Chapter: I

THE great events of Babbitt's spring were the secret buying of
real-estate options in Linton for certain street-traction officials,
before the public announcement that the Linton Avenue Car Line would be
extended, and a dinner which was, as he rejoiced to his wife, not only
"a regular society spread but a real sure-enough highbrow affair, with
some of the keenest intellects and the brightest bunch of little women
in town." It was so absorbing an occasion that he almost forgot his
desire to run off to Maine with Paul Riesling.

Though he had been born in the village of Catawba, Babbitt had risen
to that metropolitan social plane on which hosts have as many as four
people at dinner without planning it for more than an evening or two.
But a dinner of twelve, with flowers from the florist's and all the
cut-glass out, staggered even the Babbitts.

For two weeks they studied, debated, and arbitrated the list of guests.

Babbitt marveled, "Of course we're up-to-date ourselves, but still,
think of us entertaining a famous poet like Chum Frink, a fellow that on
nothing but a poem or so every day and just writing a few advertisements
pulls down fifteen thousand berries a year!"

"Yes, and Howard Littlefield. Do you know, the other evening Eunice told
me her papa speaks three languages!" said Mrs. Babbitt.

"Huh! That's nothing! So do I--American, baseball, and poker!"

"I don't think it's nice to be funny about a matter like that. Think how
wonderful it must be to speak three languages, and so useful and--And
with people like that, I don't see why we invite the Orville Joneses."

"Well now, Orville is a mighty up-and-coming fellow!"

"Yes, I know, but--A laundry!"

"I'll admit a laundry hasn't got the class of poetry or real estate,
but just the same, Orvy is mighty deep. Ever start him spieling about
gardening? Say, that fellow can tell you the name of every kind of tree,
and some of their Greek and Latin names too! Besides, we owe the Joneses
a dinner. Besides, gosh, we got to have some boob for audience, when a
bunch of hot-air artists like Frink and Littlefield get going."

"Well, dear--I meant to speak of this--I do think that as host you ought
to sit back and listen, and let your guests have a chance to talk once
in a while!"

"Oh, you do, do you! Sure! I talk all the time! And I'm just a business
man--oh sure!--I'm no Ph.D. like Littlefield, and no poet, and I haven't
anything to spring! Well, let me tell you, just the other day your darn
Chum Frink comes up to me at the club begging to know what I thought
about the Springfield school-bond issue. And who told him? I did! You
bet your life I told him! Little me! I certainly did! He came up and
asked me, and I told him all about it! You bet! And he was darn glad to
listen to me and--Duty as a host! I guess I know my duty as a host and
let me tell you--"

In fact, the Orville Joneses were invited.


II

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

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

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

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

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

"I will not have you talking indecently before the children! And you do
have to put on your dinner-jacket!"

"I guess you mean my Tux. I tell you, of all the doggone nonsensical
nuisances that was ever invented--"

Three minutes later, after Babbitt had wailed, "Well, I don't know
whether I'm going to dress or NOT" in a manner which showed that he was
going to dress, the discussion moved on.

"Now, George, you mustn't forget to call in at Vecchia's on the way home
and get the ice cream. Their delivery-wagon is broken down, and I don't
want to trust them to send it by--"

"All right! You told me that before breakfast!"

"Well, I don't want you to forget. I'll be working my head off all day
long, training the girl that's to help with the dinner--"

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

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

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

"All you have to do is to go in and say you want the ice cream that Mrs.
Babbitt ordered yesterday by 'phone, and it will be all ready for you."

At ten-thirty she telephoned to him not to forget the ice cream from
Vecchia's.

He was surprised and blasted then by a thought. He wondered whether
Floral Heights dinners were worth the hideous toil involved. But he
repented the sacrilege in the excitement of buying the materials for
cocktails.

Now this was the manner of obtaining alcohol under the reign of
righteousness and prohibition:

He drove from the severe rectangular streets of the modern business
center into the tangled byways of Old Town--jagged blocks filled with
sooty warehouses and lofts; on into The Arbor, once a pleasant orchard
but now a morass of lodging-houses, tenements, and brothels. Exquisite
shivers chilled his spine and stomach, and he looked at every policeman
with intense innocence, as one who loved the law, and admired the Force,
and longed to stop and play with them. He parked his car a block from
Healey Hanson's saloon, worrying, "Well, rats, if anybody did see me,
they'd think I was here on business."

He entered a place curiously like the saloons of ante-prohibition days,
with a long greasy bar with sawdust in front and streaky mirror behind,
a pine table at which a dirty old man dreamed over a glass of something
which resembled whisky, and with two men at the bar, drinking something
which resembled beer, and giving that impression of forming a large
crowd which two men always give in a saloon. The bartender, a tall pale
Swede with a diamond in his lilac scarf, stared at Babbitt as he stalked
plumply up to the bar and whispered, "I'd, uh--Friend of Hanson's sent
me here. Like to get some gin."

