feel loyal and important. It associated him with Good
Fellows, with men who were nice and human, and important in business
circles. It was his V.C., his Legion of Honor ribbon, his Phi Beta Kappa
key.

With the subtleties of dressing ran other complex worries. "I feel kind
of punk this morning," he said. "I think I had too much dinner last
evening. You oughtn't to serve those heavy banana fritters."

"But you asked me to have some."

"I know, but--I tell you, when a fellow gets past forty he has to look
after his digestion. There's a lot of fellows that don't take proper
care of themselves. I tell you at forty a man's a fool or his doctor--I
mean, his own doctor. Folks don't give enough attention to this matter
of dieting. Now I think--Course a man ought to have a good meal after
the day's work, but it would be a good thing for both of us if we took
lighter lunches."

"But Georgie, here at home I always do have a light lunch."

"Mean to imply I make a hog of myself, eating down-town? Yes, sure!
You'd have a swell time if you had to eat the truck that new steward
hands out to us at the Athletic Club! But I certainly do feel out of
sorts, this morning. Funny, got a pain down here on the left side--but
no, that wouldn't be appendicitis, would it? Last night, when I was
driving over to Verg Gunch's, I felt a pain in my stomach, too. Right
here it was--kind of a sharp shooting pain. I--Where'd that dime go to?
Why don't you serve more prunes at breakfast? Of course I eat an apple
every evening--an apple a day keeps the doctor away--but still, you
ought to have more prunes, and not all these fancy doodads."

"The last time I had prunes you didn't eat them."

"Well, I didn't feel like eating 'em, I suppose. Matter of fact, I think
I did eat some of 'em. Anyway--I tell you it's mighty important to--I
was saying to Verg Gunch, just last evening, most people don't take
sufficient care of their diges--"

"Shall we have the Gunches for our dinner, next week?"

"Why sure; you bet."

"Now see here, George: I want you to put on your nice dinner-jacket that
evening."

"Rats! The rest of 'em won't want to dress."

"Of course they will. You remember when you didn't dress for the
Littlefields' supper-party, and all the rest did, and how embarrassed
you were."

"Embarrassed, hell! I wasn't embarrassed. Everybody knows I can put
on as expensive a Tux. as anybody else, and I should worry if I don't
happen to have it on sometimes. All a darn nuisance, anyway. All right
for a woman, that stays around the house all the time, but when a
fellow's worked like the dickens all day, he doesn't want to go and
hustle his head off getting into the soup-and-fish for a lot of folks
that he's seen in just reg'lar ordinary clothes that same day."

"You know you enjoy being seen in one. The other evening you admitted
you were glad I'd insisted on your dressing. You said you felt a lot
better for it. And oh, Georgie, I do wish you wouldn't say 'Tux.' It's
'dinner-jacket.'"

"Rats, what's the odds?"

"Well, it's what all the nice folks say. Suppose Lucile McKelvey heard
you calling it a 'Tux.'"

"Well, that's all right now! Lucile McKelvey can't pull anything on
me! Her folks are common as mud, even if her husband and her dad are
millionaires! I suppose you're trying to rub in your exalted social
position! Well, let me tell you that your revered paternal ancestor,
Henry T., doesn't even call it a 'Tux.'! He calls it a 'bobtail jacket
for a ringtail monkey,' and you couldn't get him into one unless you
chloroformed him!"

"Now don't be horrid, George."

"Well, I don't want to be horrid, but Lord! you're getting as fussy as
Verona. Ever since she got out of college she's been too rambunctious
to live with--doesn't know what she wants--well, I know what she
wants!--all she wants is to marry a millionaire, and live in Europe,
and hold some preacher's hand, and simultaneously at the same time stay
right here in Zenith and be some blooming kind of a socialist agitator
or boss charity-worker or some damn thing! Lord, and Ted is just as bad!
He wants to go to college, and he doesn't want to go to college.
Only one of the three that knows her own mind is Tinka. Simply can't
understand how I ever came to have a pair of shillyshallying children
like Rone and Ted. I may not be any Rockefeller or James J. Shakespeare,
but I certainly do know my own mind, and I do keep right on plugging
along in the office and--Do you know the latest? Far as I can figure
out, Ted's new bee is he'd like to be a movie actor and--And here I've
told him a hundred times, if he'll go to college and law-school and
make good, I'll set him up in business and--Verona just exactly as bad.
Doesn't know what she wants. Well, well, come on! Aren't you ready yet?
The girl rang the bell three minutes ago."

