Chapter: HIS march to greatness was not without disastrous stumbling.

Fame did not bring the social advancement which the Babbitts deserved.
They were not asked to join the Tonawanda Country Club nor invited to
the dances at the Union. Himself, Babbitt fretted, he didn't "care a fat
hoot for all these highrollers, but the wife would kind of like to be
Among Those Present." He nervously awaited his university class-dinner
and an evening of furious intimacy with such social leaders as Charles
McKelvey the millionaire contractor, Max Kruger the banker, Irving Tate
the tool-manufacturer, and Adelbert Dobson the fashionable interior
decorator. Theoretically he was their friend, as he had been in college,
and when he encountered them they still called him "Georgie," but he
didn't seem to encounter them often, and they never invited him to
dinner (with champagne and a butler) at their houses on Royal Ridge.

All the week before the class-dinner he thought of them. "No reason why
we shouldn't become real chummy now!"


II

Like all true American diversions and spiritual outpourings, the
dinner of the men of the Class of 1896 was thoroughly organized. The
dinner-committee hammered like a sales-corporation. Once a week they
sent out reminders:

TICKLER NO. 3

Old man, are you going to be with us at the livest Friendship Feed the
alumni of the good old U have ever known? The alumnae of '08 turned out
60% strong. Are we boys going to be beaten by a bunch of skirts? Come
on, fellows, let's work up some real genuine enthusiasm and all boost
together for the snappiest dinner yet! Elegant eats, short ginger-talks,
and memories shared together of the brightest, gladdest days of life.


The dinner was held in a private room at the Union Club. The club was
a dingy building, three pretentious old dwellings knocked together, and
the entrance-hall resembled a potato cellar, yet the Babbitt who
was free of the magnificence of the Athletic Club entered with
embarrassment. He nodded to the doorman, an ancient proud negro with
brass buttons and a blue tail-coat, and paraded through the hall, trying
to look like a member.

Sixty men had come to the dinner. They made islands and eddies in
the hall; they packed the elevator and the corners of the private
dining-room. They tried to be intimate and enthusiastic. They appeared
to one another exactly as they had in college--as raw youngsters whose
present mustaches, baldnesses, paunches, and wrinkles were but jovial
disguises put on for the evening. "You haven't changed a particle!"
they marveled. The men whom they could not recall they addressed, "Well,
well, great to see you again, old man. What are you--Still doing the
same thing?"

Some one was always starting a cheer or a college song, and it was
always thinning into silence. Despite their resolution to be democratic
they divided into two sets: the men with dress-clothes and the men
without. Babbitt (extremely in dress-clothes) went from one group to the
other. Though he was, almost frankly, out for social conquest, he sought
Paul Riesling first. He found him alone, neat and silent.

Paul sighed, "I'm no good at this handshaking and 'well, look who's
here' bunk."

"Rats now, Paulibus, loosen up and be a mixer! Finest bunch of boys on
earth! Say, you seem kind of glum. What's matter?"

"Oh, the usual. Run-in with Zilla."

"Come on! Let's wade in and forget our troubles."

He kept Paul beside him, but worked toward the spot where Charles
McKelvey stood warming his admirers like a furnace.

McKelvey had been the hero of the Class of '96; not only football
captain and hammer-thrower but debater, and passable in what the State
University considered scholarship. He had gone on, had captured the
construction-company once owned by the Dodsworths, best-known pioneer
family of Zenith. He built state capitols, skyscrapers, railway
terminals. He was a heavy-shouldered, big-chested man, but not sluggish.
There was a quiet humor in his eyes, a syrup-smooth quickness in his
speech, which intimidated politicians and warned reporters; and in his
presence the most intelligent scientist or the most sensitive artist
felt thin-blooded, unworldly, and a little shabby. He was, particularly
when he was influencing legislatures or hiring labor-spies, very easy
and lovable and gorgeous. He was baronial; he was a peer in the rapidly
crystallizing American aristocracy, inferior only to the haughty Old
Families. (In Zenith, an Old Family is one which came to town before
1840.) His power was the greater because he was not hindered by
scruples, by either the vice or the virtue of the older Puritan
tradition.

McKelvey was being placidly merry now with the great, the manufacturers
and bankers, the land-owners and lawyers and surgeons who had chauffeurs
and went to Europe. Babbitt squeezed among them. He liked McKelvey's
smile as much as the social advancement to be had from his favor. If in
Paul's company he felt ponderous and protective, with McKelvey he felt
slight and adoring.

He heard McKelvey say to Max Kruger, the banker, "Yes, we'll put up Sir
Gerald Doak." Babbitt's democratic love for titles became a rich relish.
"You know, he's one of the biggest iron-men in England, Max. Horribly
well-off.... Why, hello, old Georgie! Say, Max, George Babbitt is
getting fatter than I am!"

The chairman shouted, "Take your seats, fellows!"

"Shall we make a move, Charley?" Babbitt said casually to McKelvey.

"Right. Hello, Paul! How's the old fiddler? Planning to sit anywhere
special, George? Come on, let's grab some seats. Come on, Max. Georgie,
I read about your speeches in the campaign. Bully work!"

After that, Babbitt would have followed him through fire. He was
enormously busy during the dinner, now bumblingly cheering Paul, now
approaching McKelvey with "Hear, you're going to build some piers in
Brooklyn," now noting how enviously the failures of the class, sitting
by themselves in a weedy group, looked up to him in his association with
the nobility, now warming himself in the Society Talk of McKelvey and
Max Kruger. They spoke of a "jungle dance" for which Mona Dodsworth
had decorated her house with thousands of orchids. They spoke, with an
excellent imitation of casualness, of a dinner in Washington at
which McKelvey had met a Senator, a Balkan princess, and an English
major-general. McKelvey called the princess "Jenny," and let it be known
that he had danced with her.

Babbitt was thrilled, but not so weighted with awe as to be silent. If
he was not invited by them to dinner, he was yet accustomed to talking
with bank-presidents, congressmen, and clubwomen who entertained poets.
He was bright and referential with McKelvey:

"Say, Charley, juh remember in Junior year how we chartered a sea-going
hack and chased down to Riverdale, to the big show Madame Brown used to
put on? Remember how you beat up that hick constabule that tried to run
us in, and we pinched the pants-pressing sign and took and hung it on
Prof. Morrison's door? Oh, gosh, those were the days!"

Those, McKelvey agreed, were the days.

Babbitt had reached "It isn't the books you study in college but the
friendships you make that counts" when the men at head of the table
broke into song. He attacked McKelvey:

"It's a shame, uh, shame to drift apart because our, uh, business
activities lie in different fields. I've enjoyed talking over the good
old days. You and Mrs. McKelvey must come to dinner some night."

Vaguely, "Yes, indeed--"

"Like to talk to you about the growth of real estate out beyond your
Grantsville warehouse. I might be able to tip you off to a thing or two,
possibly."

"Splendid! We must have dinner together, Georgie. Just let me know. And
it will be a great pleasure to have your wife and you at the house,"
said McKelvey, much less vaguely.

Then the chairman's voice, that prodigious voice which once had roused
them to cheer defiance at rooters from Ohio or Michigan or Indiana,
whooped, "Come on, you wombats! All together in the long yell!" Babbitt
felt that life would never be sweeter than now, when he joined with Paul
Riesling and the newly recovered hero, McKelvey, in:

Baaaaaattle-ax Get an ax, Bal-ax, Get-nax, Who, who? The U.! Hooroo!


III

The Babbitts invited the McKelveys to dinner, in early December, and the
McKelveys not only accepted but, after changing the date once or twice,
actually came.

The Babbitts somewhat thoroughly discussed the details of the dinner,
from the purchase of a bottle of champagne to the number of salted
almonds to be placed before each person. Especially did they mention the
matter of the other guests. To the last Babbitt held out for giving
Paul Riesling the benefit of being with the McKelveys. "Good old Charley
would like Paul and Verg Gunch better than some highfalutin' Willy
boy," he insisted, but Mrs. Babbitt interrupted his observations with,
"Yes--perhaps--I think I'll try to get some Lynnhaven oysters," and
when she was quite ready she invited Dr. J. T. Angus, the oculist, and a
dismally respectable lawyer named Maxwell, with their glittering wives.

Neither Angus nor Maxwell belonged to the Elks or to the Athletic Club;
neither of them had ever called Babbitt "brother" or asked his opinions
on carburetors. The only "human people" whom she invited, Babbitt
raged, were the Littlefields; and Howard Littlefield at times became so
statistical that Babbitt longed for the refreshment of Gunch's, "Well,
old lemon-pie-face, what's the good word?"

Immediately after lunch Mrs. Babbitt began to set the table for the
seven-thirty dinner to the McKelveys, and Babbitt was, by order, home at
four. But they didn't find anything for him to do, and three times Mrs.
Babbitt scolded, "Do please try to keep out of the way!" He stood in the
door of the garage, his lips drooping, and wished that Littlefield or
Sam Doppelbrau or somebody would come along and talk to him. He saw Ted
sneaking about the corner of the house.

"What's the matter, old man?" said Babbitt.