The bartender gazed down on him in the manner of an outraged bishop.
"I guess you got the wrong place, my friend. We sell nothing but soft
drinks here." He cleaned the bar with a rag which would itself have done
with a little cleaning, and glared across his mechanically moving elbow.

The old dreamer at the table petitioned the bartender, "Say, Oscar,
listen."

Oscar did not listen.

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

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

"Whajuh wanta see him for?"

"I just want to talk to him. Here's my card."

It was a beautiful card, an engraved card, a card in the blackest black
and the sharpest red, announcing that Mr. George F. Babbitt was Estates,
Insurance, Rents. The bartender held it as though it weighed ten pounds,
and read it as though it were a hundred words long. He did not bend from
his episcopal dignity, but he growled, "I'll see if he's around."

From the back room he brought an immensely old young man, a quiet
sharp-eyed man, in tan silk shirt, checked vest hanging open, and
burning brown trousers--Mr. Healey Hanson. Mr. Hanson said only "Yuh?"
but his implacable and contemptuous eyes queried Babbitt's soul, and he
seemed not at all impressed by the new dark-gray suit for which (as he
had admitted to every acquaintance at the Athletic Club) Babbitt had
paid a hundred and twenty-five dollars.

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

"Well, what of it?"

"Say, uh, I'm going to have a party, and Jake told me you'd be able to
fix me up with a little gin." In alarm, in obsequiousness, as Hanson's
eyes grew more bored, "You telephone to Jake about me, if you want to."

Hanson answered by jerking his head to indicate the entrance to the
back room, and strolled away. Babbitt melodramatically crept into
an apartment containing four round tables, eleven chairs, a brewery
calendar, and a smell. He waited. Thrice he saw Healey Hanson saunter
through, humming, hands in pockets, ignoring him.

By this time Babbitt had modified his valiant morning vow, "I won't pay
one cent over seven dollars a quart" to "I might pay ten." On Hanson's
next weary entrance he besought "Could you fix that up?" Hanson scowled,
and grated, "Just a minute--Pete's sake--just a min-ute!" In growing
meekness Babbitt went on waiting till Hanson casually reappeared with
a quart of gin--what is euphemistically known as a quart--in his
disdainful long white hands.

"Twelve bucks," he snapped.

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

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

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

He had a number of titillations out of concealing the gin-bottle under
his coat and out of hiding it in his desk. All afternoon he snorted and
chuckled and gurgled over his ability to "give the Boys a real shot in
the arm to-night." He was, in fact, so exhilarated that he was within a
block of his house before he remembered that there was a certain
matter, mentioned by his wife, of fetching ice cream from Vecchia's. He
explained, "Well, darn it--" and drove back.

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

Vecchia's shop had pale blue woodwork, tracery of plaster roses,
attendants in frilled aprons, and glass shelves of "kisses" with all the
refinement that inheres in whites of eggs. Babbitt felt heavy and thick
amid this professional daintiness, and as he waited for the ice cream he
decided, with hot prickles at the back of his neck, that a girl customer
was giggling at him. He went home in a touchy temper. The first thing he
heard was his wife's agitated:

"George! DID you remember to go to Vecchia's and get the ice cream?"

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

"Yes! Often!"

"Well now, it's darn seldom I do, and it certainly makes me tired, after
going into a pink-tea joint like Vecchia's and having to stand around
looking at a lot of half-naked young girls, all rouged up like they were
sixty and eating a lot of stuff that simply ruins their stomachs--"

"Oh, it's too bad about you! I've noticed how you hate to look at pretty
girls!"

With a jar Babbitt realized that his wife was too busy to be impressed
by that moral indignation with which males rule the world, and he
went humbly up-stairs to dress. He had an impression of a glorified
dining-room, of cut-glass, candles, polished wood, lace, silver, roses.
With the awed swelling of the heart suitable to so grave a business as
giving a dinner, he slew the temptation to wear his plaited dress-shirt
for a fourth time, took out an entirely fresh one, tightened his black
bow, and rubbed his patent-leather pumps with a handkerchief. He glanced
with pleasure at his garnet and silver studs. He smoothed and patted
his ankles, transformed by silk socks from the sturdy shanks of George
Babbitt to the elegant limbs of what is called a Clubman. He stood
before the pier-glass, viewing his trim dinner-coat, his beautiful
triple-braided trousers; and murmured in lyric beatitude, "By golly,
I don't look so bad. I certainly don't look like Catawba. If the hicks
back home could see me in this rig, they'd have a fit!"

He moved majestically down to mix the cocktails. As he chipped ice, as
he squeezed oranges, as he collected vast stores of bottles, glasses,
and spoons at the sink in the pantry, he felt as authoritative as the
bartender at Healey Hanson's saloon. True, Mrs. Babbitt said he was
under foot, and Matilda and the maid hired for the evening brushed by
him, elbowed him, shrieked "Pleasopn door," as they tottered through
with trays, but in this high moment he ignored them.