V

Before he followed his wife, Babbitt stood at the westernmost window of
their room. This residential settlement, Floral Heights, was on a rise;
and though the center of the city was three miles away--Zenith had
between three and four hundred thousand inhabitants now--he could see
the top of the Second National Tower, an Indiana limestone building of
thirty-five stories.

Its shining walls rose against April sky to a simple cornice like a
streak of white fire. Integrity was in the tower, and decision. It
bore its strength lightly as a tall soldier. As Babbitt stared,
the nervousness was soothed from his face, his slack chin lifted in
reverence. All he articulated was "That's one lovely sight!" but he was
inspired by the rhythm of the city; his love of it renewed. He beheld
the tower as a temple-spire of the religion of business, a faith
passionate, exalted, surpassing common men; and as he clumped down to
breakfast he whistled the ballad "Oh, by gee, by gosh, by jingo" as
though it were a hymn melancholy and noble.

RELIEVED of Babbitt's bumbling and the soft grunts with which his wife
expressed the sympathy she was too experienced to feel and much
too experienced not to show, their bedroom settled instantly into
impersonality.

It gave on the sleeping-porch. It served both of them as dressing-room,
and on the coldest nights Babbitt luxuriously gave up the duty of being
manly and retreated to the bed inside, to curl his toes in the warmth
and laugh at the January gale.

The room displayed a modest and pleasant color-scheme, after one of the
best standard designs of the decorator who "did the interiors" for most
of the speculative-builders' houses in Zenith. The walls were gray, the
woodwork white, the rug a serene blue; and very much like mahogany was
the furniture--the bureau with its great clear mirror, Mrs. Babbitt's
dressing-table with toilet-articles of almost solid silver, the plain
twin beds, between them a small table holding a standard electric
bedside lamp, a glass for water, and a standard bedside book
with colored illustrations--what particular book it was cannot be
ascertained, since no one had ever opened it. The mattresses were firm
but not hard, triumphant modern mattresses which had cost a great deal
of money; the hot-water radiator was of exactly the proper scientific
surface for the cubic contents of the room. The windows were large
and easily opened, with the best catches and cords, and Holland
roller-shades guaranteed not to crack. It was a masterpiece among
bedrooms, right out of Cheerful Modern Houses for Medium Incomes. Only
it had nothing to do with the Babbitts, nor with any one else. If people
had ever lived and loved here, read thrillers at midnight and lain in
beautiful indolence on a Sunday morning, there were no signs of it. It
had the air of being a very good room in a very good hotel. One expected
the chambermaid to come in and make it ready for people who would stay
but one night, go without looking back, and never think of it again.

Every second house in Floral Heights had a bedroom precisely like this.

The Babbitts' house was five years old. It was all as competent
and glossy as this bedroom. It had the best of taste, the best of
inexpensive rugs, a simple and laudable architecture, and the latest
conveniences. Throughout, electricity took the place of candles and
slatternly hearth-fires. Along the bedroom baseboard were three plugs
for electric lamps, concealed by little brass doors. In the halls were
plugs for the vacuum cleaner, and in the living-room plugs for the piano
lamp, for the electric fan. The trim dining-room (with its admirable oak
buffet, its leaded-glass cupboard, its creamy plaster walls, its modest
scene of a salmon expiring upon a pile of oysters) had plugs which
supplied the electric percolator and the electric toaster.

In fact there was but one thing wrong with the Babbitt house: It was not
a home.

II

Often of a morning Babbitt came bouncing and jesting in to breakfast.
But things were mysteriously awry to-day. As he pontifically tread the
upper hall he looked into Verona's bedroom and protested, "What's the
use of giving the family a high-class house when they don't appreciate
it and tend to business and get down to brass tacks?"

