prompt:
Chapter: No apartment-house in Zenith had more resolutely experimented in
condensation than the Revelstoke Arms, in which Paul and Zilla Riesling
had a flat. By sliding the beds into low closets the bedrooms were
converted into living-rooms. The kitchens were cupboards each containing
an electric range, a copper sink, a glass refrigerator, and, very
intermittently, a Balkan maid. Everything about the Arms was excessively
modern, and everything was compressed--except the garages.

The Babbitts were calling on the Rieslings at the Arms. It was a
speculative venture to call on the Rieslings; interesting and sometimes
disconcerting. Zilla was an active, strident, full-blown, high-bosomed
blonde. When she condescended to be good-humored she was nervously
amusing. Her comments on people were saltily satiric and penetrative of
accepted hypocrisies. "That's so!" you said, and looked sheepish. She
danced wildly, and called on the world to be merry, but in the midst of
it she would turn indignant. She was always becoming indignant. Life was
a plot against her and she exposed it furiously.

She was affable to-night. She merely hinted that Orville Jones wore a
toupe, that Mrs. T. Cholmondeley Frink's singing resembled a Ford going
into high, and that the Hon. Otis Deeble, mayor of Zenith and candidate
for Congress, was a flatulent fool (which was quite true). The Babbitts
and Rieslings sat doubtfully on stone-hard brocade chairs in the small
living-room of the flat, with its mantel unprovided with a fireplace,
and its strip of heavy gilt fabric upon a glaring new player-piano, till
Mrs. Riesling shrieked, "Come on! Let's put some pep in it! Get out your
fiddle, Paul, and I'll try to make Georgie dance decently."

The Babbitts were in earnest. They were plotting for the escape to
Maine. But when Mrs. Babbitt hinted with plump smilingness, "Does
Paul get as tired after the winter's work as Georgie does?" then Zilla
remembered an injury; and when Zilla Riesling remembered an injury the
world stopped till something had been done about it.

"Does he get tired? No, he doesn't get tired, he just goes crazy, that's
all! You think Paul is so reasonable, oh, yes, and he loves to make out
he's a little lamb, but he's stubborn as a mule. Oh, if you had to live
with him--! You'd find out how sweet he is! He just pretends to be
meek so he can have his own way. And me, I get the credit for being
a terrible old crank, but if I didn't blow up once in a while and get
something started, we'd die of dry-rot. He never wants to go any place
and--Why, last evening, just because the car was out of order--and
that was his fault, too, because he ought to have taken it to the
service-station and had the battery looked at--and he didn't want to go
down to the movies on the trolley. But we went, and then there was one
of those impudent conductors, and Paul wouldn't do a thing.

"I was standing on the platform waiting for the people to let me into
the car, and this beast, this conductor, hollered at me, 'Come on, you,
move up!' Why, I've never had anybody speak to me that way in all my
life! I was so astonished I just turned to him and said--I thought there
must be some mistake, and so I said to him, perfectly pleasant, 'Were
you speaking to me?' and he went on and bellowed at me, 'Yes, I was!
You're keeping the whole car from starting!' he said, and then I saw he
was one of these dirty ill-bred hogs that kindness is wasted on, and so
I stopped and looked right at him, and I said, 'I--beg--your--pardon,
I am not doing anything of the kind,' I said, 'it's the people ahead of
me, who won't move up,' I said, 'and furthermore, let me tell you, young
man, that you're a low-down, foul-mouthed, impertinent skunk,' I said,
'and you're no gentleman! I certainly intend to report you, and we'll
see,' I said, 'whether a lady is to be insulted by any drunken bum that
chooses to put on a ragged uniform, and I'd thank you,' I said, 'to keep
your filthy abuse to yourself.' And then I waited for Paul to show
he was half a man and come to my defense, and he just stood there
and pretended he hadn't heard a word, and so I said to him, 'Well,' I
said--"

"Oh, cut it, cut it, Zill!" Paul groaned. "We all know I'm a
mollycoddle, and you're a tender bud, and let's let it go at that."

"Let it go?" Zilla's face was wrinkled like the Medusa, her voice was a
dagger of corroded brass. She was full of the joy of righteousness and
bad temper. She was a crusader and, like every crusader, she exulted
in the opportunity to be vicious in the name of virtue. "Let it go? If
people knew how many things I've let go--"

"Oh, quit being such a bully."

"Yes, a fine figure you'd cut if I didn't bully you! You'd lie abed till
noon and play your idiotic fiddle till midnight! You're born lazy, and
you're born shiftless, and you're born cowardly, Paul Riesling--"

"Oh, now, don't say that, Zilla; you don't mean a word of it!" protested
Mrs. Babbitt.

"I will say that, and I mean every single last word of it!"

"Oh, now, Zilla, the idea!" Mrs. Babbitt was maternal and fussy. She
was no older than Zilla, but she seemed so--at first. She was placid
and puffy and mature, where Zilla, at forty-five, was so bleached and
tight-corseted that you knew only that she was older than she looked.
"The idea of talking to poor Paul like that!"

"Poor Paul is right! We'd both be poor, we'd be in the poorhouse, if I
didn't jazz him up!"

"Why, now, Zilla, Georgie and I were just saying how hard Paul's been
working all year, and we were thinking it would be lovely if the Boys
could run off by themselves. I've been coaxing George to go up to Maine
ahead of the rest of us, and get the tired out of his system before we
come, and I think it would be lovely if Paul could manage to get away
and join him."

At this exposure of his plot to escape, Paul was startled out of
impassivity. He rubbed his fingers. His hands twitched.

Zilla bayed, "Yes! You're lucky! You can let George go, and not have to
watch him. Fat old Georgie! Never peeps at another woman! Hasn't got the
spunk!"

"The hell I haven't!" Babbitt was fervently defending his priceless
immorality when Paul interrupted him--and Paul looked dangerous. He rose
quickly; he said gently to Zilla:

"I suppose you imply I have a lot of sweethearts."

"Yes, I do!"

"Well, then, my dear, since you ask for it--There hasn't been a time in
the last ten years when I haven't found some nice little girl to
comfort me, and as long as you continue your amiability I shall probably
continue to deceive you. It isn't hard. You're so stupid."

Zilla gibbered; she howled; words could not be distinguished in her
slaver of abuse.

Then the bland George F. Babbitt was transformed. If Paul was dangerous,
if Zilla was a snake-locked fury, if the neat emotions suitable to the
Revelstoke Arms had been slashed into raw hatreds, it was Babbitt who
was the most formidable. He leaped up. He seemed very large. He seized
Zilla's shoulder. The cautions of the broker were wiped from his face,
and his voice was cruel:

"I've had enough of all this damn nonsense! I've known you for
twenty-five years, Zil, and I never knew you to miss a chance to take
your disappointments out on Paul. You're not wicked. You're worse.
You're a fool. And let me tell you that Paul is the finest boy God ever
made. Every decent person is sick and tired of your taking advantage of
being a woman and springing every mean innuendo you can think of.
Who the hell are you that a person like Paul should have to ask your
PERMISSION to go with me? You act like you were a combination of Queen
Victoria and Cleopatra. You fool, can't you see how people snicker at
you, and sneer at you?"

Zilla was sobbing, "I've never--I've never--nobody ever talked to me
like this in all my life!"

"No, but that's the way they talk behind your back! Always! They say
you're a scolding old woman. Old, by God!"

That cowardly attack broke her. Her eyes were blank. She wept. But
Babbitt glared stolidly. He felt that he was the all-powerful official
in charge; that Paul and Mrs. Babbitt looked on him with awe; that he
alone could handle this case.

Zilla writhed. She begged, "Oh, they don't!"

"They certainly do!"

"I've been a bad woman! I'm terribly sorry! I'll kill myself! I'll do
anything. Oh, I'll--What do you want?"

She abased herself completely. Also, she enjoyed it. To the connoisseur
of scenes, nothing is more enjoyable than a thorough, melodramatic,
egoistic humility.

"I want you to let Paul beat it off to Maine with me," Babbitt demanded.

"How can I help his going? You've just said I was an idiot and nobody
paid any attention to me."

"Oh, you can help it, all right, all right! What you got to do is to cut
out hinting that the minute he gets out of your sight, he'll go chasing
after some petticoat. Matter fact, that's the way you start the boy off
wrong. You ought to have more sense--"

"Oh, I will, honestly, I will, George. I know I was bad. Oh, forgive me,
all of you, forgive me--"

She enjoyed it.

So did Babbitt. He condemned magnificently and forgave piously, and as
he went parading out with his wife he was grandly explanatory to her:

"Kind of a shame to bully Zilla, but course it was the only way to
handle her. Gosh, I certainly did have her crawling!"

She said calmly, "Yes. You were horrid. You were showing off. You were
having a lovely time thinking what a great fine person you were!"

"Well, by golly! Can you beat it! Of course I might of expected you to
not stand by me! I might of expected you'd stick up for your own sex!"

"Yes. Poor Zilla, she's so unhappy. She takes it out on Paul. She hasn't
a single thing to do, in that little flat. And she broods too much. And
she used to be so pretty and gay, and she resents losing it. And you
were just as nasty and mean as you could be. I'm not a bit proud of
you--or of Paul, boasting about his horrid love-affairs!"