"Is that you, thin, owld one? Gee, Ma certainly is on the warpath!
I told her Rone and I would jus' soon not be let in on the fiesta
to-night, and she bit me. She says I got to take a bath, too. But, say,
the Babbitt men will be some lookers to-night! Little Theodore in a
dress-suit!"

"The Babbitt men!" Babbitt liked the sound of it. He put his arm about
the boy's shoulder. He wished that Paul Riesling had a daughter, so that
Ted might marry her. "Yes, your mother is kind of rouncing round, all
right," he said, and they laughed together, and sighed together, and
dutifully went in to dress.

The McKelveys were less than fifteen minutes late.

Babbitt hoped that the Doppelbraus would see the McKelveys' limousine,
and their uniformed chauffeur, waiting in front.

The dinner was well cooked and incredibly plentiful, and Mrs. Babbitt
had brought out her grandmother's silver candlesticks. Babbitt worked
hard. He was good. He told none of the jokes he wanted to tell. He
listened to the others. He started Maxwell off with a resounding, "Let's
hear about your trip to the Yellowstone." He was laudatory, extremely
laudatory. He found opportunities to remark that Dr. Angus was a
benefactor to humanity, Maxwell and Howard Littlefield profound
scholars, Charles McKelvey an inspiration to ambitious youth, and Mrs.
McKelvey an adornment to the social circles of Zenith, Washington, New
York, Paris, and numbers of other places.

But he could not stir them. It was a dinner without a soul. For no
reason that was clear to Babbitt, heaviness was over them and they spoke
laboriously and unwillingly.

He concentrated on Lucille McKelvey, carefully not looking at her
blanched lovely shoulder and the tawny silken bared which supported her
frock.

"I suppose you'll be going to Europe pretty soon again, won't you?" he
invited.

"I'd like awfully to run over to Rome for a few weeks."

"I suppose you see a lot of pictures and music and curios and everything
there."

"No, what I really go for is: there's a little trattoria on the Via
della Scrofa where you get the best fettuccine in the world."

"Oh, I--Yes. That must be nice to try that. Yes."

At a quarter to ten McKelvey discovered with profound regret that his
wife had a headache. He said blithely, as Babbitt helped him with his
coat, "We must lunch together some time, and talk over the old days."

When the others had labored out, at half-past ten, Babbitt turned to
his wife, pleading, "Charley said he had a corking time and we must
lunch--said they wanted to have us up to the house for dinner before
long."

She achieved, "Oh, it's just been one of those quiet evenings that are
often so much more enjoyable than noisy parties where everybody talks at
once and doesn't really settle down to-nice quiet enjoyment."

But from his cot on the sleeping-porch he heard her weeping, slowly,
without hope.


IV

For a month they watched the social columns, and waited for a return
dinner-invitation.

As the hosts of Sir Gerald Doak, the McKelveys were headlined all the
week after the Babbitts' dinner. Zenith ardently received Sir Gerald
(who had come to America to buy coal). The newspapers interviewed him
on prohibition, Ireland, unemployment, naval aviation, the rate of
exchange, tea-drinking versus whisky-drinking, the psychology of
American women, and daily life as lived by English county families. Sir
Gerald seemed to have heard of all those topics. The McKelveys gave him
a Singhalese dinner, and Miss Elnora Pearl Bates, society editor of the
Advocate-Times, rose to her highest lark-note. Babbitt read aloud at
breakfast-table:


'Twixt the original and Oriental decorations, the strange and delicious
food, and the personalities both of the distinguished guests, the
charming hostess and the noted host, never has Zenith seen a more
recherche affair than the Ceylon dinner-dance given last evening by Mr.
and Mrs. Charles McKelvey to Sir Gerald Doak. Methought as we--fortunate
one!--were privileged to view that fairy and foreign scene, nothing at
Monte Carlo or the choicest ambassadorial sets of foreign capitals could
be more lovely. It is not for nothing that Zenith is in matters social
rapidly becoming known as the choosiest inland city in the country.

Though he is too modest to admit it, Lord Doak gives a cachet to our
smart quartier such as it has not received since the ever-memorable
visit of the Earl of Sittingbourne. Not only is he of the British
peerage, but he is also, on dit, a leader of the British metal
industries. As he comes from Nottingham, a favorite haunt of Robin Hood,
though now, we are informed by Lord Doak, a live modern city of 275,573
inhabitants, and important lace as well as other industries, we like to
think that perhaps through his veins runs some of the blood, both virile
red and bonny blue, of that earlier lord o' the good greenwood, the
roguish Robin.

The lovely Mrs. McKelvey never was more fascinating than last evening
in her black net gown relieved by dainty bands of silver and at her
exquisite waist a glowing cluster of Aaron Ward roses.


Babbitt said bravely, "I hope they don't invite us to meet this Lord
Doak guy. Darn sight rather just have a nice quiet little dinner with
Charley and the Missus."

At the Zenith Athletic Club they discussed it amply. "I s'pose we'll
have to call McKelvey 'Lord Chaz' from now on," said Sidney Finkelstein.

"It beats all get-out," meditated that man of data, Howard Littlefield,
"how hard it is for some people to get things straight. Here they call
this fellow 'Lord Doak' when it ought to be 'Sir Gerald.'"

Babbitt marvelled, "Is that a fact! Well, well! 'Sir Gerald,' eh? That's
what you call um, eh? Well, sir, I'm glad to know that."

Later he informed his salesmen, "It's funnier 'n a goat the way
some folks that, just because they happen to lay up a big wad, go
entertaining famous foreigners, don't have any more idea 'n a rabbit how
to address 'em so's to make 'em feel at home!"

That evening, as he was driving home, he passed McKelvey's limousine
and saw Sir Gerald, a large, ruddy, pop-eyed, Teutonic Englishman whose
dribble of yellow mustache gave him an aspect sad and doubtful. Babbitt
drove on slowly, oppressed by futility. He had a sudden, unexplained,
and horrible conviction that the McKelveys were laughing at him.

He betrayed his depression by the violence with which he informed his
wife, "Folks that really tend to business haven't got the time to waste
on a bunch like the McKelveys. This society stuff is like any other
hobby; if you devote yourself to it, you get on. But I like to have a
chance to visit with you and the children instead of all this idiotic
chasing round."

They did not speak of the McKelveys again.


V

It was a shame, at this worried time, to have to think about the
Overbrooks.

Ed Overbrook was a classmate of Babbitt who had been a failure. He had
a large family and a feeble insurance business out in the suburb of
Dorchester. He was gray and thin and unimportant. He had always been
gray and thin and unimportant. He was the person whom, in any group,
you forgot to introduce, then introduced with extra enthusiasm. He had
admired Babbitt's good-fellowship in college, had admired ever since
his power in real estate, his beautiful house and wonderful clothes. It
pleased Babbitt, though it bothered him with a sense of responsibility.
At the class-dinner he had seen poor Overbrook, in a shiny blue serge
business-suit, being diffident in a corner with three other failures.
He had gone over and been cordial: "Why, hello, young Ed! I hear you're
writing all the insurance in Dorchester now. Bully work!"

They recalled the good old days when Overbrook used to write poetry.
Overbrook embarrassed him by blurting, "Say, Georgie, I hate to think
of how we been drifting apart. I wish you and Mrs. Babbitt would come to
dinner some night."

Babbitt boomed, "Fine! Sure! Just let me know. And the wife and I want
to have you at the house." He forgot it, but unfortunately Ed Overbrook
did not. Repeatedly he telephoned to Babbitt, inviting him to dinner.
"Might as well go and get it over," Babbitt groaned to his wife. "But
don't it simply amaze you the way the poor fish doesn't know the first
thing about social etiquette? Think of him 'phoning me, instead of his
wife sitting down and writing us a regular bid! Well, I guess
we're stuck for it. That's the trouble with all this class-brother
hooptedoodle."

He accepted Overbrook's next plaintive invitation, for an evening two
weeks off. A dinner two weeks off, even a family dinner, never seems
so appalling, till the two weeks have astoundingly disappeared and
one comes dismayed to the ambushed hour. They had to change the date,
because of their own dinner to the McKelveys, but at last they gloomily
drove out to the Overbrooks' house in Dorchester.

It was miserable from the beginning. The Overbrooks had dinner at
six-thirty, while the Babbitts never dined before seven. Babbitt
permitted himself to be ten minutes late. "Let's make it as short as
possible. I think we'll duck out quick. I'll say I have to be at the
office extra early to-morrow," he planned.

The Overbrook house was depressing. It was the second story of a wooden
two-family dwelling; a place of baby-carriages, old hats hung in
the hall, cabbage-smell, and a Family Bible on the parlor table. Ed
Overbrook and his wife were as awkward and threadbare as usual, and the
other guests were two dreadful families whose names Babbitt never caught
and never desired to catch. But he was touched, and disconcerted, by the
tactless way in which Overbrook praised him: "We're mighty proud to have
old George here to-night! Of course you've all read about his speeches
and oratory in the papers--and the boy's good-looking, too, eh?--but
what I always think of is back in college, and what a great old mixer he
was, and one of the best swimmers in the class."