Besides the new bottle of gin, his cellar consisted of one half-bottle
of Bourbon whisky, a quarter of a bottle of Italian vermouth, and
approximately one hundred drops of orange bitters. He did not possess
a cocktail-shaker. A shaker was proof of dissipation, the symbol of a
Drinker, and Babbitt disliked being known as a Drinker even more than
he liked a Drink. He mixed by pouring from an ancient gravy-boat into a
handleless pitcher; he poured with a noble dignity, holding his alembics
high beneath the powerful Mazda globe, his face hot, his shirt-front a
glaring white, the copper sink a scoured red-gold.

He tasted the sacred essence. "Now, by golly, if that isn't pretty
near one fine old cocktail! Kind of a Bronx, and yet like a Manhattan.
Ummmmmm! Hey, Myra, want a little nip before the folks come?"

Bustling into the dining-room, moving each glass a quarter of an
inch, rushing back with resolution implacable on her face her gray and
silver-lace party frock protected by a denim towel, Mrs. Babbitt glared
at him, and rebuked him, "Certainly not!"

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

The cocktail filled him with a whirling exhilaration behind which he
was aware of devastating desires--to rush places in fast motors, to kiss
girls, to sing, to be witty. He sought to regain his lost dignity by
announcing to Matilda:

"I'm going to stick this pitcher of cocktails in the refrigerator. Be
sure you don't upset any of 'em."

"Yeh."

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

"Yeh."

"Well, be--" He was dizzy. His voice was thin and distant. "Whee!" With
enormous impressiveness he commanded, "Well, be sure now," and minced
into the safety of the living-room. He wondered whether he could
persuade "as slow a bunch as Myra and the Littlefields to go some place
aft' dinner and raise Cain and maybe dig up smore booze." He perceived
that he had gifts of profligacy which had been neglected.

By the time the guests had come, including the inevitable late couple
for whom the others waited with painful amiability, a great gray
emptiness had replaced the purple swirling in Babbitt's head, and he had
to force the tumultuous greetings suitable to a host on Floral Heights.

The guests were Howard Littlefield, the doctor of philosophy who
furnished publicity and comforting economics to the Street Traction
Company; Vergil Gunch, the coal-dealer, equally powerful in the Elks
and in the Boosters' Club; Eddie Swanson the agent for the Javelin Motor
Car, who lived across the street; and Orville Jones, owner of the Lily
White Laundry, which justly announced itself "the biggest, busiest,
bulliest cleanerie shoppe in Zenith." But, naturally, the most
distinguished of all was T. Cholmondeley Frink, who was not only the
author of "Poemulations," which, syndicated daily in sixty-seven leading
newspapers, gave him one of the largest audiences of any poet in the
world, but also an optimistic lecturer and the creator of "Ads that
Add." Despite the searching philosophy and high morality of his verses,
they were humorous and easily understood by any child of twelve; and it
added a neat air of pleasantry to them that they were set not as verse
but as prose. Mr. Frink was known from Coast to Coast as "Chum."

With them were six wives, more or less--it was hard to tell, so early in
the evening, as at first glance they all looked alike, and as they all
said, "Oh, ISN'T this nice!" in the same tone of determined liveliness.
To the eye, the men were less similar: Littlefield, a hedge-scholar,
tall and horse-faced; Chum Frink, a trifle of a man with soft and
mouse-like hair, advertising his profession as poet by a silk cord on
his eye-glasses; Vergil Gunch, broad, with coarse black hair en brosse;
Eddie Swanson, a bald and bouncing young man who showed his taste
for elegance by an evening waistcoat of figured black silk with glass
buttons; Orville Jones, a steady-looking, stubby, not very memorable
person, with a hemp-colored toothbrush mustache. Yet they were all so
well fed and clean, they all shouted "'Evenin', Georgie!" with such
robustness, that they seemed to be cousins, and the strange thing is
that the longer one knew the women, the less alike they seemed;
while the longer one knew the men, the more alike their bold patterns
appeared.

The drinking of the cocktails was as canonical a rite as the mixing. The
company waited, uneasily, hopefully, agreeing in a strained manner that
the weather had been rather warm and slightly cold, but still Babbitt
said nothing about drinks. They became despondent. But when the late
couple (the Swansons) had arrived, Babbitt hinted, "Well, folks, do you
think you could stand breaking the law a little?"

They looked at Chum Frink, the recognized lord of language. Frink pulled
at his eye-glass cord as at a bell-rope, he cleared his throat and said
that which was the custom:

"I'll tell you, George: I'm a law-abiding man, but they do say Verg
Gunch is a regular yegg, and of course he's bigger 'n I am, and I just
can't figure out what I'd do if he tried to force me into anything
criminal!"

Gunch was roaring, "Well, I'll take a chance--" when Frink held up his
hand and went on, "So if Verg and you insist, Georgie, I'll park my car
on the wrong side of the street, because I take it for granted that's
the crime you're hinting at!"