He marched upon them: Verona, a dumpy brown-haired girl of twenty-two,
just out of Bryn Mawr, given to solicitudes about duty and sex and
God and the unconquerable bagginess of the gray sports-suit she was now
wearing. Ted--Theodore Roosevelt Babbitt--a decorative boy of seventeen.
Tinka--Katherine--still a baby at ten, with radiant red hair and a
thin skin which hinted of too much candy and too many ice cream sodas.
Babbitt did not show his vague irritation as he tramped in. He really
disliked being a family tyrant, and his nagging was as meaningless as it
was frequent. He shouted at Tinka, "Well, kittiedoolie!" It was the only
pet name in his vocabulary, except the "dear" and "hon." with which he
recognized his wife, and he flung it at Tinka every morning.

He gulped a cup of coffee in the hope of pacifying his stomach and his
soul. His stomach ceased to feel as though it did not belong to him,
but Verona began to be conscientious and annoying, and abruptly there
returned to Babbitt the doubts regarding life and families and business
which had clawed at him when his dream-life and the slim fairy girl had
fled.

Verona had for six months been filing-clerk at the Gruensberg Leather
Company offices, with a prospect of becoming secretary to Mr. Gruensberg
and thus, as Babbitt defined it, "getting some good out of your
expensive college education till you're ready to marry and settle down."

But now said Verona: "Father! I was talking to a classmate of mine
that's working for the Associated Charities--oh, Dad, there's the
sweetest little babies that come to the milk-station there!--and I feel
as though I ought to be doing something worth while like that."

"What do you mean 'worth while'? If you get to be Gruensberg's
secretary--and maybe you would, if you kept up your shorthand and didn't
go sneaking off to concerts and talkfests every evening--I guess you'll
find thirty-five or forty bones a week worth while!"

"I know, but--oh, I want to--contribute--I wish I were working in a
settlement-house. I wonder if I could get one of the department-stores
to let me put in a welfare-department with a nice rest-room and chintzes
and wicker chairs and so on and so forth. Or I could--"

"Now you look here! The first thing you got to understand is that all
this uplift and flipflop and settlement-work and recreation is nothing
in God's world but the entering wedge for socialism. The sooner a man
learns he isn't going to be coddled, and he needn't expect a lot of free
grub and, uh, all these free classes and flipflop and doodads for his
kids unless he earns 'em, why, the sooner he'll get on the job and
produce--produce--produce! That's what the country needs, and not all
this fancy stuff that just enfeebles the will-power of the working man
and gives his kids a lot of notions above their class. And you--if you'd
tend to business instead of fooling and fussing--All the time! When I
was a young man I made up my mind what I wanted to do, and stuck to it
through thick and thin, and that's why I'm where I am to-day, and--Myra!
What do you let the girl chop the toast up into these dinky little
chunks for? Can't get your fist onto 'em. Half cold, anyway!"

Ted Babbitt, junior in the great East Side High School, had been making
hiccup-like sounds of interruption. He blurted now, "Say, Rone, you
going to--"

Verona whirled. "Ted! Will you kindly not interrupt us when we're
talking about serious matters!"

"Aw punk," said Ted judicially. "Ever since somebody slipped up and let
you out of college, Ammonia, you been pulling these nut conversations
about what-nots and so-on-and-so-forths. Are you going to--I want to use
the car tonight."

Babbitt snorted, "Oh, you do! May want it myself!" Verona protested,
"Oh, you do, Mr. Smarty! I'm going to take it myself!" Tinka wailed,
"Oh, papa, you said maybe you'd drive us down to Rosedale!" and Mrs.
Babbitt, "Careful, Tinka, your sleeve is in the butter." They glared,
and Verona hurled, "Ted, you're a perfect pig about the car!"

"Course you're not! Not a-tall!" Ted could be maddeningly bland. "You
just want to grab it off, right after dinner, and leave it in front of
some skirt's house all evening while you sit and gas about lite'ature
and the highbrows you're going to marry--if they only propose!"

"Well, Dad oughtn't to EVER let you have it! You and those beastly Jones
boys drive like maniacs. The idea of your taking the turn on Chautauqua
Place at forty miles an hour!"