Babbitt tried to be jovial; he worked at it; but he could find nothing
to interest him in Overbrook's timorousness, the blankness of the other
guests, or the drained stupidity of Mrs. Overbrook, with her spectacles,
drab skin, and tight-drawn hair. He told his best Irish story, but it
sank like soggy cake. Most bleary moment of all was when Mrs. Overbrook,
peering out of her fog of nursing eight children and cooking and
scrubbing, tried to be conversational.

"I suppose you go to Chicago and New York right along, Mr. Babbitt," she
prodded.

"Well, I get to Chicago fairly often."

"It must be awfully interesting. I suppose you take in all the
theaters."

"Well, to tell the truth, Mrs. Overbrook, thing that hits me best is a
great big beefsteak at a Dutch restaurant in the Loop!"

They had nothing more to say. Babbitt was sorry, but there was no
hope; the dinner was a failure. At ten, rousing out of the stupor of
meaningless talk, he said as cheerily as he could, "'Fraid we got to be
starting, Ed. I've got a fellow coming to see me early to-morrow." As
Overbrook helped him with his coat, Babbitt said, "Nice to rub up on the
old days! We must have lunch together, P.D.Q."

Mrs. Babbitt sighed, on their drive home, "It was pretty terrible. But
how Mr. Overbrook does admire you!"

"Yep. Poor cuss! Seems to think I'm a little tin archangel, and the
best-looking man in Zenith."

"Well, you're certainly not that but--Oh, Georgie, you don't suppose we
have to invite them to dinner at our house now, do we?"

"Ouch! Gaw, I hope not!"

"See here, now, George! You didn't say anything about it to Mr.
Overbrook, did you?"

"No! Gee! No! Honest, I didn't! Just made a bluff about having him to
lunch some time."

"Well.... Oh, dear.... I don't want to hurt their feelings. But I
don't see how I could stand another evening like this one. And suppose
somebody like Dr. and Mrs. Angus came in when we had the Overbrooks
there, and thought they were friends of ours!"

For a week they worried, "We really ought to invite Ed and his wife,
poor devils!" But as they never saw the Overbrooks, they forgot them,
and after a month or two they said, "That really was the best way, just
to let it slide. It wouldn't be kind to THEM to have them here. They'd
feel so out of place and hard-up in our home."

They did not speak of the Overbrooks again.





THE certainty that he was not going to be accepted by the McKelveys made
Babbitt feel guilty and a little absurd. But he went more regularly to
the Elks; at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon he was oratorical regarding
the wickedness of strikes; and again he saw himself as a Prominent
Citizen.

His clubs and associations were food comfortable to his spirit.

Of a decent man in Zenith it was required that he should belong to
one, preferably two or three, of the innumerous "lodges" and
prosperity-boosting lunch-clubs; to the Rotarians, the Kiwanis, or the
Boosters; to the Oddfellows, Moose, Masons, Red Men, Woodmen, Owls,
Eagles, Maccabees, Knights of Pythias, Knights of Columbus, and other
secret orders characterized by a high degree of heartiness, sound
morals, and reverence for the Constitution. There were four reasons for
joining these orders: It was the thing to do. It was good for business,
since lodge-brothers frequently became customers. It gave to Americans
unable to become Geheimrate or Commendatori such unctuous honorifics as
High Worthy Recording Scribe and Grand Hoogow to add to the commonplace
distinctions of Colonel, Judge, and Professor. And it permitted the
swaddled American husband to stay away from home for one evening a week.
The lodge was his piazza, his pavement cafe. He could shoot pool and
talk man-talk and be obscene and valiant.

Babbitt was what he called a "joiner" for all these reasons.

Behind the gold and scarlet banner of his public achievements was the
dun background of office-routine: leases, sales-contracts, lists of
properties to rent. The evenings of oratory and committees and lodges
stimulated him like brandy, but every morning he was sandy-tongued. Week
by week he accumulated nervousness. He was in open disagreement with his
outside salesman, Stanley Graff; and once, though her charms had always
kept him nickeringly polite to her, he snarled at Miss McGoun for
changing his letters.

But in the presence of Paul Riesling he relaxed. At least once a week
they fled from maturity. On Saturday they played golf, jeering, "As
a golfer, you're a fine tennis-player," or they motored all Sunday
afternoon, stopping at village lunchrooms to sit on high stools at a
counter and drink coffee from thick cups. Sometimes Paul came over in
the evening with his violin, and even Zilla was silent as the lonely man
who had lost his way and forever crept down unfamiliar roads spun out
his dark soul in music.


II

Nothing gave Babbitt more purification and publicity than his labors for
the Sunday School.

His church, the Chatham Road Presbyterian, was one of the largest and
richest, one of the most oaken and velvety, in Zenith. The pastor was
the Reverend John Jennison Drew, M.A., D.D., LL.D. (The M.A. and the
D.D. were from Elbert University, Nebraska, the LL.D. from Waterbury
College, Oklahoma.) He was eloquent, efficient, and versatile. He
presided at meetings for the denunciation of unions or the elevation of
domestic service, and confided to the audiences that as a poor boy he
had carried newspapers. For the Saturday edition of the Evening Advocate
he wrote editorials on "The Manly Man's Religion" and "The Dollars and
Sense Value of Christianity," which were printed in bold type surrounded
by a wiggly border. He often said that he was "proud to be known as
primarily a business man" and that he certainly was not going to "permit
the old Satan to monopolize all the pep and punch." He was a thin,
rustic-faced young man with gold spectacles and a bang of dull brown
hair, but when he hurled himself into oratory he glowed with power.
He admitted that he was too much the scholar and poet to imitate the
evangelist, Mike Monday, yet he had once awakened his fold to new life,
and to larger collections, by the challenge, "My brethren, the real
cheap skate is the man who won't lend to the Lord!"

He had made his church a true community center. It contained everything
but a bar. It had a nursery, a Thursday evening supper with a short
bright missionary lecture afterward, a gymnasium, a fortnightly
motion-picture show, a library of technical books for young
workmen--though, unfortunately, no young workman ever entered the church
except to wash the windows or repair the furnace--and a sewing-circle
which made short little pants for the children of the poor while Mrs.
Drew read aloud from earnest novels.

Though Dr. Drew's theology was Presbyterian, his church-building
was gracefully Episcopalian. As he said, it had the "most perdurable
features of those noble ecclesiastical monuments of grand Old England
which stand as symbols of the eternity of faith, religious and civil."
It was built of cheery iron-spot brick in an improved Gothic style, and
the main auditorium had indirect lighting from electric globes in lavish
alabaster bowls.

On a December morning when the Babbitts went to church, Dr. John
Jennison Drew was unusually eloquent. The crowd was immense. Ten brisk
young ushers, in morning coats with white roses, were bringing folding
chairs up from the basement. There was an impressive musical program,
conducted by Sheldon Smeeth, educational director of the Y.M.C.A.,
who also sang the offertory. Babbitt cared less for this, because some
misguided person had taught young Mr. Smeeth to smile, smile, smile
while he was singing, but with all the appreciation of a fellow-orator
he admired Dr. Drew's sermon. It had the intellectual quality which
distinguished the Chatham Road congregation from the grubby chapels on
Smith Street.

"At this abundant harvest-time of all the year," Dr. Drew chanted,
"when, though stormy the sky and laborious the path to the drudging
wayfarer, yet the hovering and bodiless spirit swoops back o'er all the
labors and desires of the past twelve months, oh, then it seems to
me there sounds behind all our apparent failures the golden chorus of
greeting from those passed happily on; and lo! on the dim horizon we
see behind dolorous clouds the mighty mass of mountains--mountains of
melody, mountains of mirth, mountains of might!"

"I certainly do like a sermon with culture and thought in it," meditated
Babbitt.

At the end of the service he was delighted when the pastor, actively
shaking hands at the door, twittered, "Oh, Brother Babbitt, can you wait
a jiffy? Want your advice."

"Sure, doctor! You bet!"

"Drop into my office. I think you'll like the cigars there." Babbitt did
like the cigars. He also liked the office, which was distinguished from
other offices only by the spirited change of the familiar wall-placard
to "This is the Lord's Busy Day." Chum Frink came in, then William W.
Eathorne.

Mr. Eathorne was the seventy-year-old president of the First State Bank
of Zenith. He still wore the delicate patches of side-whiskers which had
been the uniform of bankers in 1870. If Babbitt was envious of the
Smart Set of the McKelveys, before William Washington Eathorne he was
reverent. Mr. Eathorne had nothing to do with the Smart Set. He was
above it. He was the great-grandson of one of the five men who founded
Zenith, in 1792, and he was of the third generation of bankers. He could
examine credits, make loans, promote or injure a man's business. In his
presence Babbitt breathed quickly and felt young.

The Reverend Dr. Drew bounced into the room and flowered into speech:

"I've asked you gentlemen to stay so I can put a proposition before you.
The Sunday School needs bucking up. It's the fourth largest in Zenith,
but there's no reason why we should take anybody's dust. We ought to be
first. I want to request you, if you will, to form a committee of
advice and publicity for the Sunday School; look it over and make any
suggestions for its betterment, and then, perhaps, see that the press
gives us some attention--give the public some really helpful and
constructive news instead of all these murders and divorces."

"Excellent," said the banker.

Babbitt and Frink were enchanted to join him.