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

Babbitt clamored, "How did you guess it, Chum? Well, you-all just wait
a moment while I go out and get the--keys to your cars!" Through a froth
of merriment he brought the shining promise, the mighty tray of glasses
with the cloudy yellow cocktails in the glass pitcher in the center. The
men babbled, "Oh, gosh, have a look!" and "This gets me right where I
live!" and "Let me at it!" But Chum Frink, a traveled man and not unused
to woes, was stricken by the thought that the potion might be merely
fruit-juice with a little neutral spirits. He looked timorous as
Babbitt, a moist and ecstatic almoner, held out a glass, but as he
tasted it he piped, "Oh, man, let me dream on! It ain't true, but don't
waken me! Jus' lemme slumber!"

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

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

Babbitt drank with the others; his moment's depression was gone; he
perceived that these were the best fellows in the world; he wanted to
give them a thousand cocktails. "Think you could stand another?" he
cried. The wives refused, with giggles, but the men, speaking in a wide,
elaborate, enjoyable manner, gloated, "Well, sooner than have you get
sore at me, Georgie--"

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

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

"Now, I'll tell you," said Vergil Gunch; "way I figure it is this, and
I can speak by the book, because I've talked to a lot of doctors and
fellows that ought to know, and the way I see it is that it's a good
thing to get rid of the saloon, but they ought to let a fellow have beer
and light wines."

Howard Littlefield observed, "What isn't generally realized is that it's
a dangerous prop'sition to invade the rights of personal liberty.
Now, take this for instance: The King of--Bavaria? I think it was
Bavaria--yes, Bavaria, it was--in 1862, March, 1862, he issued a
proclamation against public grazing of live-stock. The peasantry had
stood for overtaxation without the slightest complaint, but when this
proclamation came out, they rebelled. Or it may have been Saxony. But
it just goes to show the dangers of invading the rights of personal
liberty."

"That's it--no one got a right to invade personal liberty," said Orville
Jones.

"Just the same, you don't want to forget prohibition is a mighty good
thing for the working-classes. Keeps 'em from wasting their money and
lowering their productiveness," said Vergil Gunch.

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

They bobbed their heads, looked admiringly at one another, and stated,
"That's so, that would be the stunt."

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

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

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

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

Mrs. Babbitt turned toward them with yearning sweetness; Frink hastened
to finish even his best beer-recipe; and she said gaily, "Dinner is
served."

There was a good deal of friendly argument among the men as to which
should go in last, and while they were crossing the hall from the
living-room to the dining-room Vergil Gunch made them laugh by
thundering, "If I can't sit next to Myra Babbitt and hold her hand under
the table, I won't play--I'm goin' home." In the dining-room they stood
embarrassed while Mrs. Babbitt fluttered, "Now, let me see--Oh, I was
going to have some nice hand-painted place-cards for you but--Oh, let me
see; Mr. Frink, you sit there."

The dinner was in the best style of women's-magazine art, whereby the
salad was served in hollowed apples, and everything but the invincible
fried chicken resembled something else. Ordinarily the men found it hard
to talk to the women; flirtation was an art unknown on Floral Heights,
and the realms of offices and of kitchens had no alliances. But under
the inspiration of the cocktails, conversation was violent. Each of the
men still had a number of important things to say about prohibition, and
now that each had a loyal listener in his dinner-partner he burst out:

"I found a place where I can get all the hootch I want at eight a
quart--"

"Did you read about this fellow that went and paid a thousand dollars
for ten cases of red-eye that proved to be nothing but water? Seems this
fellow was standing on the corner and fellow comes up to him--"

"They say there's a whole raft of stuff being smuggled across at
Detroit--"

"What I always say is--what a lot of folks don't realize about
prohibition--"

"And then you get all this awful poison stuff--wood alcohol and
everything--"

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

But they all felt that it was rather in bad taste for Orville Jones--and
he not recognized as one of the wits of the occasion anyway--to say, "In
fact, the whole thing about prohibition is this: it isn't the initial
cost, it's the humidity."

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

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

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

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

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

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

Orville Jones announced, "Say, I heard a Good One the other day about
a coupla Swedes and their wives," and, in the best Jewish accent, he
resolutely carried the Good One to a slightly disinfected ending.
Gunch capped it. But the cocktails waned, the seekers dropped back into
cautious reality.

Chum Frink had recently been on a lecture-tour among the small towns,
and he chuckled, "Awful good to get back to civilization! I certainly
been seeing some hick towns! I mean--Course the folks there are the
best on earth, but, gee whiz, those Main Street burgs are slow, and you
fellows can't hardly appreciate what it means to be here with a bunch of
live ones!"

"You bet!" exulted Orville Jones. "They're the best folks on earth,
those small-town folks, but, oh, mama! what conversation! Why, say,
they can't talk about anything but the weather and the ne-oo Ford, by
heckalorum!"

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

"Don't they, though! They just say the same things over and over," said
Vergil Gunch.

"Yes, it's really remarkable. They seem to lack all power of looking at
things impersonally. They simply go over and over the same talk about
Fords and the weather and so on." said Howard Littlefield.

"Still, at that, you can't blame 'em. They haven't got any intellectual
stimulus such as you get up here in the city," said Chum Frink.