He was sulkily silent; he maintained his bad temper at a high level of
outraged nobility all the four blocks home. At the door he left her, in
self-approving haughtiness, and tramped the lawn.

With a shock it was revealed to him: "Gosh, I wonder if she was
right--if she was partly right?" Overwork must have flayed him to
abnormal sensitiveness; it was one of the few times in his life when he
had queried his eternal excellence; and he perceived the summer night,
smelled the wet grass. Then: "I don't care! I've pulled it off. We're
going to have our spree. And for Paul, I'd do anything."

II

They were buying their Maine tackle at Ijams Brothers', the Sporting
Goods Mart, with the help of Willis Ijams, fellow member of the
Boosters' Club. Babbitt was completely mad. He trumpeted and danced. He
muttered to Paul, "Say, this is pretty good, eh? To be buying the stuff,
eh? And good old Willis Ijams himself coming down on the floor to wait
on us! Say, if those fellows that are getting their kit for the North
Lakes knew we were going clear up to Maine, they'd have a fit, eh? . . .
Well, come on, Brother Ijams--Willis, I mean. Here's your chance! We're
a couple of easy marks! Whee! Let me at it! I'm going to buy out the
store!"

He gloated on fly-rods and gorgeous rubber hip-boots, on tents with
celluloid windows and folding chairs and ice-boxes. He simple-heartedly
wanted to buy all of them. It was the Paul whom he was always vaguely
protecting who kept him from his drunken desires.

But even Paul lightened when Willis Ijams, a salesman with poetry and
diplomacy, discussed flies. "Now, of course, you boys know." he said,
"the great scrap is between dry flies and wet flies. Personally, I'm for
dry flies. More sporting."

"That's so. Lots more sporting," fulminated Babbitt, who knew very
little about flies either wet or dry.

"Now if you'll take my advice, Georgie, you'll stock up well on these
pale evening dims, and silver sedges, and red ants. Oh, boy, there's a
fly, that red ant!"

"You bet! That's what it is--a fly!" rejoiced Babbitt.

"Yes, sir, that red ant," said Ijams, "is a real honest-to-God FLY!"

"Oh, I guess ole Mr. Trout won't come a-hustling when I drop one of
those red ants on the water!" asserted Babbitt, and his thick wrists
made a rapturous motion of casting.

"Yes, and the landlocked salmon will take it, too," said Ijams, who had
never seen a landlocked salmon.

"Salmon! Trout! Say, Paul, can you see Uncle George with his khaki pants
on haulin' 'em in, some morning 'bout seven? Whee!"

III

They were on the New York express, incredibly bound for Maine,
incredibly without their families. They were free, in a man's world, in
the smoking-compartment of the Pullman.

Outside the car window was a glaze of darkness stippled with the gold
of infrequent mysterious lights. Babbitt was immensely conscious, in
the sway and authoritative clatter of the train, of going, of going on.
Leaning toward Paul he grunted, "Gosh, pretty nice to be hiking, eh?"

The small room, with its walls of ocher-colored steel, was filled mostly
with the sort of men he classified as the Best Fellows You'll Ever
Meet--Real Good Mixers. There were four of them on the long seat; a fat
man with a shrewd fat face, a knife-edged man in a green velour hat,
a very young young man with an imitation amber cigarette-holder, and
Babbitt. Facing them, on two movable leather chairs, were Paul and a
lanky, old-fashioned man, very cunning, with wrinkles bracketing
his mouth. They all read newspapers or trade journals, boot-and-shoe
journals, crockery journals, and waited for the joys of conversation.
It was the very young man, now making his first journey by Pullman, who
began it.

"Say, gee, I had a wild old time in Zenith!" he gloried. "Say, if a
fellow knows the ropes there he can have as wild a time as he can in New
York!"

"Yuh, I bet you simply raised the old Ned. I figured you were a bad man
when I saw you get on the train!" chuckled the fat one.

The others delightedly laid down their papers.

"Well, that's all right now! I guess I seen some things in the Arbor you
never seen!" complained the boy.

"Oh, I'll bet you did! I bet you lapped up the malted milk like a
reg'lar little devil!"

Then, the boy having served as introduction, they ignored him and
charged into real talk. Only Paul, sitting by himself, reading at a
serial story in a newspaper, failed to join them and all but Babbitt
regarded him as a snob, an eccentric, a person of no spirit.

Which of them said which has never been determined, and does not matter,
since they all had the same ideas and expressed them always with the
same ponderous and brassy assurance. If it was not Babbitt who was
delivering any given verdict, at least he was beaming on the chancellor
who did deliver it.

"At that, though," announced the first "they're selling quite some booze
in Zenith. Guess they are everywhere. I don't know how you fellows
feel about prohibition, but the way it strikes me is that it's a mighty
beneficial thing for the poor zob that hasn't got any will-power but for
fellows like us, it's an infringement of personal liberty."

"That's a fact. Congress has got no right to interfere with a fellow's
personal liberty," contended the second.

A man came in from the car, but as all the seats were full he stood up
while he smoked his cigarette. He was an Outsider; he was not one of the
Old Families of the smoking-compartment. They looked upon him bleakly
and, after trying to appear at ease by examining his chin in the mirror,
he gave it up and went out in silence.

"Just been making a trip through the South. Business conditions not very
good down there," said one of the council.

"Is that a fact! Not very good, eh?"

"No, didn't strike me they were up to normal."

"Not up to normal, eh?"

"No, I wouldn't hardly say they were."

The whole council nodded sagely and decided, "Yump, not hardly up to
snuff."

"Well, business conditions ain't what they ought to be out West,
neither, not by a long shot."

"That's a fact. And I guess the hotel business feels it. That's one good
thing, though: these hotels that've been charging five bucks a day--yes,
and maybe six--seven!--for a rotten room are going to be darn glad to
get four, and maybe give you a little service."

"That's a fact. Say, uh, speaknubout hotels, I hit the St. Francis at
San Francisco for the first time, the other day, and, say, it certainly
is a first-class place."

"You're right, brother! The St. Francis is a swell place--absolutely
A1."

"That's a fact. I'm right with you. It's a first-class place."

"Yuh, but say, any of you fellows ever stay at the Rippleton, in
Chicago? I don't want to knock--I believe in boosting wherever you
can--but say, of all the rotten dumps that pass 'emselves off as
first-class hotels, that's the worst. I'm going to get those guys, one
of these days, and I told 'em so. You know how I am--well, maybe you
don't know, but I'm accustomed to first-class accommodations, and I'm
perfectly willing to pay a reasonable price. I got into Chicago late the
other night, and the Rippleton's near the station--I'd never been there
before, but I says to the taxi-driver--I always believe in taking a
taxi when you get in late; may cost a little more money, but, gosh, it's
worth it when you got to be up early next morning and out selling a lot
of crabs--and I said to him, 'Oh, just drive me over to the Rippleton.'

"Well, we got there, and I breezed up to the desk and said to the clerk,
'Well, brother, got a nice room with bath for Cousin Bill?' Saaaay!
You'd 'a' thought I'd sold him a second, or asked him to work on Yom
Kippur! He hands me the cold-boiled stare and yaps, 'I dunno, friend,
I'll see,' and he ducks behind the rigamajig they keep track of the
rooms on. Well, I guess he called up the Credit Association and the
American Security League to see if I was all right--he certainly took
long enough--or maybe he just went to sleep; but finally he comes out
and looks at me like it hurts him, and croaks, 'I think I can let
you have a room with bath.' 'Well, that's awful nice of you--sorry to
trouble you--how much 'll it set me back?' I says, real sweet. 'It'll
cost you seven bucks a day, friend,' he says.

"Well, it was late, and anyway, it went down on my
expense-account--gosh, if I'd been paying it instead of the firm, I'd
'a' tramped the streets all night before I'd 'a' let any hick tavern
stick me seven great big round dollars, believe me! So I lets it go at
that. Well, the clerk wakes a nice young bell hop--fine lad--not a day
over seventy-nine years old--fought at the Battle of Gettysburg and
doesn't know it's over yet--thought I was one of the Confederates, I
guess, from the way he looked at me--and Rip van Winkle took me up to
something--I found out afterwards they called it a room, but first I
thought there'd been some mistake--I thought they were putting me in the
Salvation Army collection-box! At seven per each and every diem! Gosh!"

"Yuh, I've heard the Rippleton was pretty cheesy. Now, when I go to
Chicago I always stay at the Blackstone or the La Salle--first-class
places."

"Say, any of you fellows ever stay at the Birchdale at Terre Haute? How
is it?"

"Oh, the Birchdale is a first-class hotel."

(Twelve minutes of conference on the state of hotels in South Bend,
Flint, Dayton, Tulsa, Wichita, Fort Worth, Winona, Erie, Fargo, and
Moose Jaw.)