III

If you had asked Babbitt what his religion was, he would have answered
in sonorous Boosters'-Club rhetoric, "My religion is to serve my fellow
men, to honor my brother as myself, and to do my bit to make life
happier for one and all." If you had pressed him for more detail, he
would have announced, "I'm a member of the Presbyterian Church, and
naturally, I accept its doctrines." If you had been so brutal as to
go on, he would have protested, "There's no use discussing and arguing
about religion; it just stirs up bad feeling."

Actually, the content of his theology was that there was a supreme being
who had tried to make us perfect, but presumably had failed; that if
one was a Good Man he would go to a place called Heaven (Babbitt
unconsciously pictured it as rather like an excellent hotel with a
private garden), but if one was a Bad Man, that is, if he murdered
or committed burglary or used cocaine or had mistresses or sold
non-existent real estate, he would be punished. Babbitt was uncertain,
however, about what he called "this business of Hell." He explained
to Ted, "Of course I'm pretty liberal; I don't exactly believe in a
fire-and-brimstone Hell. Stands to reason, though, that a fellow can't
get away with all sorts of Vice and not get nicked for it, see how I
mean?"

Upon this theology he rarely pondered. The kernel of his practical
religion was that it was respectable, and beneficial to one's business,
to be seen going to services; that the church kept the Worst Elements
from being still worse; and that the pastor's sermons, however dull they
might seem at the time of taking, yet had a voodooistic power which "did
a fellow good--kept him in touch with Higher Things."

His first investigations for the Sunday School Advisory Committee did
not inspire him.

He liked the Busy Folks' Bible Class, composed of mature men and women
and addressed by the old-school physician, Dr. T. Atkins Jordan, in
a sparkling style comparable to that of the more refined humorous
after-dinner speakers, but when he went down to the junior classes he
was disconcerted. He heard Sheldon Smeeth, educational director of the
Y.M.C.A. and leader of the church-choir, a pale but strenuous young man
with curly hair and a smile, teaching a class of sixteen-year-old boys.
Smeeth lovingly admonished them, "Now, fellows, I'm going to have a
Heart to Heart Talk Evening at my house next Thursday. We'll get off by
ourselves and be frank about our Secret Worries. You can just tell old
Sheldy anything, like all the fellows do at the Y. I'm going to explain
frankly about the horrible practises a kiddy falls into unless he's
guided by a Big Brother, and about the perils and glory of Sex." Old
Sheldy beamed damply; the boys looked ashamed; and Babbitt didn't know
which way to turn his embarrassed eyes.

Less annoying but also much duller were the minor classes which were
being instructed in philosophy and Oriental ethnology by earnest
spinsters. Most of them met in the highly varnished Sunday School room,
but there was an overflow to the basement, which was decorated with
varicose water-pipes and lighted by small windows high up in the oozing
wall. What Babbitt saw, however, was the First Congregational Church
of Catawba. He was back in the Sunday School of his boyhood. He smelled
again that polite stuffiness to be found only in church parlors; he
recalled the case of drab Sunday School books: "Hetty, a Humble
Heroine" and "Josephus, a Lad of Palestine;" he thumbed once more the
high-colored text-cards which no boy wanted but no boy liked to throw
away, because they were somehow sacred; he was tortured by the stumbling
rote of thirty-five years ago, as in the vast Zenith church he listened
to:

"Now, Edgar, you read the next verse. What does it mean when it says
it's easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye? What does this
teach us? Clarence! Please don't wiggle so! If you had studied your
lesson you wouldn't be so fidgety. Now, Earl, what is the lesson
Jesus was trying to teach his disciples? The one thing I want you
to especially remember, boys, is the words, 'With God all things
are possible.' Just think of that always--Clarence, PLEASE pay
attention--just say 'With God all things are possible' whenever you
feel discouraged, and, Alec, will you read the next verse; if you'd pay
attention you wouldn't lose your place!"

Drone--drone--drone--gigantic bees that boomed in a cavern of
drowsiness--

Babbitt started from his open-eyed nap, thanked the teacher for "the
privilege of listening to her splendid teaching," and staggered on to
the next circle.

After two weeks of this he had no suggestions whatever for the Reverend
Dr. Drew.

Then he discovered a world of Sunday School journals, an enormous
and busy domain of weeklies and monthlies which were as technical,
as practical and forward-looking, as the real-estate columns or the
shoe-trade magazines. He bought half a dozen of them at a religious
book-shop and till after midnight he read them and admired.

He found many lucrative tips on "Focusing Appeals," "Scouting for New
Members," and "Getting Prospects to Sign up with the Sunday School." He
particularly liked the word "prospects," and he was moved by the rubric:

"The moral springs of the community's life lie deep in its Sunday
Schools--its schools of religious instruction and inspiration. Neglect
now means loss of spiritual vigor and moral power in years to come....
Facts like the above, followed by a straight-arm appeal, will reach
folks who can never be laughed or jollied into doing their part."

Babbitt admitted, "That's so. I used to skin out of the ole Sunday
School at Catawba every chance I got, but same time, I wouldn't be where
I am to-day, maybe, if it hadn't been for its training in--in moral
power. And all about the Bible. (Great literature. Have to read some of
it again, one of these days)."

How scientifically the Sunday School could be organized he learned from
an article in the Westminster Adult Bible Class:

"The second vice-president looks after the fellowship of the class. She
chooses a group to help her. These become ushers. Every one who comes
gets a glad hand. No one goes away a stranger. One member of the group
stands on the doorstep and invites passers-by to come in."

Perhaps most of all Babbitt appreciated the remarks by William H.
Ridgway in the Sunday School Times:

"If you have a Sunday School class without any pep and get-up-and-go
in it, that is, without interest, that is uncertain in attendance, that
acts like a fellow with the spring fever, let old Dr. Ridgway write you
a prescription. Rx. Invite the Bunch for Supper."

The Sunday School journals were as well rounded as they were practical.
They neglected none of the arts. As to music the Sunday School Times
advertised that C. Harold Lowden, "known to thousands through his sacred
compositions," had written a new masterpiece, "entitled 'Yearning for
You.' The poem, by Harry D. Kerr, is one of the daintiest you could
imagine and the music is indescribably beautiful. Critics are agreed
that it will sweep the country. May be made into a charming sacred song
by substituting the hymn words, 'I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say.'"

Even manual training was adequately considered. Babbitt noted an
ingenious way of illustrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ:

"Model for Pupils to Make. Tomb with Rolling Door.--Use a square covered
box turned upside down. Pull the cover forward a little to form a groove
at the bottom. Cut a square door, also cut a circle of cardboard to more
than cover the door. Cover the circular door and the tomb thickly with
stiff mixture of sand, flour and water and let it dry. It was the heavy
circular stone over the door the women found 'rolled away' on Easter
morning. This is the story we are to 'Go-tell.'"

In their advertisements the Sunday School journals were thoroughly
efficient. Babbitt was interested in a preparation which "takes the
place of exercise for sedentary men by building up depleted nerve
tissue, nourishing the brain and the digestive system." He was edified
to learn that the selling of Bibles was a hustling and strictly
competitive industry, and as an expert on hygiene he was pleased by the
Sanitary Communion Outfit Company's announcement of "an improved and
satisfactory outfit throughout, including highly polished beautiful
mahogany tray. This tray eliminates all noise, is lighter and more
easily handled than others and is more in keeping with the furniture of
the church than a tray of any other material."


IV

He dropped the pile of Sunday School journals.

He pondered, "Now, there's a real he-world. Corking!

"Ashamed I haven't sat in more. Fellow that's an influence in the
community--shame if he doesn't take part in a real virile hustling
religion. Sort of Christianity Incorporated, you might say.

"But with all reverence.

"Some folks might claim these Sunday School fans are undignified and
unspiritual and so on. Sure! Always some skunk to spring things like
that! Knocking and sneering and tearing-down--so much easier than
building up. But me, I certainly hand it to these magazines. They've
brought ole George F. Babbitt into camp, and that's the answer to the
critics!

"The more manly and practical a fellow is, the more he ought to lead the
enterprising Christian life. Me for it! Cut out this carelessness and
boozing and--Rone! Where the devil you been? This is a fine time o'
night to be coming in!"





I

THERE are but three or four old houses in Floral Heights, and in Floral
Heights an old house is one which was built before 1880. The largest of
these is the residence of William Washington Eathorne, president of the
First State Bank.

The Eathorne Mansion preserves the memory of the "nice parts" of Zenith
as they appeared from 1860 to 1900. It is a red brick immensity with
gray sandstone lintels and a roof of slate in courses of red, green, and
dyspeptic yellow. There are two anemic towers, one roofed with copper,
the other crowned with castiron ferns. The porch is like an open
tomb; it is supported by squat granite pillars above which hang frozen
cascades of brick. At one side of the house is a huge stained-glass
window in the shape of a keyhole.

But the house has an effect not at all humorous. It embodies the heavy
dignity of those Victorian financiers who ruled the generation between
the pioneers and the brisk "sales-engineers" and created a somber
oligarchy by gaining control of banks, mills, land, railroads, mines.
Out of the dozen contradictory Zeniths which together make up the
true and complete Zenith, none is so powerful and enduring yet none
so unfamiliar to the citizens as the small, still, dry, polite, cruel
Zenith of the William Eathornes; and for that tiny hierarchy the other
Zeniths unwittingly labor and insignificantly die.