"Aw, where do you get that stuff! You're so darn scared of the car that
you drive up-hill with the emergency brake on!"

"I do not! And you--Always talking about how much you know about motors,
and Eunice Littlefield told me you said the battery fed the generator!"

"You--why, my good woman, you don't know a generator from a
differential." Not unreasonably was Ted lofty with her. He was a natural
mechanic, a maker and tinkerer of machines; he lisped in blueprints for
the blueprints came.

"That'll do now!" Babbitt flung in mechanically, as he lighted the
gloriously satisfying first cigar of the day and tasted the exhilarating
drug of the Advocate-Times headlines.

Ted negotiated: "Gee, honest, Rone, I don't want to take the old boat,
but I promised couple o' girls in my class I'd drive 'em down to
the rehearsal of the school chorus, and, gee, I don't want to, but a
gentleman's got to keep his social engagements."

"Well, upon my word! You and your social engagements! In high school!"

"Oh, ain't we select since we went to that hen college! Let me tell you
there isn't a private school in the state that's got as swell a bunch as
we got in Gamma Digamma this year. There's two fellows that their dads
are millionaires. Say, gee, I ought to have a car of my own, like lots
of the fellows." Babbitt almost rose. "A car of your own! Don't you want
a yacht, and a house and lot? That pretty nearly takes the cake! A boy
that can't pass his Latin examinations, like any other boy ought to, and
he expects me to give him a motor-car, and I suppose a chauffeur, and an
areoplane maybe, as a reward for the hard work he puts in going to the
movies with Eunice Littlefield! Well, when you see me giving you--"

Somewhat later, after diplomacies, Ted persuaded Verona to admit that
she was merely going to the Armory, that evening, to see the dog and
cat show. She was then, Ted planned, to park the car in front of the
candy-store across from the Armory and he would pick it up. There were
masterly arrangements regarding leaving the key, and having the gasoline
tank filled; and passionately, devotees of the Great God Motor, they
hymned the patch on the spare inner-tube, and the lost jack-handle.

Their truce dissolving, Ted observed that her friends were "a scream of
a bunch-stuck-up gabby four-flushers." His friends, she indicated,
were "disgusting imitation sports, and horrid little shrieking ignorant
girls." Further: "It's disgusting of you to smoke cigarettes, and so on
and so forth, and those clothes you've got on this morning, they're too
utterly ridiculous--honestly, simply disgusting."

Ted balanced over to the low beveled mirror in the buffet, regarded his
charms, and smirked. His suit, the latest thing in Old Eli Togs, was
skin-tight, with skimpy trousers to the tops of his glaring tan boots, a
chorus-man waistline, pattern of an agitated check, and across the back
a belt which belted nothing. His scarf was an enormous black silk wad.
His flaxen hair was ice-smooth, pasted back without parting. When he
went to school he would add a cap with a long vizor like a shovel-blade.
Proudest of all was his waistcoat, saved for, begged for, plotted for;
a real Fancy Vest of fawn with polka dots of a decayed red, the points
astoundingly long. On the lower edge of it he wore a high-school button,
a class button, and a fraternity pin.

And none of it mattered. He was supple and swift and flushed; his eyes
(which he believed to be cynical) were candidly eager. But he was not
over-gentle. He waved his hand at poor dumpy Verona and drawled: "Yes, I
guess we're pretty ridiculous and disgusticulus, and I rather guess our
new necktie is some smear!"

Babbitt barked: "It is! And while you're admiring yourself, let me tell
you it might add to your manly beauty if you wiped some of that egg off
your mouth!"

Verona giggled, momentary victor in the greatest of Great Wars, which
is the family war. Ted looked at her hopelessly, then shrieked at Tinka:
"For the love o' Pete, quit pouring the whole sugar bowl on your corn
flakes!"