"Speaknubout prices," the man in the velour hat observed, fingering the
elk-tooth on his heavy watch-chain, "I'd like to know where they get
this stuff about clothes coming down. Now, you take this suit I got on."
He pinched his trousers-leg. "Four years ago I paid forty-two fifty for
it, and it was real sure-'nough value. Well, here the other day I went
into a store back home and asked to see a suit, and the fellow yanks out
some hand-me-downs that, honest, I wouldn't put on a hired man. Just out
of curiosity I asks him, 'What you charging for that junk?' 'Junk,' he
says, 'what d' you mean junk? That's a swell piece of goods, all wool--'
Like hell! It was nice vegetable wool, right off the Ole Plantation!
'It's all wool,' he says, 'and we get sixty-seven ninety for it.' 'Oh,
you do, do you!' I says. 'Not from me you don't,' I says, and I walks
right out on him. You bet! I says to the wife, 'Well,' I said, 'as long
as your strength holds out and you can go on putting a few more patches
on papa's pants, we'll just pass up buying clothes."'

"That's right, brother. And just look at collars, frinstance--"

"Hey! Wait!" the fat man protested. "What's the matter with collars? I'm
selling collars! D' you realize the cost of labor on collars is still
two hundred and seven per cent. above--"

They voted that if their old friend the fat man sold collars, then the
price of collars was exactly what it should be; but all other clothing
was tragically too expensive. They admired and loved one another now.
They went profoundly into the science of business, and indicated that
the purpose of manufacturing a plow or a brick was so that it might be
sold. To them, the Romantic Hero was no longer the knight, the wandering
poet, the cowpuncher, the aviator, nor the brave young district
attorney, but the great sales-manager, who had an Analysis of
Merchandizing Problems on his glass-topped desk, whose title of nobility
was "Go-getter," and who devoted himself and all his young samurai to
the cosmic purpose of Selling--not of selling anything in particular,
for or to anybody in particular, but pure Selling.

The shop-talk roused Paul Riesling. Though he was a player of violins
and an interestingly unhappy husband, he was also a very able salesman
of tar-roofing. He listened to the fat man's remarks on "the value of
house-organs and bulletins as a method of jazzing-up the Boys out on the
road;" and he himself offered one or two excellent thoughts on the use
of two-cent stamps on circulars. Then he committed an offense against
the holy law of the Clan of Good Fellows. He became highbrow.

They were entering a city. On the outskirts they passed a steel-mill
which flared in scarlet and orange flame that licked at the cadaverous
stacks, at the iron-sheathed walls and sullen converters.

"My Lord, look at that--beautiful!" said Paul.

"You bet it's beautiful, friend. That's the Shelling-Horton Steel Plant,
and they tell me old John Shelling made a good three million bones
out of munitions during the war!" the man with the velour hat said
reverently.

"I didn't mean--I mean it's lovely the way the light pulls that
picturesque yard, all littered with junk, right out of the darkness,"
said Paul.

They stared at him, while Babbitt crowed, "Paul there has certainly got
one great little eye for picturesque places and quaint sights and all
that stuff. 'D of been an author or something if he hadn't gone into the
roofing line."

Paul looked annoyed. (Babbitt sometimes wondered if Paul appreciated his
loyal boosting.) The man in the velour hat grunted, "Well, personally,
I think Shelling-Horton keep their works awful dirty. Bum routing. But
I don't suppose there's any law against calling 'em 'picturesque' if it
gets you that way!"

Paul sulkily returned to his newspaper and the conversation logically
moved on to trains.

"What time do we get into Pittsburg?" asked Babbitt.

"Pittsburg? I think we get in at--no, that was last year's
schedule--wait a minute--let's see--got a time-table right here."

"I wonder if we're on time?"

"Yuh, sure, we must be just about on time."

"No, we aren't--we were seven minutes late, last station."

"Were we? Straight? Why, gosh, I thought we were right on time."

"No, we're about seven minutes late."

"Yuh, that's right; seven minutes late."

The porter entered--a negro in white jacket with brass buttons.

"How late are we, George?" growled the fat man.

"'Deed, I don't know, sir. I think we're about on time," said the
porter, folding towels and deftly tossing them up on the rack above the
washbowls. The council stared at him gloomily and when he was gone they
wailed:

"I don't know what's come over these niggers, nowadays. They never give
you a civil answer."

"That's a fact. They're getting so they don't have a single bit of
respect for you. The old-fashioned coon was a fine old cuss--he knew
his place--but these young dinges don't want to be porters or
cotton-pickers. Oh, no! They got to be lawyers and professors and Lord
knows what all! I tell you, it's becoming a pretty serious problem. We
ought to get together and show the black man, yes, and the yellow man,
his place. Now, I haven't got one particle of race-prejudice. I'm the
first to be glad when a nigger succeeds--so long as he stays where he
belongs and doesn't try to usurp the rightful authority and business
ability of the white man."

"That's the i.! And another thing we got to do," said the man with the
velour hat (whose name was Koplinsky), "is to keep these damn
foreigners out of the country. Thank the Lord, we're putting a limit on
immigration. These Dagoes and Hunkies have got to learn that this is a
white man's country, and they ain't wanted here. When we've assimilated
the foreigners we got here now and learned 'em the principles of
Americanism and turned 'em into regular folks, why then maybe we'll let
in a few more."

"You bet. That's a fact," they observed, and passed on to lighter
topics. They rapidly reviewed motor-car prices, tire-mileage,
oil-stocks, fishing, and the prospects for the wheat-crop in Dakota.

But the fat man was impatient at this waste of time. He was a veteran
traveler and free of illusions. Already he had asserted that he was
"an old he-one." He leaned forward, gathered in their attention by his
expression of sly humor, and grumbled, "Oh, hell, boys, let's cut out
the formality and get down to the stories!"

They became very lively and intimate.

Paul and the boy vanished. The others slid forward on the long seat,
unbuttoned their vests, thrust their feet up on the chairs, pulled the
stately brass cuspidors nearer, and ran the green window-shade down on
its little trolley, to shut them in from the uncomfortable strangeness
of night. After each bark of laughter they cried, "Say, jever hear the
one about--" Babbitt was expansive and virile. When the train stopped
at an important station, the four men walked up and down the cement
platform, under the vast smoky train-shed roof, like a stormy sky, under
the elevated footways, beside crates of ducks and sides of beef, in the
mystery of an unknown city. They strolled abreast, old friends and well
content. At the long-drawn "Alllll aboarrrrrd"--like a mountain call at
dusk--they hastened back into the smoking-compartment, and till two of
the morning continued the droll tales, their eyes damp with cigar-smoke
and laughter. When they parted they shook hands, and chuckled, "Well,
sir, it's been a great session. Sorry to bust it up. Mighty glad to met
you."

Babbitt lay awake in the close hot tomb of his Pullman berth, shaking
with remembrance of the fat man's limerick about the lady who wished to
be wild. He raised the shade; he lay with a puffy arm tucked between his
head and the skimpy pillow, looking out on the sliding silhouettes of
trees, and village lamps like exclamation-points. He was very happy.

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

completion: George and Myra visit Paul and Zilla Riesling at their apartment in the Revelstoke Arms with the intent of convincing Zilla to permit Paul to leave early for Maine. When the Rieslings start to argue and Zilla criticizes Paul, Babbitt comes ardently and ferociously to his friend's defense, chastising Zilla for her "damn nonsense" , calling her a fool, and telling her that people speak ill of her behind her back. Zilla reverts to tears and dramatic self-abasement, yet she eventually grants Paul the freedom to go without her. Afterwards, Myra scolds George for being so cruel. On the train to Maine, George and Paul sit and talk with four men who all seem to share the same opinions about Prohibition, hotels, and the rising cost of clothing. Though Paul does not get along very well with these men, George feels "expansive and virile" in their presence. They stay awake talking late into the night, and when George finally goes to bed, he is "very happy"


prompt:
Chapter: I

THEY had four hours in New York between trains. The one thing Babbitt
wished to see was the Pennsylvania Hotel, which had been built since his
last visit. He stared up at it, muttering, "Twenty-two hundred rooms and
twenty-two hundred baths! That's got everything in the world beat. Lord,
their turnover must be--well, suppose price of rooms is four to eight
dollars a day, and I suppose maybe some ten and--four times twenty-two
hundred-say six times twenty-two hundred--well, anyway, with restaurants
and everything, say summers between eight and fifteen thousand a day.
Every day! I never thought I'd see a thing like that! Some town! Of
course the average fellow in Zenith has got more Individual Initiative
than the fourflushers here, but I got to hand it to New York. Yes, sir,
town, you're all right--some ways. Well, old Paulski, I guess we've
seen everything that's worth while. How'll we kill the rest of the time?
Movie?"

But Paul desired to see a liner. "Always wanted to go to Europe--and, by
thunder, I will, too, some day before I past out," he sighed.

From a rough wharf on the North River they stared at the stern of
the Aquitania and her stacks and wireless antenna lifted above the
dock-house which shut her in.

"By golly," Babbitt droned, "wouldn't be so bad to go over to the
Old Country and take a squint at all these ruins, and the place where
Shakespeare was born. And think of being able to order a drink whenever
you wanted one! Just range up to a bar and holler out loud, 'Gimme a
cocktail, and darn the police!' Not bad at all. What juh like to see,
over there, Paulibus?"

Paul did not answer. Babbitt turned. Paul was standing with clenched
fists, head drooping, staring at the liner as in terror. His thin body,
seen against the summer-glaring planks of the wharf, was childishly
meager.