Most of the castles of the testy Victorian tetrarchs are gone now or
decayed into boarding-houses, but the Eathorne Mansion remains virtuous
and aloof, reminiscent of London, Back Bay, Rittenhouse Square. Its
marble steps are scrubbed daily, the brass plate is reverently polished,
and the lace curtains are as prim and superior as William Washington
Eathorne himself.

With a certain awe Babbitt and Chum Frink called on Eathorne for a
meeting of the Sunday School Advisory Committee; with uneasy stillness
they followed a uniformed maid through catacombs of reception-rooms to
the library. It was as unmistakably the library of a solid old banker as
Eathorne's side-whiskers were the side-whiskers of a solid old banker.
The books were most of them Standard Sets, with the correct and
traditional touch of dim blue, dim gold, and glossy calf-skin. The
fire was exactly correct and traditional; a small, quiet, steady fire,
reflected by polished fire-irons. The oak desk was dark and old and
altogether perfect; the chairs were gently supercilious.

Eathorne's inquiries as to the healths of Mrs. Babbitt, Miss Babbitt,
and the Other Children were softly paternal, but Babbitt had nothing
with which to answer him. It was indecent to think of using the "How's
tricks, ole socks?" which gratified Vergil Gunch and Frink and Howard
Littlefield--men who till now had seemed successful and urbane. Babbitt
and Frink sat politely, and politely did Eathorne observe, opening his
thin lips just wide enough to dismiss the words, "Gentlemen, before we
begin our conference--you may have felt the cold in coming here--so good
of you to save an old man the journey--shall we perhaps have a whisky
toddy?"

So well trained was Babbitt in all the conversation that befits a Good
Fellow that he almost disgraced himself with "Rather than make trouble,
and always providin' there ain't any enforcement officers hiding in
the waste-basket--" The words died choking in his throat. He bowed in
flustered obedience. So did Chum Frink.

Eathorne rang for the maid.

The modern and luxurious Babbitt had never seen any one ring for a
servant in a private house, except during meals. Himself, in hotels, had
rung for bell-boys, but in the house you didn't hurt Matilda's feelings;
you went out in the hall and shouted for her. Nor had he, since
prohibition, known any one to be casual about drinking. It was
extraordinary merely to sip his toddy and not cry, "Oh, maaaaan, this
hits me right where I live!" And always, with the ecstasy of youth
meeting greatness, he marveled, "That little fuzzy-face there, why,
he could make me or break me! If he told my banker to call my loans--!
Gosh! That quarter-sized squirt! And looking like he hadn't got a single
bit of hustle to him! I wonder--Do we Boosters throw too many fits about
pep?"

From this thought he shuddered away, and listened devoutly to Eathorne's
ideas on the advancement of the Sunday School, which were very clear and
very bad.

Diffidently Babbitt outlined his own suggestions:

"I think if you analyze the needs of the school, in fact, going right
at it as if it was a merchandizing problem, of course the one basic
and fundamental need is growth. I presume we're all agreed we won't be
satisfied till we build up the biggest darn Sunday School in the whole
state, so the Chatham Road Presbyterian won't have to take anything
off anybody. Now about jazzing up the campaign for prospects: they've
already used contesting teams, and given prizes to the kids that bring
in the most members. And they made a mistake there: the prizes were
a lot of folderols and doodads like poetry books and illustrated
Testaments, instead of something a real live kid would want to work for,
like real cash or a speedometer for his motor cycle. Course I suppose
it's all fine and dandy to illustrate the lessons with these decorated
book-marks and blackboard drawings and so on, but when it comes down to
real he-hustling, getting out and drumming up customers--or members, I
mean, why, you got to make it worth a fellow's while.

"Now, I want to propose two stunts: First, divide the Sunday School into
four armies, depending on age. Everybody gets a military rank in his own
army according to how many members he brings in, and the duffers that
lie down on us and don't bring in any, they remain privates. The pastor
and superintendent rank as generals. And everybody has got to give
salutes and all the rest of that junk, just like a regular army, to make
'em feel it's worth while to get rank.

"Then, second: Course the school has its advertising committee, but,
Lord, nobody ever really works good--nobody works well just for the love
of it. The thing to do is to be practical and up-to-date, and hire a
real paid press-agent for the Sunday School-some newspaper fellow who
can give part of his time."

"Sure, you bet!" said Chum Frink.

"Think of the nice juicy bits he could get in!" Babbitt crowed.
"Not only the big, salient, vital facts, about how fast the Sunday
School--and the collection--is growing, but a lot of humorous gossip
and kidding: about how some blowhard fell down on his pledge to get new
members, or the good time the Sacred Trinity class of girls had at their
wieniewurst party. And on the side, if he had time, the press-agent
might even boost the lessons themselves--do a little advertising for
all the Sunday Schools in town, in fact. No use being hoggish toward
the rest of 'em, providing we can keep the bulge on 'em in membership.
Frinstance, he might get the papers to--Course I haven't got a literary
training like Frink here, and I'm just guessing how the pieces ought
to be written, but take frinstance, suppose the week's lesson is about
Jacob; well, the press-agent might get in something that would have
a fine moral, and yet with a trick headline that'd get folks to read
it--say like: 'Jake Fools the Old Man; Makes Getaway with Girl and
Bankroll.' See how I mean? That'd get their interest! Now, course, Mr.
Eathorne, you're conservative, and maybe you feel these stunts would be
undignified, but honestly, I believe they'd bring home the bacon."

Eathorne folded his hands on his comfortable little belly and purred
like an aged pussy:

"May I say, first, that I have been very much pleased by your analysis
of the situation, Mr. Babbitt. As you surmise, it's necessary in My
Position to be conservative, and perhaps endeavor to maintain a certain
standard of dignity. Yet I think you'll find me somewhat progressive. In
our bank, for example, I hope I may say that we have as modern a method
of publicity and advertising as any in the city. Yes, I fancy you'll
find us oldsters quite cognizant of the shifting spiritual values of the
age. Yes, oh yes. And so, in fact, it pleases me to be able to say
that though personally I might prefer the sterner Presbyterianism of an
earlier era--"

Babbitt finally gathered that Eathorne was willing.

Chum Frink suggested as part-time press-agent one Kenneth Escott,
reporter on the Advocate-Times.

They parted on a high plane of amity and Christian helpfulness.

Babbitt did not drive home, but toward the center of the city. He wished
to be by himself and exult over the beauty of intimacy with William
Washington Eathorne.


II

A snow-blanched evening of ringing pavements and eager lights.

Great golden lights of trolley-cars sliding along the packed snow of the
roadway. Demure lights of little houses. The belching glare of a distant
foundry, wiping out the sharp-edged stars. Lights of neighborhood drug
stores where friends gossiped, well pleased, after the day's work.

The green light of a police-station, and greener radiance on the snow;
the drama of a patrol-wagon--gong beating like a terrified heart,
headlights scorching the crystal-sparkling street, driver not a
chauffeur but a policeman proud in uniform, another policeman perilously
dangling on the step at the back, and a glimpse of the prisoner. A
murderer, a burglar, a coiner cleverly trapped?

An enormous graystone church with a rigid spire; dim light in the
Parlors, and cheerful droning of choir-practise. The quivering green
mercury-vapor light of a photo-engraver's loft. Then the storming lights
of down-town; parked cars with ruby tail-lights; white arched entrances
to movie theaters, like frosty mouths of winter caves; electric
signs--serpents and little dancing men of fire; pink-shaded globes and
scarlet jazz music in a cheap up-stairs dance-hall; lights of Chinese
restaurants, lanterns painted with cherry-blossoms and with pagodas,
hung against lattices of lustrous gold and black. Small dirty lamps in
small stinking lunchrooms. The smart shopping-district, with rich and
quiet light on crystal pendants and furs and suave surfaces of polished
wood in velvet-hung reticent windows. High above the street, an
unexpected square hanging in the darkness, the window of an office where
some one was working late, for a reason unknown and stimulating. A man
meshed in bankruptcy, an ambitious boy, an oil-man suddenly become rich?

The air was shrewd, the snow was deep in uncleared alleys, and beyond
the city, Babbitt knew, were hillsides of snow-drift among wintry oaks,
and the curving ice-enchanted river.

He loved his city with passionate wonder. He lost the accumulated
weariness of business--worry and expansive oratory; he felt young and
potential. He was ambitious. It was not enough to be a Vergil Gunch,
an Orville Jones. No. "They're bully fellows, simply lovely, but they
haven't got any finesse." No. He was going to be an Eathorne; delicately
rigorous, coldly powerful.

"That's the stuff. The wallop in the velvet mitt. Not let anybody
get fresh with you. Been getting careless about my diction. Slang.
Colloquial. Cut it out. I was first-rate at rhetoric in college. Themes
on--Anyway, not bad. Had too much of this hooptedoodle and good-fellow
stuff. I--Why couldn't I organize a bank of my own some day? And Ted
succeed me!"

He drove happily home, and to Mrs. Babbitt he was a William Washington
Eathorne, but she did not notice it.