"Gosh, that's right," said Babbitt. "I don't want you highbrows to get
stuck on yourselves but I must say it keeps a fellow right up on his
toes to sit in with a poet and with Howard, the guy that put the con
in economics! But these small-town boobs, with nobody but each other to
talk to, no wonder they get so sloppy and uncultured in their speech,
and so balled-up in their thinking!"

Orville Jones commented, "And, then take our other advantages--the
movies, frinstance. These Yapville sports think they're all-get-out if
they have one change of bill a week, where here in the city you got your
choice of a dozen diff'rent movies any evening you want to name!"

"Sure, and the inspiration we get from rubbing up against high-class
hustlers every day and getting jam full of ginger," said Eddie Swanson.

"Same time," said Babbitt, "no sense excusing these rube burgs too easy.
Fellow's own fault if he doesn't show the initiative to up and beat it
to the city, like we done--did. And, just speaking in confidence among
friends, they're jealous as the devil of a city man. Every time I go up
to Catawba I have to go around apologizing to the fellows I was brought
up with because I've more or less succeeded and they haven't. And if you
talk natural to 'em, way we do here, and show finesse and what you might
call a broad point of view, why, they think you're putting on side.
There's my own half-brother Martin--runs the little ole general store my
Dad used to keep. Say, I'll bet he don't know there is such a thing as
a Tux--as a dinner-jacket. If he was to come in here now, he'd think we
were a bunch of--of--Why, gosh, I swear, he wouldn't know what to think!
Yes, sir, they're jealous!"

Chum Frink agreed, "That's so. But what I mind is their lack of culture
and appreciation of the Beautiful--if you'll excuse me for being
highbrow. Now, I like to give a high-class lecture, and read some of my
best poetry--not the newspaper stuff but the magazine things. But say,
when I get out in the tall grass, there's nothing will take but a lot of
cheesy old stories and slang and junk that if any of us were to indulge
in it here, he'd get the gate so fast it would make his head swim."

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


III

However intimate they might be with T. Cholmondeley Frink as a neighbor,
as a borrower of lawn-mowers and monkey-wrenches, they knew that he was
also a Famous Poet and a distinguished advertising-agent; that behind
his easiness were sultry literary mysteries which they could not
penetrate. But to-night, in the gin-evolved confidence, he admitted them
to the arcanum:

"I've got a literary problem that's worrying me to death. I'm doing a
series of ads for the Zeeco Car and I want to make each of 'em a real
little gem--reg'lar stylistic stuff. I'm all for this theory that
perfection is the stunt, or nothing at all, and these are as tough
things as I ever tackled. You might think it'd be harder to do my
poems--all these Heart Topics: home and fireside and happiness--but
they're cinches. You can't go wrong on 'em; you know what sentiments
any decent go-ahead fellow must have if he plays the game, and you stick
right to 'em. But the poetry of industrialism, now there's a literary
line where you got to open up new territory. Do you know the fellow
who's really THE American genius? The fellow who you don't know his
name and I don't either, but his work ought to be preserved so's future
generations can judge our American thought and originality to-day? Why,
the fellow that writes the Prince Albert Tobacco ads! Just listen to
this:

It's P.A. that jams such joy in jimmy pipes. Say--bet you've often
bent-an-ear to that spill-of-speech about hopping from five to
f-i-f-t-y p-e-r by "stepping on her a bit!" Guess that's going some, all
right--BUT just among ourselves, you better start a rapidwhiz system
to keep tabs as to how fast you'll buzz from low smoke spirits to
TIP-TOP-HIGH--once you line up behind a jimmy pipe that's all aglow with
that peach-of-a-pal, Prince Albert.

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

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


"Now that," caroled the motor agent, Eddie Swanson, "that's what I call
he-literature! That Prince Albert fellow--though, gosh, there can't
be just one fellow that writes 'em; must be a big board of classy
ink-slingers in conference, but anyway: now, him, he doesn't write for
long-haired pikers, he writes for Regular Guys, he writes for ME, and I
tip my benny to him! The only thing is: I wonder if it sells the goods?
Course, like all these poets, this Prince Albert fellow lets his idea
run away with him. It makes elegant reading, but it don't say nothing.
I'd never go out and buy Prince Albert Tobacco after reading it, because
it doesn't tell me anything about the stuff. It's just a bunch of
fluff."

Frink faced him: "Oh, you're crazy! Have I got to sell you the idea of
Style? Anyway that's the kind of stuff I'd like to do for the Zeeco. But
I simply can't. So I decided to stick to the straight poetic, and I took
a shot at a highbrow ad for the Zeeco. How do you like this:

The long white trail is calling--calling--and it's over the hills and far
away for every man or woman that has red blood in his veins and on his
lips the ancient song of the buccaneers. It's away with dull drudging,
and a fig for care. Speed--glorious Speed--it's more than just a
moment's exhilaration--it's Life for you and me! This great new truth
the makers of the Zeeco Car have considered as much as price and style.
It's fleet as the antelope, smooth as the glide of a swallow, yet
powerful as the charge of a bull-elephant. Class breathes in every line.
Listen, brother! You'll never know what the high art of hiking is till
you TRY LIFE'S ZIPPINGEST ZEST--THE ZEECO!"