Again, "What would you hit for on the other side, Paul?"

Scowling at the steamer, his breast heaving, Paul whispered, "Oh, my
God!" While Babbitt watched him anxiously he snapped, "Come on, let's
get out of this," and hastened down the wharf, not looking back.

"That's funny," considered Babbitt. "The boy didn't care for seeing the
ocean boats after all. I thought he'd be interested in 'em."

II

Though he exulted, and made sage speculations about locomotive
horse-power, as their train climbed the Maine mountain-ridge and from
the summit he looked down the shining way among the pines; though he
remarked, "Well, by golly!" when he discovered that the station at
Katadumcook, the end of the line, was an aged freight-car; Babbitt's
moment of impassioned release came when they sat on a tiny wharf on Lake
Sunasquam, awaiting the launch from the hotel. A raft had floated down
the lake; between the logs and the shore, the water was transparent,
thin-looking, flashing with minnows. A guide in black felt hat with
trout-flies in the band, and flannel shirt of a peculiarly daring blue,
sat on a log and whittled and was silent. A dog, a good country
dog, black and woolly gray, a dog rich in leisure and in meditation,
scratched and grunted and slept. The thick sunlight was lavish on the
bright water, on the rim of gold-green balsam boughs, the silver birches
and tropic ferns, and across the lake it burned on the sturdy shoulders
of the mountains. Over everything was a holy peace.

Silent, they loafed on the edge of the wharf, swinging their legs above
the water. The immense tenderness of the place sank into Babbitt, and
he murmured, "I'd just like to sit here--the rest of my life--and
whittle--and sit. And never hear a typewriter. Or Stan Graff fussing in
the 'phone. Or Rone and Ted scrapping. Just sit. Gosh!"

He patted Paul's shoulder. "How does it strike you, old snoozer?"

"Oh, it's darn good, Georgie. There's something sort of eternal about
it."

For once, Babbitt understood him.

III

Their launch rounded the bend; at the head of the lake, under a mountain
slope, they saw the little central dining-shack of their hotel and the
crescent of squat log cottages which served as bedrooms. They landed,
and endured the critical examination of the habitues who had been at the
hotel for a whole week. In their cottage, with its high stone fireplace,
they hastened, as Babbitt expressed it, to "get into some regular
he-togs." They came out; Paul in an old gray suit and soft white shirt;
Babbitt in khaki shirt and vast and flapping khaki trousers. It was
excessively new khaki; his rimless spectacles belonged to a city office;
and his face was not tanned but a city pink. He made a discordant noise
in the place. But with infinite satisfaction he slapped his legs and
crowed, "Say, this is getting back home, eh?"

They stood on the wharf before the hotel. He winked at Paul and drew
from his back pocket a plug of chewing-tobacco, a vulgarism forbidden
in the Babbitt home. He took a chew, beaming and wagging his head as
he tugged at it. "Um! Um! Maybe I haven't been hungry for a wad of
eating-tobacco! Have some?"

They looked at each other in a grin of understanding. Paul took the
plug, gnawed at it. They stood quiet, their jaws working. They solemnly
spat, one after the other, into the placid water. They stretched
voluptuously, with lifted arms and arched backs. From beyond the
mountains came the shuffling sound of a far-off train. A trout leaped,
and fell back in a silver circle. They sighed together.

IV

They had a week before their families came. Each evening they planned to
get up early and fish before breakfast. Each morning they lay abed till
the breakfast-bell, pleasantly conscious that there were no efficient
wives to rouse them. The mornings were cold; the fire was kindly as they
dressed.

Paul was distressingly clean, but Babbitt reveled in a good sound
dirtiness, in not having to shave till his spirit was moved to it. He
treasured every grease spot and fish-scale on his new khaki trousers.

All morning they fished unenergetically, or tramped the dim and
aqueous-lighted trails among rank ferns and moss sprinkled with crimson
bells. They slept all afternoon, and till midnight played stud-poker
with the guides. Poker was a serious business to the guides. They did
not gossip; they shuffled the thick greasy cards with a deft ferocity
menacing to the "sports;" and Joe Paradise, king of guides, was
sarcastic to loiterers who halted the game even to scratch.

At midnight, as Paul and he blundered to their cottage over the pungent
wet grass, and pine-roots confusing in the darkness, Babbitt rejoiced
that he did not have to explain to his wife where he had been all
evening.

They did not talk much. The nervous loquacity and opinionation of the
Zenith Athletic Club dropped from them. But when they did talk they
slipped into the naive intimacy of college days. Once they drew their
canoe up to the bank of Sunasquam Water, a stream walled in by the dense
green of the hardhack. The sun roared on the green jungle but in the
shade was sleepy peace, and the water was golden and rippling. Babbitt
drew his hand through the cool flood, and mused:

"We never thought we'd come to Maine together!"

"No. We've never done anything the way we thought we would. I expected
to live in Germany with my granddad's people, and study the fiddle."

"That's so. And remember how I wanted to be a lawyer and go into
politics? I still think I might have made a go of it. I've kind of got
the gift of the gab--anyway, I can think on my feet, and make some kind
of a spiel on most anything, and of course that's the thing you need in
politics. By golly, Ted's going to law-school, even if I didn't! Well--I
guess it's worked out all right. Myra's been a fine wife. And Zilla
means well, Paulibus."

"Yes. Up here, I figure out all sorts of plans to keep her amused. I
kind of feel life is going to be different, now that we're getting a
good rest and can go back and start over again."

"I hope so, old boy." Shyly: "Say, gosh, it's been awful nice to sit
around and loaf and gamble and act regular, with you along, you old
horse-thief!"

"Well, you know what it means to me, Georgie. Saved my life."

The shame of emotion overpowered them; they cursed a little, to prove
they were good rough fellows; and in a mellow silence, Babbitt whistling
while Paul hummed, they paddled back to the hotel.

V

Though it was Paul who had seemed overwrought, Babbitt who had been the
protecting big brother, Paul became clear-eyed and merry, while Babbitt
sank into irritability. He uncovered layer on layer of hidden weariness.
At first he had played nimble jester to Paul and for him sought
amusements; by the end of the week Paul was nurse, and Babbitt accepted
favors with the condescension one always shows a patient nurse.

The day before their families arrived, the women guests at the
hotel bubbled, "Oh, isn't it nice! You must be so excited;" and the
proprieties compelled Babbitt and Paul to look excited. But they went to
bed early and grumpy.

When Myra appeared she said at once, "Now, we want you boys to go on
playing around just as if we weren't here."

The first evening, he stayed out for poker with the guides, and she said
in placid merriment, "My! You're a regular bad one!" The second evening,
she groaned sleepily, "Good heavens, are you going to be out every
single night?" The third evening, he didn't play poker.

He was tired now in every cell. "Funny! Vacation doesn't seem to have
done me a bit of good," he lamented. "Paul's frisky as a colt, but I
swear, I'm crankier and nervouser than when I came up here."

He had three weeks of Maine. At the end of the second week he began to
feel calm, and interested in life. He planned an expedition to climb
Sachem Mountain, and wanted to camp overnight at Box Car Pond. He was
curiously weak, yet cheerful, as though he had cleansed his veins of
poisonous energy and was filling them with wholesome blood.

He ceased to be irritated by Ted's infatuation with a waitress (his
seventh tragic affair this year); he played catch with Ted, and with
pride taught him to cast a fly in the pine-shadowed silence of Skowtuit
Pond.

At the end he sighed, "Hang it, I'm just beginning to enjoy my vacation.
But, well, I feel a lot better. And it's going to be one great year!
Maybe the Real Estate Board will elect me president, instead of some
fuzzy old-fashioned faker like Chan Mott."

On the way home, whenever he went into the smoking-compartment he felt
guilty at deserting his wife and angry at being expected to feel guilty,
but each time he triumphed, "Oh, this is going to be a great year, a
great old year!"

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

completion: During their layover in New York, Paul wants to see the Aquitania, declaring that he "Always wanted to go to Europe". As they stare at the line, Paul becomes so tense and agitated that they have to leave. In Maine, George and Paul spend their time relaxing and sitting at the edge of a wharf. For the week before their families arrive, the men indulge themselves by sleeping late, chewing tobacco, playing poker late into the night, and not bathing every day. They view the vacation as a chance to get "a good rest. and start over again". Over the course of the week, Paul becomes increasingly relaxed and cheerful, whereas George becomes increasingly weary and overwrought. When his family arrives, he is agitated again and reminded of his troublesome sense of obligation, though he is able to enjoy spending time with Ted and feels somewhat rejuvenated


prompt:
Chapter: I

ALL the way home from Maine, Babbitt was certain that he was a changed
man. He was converted to serenity. He was going to cease worrying
about business. He was going to have more "interests"--theaters, public
affairs, reading. And suddenly, as he finished an especially heavy
cigar, he was going to stop smoking.