III

Young Kenneth Escott, reporter on the Advocate-Times was appointed
press-agent of the Chatham Road Presbyterian Sunday School. He gave six
hours a week to it. At least he was paid for giving six hours a week.
He had friends on the Press and the Gazette and he was not (officially)
known as a press-agent. He procured a trickle of insinuating items
about neighborliness and the Bible, about class-suppers, jolly but
educational, and the value of the Prayer-life in attaining financial
success.

The Sunday School adopted Babbitt's system of military ranks. Quickened
by this spiritual refreshment, it had a boom. It did not become the
largest school in Zenith--the Central Methodist Church kept ahead of it
by methods which Dr. Drew scored as "unfair, undignified, un-American,
ungentlemanly, and unchristian"--but it climbed from fourth place to
second, and there was rejoicing in heaven, or at least in that portion
of heaven included in the parsonage of Dr. Drew, while Babbitt had much
praise and good repute.

He had received the rank of colonel on the general staff of the school.
He was plumply pleased by salutes on the street from unknown small
boys; his ears were tickled to ruddy ecstasy by hearing himself called
"Colonel;" and if he did not attend Sunday School merely to be thus
exalted, certainly he thought about it all the way there.

He was particularly pleasant to the press-agent, Kenneth Escott; he took
him to lunch at the Athletic Club and had him at the house for dinner.

Like many of the cocksure young men who forage about cities in apparent
contentment and who express their cynicism in supercilious slang, Escott
was shy and lonely. His shrewd starveling face broadened with joy at
dinner, and he blurted, "Gee whillikins, Mrs. Babbitt, if you knew how
good it is to have home eats again!"

Escott and Verona liked each other. All evening they "talked about
ideas." They discovered that they were Radicals. True, they were
sensible about it. They agreed that all communists were criminals;
that this vers libre was tommy-rot; and that while there ought to be
universal disarmament, of course Great Britain and the United States
must, on behalf of oppressed small nations, keep a navy equal to the
tonnage of all the rest of the world. But they were so revolutionary
that they predicted (to Babbitt's irritation) that there would some
day be a Third Party which would give trouble to the Republicans and
Democrats.

Escott shook hands with Babbitt three times, at parting.

Babbitt mentioned his extreme fondness for Eathorne.

Within a week three newspapers presented accounts of Babbitt's sterling
labors for religion, and all of them tactfully mentioned William
Washington Eathorne as his collaborator.

Nothing had brought Babbitt quite so much credit at the Elks, the
Athletic Club, and the Boosters'. His friends had always congratulated
him on his oratory, but in their praise was doubt, for even in speeches
advertising the city there was something highbrow and degenerate,
like writing poetry. But now Orville Jones shouted across the Athletic
dining-room, "Here's the new director of the First State Bank!" Grover
Butterbaugh, the eminent wholesaler of plumbers' supplies, chuckled,
"Wonder you mix with common folks, after holding Eathorne's hand!" And
Emil Wengert, the jeweler, was at last willing to discuss buying a house
in Dorchester.


IV

When the Sunday School campaign was finished, Babbitt suggested to
Kenneth Escott, "Say, how about doing a little boosting for Doc Drew
personally?"

Escott grinned. "You trust the doc to do a little boosting for himself,
Mr. Babbitt! There's hardly a week goes by without his ringing up the
paper to say if we'll chase a reporter up to his Study, he'll let us
in on the story about the swell sermon he's going to preach on the
wickedness of short skirts, or the authorship of the Pentateuch. Don't
you worry about him. There's just one better publicity-grabber in town,
and that's this Dora Gibson Tucker that runs the Child Welfare and the
Americanization League, and the only reason she's got Drew beaten is
because she has got SOME brains!"

"Well, now Kenneth, I don't think you ought to talk that way about the
doctor. A preacher has to watch his interests, hasn't he? You remember
that in the Bible about--about being diligent in the Lord's business, or
something?"

"All right, I'll get something in if you want me to, Mr. Babbitt, but
I'll have to wait till the managing editor is out of town, and then
blackjack the city editor."

Thus it came to pass that in the Sunday Advocate-Times, under a picture
of Dr. Drew at his earnestest, with eyes alert, jaw as granite, and
rustic lock flamboyant, appeared an inscription--a wood-pulp tablet
conferring twenty-four hours' immortality:


The Rev. Dr. John Jennison Drew, M.A., pastor of the beautiful
Chatham Road Presbyterian Church in lovely Floral Heights, is a wizard
soul-winner. He holds the local record for conversions. During his
shepherdhood an average of almost a hundred sin-weary persons per year
have declared their resolve to lead a new life and have found a harbor
of refuge and peace.

Everything zips at the Chatham Road Church. The subsidiary organizations
are keyed to the top-notch of efficiency. Dr. Drew is especially keen
on good congregational singing. Bright cheerful hymns are used at every
meeting, and the special Sing Services attract lovers of music and
professionals from all parts of the city.

On the popular lecture platform as well as in the pulpit Dr. Drew is
a renowned word-painter, and during the course of the year he receives
literally scores of invitations to speak at varied functions both here
and elsewhere.


V

Babbitt let Dr. Drew know that he was responsible for this tribute. Dr.
Drew called him "brother," and shook his hand a great many times.

During the meetings of the Advisory Committee, Babbitt had hinted that
he would be charmed to invite Eathorne to dinner, but Eathorne had
murmured, "So nice of you--old man, now--almost never go out." Surely
Eathorne would not refuse his own pastor. Babbitt said boyishly to Drew:

"Say, doctor, now we've put this thing over, strikes me it's up to the
dominie to blow the three of us to a dinner!"

"Bully! You bet! Delighted!" cried Dr. Drew, in his manliest way. (Some
one had once told him that he talked like the late President Roosevelt.)

"And, uh, say, doctor, be sure and get Mr. Eathorne to come. Insist
on it. It's, uh--I think he sticks around home too much for his own
health."

Eathorne came.

It was a friendly dinner. Babbitt spoke gracefully of the stabilizing
and educational value of bankers to the community. They were, he
said, the pastors of the fold of commerce. For the first time Eathorne
departed from the topic of Sunday Schools, and asked Babbitt about the
progress of his business. Babbitt answered modestly, almost filially.

A few months later, when he had a chance to take part in the Street
Traction Company's terminal deal, Babbitt did not care to go to his own
bank for a loan. It was rather a quiet sort of deal and, if it had come
out, the Public might not have understood. He went to his friend Mr.
Eathorne; he was welcomed, and received the loan as a private venture;
and they both profited in their pleasant new association.

After that, Babbitt went to church regularly, except on spring Sunday
mornings which were obviously meant for motoring. He announced to Ted,
"I tell you, boy, there's no stronger bulwark of sound conservatism than
the evangelical church, and no better place to make friends who'll
help you to gain your rightful place in the community than in your own
church-home!"





I

THOUGH he saw them twice daily, though he knew and amply discussed every
detail of their expenditures, yet for weeks together Babbitt was no more
conscious of his children than of the buttons on his coat-sleeves.

The admiration of Kenneth Escott made him aware of Verona.

She had become secretary to Mr. Gruensberg of the Gruensberg Leather
Company; she did her work with the thoroughness of a mind which reveres
details and never quite understands them; but she was one of the
people who give an agitating impression of being on the point of doing
something desperate--of leaving a job or a husband--without ever doing
it. Babbitt was so hopeful about Escott's hesitant ardors that he became
the playful parent. When he returned from the Elks he peered coyly into
the living-room and gurgled, "Has our Kenny been here to-night?" He
never credited Verona's protest, "Why, Ken and I are just good friends,
and we only talk about Ideas. I won't have all this sentimental
nonsense, that would spoil everything."

It was Ted who most worried Babbitt.

With conditions in Latin and English but with a triumphant record in
manual training, basket-ball, and the organization of dances, Ted was
struggling through his Senior year in the East Side High School. At home
he was interested only when he was asked to trace some subtle ill in the
ignition system of the car. He repeated to his tut-tutting father that
he did not wish to go to college or law-school, and Babbitt was equally
disturbed by this "shiftlessness" and by Ted's relations with Eunice
Littlefield, next door.

Though she was the daughter of Howard Littlefield, that wrought-iron
fact-mill, that horse-faced priest of private ownership, Eunice was
a midge in the sun. She danced into the house, she flung herself into
Babbitt's lap when he was reading, she crumpled his paper, and laughed
at him when he adequately explained that he hated a crumpled newspaper
as he hated a broken sales-contract. She was seventeen now. Her ambition
was to be a cinema actress. She did not merely attend the showing of
every "feature film;" she also read the motion-picture magazines,
those extraordinary symptoms of the Age of Pep--monthlies and weeklies
gorgeously illustrated with portraits of young women who had recently
been manicure girls, not very skilful manicure girls, and who, unless
their every grimace had been arranged by a director, could not have
acted in the Easter cantata of the Central Methodist Church; magazines
reporting, quite seriously, in "interviews" plastered with pictures of
riding-breeches and California bungalows, the views on sculpture and
international politics of blankly beautiful, suspiciously beautiful
young men; outlining the plots of films about pure prostitutes and
kind-hearted train-robbers; and giving directions for making bootblacks
into Celebrated Scenario Authors overnight.