"Yes," Frink mused, "that's got an elegant color to it, if I do say
so, but it ain't got the originality of 'spill-of-speech!'" The whole
company sighed with sympathy and admiration.





I

BABBITT was fond of his friends, he loved the importance of being host
and shouting, "Certainly, you're going to have smore chicken--the idea!"
and he appreciated the genius of T. Cholmondeley Frink, but the vigor
of the cocktails was gone, and the more he ate the less joyful he
felt. Then the amity of the dinner was destroyed by the nagging of the
Swansons.

In Floral Heights and the other prosperous sections of Zenith,
especially in the "young married set," there were many women who had
nothing to do. Though they had few servants, yet with gas stoves,
electric ranges and dish-washers and vacuum cleaners, and tiled kitchen
walls, their houses were so convenient that they had little housework,
and much of their food came from bakeries and delicatessens. They had
but two, one, or no children; and despite the myth that the Great War
had made work respectable, their husbands objected to their "wasting
time and getting a lot of crank ideas" in unpaid social work, and still
more to their causing a rumor, by earning money, that they were not
adequately supported. They worked perhaps two hours a day, and the
rest of the time they ate chocolates, went to the motion-pictures, went
window-shopping, went in gossiping twos and threes to card-parties,
read magazines, thought timorously of the lovers who never appeared,
and accumulated a splendid restlessness which they got rid of by nagging
their husbands. The husbands nagged back.

Of these naggers the Swansons were perfect specimens.

Throughout the dinner Eddie Swanson had been complaining, publicly,
about his wife's new frock. It was, he submitted, too short, too low,
too immodestly thin, and much too expensive. He appealed to Babbitt:

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

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

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

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

"That's all right now," said Swanson. "I'm authority enough so I know it
was a waste of money, and it makes me tired to see you not wearing out a
whole closetful of clothes you got already. I've expressed my idea about
this before, and you know good and well you didn't pay the least bit of
attention. I have to camp on your trail to get you to do anything--"

There was much more of it, and they all assisted, all but Babbitt.
Everything about him was dim except his stomach, and that was a bright
scarlet disturbance. "Had too much grub; oughtn't to eat this stuff,"
he groaned--while he went on eating, while he gulped down a chill and
glutinous slice of the ice-cream brick, and cocoanut cake as oozy as
shaving-cream. He felt as though he had been stuffed with clay; his body
was bursting, his throat was bursting, his brain was hot mud; and only
with agony did he continue to smile and shout as became a host on Floral
Heights.

He would, except for his guests, have fled outdoors and walked off the
intoxication of food, but in the haze which filled the room they sat
forever, talking, talking, while he agonized, "Darn fool to be eating
all this--not 'nother mouthful," and discovered that he was again
tasting the sickly welter of melted ice cream on his plate. There was
no magic in his friends; he was not uplifted when Howard Littlefield
produced from his treasure-house of scholarship the information that the
chemical symbol for raw rubber is C10H16, which turns into isoprene,
or 2C5H8. Suddenly, without precedent, Babbitt was not merely bored but
admitting that he was bored. It was ecstasy to escape from the table,
from the torture of a straight chair, and loll on the davenport in the
living-room.

The others, from their fitful unconvincing talk, their expressions of
being slowly and painfully smothered, seemed to be suffering from the
toil of social life and the horror of good food as much as himself. All
of them accepted with relief the suggestion of bridge.

Babbitt recovered from the feeling of being boiled. He won at bridge.
He was again able to endure Vergil Gunch's inexorable heartiness. But
he pictured loafing with Paul Riesling beside a lake in Maine. It was as
overpowering and imaginative as homesickness. He had never seen Maine,
yet he beheld the shrouded mountains, the tranquil lake of evening.
"That boy Paul's worth all these ballyhooing highbrows put together," he
muttered; and, "I'd like to get away from--everything."

Even Louetta Swanson did not rouse him.

Mrs. Swanson was pretty and pliant. Babbitt was not an analyst of women,
except as to their tastes in Furnished Houses to Rent. He divided them
into Real Ladies, Working Women, Old Cranks, and Fly Chickens. He mooned
over their charms but he was of opinion that all of them (save the women
of his own family) were "different" and "mysterious." Yet he had known
by instinct that Louetta Swanson could be approached. Her eyes and lips
were moist. Her face tapered from a broad forehead to a pointed chin,
her mouth was thin but strong and avid, and between her brows were two
outcurving and passionate wrinkles. She was thirty, perhaps, or younger.
Gossip had never touched her, but every man naturally and instantly rose
to flirtatiousness when he spoke to her, and every woman watched her
with stilled blankness.

Between games, sitting on the davenport, Babbitt spoke to her with the
requisite gallantry, that sonorous Floral Heights gallantry which is not
flirtation but a terrified flight from it: "You're looking like a new
soda-fountain to night, Louetta."