He invented a new and perfect method. He would buy no tobacco; he would
depend on borrowing it; and, of course, he would be ashamed to borrow
often. In a spasm of righteousness he flung his cigar-case out of the
smoking-compartment window. He went back and was kind to his wife
about nothing in particular; he admired his own purity, and decided,
"Absolutely simple. Just a matter of will-power." He started a magazine
serial about a scientific detective. Ten miles on, he was conscious that
he desired to smoke. He ducked his head, like a turtle going into its
shell; he appeared uneasy; he skipped two pages in his story and didn't
know it. Five miles later, he leaped up and sought the porter. "Say,
uh, George, have you got a--" The porter looked patient. "Have you got a
time-table?" Babbitt finished. At the next stop he went out and bought a
cigar. Since it was to be his last before he reached Zenith, he finished
it down to an inch stub.

Four days later he again remembered that he had stopped smoking, but he
was too busy catching up with his office-work to keep it remembered.

II

Baseball, he determined, would be an excellent hobby. "No sense a man's
working his fool head off. I'm going out to the Game three times a week.
Besides, fellow ought to support the home team."

He did go and support the team, and enhance the glory of Zenith, by
yelling "Attaboy!" and "Rotten!" He performed the rite scrupulously. He
wore a cotton handkerchief about his collar; he became sweaty; he opened
his mouth in a wide loose grin; and drank lemon soda out of a bottle. He
went to the Game three times a week, for one week. Then he compromised
on watching the Advocate-Times bulletin-board. He stood in the thickest
and steamiest of the crowd, and as the boy up on the lofty platform
recorded the achievements of Big Bill Bostwick, the pitcher, Babbitt
remarked to complete strangers, "Pretty nice! Good work!" and hastened
back to the office.

He honestly believed that he loved baseball. It is true that he hadn't,
in twenty-five years, himself played any baseball except back-lot catch
with Ted--very gentle, and strictly limited to ten minutes. But the
game was a custom of his clan, and it gave outlet for the homicidal and
sides-taking instincts which Babbitt called "patriotism" and "love of
sport."

As he approached the office he walked faster and faster, muttering,
"Guess better hustle." All about him the city was hustling, for
hustling's sake. Men in motors were hustling to pass one another in
the hustling traffic. Men were hustling to catch trolleys, with another
trolley a minute behind, and to leap from the trolleys, to gallop across
the sidewalk, to hurl themselves into buildings, into hustling express
elevators. Men in dairy lunches were hustling to gulp down the food
which cooks had hustled to fry. Men in barber shops were snapping, "Jus'
shave me once over. Gotta hustle." Men were feverishly getting rid of
visitors in offices adorned with the signs, "This Is My Busy Day" and
"The Lord Created the World in Six Days--You Can Spiel All You Got to
Say in Six Minutes." Men who had made five thousand, year before last,
and ten thousand last year, were urging on nerve-yelping bodies and
parched brains so that they might make twenty thousand this year;
and the men who had broken down immediately after making their twenty
thousand dollars were hustling to catch trains, to hustle through the
vacations which the hustling doctors had ordered.

Among them Babbitt hustled back to his office, to sit down with
nothing much to do except see that the staff looked as though they were
hustling.

III

Every Saturday afternoon he hustled out to his country club and hustled
through nine holes of golf as a rest after the week's hustle.

In Zenith it was as necessary for a Successful Man to belong to a
country club as it was to wear a linen collar. Babbitt's was the Outing
Golf and Country Club, a pleasant gray-shingled building with a broad
porch, on a daisy-starred cliff above Lake Kennepoose. There was
another, the Tonawanda Country Club, to which belonged Charles McKelvey,
Horace Updike, and the other rich men who lunched not at the Athletic
but at the Union Club. Babbitt explained with frequency, "You couldn't
hire me to join the Tonawanda, even if I did have a hundred and eighty
bucks to throw away on the initiation fee. At the Outing we've got
a bunch of real human fellows, and the finest lot of little women in
town--just as good at joshing as the men--but at the Tonawanda there's
nothing but these would-be's in New York get-ups, drinking tea! Too
much dog altogether. Why, I wouldn't join the Tonawanda even if they--I
wouldn't join it on a bet!"

When he had played four or five holes, he relaxed a bit, his
tobacco-fluttering heart beat more normally, and his voice slowed to the
drawling of his hundred generations of peasant ancestors.

IV

At least once a week Mr. and Mrs. Babbitt and Tinka went to the movies.
Their favorite motion-picture theater was the Chateau, which held three
thousand spectators and had an orchestra of fifty pieces which played
Arrangements from the Operas and suites portraying a Day on the Farm,
or a Four-alarm Fire. In the stone rotunda, decorated with
crown-embroidered velvet chairs and almost medieval tapestries,
parrakeets sat on gilded lotos columns.

With exclamations of "Well, by golly!" and "You got to go some to
beat this dump!" Babbitt admired the Chateau. As he stared across the
thousands of heads, a gray plain in the dimness, as he smelled good
clothes and mild perfume and chewing-gum, he felt as when he had first
seen a mountain and realized how very, very much earth and rock there
was in it.

He liked three kinds of films: pretty bathing girls with bare legs;
policemen or cowboys and an industrious shooting of revolvers; and
funny fat men who ate spaghetti. He chuckled with immense, moist-eyed
sentimentality at interludes portraying puppies, kittens, and chubby
babies; and he wept at deathbeds and old mothers being patient in
mortgaged cottages. Mrs. Babbitt preferred the pictures in which
handsome young women in elaborate frocks moved through sets ticketed as
the drawing-rooms of New York millionaires. As for Tinka, she preferred,
or was believed to prefer, whatever her parents told her to.

All his relaxations--baseball, golf, movies, bridge, motoring, long
talks with Paul at the Athletic Club, or at the Good Red Beef and Old
English Chop House--were necessary to Babbitt, for he was entering a
year of such activity as he had never known.

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

completion: Returning from Maine, George is convinced that he is "a changed man" and that he is "converted to serenity". He vows to pursue interests and hobbies, such as baseball and movies, and to stop smoking. But he can never remember not to smoke, and he stops attending baseball games within one week. He becomes entangled, once again, with the hustle of life in Zenith


prompt:
Chapter: I

IT was by accident that Babbitt had his opportunity to address the S. A.
R. E. B.

The S. A. R. E. B., as its members called it, with the universal
passion for mysterious and important-sounding initials, was the State
Association of Real Estate Boards; the organization of brokers and
operators. It was to hold its annual convention at Monarch, Zenith's
chief rival among the cities of the state. Babbitt was an official
delegate; another was Cecil Rountree, whom Babbitt admired for his
picaresque speculative building, and hated for his social position,
for being present at the smartest dances on Royal Ridge. Rountree was
chairman of the convention program-committee.

Babbitt had growled to him, "Makes me tired the way these doctors and
profs and preachers put on lugs about being 'professional men.' A good
realtor has to have more knowledge and finesse than any of 'em."

"Right you are! I say: Why don't you put that into a paper, and give it
at the S. A. R. E. B.?" suggested Rountree.

"Well, if it would help you in making up the program--Tell you: the way
I look at it is this: First place, we ought to insist that folks call
us 'realtors' and not 'real-estate men.' Sounds more like a reg'lar
profession. Second place--What is it distinguishes a profession from a
mere trade, business, or occupation? What is it? Why, it's the public
service and the skill, the trained skill, and the knowledge and, uh,
all that, whereas a fellow that merely goes out for the jack, he never
considers the-public service and trained skill and so on. Now as a
professional--"

"Rather! That's perfectly bully! Perfectly corking! Now you write it in
a paper," said Rountree, as he rapidly and firmly moved away.

II

However accustomed to the literary labors of advertisements and
correspondence, Babbitt was dismayed on the evening when he sat down to
prepare a paper which would take a whole ten minutes to read.

He laid out a new fifteen-cent school exercise-book on his wife's
collapsible sewing-table, set up for the event in the living-room. The
household had been bullied into silence; Verona and Ted requested to
disappear, and Tinka threatened with "If I hear one sound out of you--if
you holler for a glass of water one single solitary time--You better
not, that's all!" Mrs. Babbitt sat over by the piano, making a nightgown
and gazing with respect while Babbitt wrote in the exercise-book, to the
rhythmical wiggling and squeaking of the sewing-table.

When he rose, damp and jumpy, and his throat dusty from cigarettes,
she marveled, "I don't see how you can just sit down and make up things
right out of your own head!"

"Oh, it's the training in constructive imagination that a fellow gets in
modern business life."

He had written seven pages, whereof the first page set forth:

{illustration omitted: consists of several doodles and "(1) a profession
(2) Not just a trade crossed out (3) Skill & vision (3) Shd be called
"realtor" & not just real est man"}

The other six pages were rather like the first.

For a week he went about looking important. Every morning, as he
dressed, he thought aloud: "Jever stop to consider, Myra, that before
a town can have buildings or prosperity or any of those things, some
realtor has got to sell 'em the land? All civilization starts with him.
Jever realize that?" At the Athletic Club he led unwilling men aside to
inquire, "Say, if you had to read a paper before a big convention, would
you start in with the funny stories or just kind of scatter 'em all
through?" He asked Howard Littlefield for a "set of statistics about
real-estate sales; something good and impressive," and Littlefield
provided something exceedingly good and impressive.