When Verona and Ted were gone and Tinka upstairs, Babbitt groaned to his
wife: "Nice family, I must say! I don't pretend to be any baa-lamb, and
maybe I'm a little cross-grained at breakfast sometimes, but the way
they go on jab-jab-jabbering, I simply can't stand it. I swear, I feel
like going off some place where I can get a little peace. I do think
after a man's spent his lifetime trying to give his kids a chance and
a decent education, it's pretty discouraging to hear them all the time
scrapping like a bunch of hyenas and never--and never--Curious; here
in the paper it says--Never silent for one mom--Seen the morning paper
yet?"

"No, dear." In twenty-three years of married life, Mrs. Babbitt had seen
the paper before her husband just sixty-seven times.

"Lots of news. Terrible big tornado in the South. Hard luck, all right.
But this, say, this is corking! Beginning of the end for those fellows!
New York Assembly has passed some bills that ought to completely outlaw
the socialists! And there's an elevator-runners' strike in New York and
a lot of college boys are taking their places. That's the stuff! And
a mass-meeting in Birmingham's demanded that this Mick agitator, this
fellow De Valera, be deported. Dead right, by golly! All these agitators
paid with German gold anyway. And we got no business interfering with
the Irish or any other foreign government. Keep our hands strictly off.
And there's another well-authenticated rumor from Russia that Lenin is
dead. That's fine. It's beyond me why we don't just step in there and
kick those Bolshevik cusses out."

"That's so," said Mrs. Babbitt.

"And it says here a fellow was inaugurated mayor in overalls--a
preacher, too! What do you think of that!"

"Humph! Well!"

He searched for an attitude, but neither as a Republican, a
Presbyterian, an Elk, nor a real-estate broker did he have any doctrine
about preacher-mayors laid down for him, so he grunted and went on. She
looked sympathetic and did not hear a word. Later she would read the
headlines, the society columns, and the department-store advertisements.

"What do you know about this! Charley McKelvey still doing the sassiety
stunt as heavy as ever. Here's what that gushy woman reporter says about
last night:"

Never is Society with the big, big S more flattered than when they are
bidden to partake of good cheer at the distinguished and hospitable
residence of Mr. and Mrs. Charles L. McKelvey as they were last night.
Set in its spacious lawns and landscaping, one of the notable sights
crowning Royal Ridge, but merry and homelike despite its mighty stone
walls and its vast rooms famed for their decoration, their home was
thrown open last night for a dance in honor of Mrs. McKelvey's notable
guest, Miss J. Sneeth of Washington. The wide hall is so generous in
its proportions that it made a perfect ballroom, its hardwood floor
reflecting the charming pageant above its polished surface. Even
the delights of dancing paled before the alluring opportunities for
tete-a-tetes that invited the soul to loaf in the long library before
the baronial fireplace, or in the drawing-room with its deep comfy
armchairs, its shaded lamps just made for a sly whisper of pretty
nothings all a deux; or even in the billiard room where one could take
a cue and show a prowess at still another game than that sponsored by
Cupid and Terpsichore.

There was more, a great deal more, in the best urban journalistic
style of Miss Elnora Pearl Bates, the popular society editor of the
Advocate-Times. But Babbitt could not abide it. He grunted. He wrinkled
the newspaper. He protested: "Can you beat it! I'm willing to hand a lot
of credit to Charley McKelvey. When we were in college together, he was
just as hard up as any of us, and he's made a million good bucks out
of contracting and hasn't been any dishonester or bought any more city
councils than was necessary. And that's a good house of his--though it
ain't any 'mighty stone walls' and it ain't worth the ninety thousand
it cost him. But when it comes to talking as though Charley McKelvey
and all that booze-hoisting set of his are any blooming bunch of of, of
Vanderbilts, why, it makes me tired!"

Timidly from Mrs. Babbitt: "I would like to see the inside of their
house though. It must be lovely. I've never been inside."

"Well, I have! Lots of--couple of times. To see Chaz about business
deals, in the evening. It's not so much. I wouldn't WANT to go there to
dinner with that gang of, of high-binders. And I'll bet I make a whole
lot more money than some of those tin-horns that spend all they got on
dress-suits and haven't got a decent suit of underwear to their name!
Hey! What do you think of this!"