These authorities Eunice studied. She could, she frequently did, tell
whether it was in November or December, 1905, that Mack Harker? the
renowned screen cowpuncher and badman, began his public career as
chorus man in "Oh, You Naughty Girlie." On the wall of her room, her
father reported, she had pinned up twenty-one photographs of actors. But
the signed portrait of the most graceful of the movie heroes she carried
in her young bosom.

Babbitt was bewildered by this worship of new gods, and he suspected
that Eunice smoked cigarettes. He smelled the cloying reek from
up-stairs, and heard her giggling with Ted. He never inquired. The
agreeable child dismayed him. Her thin and charming face was sharpened
by bobbed hair; her skirts were short, her stockings were rolled, and,
as she flew after Ted, above the caressing silk were glimpses of soft
knees which made Babbitt uneasy, and wretched that she should consider
him old. Sometimes, in the veiled life of his dreams, when the
fairy child came running to him she took on the semblance of Eunice
Littlefield.

Ted was motor-mad as Eunice was movie-mad.

A thousand sarcastic refusals did not check his teasing for a car of
his own. However lax he might be about early rising and the prosody of
Vergil, he was tireless in tinkering. With three other boys he bought a
rheumatic Ford chassis, built an amazing racer-body out of tin and pine,
went skidding round corners in the perilous craft, and sold it at a
profit. Babbitt gave him a motor-cycle, and every Saturday afternoon,
with seven sandwiches and a bottle of Coca-Cola in his pockets, and
Eunice perched eerily on the rumble seat, he went roaring off to distant
towns.

Usually Eunice and he were merely neighborhood chums, and quarreled with
a wholesome and violent lack of delicacy; but now and then, after the
color and scent of a dance, they were silent together and a little
furtive, and Babbitt was worried.

Babbitt was an average father. He was affectionate, bullying,
opinionated, ignorant, and rather wistful. Like most parents, he enjoyed
the game of waiting till the victim was clearly wrong, then virtuously
pouncing. He justified himself by croaking, "Well, Ted's mother spoils
him. Got to be somebody who tells him what's what, and me, I'm elected
the goat. Because I try to bring him up to be a real, decent, human
being and not one of these sapheads and lounge-lizards, of course they
all call me a grouch!"

Throughout, with the eternal human genius for arriving by the worst
possible routes at surprisingly tolerable goals, Babbitt loved his son
and warmed to his companionship and would have sacrificed everything for
him--if he could have been sure of proper credit.


II

Ted was planning a party for his set in the Senior Class.

Babbitt meant to be helpful and jolly about it. From his memory of
high-school pleasures back in Catawba he suggested the nicest games:
Going to Boston, and charades with stew-pans for helmets, and
word-games in which you were an Adjective or a Quality. When he was most
enthusiastic he discovered that they weren't paying attention; they were
only tolerating him. As for the party, it was as fixed and standardized
as a Union Club Hop. There was to be dancing in the living-room, a noble
collation in the dining-room, and in the hall two tables of bridge for
what Ted called "the poor old dumb-bells that you can't get to dance
hardly more 'n half the time."

Every breakfast was monopolized by conferences on the affair. No one
listened to Babbitt's bulletins about the February weather or to his
throat-clearing comments on the headlines. He said furiously, "If I may
be PERMITTED to interrupt your engrossing private CONVERSATION--Juh hear
what I SAID?"

"Oh, don't be a spoiled baby! Ted and I have just as much right to talk
as you have!" flared Mrs. Babbitt.

On the night of the party he was permitted to look on, when he was not
helping Matilda with the Vecchia ice cream and the petits fours. He was
deeply disquieted. Eight years ago, when Verona had given a high-school
party, the children had been featureless gabies. Now they were men
and women of the world, very supercilious men and women; the boys
condescended to Babbitt, they wore evening-clothes, and with hauteur
they accepted cigarettes from silver cases. Babbitt had heard stories
of what the Athletic Club called "goings on" at young parties; of
girls "parking" their corsets in the dressing-room, of "cuddling" and
"petting," and a presumable increase in what was known as Immorality.
To-night he believed the stories. These children seemed bold to him, and
cold. The girls wore misty chiffon, coral velvet, or cloth of gold, and
around their dipping bobbed hair were shining wreaths. He had it, upon
urgent and secret inquiry, that no corsets were known to be parked
upstairs; but certainly these eager bodies were not stiff with steel.
Their stockings were of lustrous silk, their slippers costly and
unnatural, their lips carmined and their eyebrows penciled. They danced
cheek to cheek with the boys, and Babbitt sickened with apprehension and
unconscious envy.

Worst of them all was Eunice Littlefield, and maddest of all the boys
was Ted. Eunice was a flying demon. She slid the length of the room; her
tender shoulders swayed; her feet were deft as a weaver's shuttle; she
laughed, and enticed Babbitt to dance with her.

Then he discovered the annex to the party.

The boys and girls disappeared occasionally, and he remembered rumors
of their drinking together from hip-pocket flasks. He tiptoed round the
house, and in each of the dozen cars waiting in the street he saw the
points of light from cigarettes, from each of them heard high giggles.
He wanted to denounce them but (standing in the snow, peering round
the dark corner) he did not dare. He tried to be tactful. When he had
returned to the front hall he coaxed the boys, "Say, if any of you
fellows are thirsty, there's some dandy ginger ale."

"Oh! Thanks!" they condescended.

He sought his wife, in the pantry, and exploded, "I'd like to go in
there and throw some of those young pups out of the house! They talk
down to me like I was the butler! I'd like to--"

"I know," she sighed; "only everybody says, all the mothers tell me,
unless you stand for them, if you get angry because they go out to their
cars to have a drink, they won't come to your house any more, and we
wouldn't want Ted left out of things, would we?"

He announced that he would be enchanted to have Ted left out of things,
and hurried in to be polite, lest Ted be left out of things.

But, he resolved, if he found that the boys were drinking, he
would--well, he'd "hand 'em something that would surprise 'em." While
he was trying to be agreeable to large-shouldered young bullies he was
earnestly sniffing at them. Twice he caught the reek of prohibition-time
whisky, but then, it was only twice--

Dr. Howard Littlefield lumbered in.

He had come, in a mood of solemn parental patronage, to look on. Ted and
Eunice were dancing, moving together like one body. Littlefield gasped.
He called Eunice. There was a whispered duologue, and Littlefield
explained to Babbitt that Eunice's mother had a headache and needed her.
She went off in tears. Babbitt looked after them furiously. "That little
devil! Getting Ted into trouble! And Littlefield, the conceited old
gas-bag, acting like it was Ted that was the bad influence!"

Later he smelled whisky on Ted's breath.

After the civil farewell to the guests, the row was terrific, a thorough
Family Scene, like an avalanche, devastating and without reticences.
Babbitt thundered, Mrs. Babbitt wept, Ted was unconvincingly defiant,
and Verona in confusion as to whose side she was taking.

For several months there was coolness between the Babbitts and the
Littlefields, each family sheltering their lamb from the wolf-cub next
door. Babbitt and Littlefield still spoke in pontifical periods about
motors and the senate, but they kept bleakly away from mention of their
families. Whenever Eunice came to the house she discussed with pleasant
intimacy the fact that she had been forbidden to come to the house; and
Babbitt tried, with no success whatever, to be fatherly and advisory
with her.


III

"Gosh all fishhooks!" Ted wailed to Eunice, as they wolfed hot
chocolate, lumps of nougat, and an assortment of glace nuts, in the
mosaic splendor of the Royal Drug Store, "it gets me why Dad doesn't
just pass out from being so poky. Every evening he sits there, about
half-asleep, and if Rone or I say, 'Oh, come on, let's do something,' he
doesn't even take the trouble to think about it. He just yawns and says,
'Naw, this suits me right here.' He doesn't know there's any fun going
on anywhere. I suppose he must do some thinking, same as you and I do,
but gosh, there's no way of telling it. I don't believe that outside of
the office and playing a little bum golf on Saturday he knows there's
anything in the world to do except just keep sitting there--sitting
there every night--not wanting to go anywhere--not wanting to do
anything--thinking us kids are crazy--sitting there--Lord!"


IV

If he was frightened by Ted's slackness, Babbitt was not sufficiently
frightened by Verona. She was too safe. She lived too much in the neat
little airless room of her mind. Kenneth Escott and she were always
under foot. When they were not at home, conducting their cautiously
radical courtship over sheets of statistics, they were trudging off to
lectures by authors and Hindu philosophers and Swedish lieutenants.

"Gosh," Babbitt wailed to his wife, as they walked home from the
Fogartys' bridge-party, "it gets me how Rone and that fellow can be so
poky. They sit there night after night, whenever he isn't working,
and they don't know there's any fun in the world. All talk and
discussion--Lord! Sitting there--sitting there--night after night--not
wanting to do anything--thinking I'm crazy because I like to go out and
play a fist of cards--sitting there--gosh!"

Then round the swimmer, bored by struggling through the perpetual surf
of family life, new combers swelled.