But it was to T. Cholmondeley Frink that Babbitt most often turned. He
caught Frink at the club every noon, and demanded, while Frink
looked hunted and evasive, "Say, Chum--you're a shark on this
writing stuff--how would you put this sentence, see here in my
manuscript--manuscript now where the deuce is that?--oh, yes, here.
Would you say 'We ought not also to alone think?' or 'We ought also not
to think alone?' or--"

One evening when his wife was away and he had no one to impress, Babbitt
forgot about Style, Order, and the other mysteries, and scrawled off
what he really thought about the real-estate business and about himself,
and he found the paper written. When he read it to his wife she yearned,
"Why, dear, it's splendid; beautifully written, and so clear and
interesting, and such splendid ideas! Why, it's just--it's just
splendid!"

Next day he cornered Chum Frink and crowed, "Well, old son, I finished
it last evening! Just lammed it out! I used to think you writing-guys
must have a hard job making up pieces, but Lord, it's a cinch. Pretty
soft for you fellows; you certainly earn your money easy! Some day when
I get ready to retire, guess I'll take to writing and show you boys how
to do it. I always used to think I could write better stuff, and more
punch and originality, than all this stuff you see printed, and now I'm
doggone sure of it!"

He had four copies of the paper typed in black with a gorgeous red
title, had them bound in pale blue manilla, and affably presented one to
old Ira Runyon, the managing editor of the Advocate-Times, who said yes,
indeed yes, he was very glad to have it, and he certainly would read it
all through--as soon as he could find time.

Mrs. Babbitt could not go to Monarch. She had a women's-club meeting.
Babbitt said that he was very sorry.

III

Besides the five official delegates to the convention--Babbitt,
Rountree, W. A. Rogers, Alvin Thayer, and Elbert Wing--there were fifty
unofficial delegates, most of them with their wives.

They met at the Union Station for the midnight train to Monarch. All
of them, save Cecil Rountree, who was such a snob that he never wore
badges, displayed celluloid buttons the size of dollars and lettered "We
zoom for Zenith." The official delegates were magnificent with silver
and magenta ribbons. Martin Lumsen's little boy Willy carried a tasseled
banner inscribed "Zenith the Zip City--Zeal, Zest and Zowie--1,000,000
in 1935." As the delegates arrived, not in taxicabs but in the family
automobile driven by the oldest son or by Cousin Fred, they formed
impromptu processions through the station waiting-room.

It was a new and enormous waiting-room, with marble pilasters, and
frescoes depicting the exploration of the Chaloosa River Valley by Pere
Emile Fauthoux in 1740. The benches were shelves of ponderous mahogany;
the news-stand a marble kiosk with a brass grill. Down the echoing
spaces of the hall the delegates paraded after Willy Lumsen's banner,
the men waving their cigars, the women conscious of their new frocks and
strings of beads, all singing to the tune of Auld Lang Syne the official
City Song, written by Chum Frink:

     Good old Zenith,
     Our kin and kith,
     Wherever we may be,
     Hats in the ring,
     We blithely sing
     Of thy Prosperity.

Warren Whitby, the broker, who had a gift of verse for banquets and
birthdays, had added to Frink's City Song a special verse for the
realtors' convention:

     Oh, here we come,
     The fellows from
     Zenith, the Zip Citee.
     We wish to state
     In real estate
     There's none so live as we.

Babbitt was stirred to hysteric patriotism. He leaped on a bench,
shouting to the crowd:

"What's the matter with Zenith?"

"She's all right!"

"What's best ole town in the U. S. A.?"

"Zeeeeeen-ith!"

The patient poor people waiting for the midnight train stared in
unenvious wonder--Italian women with shawls, old weary men with broken
shoes, roving road-wise boys in suits which had been flashy when they
were new but which were faded now and wrinkled.

Babbitt perceived that as an official delegate he must be more
dignified. With Wing and Rogers he tramped up and down the cement
platform beside the waiting Pullmans. Motor-driven baggage-trucks
and red-capped porters carrying bags sped down the platform with an
agreeable effect of activity. Arc-lights glared and stammered overhead.
The glossy yellow sleeping-cars shone impressively. Babbitt made his
voice to be measured and lordly; he thrust out his abdomen and rumbled,
"We got to see to it that the convention lets the Legislature understand
just where they get off in this matter of taxing realty transfers." Wing
uttered approving grunts and Babbitt swelled--gloated.

The blind of a Pullman compartment was raised, and Babbitt looked
into an unfamiliar world. The occupant of the compartment was Lucile
McKelvey, the pretty wife of the millionaire contractor. Possibly,
Babbitt thrilled, she was going to Europe! On the seat beside her was a
bunch of orchids and violets, and a yellow paper-bound book which seemed
foreign. While he stared, she picked up the book, then glanced out of
the window as though she was bored. She must have looked straight at
him, and he had met her, but she gave no sign. She languidly pulled down
the blind, and he stood still, a cold feeling of insignificance in his
heart.

But on the train his pride was restored by meeting delegates from
Sparta, Pioneer, and other smaller cities of the state, who listened
respectfully when, as a magnifico from the metropolis of Zenith,
he explained politics and the value of a Good Sound Business
Administration. They fell joyfully into shop-talk, the purest and most
rapturous form of conversation:

"How'd this fellow Rountree make out with this big apartment-hotel he
was going to put up? Whadde do? Get out bonds to finance it?" asked a
Sparta broker.

"Well, I'll tell you," said Babbitt. "Now if I'd been handling it--"

"So," Elbert Wing was droning, "I hired this shop-window for a week, and
put up a big sign, 'Toy Town for Tiny Tots,' and stuck in a lot of doll
houses and some dinky little trees, and then down at the bottom, 'Baby
Likes This Dollydale, but Papa and Mama Will Prefer Our Beautiful
Bungalows,' and you know, that certainly got folks talking, and first
week we sold--"

The trucks sang "lickety-lick, lickety-lick" as the train ran through
the factory district. Furnaces spurted flame, and power-hammers were
clanging. Red lights, green lights, furious white lights rushed past,
and Babbitt was important again, and eager.

IV

He did a voluptuous thing: he had his clothes pressed on the train. In
the morning, half an hour before they reached Monarch, the porter came
to his berth and whispered, "There's a drawing-room vacant, sir. I put
your suit in there." In tan autumn overcoat over his pajamas, Babbitt
slipped down the green-curtain-lined aisle to the glory of his first
private compartment. The porter indicated that he knew Babbitt was
used to a man-servant; he held the ends of Babbitt's trousers, that the
beautifully sponged garment might not be soiled, filled the bowl in the
private washroom, and waited with a towel.

To have a private washroom was luxurious. However enlivening a Pullman
smoking-compartment was by night, even to Babbitt it was depressing
in the morning, when it was jammed with fat men in woolen undershirts,
every hook filled with wrinkled cottony shirts, the leather seat piled
with dingy toilet-kits, and the air nauseating with the smell of soap
and toothpaste. Babbitt did not ordinarily think much of privacy, but
now he reveled in it, reveled in his valet, and purred with pleasure as
he gave the man a tip of a dollar and a half.

He rather hoped that he was being noticed as, in his newly pressed
clothes, with the adoring porter carrying his suit-case, he disembarked
at Monarch.

He was to share a room at the Hotel Sedgwick with W. A. Rogers, that
shrewd, rustic-looking Zenith dealer in farm-lands. Together they had
a noble breakfast, with waffles, and coffee not in exiguous cups but
in large pots. Babbitt grew expansive, and told Rogers about the art of
writing; he gave a bellboy a quarter to fetch a morning newspaper from
the lobby, and sent to Tinka a post-card: "Papa wishes you were here to
bat round with him."

V

The meetings of the convention were held in the ballroom of the Allen
House. In an anteroom was the office of the chairman of the executive
committee. He was the busiest man in the convention; he was so busy that
he got nothing done whatever. He sat at a marquetry table, in a room
littered with crumpled paper and, all day long, town-boosters and
lobbyists and orators who wished to lead debates came and whispered to
him, whereupon he looked vague, and said rapidly, "Yes, yes, that's a
fine idea; we'll do that," and instantly forgot all about it, lighted
a cigar and forgot that too, while the telephone rang mercilessly and
about him men kept beseeching, "Say, Mr. Chairman--say, Mr. Chairman!"
without penetrating his exhausted hearing.

In the exhibit-room were plans of the new suburbs of Sparta, pictures
of the new state capitol, at Galop de Vache, and large ears of corn with
the label, "Nature's Gold, from Shelby County, the Garden Spot of God's
Own Country."

The real convention consisted of men muttering in hotel bedrooms or in
groups amid the badge-spotted crowd in the hotel-lobby, but there was a
show of public meetings.

The first of them opened with a welcome by the mayor of Monarch. The
pastor of the First Christian Church of Monarch, a large man with a long
damp frontal lock, informed God that the real-estate men were here now.

The venerable Minnemagantic realtor, Major Carlton Tuke, read a paper in
which he denounced cooperative stores. William A. Larkin of Eureka gave
a comforting prognosis of "The Prospects for Increased Construction,"
and reminded them that plate-glass prices were two points lower.

The convention was on.