"Am I?"

"Ole Eddie kind of on the rampage."

"Yes. I get so sick of it."

"Well, when you get tired of hubby, you can run off with Uncle George."

"If I ran away--Oh, well--"

"Anybody ever tell you your hands are awful pretty?"

She looked down at them, she pulled the lace of her sleeves over
them, but otherwise she did not heed him. She was lost in unexpressed
imaginings.

Babbitt was too languid this evening to pursue his duty of being
a captivating (though strictly moral) male. He ambled back to the
bridge-tables. He was not much thrilled when Mrs. Frink, a small
twittering woman, proposed that they "try and do some spiritualism and
table-tipping--you know Chum can make the spirits come--honest, he just
scares me!"

The ladies of the party had not emerged all evening, but now, as the sex
given to things of the spirit while the men warred against base things
material, they took command and cried, "Oh, let's!" In the dimness
the men were rather solemn and foolish, but the goodwives quivered and
adored as they sat about the table. They laughed, "Now, you be good or
I'll tell!" when the men took their hands in the circle.

Babbitt tingled with a slight return of interest in life as Louetta
Swanson's hand closed on his with quiet firmness.

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

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

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

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

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

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

"Page Mr. Dannnnnty!" intoned Eddie Swanson.

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

"Fellow-poets, rats! Where d' you get that stuff?" protested Vergil
Gunch. "I suppose Dante showed a lot of speed for an old-timer--not that
I've actually read him, of course--but to come right down to hard facts,
he wouldn't stand one-two-three if he had to buckle down to practical
literature and turn out a poem for the newspaper-syndicate every day,
like Chum does!"

"That's so," from Eddie Swanson. "Those old birds could take their time.
Judas Priest, I could write poetry myself if I had a whole year for it,
and just wrote about that old-fashioned junk like Dante wrote about."

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

"You forgot to give um the address: 1658 Brimstone Avenue, Fiery
Heights, Hell," Gunch chuckled, but the others felt that this was
irreligious. And besides--"probably it was just Chum making the knocks,
but still, if there did happen to be something to all this, be exciting
to talk to an old fellow belonging to--way back in early times--"

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

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

Frink spelled out the messages by running through the alphabet till the
spirit interpreter knocked at the right letter.

Littlefield asked, in a learned tone, "Do you like it in the Paradiso,
Messire?"

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

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

Babbitt had a different worry. "Suppose Chum Frink was really one of
these spiritualists! Chum had, for a literary fellow, always seemed to
be a Regular Guy; he belonged to the Chatham Road Presbyterian Church
and went to the Boosters' lunches and liked cigars and motors and racy
stories. But suppose that secretly--After all, you never could tell
about these darn highbrows; and to be an out-and-out spiritualist would
be almost like being a socialist!"

No one could long be serious in the presence of Vergil Gunch. "Ask Dant'
how Jack Shakespeare and old Verg'--the guy they named after me--are
gettin' along, and don't they wish they could get into the movie game!"
he blared, and instantly all was mirth. Mrs. Jones shrieked, and Eddie
Swanson desired to know whether Dante didn't catch cold with nothing on
but his wreath.

The pleased Dante made humble answer.

But Babbitt--the curst discontent was torturing him again, and heavily,
in the impersonal darkness, he pondered, "I don't--We're all so flip and
think we're so smart. There'd be--A fellow like Dante--I wish I'd read
some of his pieces. I don't suppose I ever will, now."

He had, without explanation, the impression of a slaggy cliff and on it,
in silhouette against menacing clouds, a lone and austere figure. He was
dismayed by a sudden contempt for his surest friends. He grasped Louetta
Swanson's hand, and found the comfort of human warmth. Habit came, a
veteran warrior; and he shook himself. "What the deuce is the matter
with me, this evening?"

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


II

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

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

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

She was beaming. "Oh, it was nice, wasn't it! I know they enjoyed every
minute of it. Don't you think so?"

He couldn't do it. He couldn't mock. It would have been like sneering at
a happy child. He lied ponderously: "You bet! Best party this year, by a
long shot."

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

"You bet! Fried to the Queen's taste. Best fried chicken I've tasted for
a coon's age."

"Didn't Matilda fry it beautifully! And don't you think the soup was
simply delicious?"

"It certainly was! It was corking! Best soup I've tasted since Heck was
a pup!" But his voice was seeping away. They stood in the hall, under
the electric light in its square box-like shade of red glass bound with
nickel. She stared at him.

"Why, George, you don't sound--you sound as if you hadn't really enjoyed
it."

"Sure I did! Course I did!"

"George! What is it?"

"Oh, I'm kind of tired, I guess. Been pounding pretty hard at the
office. Need to get away and rest up a little."

"Well, we're going to Maine in just a few weeks now, dear." "Yuh--" Then
he was pouring it out nakedly, robbed of reticence. "Myra: I think it'd
be a good thing for me to get up there early."