V

Babbitt's father- and mother-in-law, Mr. and Mrs. Henry T. Thompson,
rented their old house in the Bellevue district and moved to the Hotel
Hatton, that glorified boarding-house filled with widows, red-plush
furniture, and the sound of ice-water pitchers. They were lonely there,
and every other Sunday evening the Babbitts had to dine with them, on
fricasseed chicken, discouraged celery, and cornstarch ice cream, and
afterward sit, polite and restrained, in the hotel lounge, while a young
woman violinist played songs from the German via Broadway.

Then Babbitt's own mother came down from Catawba to spend three weeks.

She was a kind woman and magnificently uncomprehending. She
congratulated the convention-defying Verona on being a "nice, loyal
home-body without all these Ideas that so many girls seem to have
nowadays;" and when Ted filled the differential with grease, out of pure
love of mechanics and filthiness, she rejoiced that he was "so handy
around the house--and helping his father and all, and not going out with
the girls all the time and trying to pretend he was a society fellow."

Babbitt loved his mother, and sometimes he rather liked her, but he was
annoyed by her Christian Patience, and he was reduced to pulpiness when
she discoursed about a quite mythical hero called "Your Father":

"You won't remember it, Georgie, you were such a little fellow at the
time--my, I remember just how you looked that day, with your goldy brown
curls and your lace collar, you always were such a dainty child, and
kind of puny and sickly, and you loved pretty things so much and the red
tassels on your little bootees and all--and Your Father was taking us to
church and a man stopped us and said 'Major'--so many of the neighbors
used to call Your Father 'Major;' of course he was only a private in The
War but everybody knew that was because of the jealousy of his captain
and he ought to have been a high-ranking officer, he had that natural
ability to command that so very, very few men have--and this man came
out into the road and held up his hand and stopped the buggy and said,
'Major,' he said, 'there's a lot of the folks around here that have
decided to support Colonel Scanell for congress, and we want you to
join us. Meeting people the way you do in the store, you could help us a
lot.'

"Well, Your Father just looked at him and said, 'I certainly shall do
nothing of the sort. I don't like his politics,' he said. Well, the
man--Captain Smith they used to call him, and heaven only knows
why, because he hadn't the shadow or vestige of a right to be called
'Captain' or any other title--this Captain Smith said, 'We'll make it
hot for you if you don't stick by your friends, Major.' Well, you know
how Your Father was, and this Smith knew it too; he knew what a Real Man
he was, and he knew Your Father knew the political situation from A to
Z, and he ought to have seen that here was one man he couldn't impose
on, but he went on trying to and hinting and trying till Your Father
spoke up and said to him, 'Captain Smith,' he said, 'I have a reputation
around these parts for being one who is amply qualified to mind his own
business and let other folks mind theirs!' and with that he drove on and
left the fellow standing there in the road like a bump on a log!"

Babbitt was most exasperated when she revealed his boyhood to the
children. He had, it seemed, been fond of barley-sugar; had worn the
"loveliest little pink bow in his curls" and corrupted his own name to
"Goo-goo." He heard (though he did not officially hear) Ted admonishing
Tinka, "Come on now, kid; stick the lovely pink bow in your curls and
beat it down to breakfast, or Goo-goo will jaw your head off."

Babbitt's half-brother, Martin, with his wife and youngest baby, came
down from Catawba for two days. Martin bred cattle and ran the dusty
general-store. He was proud of being a freeborn independent American of
the good old Yankee stock; he was proud of being honest, blunt, ugly,
and disagreeable. His favorite remark was "How much did you pay for
that?" He regarded Verona's books, Babbitt's silver pencil, and flowers
on the table as citified extravagances, and said so. Babbitt would have
quarreled with him but for his gawky wife and the baby, whom Babbitt
teased and poked fingers at and addressed:

"I think this baby's a bum, yes, sir, I think this little baby's a bum,
he's a bum, yes, sir, he's a bum, that's what he is, he's a bum, this
baby's a bum, he's nothing but an old bum, that's what he is--a bum!"

All the while Verona and Kenneth Escott held long inquiries into
epistemology; Ted was a disgraced rebel; and Tinka, aged eleven, was
demanding that she be allowed to go to the movies thrice a week, "like
all the girls."

Babbitt raged, "I'm sick of it! Having to carry three generations. Whole
damn bunch lean on me. Pay half of mother's income, listen to Henry
T., listen to Myra's worrying, be polite to Mart, and get called an old
grouch for trying to help the children. All of 'em depending on me and
picking on me and not a damn one of 'em grateful! No relief, and no
credit, and no help from anybody. And to keep it up for--good Lord, how
long?"

He enjoyed being sick in February; he was delighted by their
consternation that he, the rock, should give way.

He had eaten a questionable clam. For two days he was languorous and
petted and esteemed. He was allowed to snarl "Oh, let me alone!" without
reprisals. He lay on the sleeping-porch and watched the winter sun slide
along the taut curtains, turning their ruddy khaki to pale blood red.
The shadow of the draw-rope was dense black, in an enticing ripple on
the canvas. He found pleasure in the curve of it, sighed as the fading
light blurred it. He was conscious of life, and a little sad. With no
Vergil Gunches before whom to set his face in resolute optimism, he
beheld, and half admitted that he beheld, his way of life as incredibly
mechanical. Mechanical business--a brisk selling of badly built houses.
Mechanical religion--a dry, hard church, shut off from the real life
of the streets, inhumanly respectable as a top-hat. Mechanical golf and
dinner-parties and bridge and conversation. Save with Paul Riesling,
mechanical friendships--back-slapping and jocular, never daring to essay
the test of quietness.

He turned uneasily in bed.

He saw the years, the brilliant winter days and all the long sweet
afternoons which were meant for summery meadows, lost in such brittle
pretentiousness. He thought of telephoning about leases, of cajoling men
he hated, of making business calls and waiting in dirty anterooms--hat
on knee, yawning at fly-specked calendars, being polite to office-boys.

"I don't hardly want to go back to work," he prayed. "I'd like to--I
don't know."

But he was back next day, busy and of doubtful temper.

 Babbitt's desire to rise further on the social ladder is examined in Chapter Fifteen. There is to be a university class dinner and he hopes to get 'chummy' with the successful Charles McKelvey and Max Kruger. At the dinner, Babbitt is described as being 'out for social conquest', but he looks for Paul first. Babbitt sits next to Paul and McKelvey at dinner, and Babbitt invites McKelvey to his home. This invitation is not fully accepted until Babbitt tells him he might be able to tip him off about some business. The McKelveys finally come to the Babbitt house for dinner, but it does not go well and it is 'without a soul'. McKelvey says they must have lunch sometime and he and his wife leave early. After the dinner, Babbitt hears Myra weeping. For a month afterwards the Babbitts read the social column and Babbitt is disappointed that McKelvey has not invited him to meet Sir Gerald Doak who he has been entertaining all week. When Babbitt drives past their house, he feels as though the McKelveys are laughing at him. This chapter ends with the Babbitts going to dinner at Ed Overbrook's. This is written of ironically and is a mirror image of Babbitt's experience with the McKelveys. Babbitt, for example, regards Overbrook as a failure. He and Myra arrive late and leave early and he says they must have lunch sometime. After a month or two, the Babbitts agree they will not invite the Overbrooks in return and do not speak of them again. Chapter Sixteen sees Babbitt throwing himself into helping the Reverend Doctor Drew's Sunday School, for 'purification and publicity'. He works alongside Frink and William Eathorne on the Sunday School Advisory Committee. Chapter Seventeen outlines how Babbitt is impressed by Eathorne; he admires his mansion and his finesse and is ambitious to be like him. Kenneth Escott, a reporter on the Advocate-Times, is employed by the committee as a press agent for the Sunday School. Escott is invited to the Babbitt house for dinner and he gets on well with Verona. They discover they are radicals, but 'sensible' . Babbitt mentions his 'fondness' for Eathorne to Escott. Within a week, three newspapers report on Babbitt's work for religion and how he has been working with Eathorne. Whilst working on the committee, Babbitt had asked Eathorne to dinner, but this was declined. Babbitt uses his manipulative skills to secure a social arrangement with him. He persuades Escott to write a tribute to Reverend Drew and when it appears Babbitt lets Drew know that he was responsible for it. He then talks him into holding a dinner and asks him to invite Eathorne. Eathorne's attendance is secured as he will not let the pastor down. A few months later Babbitt needs a private loan when closing a deal with the Street Traction Company and it is strongly implied this is an illegal act. He asks Eathorne for the money and receives it as a 'private venture'. Chapter Eighteen moves back to Babbitt's family. He is slightly worried about Ted's relations with Eunice Littlefield. He is also perturbed that she considers him old; sometimes, Eunice becomes his fairy child in his dreams. Ted holds a party for his senior class and Babbitt is 'deeply disquieted' by their sophistication. They also seem 'cold' and 'bold'. He is envious as he watches them dance, and he is also condescended to. He tells Myra that some of the guests talk to him as though he is the butler. This chapter ends with Babbitt's mother coming to stay for three weeks. He feels 'reduced to pulpiness' when she discusses his father, 'the mythical hero'. His half-brother also visits for two days , and his favorite remark is, 'how much did you pay for that?' Babbitt feels as though nobody is grateful towards him and thinks of his life as mechanical. He does not want to go back to work, but does not know what else to do.