Mrs. Babbitt was strangely unmoved by the tidings from the Real Estate
and Building column of the Advocate-Times:

     Ashtabula Street, 496--J. K. Dawson to
     Thomas Mullally, April 17, 15.7 X 112.2,
     mtg. $4000 . . . . . . . . . . . . . Nom

And this morning Babbitt was too disquieted to entertain her with items
from Mechanics' Liens, Mortgages Recorded, and Contracts Awarded. He
rose. As he looked at her his eyebrows seemed shaggier than usual.
Suddenly:

"Yes, maybe--Kind of shame to not keep in touch with folks like the
McKelveys. We might try inviting them to dinner, some evening. Oh,
thunder, let's not waste our good time thinking about 'em! Our little
bunch has a lot liver times than all those plutes. Just compare a real
human like you with these neurotic birds like Lucile McKelvey--all
highbrow talk and dressed up like a plush horse! You're a great old
girl, hon.!"

He covered his betrayal of softness with a complaining: "Say, don't let
Tinka go and eat any more of that poison nutfudge. For Heaven's sake,
try to keep her from ruining her digestion. I tell you, most folks don't
appreciate how important it is to have a good digestion and regular
habits. Be back 'bout usual time, I guess."

He kissed her--he didn't quite kiss her--he laid unmoving lips against
her unflushing cheek. He hurried out to the garage, muttering: "Lord,
what a family! And now Myra is going to get pathetic on me because we
don't train with this millionaire outfit. Oh, Lord, sometimes I'd like
to quit the whole game. And the office worry and detail just as bad. And
I act cranky and--I don't mean to, but I get--So darn tired!"

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

completion: On April 20 1920, dawn breaks over Zenith, a Midwestern town bustling with new skyscrapers, automobiles, and factories. George F. Babbitt, a 46-year-old real estate broker, reluctantly awakens from a recurring dream about his fairy girl, a slim maiden who fulfills his fantasies of being a "gallant, romantic youth." In reality, Babbitt is a middle-aged, rather pudgy family man. His home, replete with all the modern conveniences, is located in Floral Heights, the middle-class residential section of Zenith. The sounds of Zenith's morning activity, Babbitt's alarm clock, a pleasing example of the latest technology, and Myra Babbitt's cheerful morning greeting dispel the last vestiges of Babbitt's fantasy world. Babbitt sulkily embarks on his morning shaving ritual, grumbling that there are no dry towels. He resorts to the untouchable guest towel that even the guests do not normally use. Babbitt also has a headache because he spent the previous evening drinking Vergil Gunch's illegal home-brewed beer, smoking cigars, and playing poker. He resents having to leave the virile world of manly activities. Myra helps him dress, and then the family, composed of the Babbitts and their three children, Verona, Ted, and little Tinka, convenes in the kitchen for breakfast. Verona, a graduate of Bryn Mawr, works as a filing clerk, but she yearns for a socially responsible career. Babbitt views charity institutions as a threat to the work ethic of the poor, who he believes should learn to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. He prefers that Verona earn a promotion to secretary, a far more practical use of her expensive college education in his opinion. Ted, a junior at the local high school, isn't sure whether he wants to go to college. Ted's main concerns are nice clothes, girls, and cars. He and Verona bicker over the car while Tinka cries out that Babbitt promised to drive them all to Rosedale. Ted and Verona belittle each other's "social engagements," greatly irritating their father. Meanwhile, Tinka satisfies her voracious sweet tooth with heavily sugared cereal, much to Babbitt's displeasure. He has lately been concerned with the digestive health of his family. After the children depart from the table, Babbitt bemoans their incessant chattering. The morning newspaper calms his agitated nerves. He reads it aloud to Myra, but only the popular society column interests her. Babbitt grunts at the praise heaped on Charles McKelvey's parties at his lavish home. Myra hesitantly ventures that she would like to see the inside of his home. Babbitt asserts that Myra is "a great old girl" and states that it is regrettable that he didn't keep in touch with McKelvey after they graduated from college. Babbitt kisses her before leaving for work. Grumbling to himself at Myra's desire to associate with "this millionaire outfit," Babbitt exits his home to start his beloved car. He wishes he could dispense with "the whole game. " He doesn't mean to be irritable, but he constantly feels tired.