"But you have this man you have to meet in New York about business."

"What man? Oh, sure. Him. Oh, that's all off. But I want to hit Maine
early--get in a little fishing, catch me a big trout, by golly!" A
nervous, artificial laugh.

"Well, why don't we do it? Verona and Matilda can run the house between
them, and you and I can go any time, if you think we can afford it."

"But that's--I've been feeling so jumpy lately, I thought maybe it might
be a good thing if I kind of got off by myself and sweat it out of me."

"George! Don't you WANT me to go along?" She was too wretchedly in
earnest to be tragic, or gloriously insulted, or anything save dumpy and
defenseless and flushed to the red steaminess of a boiled beet.

"Of course I do! I just meant--" Remembering that Paul Riesling had
predicted this, he was as desperate as she. "I mean, sometimes it's a
good thing for an old grouch like me to go off and get it out of
his system." He tried to sound paternal. "Then when you and the kids
arrive--I figured maybe I might skip up to Maine just a few days ahead
of you--I'd be ready for a real bat, see how I mean?" He coaxed her
with large booming sounds, with affable smiles, like a popular preacher
blessing an Easter congregation, like a humorous lecturer completing his
stint of eloquence, like all perpetrators of masculine wiles.

She stared at him, the joy of festival drained from her face. "Do I
bother you when we go on vacations? Don't I add anything to your fun?"

He broke. Suddenly, dreadfully, he was hysterical, he was a yelping
baby. "Yes, yes, yes! Hell, yes! But can't you understand I'm shot to
pieces? I'm all in! I got to take care of myself! I tell you, I got
to--I'm sick of everything and everybody! I got to--"

It was she who was mature and protective now. "Why, of course! You shall
run off by yourself! Why don't you get Paul to go along, and you boys
just fish and have a good time?" She patted his shoulder--reaching up to
it--while he shook with palsied helplessness, and in that moment was not
merely by habit fond of her but clung to her strength.

She cried cheerily, "Now up-stairs you go, and pop into bed. We'll fix
it all up. I'll see to the doors. Now skip!"

For many minutes, for many hours, for a bleak eternity, he lay awake,
shivering, reduced to primitive terror, comprehending that he had won
freedom, and wondering what he could do with anything so unknown and so
embarrassing as freedom.





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.





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!"





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.

 Business is brisk that spring, so Babbitt and Myra throw a dinner party for Zenith's "keenest intellects." Babbitt visits a speakeasy to purchase gin from the surly proprietor, Healey Hanson. Everyone rejoices when Babbitt brings out the cocktails. In the warmth of alcohol, Babbitt decides his guests are wonderful friends. The men hold forth that Prohibition is fine for the working classes, but it is an infringement on the personal liberty of men like themselves. When the good cheer of the cocktails wears off, Babbitt admits to himself that he is bored and wishes he could retreat to Maine. Meanwhile, the guests play bridge and hold a seance to summon Dante. After the guests depart, Myra senses that Babbitt didn't enjoy the party despite his protestations to the contrary. He confesses that he has felt rather tired of late and wishes to go to Maine a week earlier than Myra and the children. Myra's feelings are hurt, but when she sees how upset Babbitt is, she understands his need for time alone. She suggests that he take Riesling with him. Babbitt and Myra visit Riesling and Zilla's impressively modern apartment. When Myra suggests that Riesling go with Babbitt to Maine early, Zilla accuses Riesling of cheating on her. A bitter argument ensues, and Babbitt, roused to his friend's defense, attacks Zilla for being a cruel, nagging wife. Zilla bursts into tears and admits that he is right but only because she gets pleasure out of the whole dramatic scene. Babbitt magnanimously forgives her, and Zilla agrees to let Riesling go to Maine a week early. Later, Myra criticizes Babbitt for being so cruel. She explains that Zilla has nothing to do all day, so she vents her frustration on her husband. Babbitt knows she is right, but he is happy that Riesling can now go to Maine early with him. On the train to New York, the conversation between the traveling businessmen in the smoking car is full of talk about Prohibition and the world of business. The men complain about the black porter's lack of respect. They are quite happy that there are laws restricting immigration because they feel that the "foreigners" are overrunning the country. Disgusted, Riesling leaves the car; Babbitt stays behind. Upon their arrival in New York, Riesling asks Babbitt if they can go look at the ocean liners. He wanted to go study the violin in Europe during his youth, and he still hopes to do so one day. However, when they see the liners, Riesling becomes distraught and wishes to leave, much to Babbitt's surprise. They recover their good cheer by engaging in fishing and late night poker games in Maine. When their families arrive, Myra urges them to act as if they weren't there, but her complaining puts an end to the late night poker games. Nevertheless, Babbitt feels refreshed by the vacation. He resolves to do things differently in the year to come, hoping that he will be elected president of the Real Estate Board. Upon his return to Zenith, Babbitt again makes an unsuccessful attempt to quit smoking and to make a hobby of going to baseball games. He does play golf once a week, however, and goes to the movies weekly with his wife and Tinka.