The delegates were entertained, incessantly and firmly. The Monarch
Chamber of Commerce gave them a banquet, and the Manufacturers'
Association an afternoon reception, at which a chrysanthemum was
presented to each of the ladies, and to each of the men a leather
bill-fold inscribed "From Monarch the Mighty Motor Mart."

Mrs. Crosby Knowlton, wife of the manufacturer of Fleetwing Automobiles,
opened her celebrated Italian garden and served tea. Six hundred
real-estate men and wives ambled down the autumnal paths. Perhaps
three hundred of them were quietly inconspicuous; perhaps three hundred
vigorously exclaimed, "This is pretty slick, eh?" surreptitiously picked
the late asters and concealed them in their pockets, and tried to get
near enough to Mrs. Knowlton to shake her lovely hand. Without request,
the Zenith delegates (except Rountree) gathered round a marble dancing
nymph and sang "Here we come, the fellows from Zenith, the Zip Citee."

It chanced that all the delegates from Pioneer belonged to the Brotherly
and Protective Order of Elks, and they produced an enormous banner
lettered: "B. P. O. E.--Best People on Earth--Boost Pioneer, Oh Eddie."
Nor was Galop de Vache, the state capital, to be slighted. The leader
of the Galop de Vache delegation was a large, reddish, roundish man,
but active. He took off his coat, hurled his broad black felt hat on
the ground, rolled up his sleeves, climbed upon the sundial, spat, and
bellowed:

"We'll tell the world, and the good lady who's giving the show this
afternoon, that the bonniest burg in this man's state is Galop de Vache.
You boys can talk about your zip, but jus' lemme murmur that old Galop
has the largest proportion of home-owning citizens in the state; and
when folks own their homes, they ain't starting labor-troubles, and
they're raising kids instead of raising hell! Galop de Vache! The
town for homey folks! The town that eats 'em alive oh, Bosco!
We'll--tell--the--world!"

The guests drove off; the garden shivered into quiet. But Mrs. Crosby
Knowlton sighed as she looked at a marble seat warm from five hundred
summers of Amalfi. On the face of a winged sphinx which supported it
some one had drawn a mustache in lead-pencil. Crumpled paper napkins
were dumped among the Michaelmas daisies. On the walk, like shredded
lovely flesh, were the petals of the last gallant rose. Cigarette stubs
floated in the goldfish pool, trailing an evil stain as they swelled and
disintegrated, and beneath the marble seat, the fragments carefully put
together, was a smashed teacup.

VI

As he rode back to the hotel Babbitt reflected, "Myra would have enjoyed
all this social agony." For himself he cared less for the garden party
than for the motor tours which the Monarch Chamber of Commerce
had arranged. Indefatigably he viewed water-reservoirs, suburban
trolley-stations, and tanneries. He devoured the statistics which were
given to him, and marveled to his roommate, W. A. Rogers, "Of course
this town isn't a patch on Zenith; it hasn't got our outlook and
natural resources; but did you know--I nev' did till to-day--that they
manufactured seven hundred and sixty-three million feet of lumber last
year? What d' you think of that!"

He was nervous as the time for reading his paper approached. When he
stood on the low platform before the convention, he trembled and saw
only a purple haze. But he was in earnest, and when he had finished the
formal paper he talked to them, his hands in his pockets, his spectacled
face a flashing disk, like a plate set up on edge in the lamplight.
They shouted "That's the stuff!" and in the discussion afterward they
referred with impressiveness to "our friend and brother, Mr. George F.
Babbitt." He had in fifteen minutes changed from a minor delegate to
a personage almost as well known as that diplomat of business, Cecil
Rountree. After the meeting, delegates from all over the state said,
"Hower you, Brother Babbitt?" Sixteen complete strangers called him
"George," and three men took him into corners to confide, "Mighty glad
you had the courage to stand up and give the Profession a real boost.
Now I've always maintained--"

Next morning, with tremendous casualness, Babbitt asked the girl at the
hotel news-stand for the newspapers from Zenith. There was nothing in
the Press, but in the Advocate-Times, on the third page--He gasped.
They had printed his picture and a half-column account. The heading was
"Sensation at Annual Land-men's Convention. G. F. Babbitt, Prominent
Ziptown Realtor, Keynoter in Fine Address."

He murmured reverently, "I guess some of the folks on Floral Heights
will sit up and take notice now, and pay a little attention to old
Georgie!"

VII

It was the last meeting. The delegations were presenting the claims
of their several cities to the next year's convention. Orators were
announcing that "Galop de Vache, the Capital City, the site of Kremer
College and of the Upholtz Knitting Works, is the recognized center of
culture and high-class enterprise;" and that "Hamburg, the Big Little
City with the Logical Location, where every man is open-handed and every
woman a heaven-born hostess, throws wide to you her hospitable gates."

In the midst of these more diffident invitations, the golden doors of
the ballroom opened with a blatting of trumpets, and a circus
parade rolled in. It was composed of the Zenith brokers, dressed as
cowpunchers, bareback riders, Japanese jugglers. At the head was
big Warren Whitby, in the bearskin and gold-and-crimson coat of a
drum-major. Behind him, as a clown, beating a bass drum, extraordinarily
happy and noisy, was Babbitt.

Warren Whitby leaped on the platform, made merry play with his baton,
and observed, "Boyses and girlses, the time has came to get down to
cases. A dyed-in-the-wool Zenithite sure loves his neighbors, but we've
made up our minds to grab this convention off our neighbor burgs like
we've grabbed the condensed-milk business and the paper-box business
and--"

J. Harry Barmhill, the convention chairman, hinted, "We're grateful to
you, Mr. Uh, but you must give the other boys a chance to hand in their
bids now."

A fog-horn voice blared, "In Eureka we'll promise free motor rides
through the prettiest country--"

Running down the aisle, clapping his hands, a lean bald young man cried,
"I'm from Sparta! Our Chamber of Commerce has wired me they've set aside
eight thousand dollars, in real money, for the entertainment of the
convention!"

A clerical-looking man rose to clamor, "Money talks! Move we accept the
bid from Sparta!"

It was accepted.

VIII

The Committee on Resolutions was reporting. They said that Whereas
Almighty God in his beneficent mercy had seen fit to remove to a sphere
of higher usefulness some thirty-six realtors of the state the past
year, Therefore it was the sentiment of this convention assembled that
they were sorry God had done it, and the secretary should be, and hereby
was, instructed to spread these resolutions on the minutes, and to
console the bereaved families by sending them each a copy.

A second resolution authorized the president of the S.A.R.E.B. to spend
fifteen thousand dollars in lobbying for sane tax measures in the State
Legislature. This resolution had a good deal to say about Menaces to
Sound Business and clearing the Wheels of Progress from ill-advised and
shortsighted obstacles.

The Committee on Committees reported, and with startled awe Babbitt
learned that he had been appointed a member of the Committee on Torrens
Titles.

He rejoiced, "I said it was going to be a great year! Georgie, old son,
you got big things ahead of you! You're a natural-born orator and a good
mixer and--Zowie!"

IX

There was no formal entertainment provided for the last evening. Babbitt
had planned to go home, but that afternoon the Jered Sassburgers of
Pioneer suggested that Babbitt and W. A. Rogers have tea with them at
the Catalpa Inn.

Teas were not unknown to Babbitt--his wife and he earnestly attended
them at least twice a year--but they were sufficiently exotic to make
him feel important. He sat at a glass-covered table in the Art Room of
the Inn, with its painted rabbits, mottoes lettered on birch bark, and
waitresses being artistic in Dutch caps; he ate insufficient lettuce
sandwiches, and was lively and naughty with Mrs. Sassburger, who was as
smooth and large-eyed as a cloak-model. Sassburger and he had met two
days before, so they were calling each other "Georgie" and "Sassy."

Sassburger said prayerfully, "Say, boys, before you go, seeing this is
the last chance, I've GOT IT, up in my room, and Miriam here is the best
little mixelogist in the Stati Unidos like us Italians say."

With wide flowing gestures, Babbitt and Rogers followed the Sassburgers
to their room. Mrs. Sassburger shrieked, "Oh, how terrible!" when she
saw that she had left a chemise of sheer lavender crepe on the bed. She
tucked it into a bag, while Babbitt giggled, "Don't mind us; we're a
couple o' little divvils!"

Sassburger telephoned for ice, and the bell-boy who brought it said,
prosaically and unprompted, "Highball glasses or cocktail?" Miriam
Sassburger mixed the cocktails in one of those dismal, nakedly white
water-pitchers which exist only in hotels. When they had finished
the first round she proved by intoning "Think you boys could stand
another--you got a dividend coming" that, though she was but a woman,
she knew the complete and perfect rite of cocktail-drinking.

Outside, Babbitt hinted to Rogers, "Say, W. A., old rooster, it comes
over me that I could stand it if we didn't go back to the lovin' wives,
this handsome ABEND, but just kind of stayed in Monarch and threw a
party, heh?"

"George, you speak with the tongue of wisdom and sagashiteriferousness.
El Wing's wife has gone on to Pittsburg. Let's see if we can't gather
him in."

At half-past seven they sat in their room, with Elbert Wing and two
up-state delegates. Their coats were off, their vests open, their faces
red, their voices emphatic. They were finishing a bottle of corrosive
bootlegged whisky and imploring the bell-boy, "Say, son, can you get us
some more of this embalming fluid?" They were smoking large cigars and
dropping ashes and stubs on the carpet. With windy guffaws they were
telling stories. They were, in fact, males in a happy state of nature.

Babbitt sighed, "I don't know how it strikes you hellions, but
personally I like this busting loose for a change, and kicking over a
couple of mountains and climbing up on the North Pole and waving the
aurora borealis around."

The man from Sparta, a grave, intense youngster, babbled, "Say! I guess
I'm as good a husband as the run of the mill, but God, I do get so tired
of going home every evening, and nothing to see but the movies. That's
why I go out and drill with the National Guard. I guess I got the nicest
little wife in my burg, but--Say! Know what I wanted to do as a kid?
Know what I wanted to do? Wanted to be a big chemist. Tha's what I
wanted to do. But Dad chased me out on the road selling kitchenware, and
here I'm settled down--settled for LIFE--not a chance! Oh, who the devil
started this funeral talk? How 'bout 'nother lil drink? 'And a-noth-er
drink wouldn' do 's 'ny harmmmmmmm.'"

"Yea. Cut the sob-stuff," said W. A. Rogers genially. "You boys know I'm
the village songster? Come on now--sing up:

     Said the old Obadiah to the young Obadiah,
     'I am dry, Obadiah, I am dry.'
     Said the young Obadiah to the old Obadiah,
     'So am I, Obadiah, so am I.'"

X

They had dinner in the Moorish Grillroom of the Hotel Sedgwick.
Somewhere, somehow, they seemed to have gathered in two other comrades:
a manufacturer of fly-paper and a dentist. They all drank whisky from
tea-cups, and they were humorous, and never listened to one another,
except when W. A. Rogers "kidded" the Italian waiter.

"Say, Gooseppy," he said innocently, "I want a couple o' fried
elephants' ears."

"Sorry, sir, we haven't any."

"Huh? No elephants' ears? What do you know about that!" Rogers turned to
Babbitt. "Pedro says the elephants' ears are all out!"

"Well, I'll be switched!" said the man from Sparta, with difficulty
hiding his laughter.

"Well, in that case, Carlo, just bring me a hunk o' steak and a couple
o' bushels o' French fried potatoes and some peas," Rogers went on. "I
suppose back in dear old sunny It' the Eyetalians get their fresh garden
peas out of the can."

"No, sir, we have very nice peas in Italy."

"Is that a fact! Georgie, do you hear that? They get their fresh garden
peas out of the garden, in Italy! By golly, you live and learn, don't
you, Antonio, you certainly do live and learn, if you live long enough
and keep your strength. All right, Garibaldi, just shoot me in that
steak, with about two printers'-reams of French fried spuds on the
promenade deck, comprehenez-vous, Michelovitch Angeloni?"

Afterward Elbert Wing admired, "Gee, you certainly did have that poor
Dago going, W. A. He couldn't make you out at all!"

In the Monarch Herald, Babbitt found an advertisement which he read
aloud, to applause and laughter:

Old Colony Theatre

Shake the Old Dogs to the WROLLICKING WRENS The bonniest bevy of
beauteous bathing babes in burlesque. Pete Menutti and his Oh, Gee,
Kids.

This is the straight steer, Benny, the painless chicklets of the
Wrollicking Wrens are the cuddlingest bunch that ever hit town. Steer
the feet, get the card board, and twist the pupils to the PDQest show
ever. You will get 111% on your kale in this fun-fest. The Calroza
Sisters are sure some lookers and will give you a run for your gelt.
Jock Silbersteen is one of the pepper lads and slips you a dose of
real laughter. Shoot the up and down to Jackson and West for graceful
tappers. They run 1-2 under the wire. Provin and Adams will blow the
blues in their laugh skit "Hootch Mon!" Something doing, boys. Listen to
what the Hep Bird twitters.

"Sounds like a juicy show to me. Let's all take it in," said Babbitt.

But they put off departure as long as they could. They were safe while
they sat here, legs firmly crossed under the table, but they felt
unsteady; they were afraid of navigating the long and slippery floor of
the grillroom under the eyes of the other guests and the too-attentive
waiters.

When they did venture, tables got in their way, and they sought to cover
embarrassment by heavy jocularity at the coatroom. As the girl handed
out their hats, they smiled at her, and hoped that she, a cool and
expert judge, would feel that they were gentlemen. They croaked at one
another, "Who owns the bum lid?" and "You take a good one, George; I'll
take what's left," and to the check-girl they stammered, "Better come
along, sister! High, wide, and fancy evening ahead!" All of them tried
to tip her, urging one another, "No! Wait! Here! I got it right here!"
Among them, they gave her three dollars.

XI

Flamboyantly smoking cigars they sat in a box at the burlesque show,
their feet up on the rail, while a chorus of twenty daubed, worried,
and inextinguishably respectable grandams swung their legs in the more
elementary chorus-evolutions, and a Jewish comedian made vicious fun of
Jews. In the entr'actes they met other lone delegates. A dozen of them
went in taxicabs out to Bright Blossom Inn, where the blossoms were
made of dusty paper festooned along a room low and stinking, like a
cow-stable no longer wisely used.

Here, whisky was served openly, in glasses. Two or three clerks, who
on pay-day longed to be taken for millionaires, sheepishly danced with
telephone-girls and manicure-girls in the narrow space between the
tables. Fantastically whirled the professionals, a young man in sleek
evening-clothes and a slim mad girl in emerald silk, with amber hair
flung up as jaggedly as flames. Babbitt tried to dance with her. He
shuffled along the floor, too bulky to be guided, his steps unrelated
to the rhythm of the jungle music, and in his staggering he would have
fallen, had she not held him with supple kindly strength. He was blind
and deaf from prohibition-era alcohol; he could not see the tables, the
faces. But he was overwhelmed by the girl and her young pliant warmth.

When she had firmly returned him to his group, he remembered, by a
connection quite untraceable, that his mother's mother had been Scotch,
and with head thrown back, eyes closed, wide mouth indicating ecstasy,
he sang, very slowly and richly, "Loch Lomond."

But that was the last of his mellowness and jolly companionship. The
man from Sparta said he was a "bum singer," and for ten minutes Babbitt
quarreled with him, in a loud, unsteady, heroic indignation. They called
for drinks till the manager insisted that the place was closed. All the
while Babbitt felt a hot raw desire for more brutal amusements. When
W. A. Rogers drawled, "What say we go down the line and look over the
girls?" he agreed savagely. Before they went, three of them secretly
made appointments with the professional dancing girl, who agreed "Yes,
yes, sure, darling" to everything they said, and amiably forgot them.

As they drove back through the outskirts of Monarch, down streets of
small brown wooden cottages of workmen, characterless as cells, as they
rattled across warehouse-districts which by drunken night seemed vast
and perilous, as they were borne toward the red lights and violent
automatic pianos and the stocky women who simpered, Babbitt was
frightened. He wanted to leap from the taxicab, but all his body was a
murky fire, and he groaned, "Too late to quit now," and knew that he did
not want to quit.

There was, they felt, one very humorous incident on the way. A broker
from Minnemagantic said, "Monarch is a lot sportier than Zenith. You
Zenith tightwads haven't got any joints like these here." Babbitt raged,
"That's a dirty lie! Snothin' you can't find in Zenith. Believe me, we
got more houses and hootch-parlors an' all kinds o' dives than any burg
in the state."

He realized they were laughing at him; he desired to fight; and forgot
it in such musty unsatisfying experiments as he had not known since
college.

In the morning, when he returned to Zenith, his desire for rebellion was
partly satisfied. He had retrograded to a shamefaced contentment. He was
irritable. He did not smile when W. A. Rogers complained, "Ow, what a
head! I certainly do feel like the wrath of God this morning. Say! I
know what was the trouble! Somebody went and put alcohol in my booze
last night."

Babbitt's excursion was never known to his family, nor to any one in
Zenith save Rogers and Wing. It was not officially recognized even by
himself. If it had any consequences, they have not been discovered.

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

completion: Cecil Rountree convinces Babbitt to write and present a paper at the State Association of Real Estate Boards's annual convention in Monarch, Zenith's rival city. After much toiling, he is finally able to complete the paper, and he presents it to Ira Runyon. The delegates and their wives arrive at the station for the midnight train to Monarch wearing badges and buttons and singing songs about the superiority of Zenith. Babbitt is "stirred to hysteric patriotism" , feeling proud, important, and eager to tout all of Zenith's charms. The convention meetings take place in the Allen House ballroom, but "the real convention of men muttering in hotel bedrooms or in groups". The delegates are entertained by a continuous stream of entertainment, such as banquets and teas. Though Babbitt is nervous about presenting his paper, it is well received by everyone, and the Advocate-Times deems it a sensation. Babbitt is appointed a member of the Committee on Torrens Titles. Babbitt decides to stay one final evening in Monarch with W. A. Rogers in order to have tea with Jered and Mrs. Sassburger. After tea, they drink excessive amounts of alcohol and go to see a burlesque with strippers. Babbitt dances with a woman and feels a "hot raw desire for more brutal amusements". He returns to Zenith, and his family never learns of the excursion