Chapter: I

HE awoke to stretch cheerfully as he listened to the sparrows, then to
remember that everything was wrong; that he was determined to go astray,
and not in the least enjoying the process. Why, he wondered, should he
be in rebellion? What was it all about? "Why not be sensible; stop all
this idiotic running around, and enjoy himself with his family,
his business, the fellows at the club?" What was he getting out of
rebellion? Misery and shame--the shame of being treated as an offensive
small boy by a ragamuffin like Ida Putiak! And yet--Always he came back
to "And yet." Whatever the misery, he could not regain contentment with
a world which, once doubted, became absurd.

Only, he assured himself, he was "through with this chasing after
girls."

By noontime he was not so sure even of that. If in Miss McGoun, Louetta
Swanson, and Ida he had failed to find the lady kind and lovely, it did
not prove that she did not exist. He was hunted by the ancient thought
that somewhere must exist the not impossible she who would understand
him, value him, and make him happy.


II

Mrs. Babbitt returned in August.

On her previous absences he had missed her reassuring buzz and of her
arrival he had made a f�te. Now, though he dared not hurt her by letting
a hint of it appear in his letters, he was sorry that she was coming
before he had found himself, and he was embarrassed by the need of
meeting her and looking joyful.

He loitered down to the station; he studied the summer-resort posters,
lest he have to speak to acquaintances and expose his uneasiness. But
he was well trained. When the train clanked in he was out on the cement
platform, peering into the chair-cars, and as he saw her in the line of
passengers moving toward the vestibule he waved his hat. At the door he
embraced her, and announced, "Well, well, well, well, by golly, you look
fine, you look fine." Then he was aware of Tinka. Here was something,
this child with her absurd little nose and lively eyes, that loved him,
believed him great, and as he clasped her, lifted and held her till she
squealed, he was for the moment come back to his old steady self.

Tinka sat beside him in the car, with one hand on the steering-wheel,
pretending to help him drive, and he shouted back to his wife, "I'll bet
the kid will be the best chuffer in the family! She holds the wheel like
an old professional!"

All the while he was dreading the moment when he would be alone with his
wife and she would patiently expect him to be ardent.


III

There was about the house an unofficial theory that he was to take
his vacation alone, to spend a week or ten days in Catawba, but he was
nagged by the memory that a year ago he had been with Paul in Maine. He
saw himself returning; finding peace there, and the presence of Paul,
in a life primitive and heroic. Like a shock came the thought that he
actually could go. Only, he couldn't, really; he couldn't leave his
business, and "Myra would think it sort of funny, his going way off
there alone. Course he'd decided to do whatever he darned pleased, from
now on, but still--to go way off to Maine!"

He went, after lengthy meditations.

With his wife, since it was inconceivable to explain that he was going
to seek Paul's spirit in the wilderness, he frugally employed the lie
prepared over a year ago and scarcely used at all. He said that he had
to see a man in New York on business. He could not have explained even
to himself why he drew from the bank several hundred dollars more than
he needed, nor why he kissed Tinka so tenderly, and cried, "God bless
you, baby!" From the train he waved to her till she was but a scarlet
spot beside the brown bulkier presence of Mrs. Babbitt, at the end of a
steel and cement aisle ending in vast barred gates. With melancholy he
looked back at the last suburb of Zenith.

All the way north he pictured the Maine guides: simple and strong and
daring, jolly as they played stud-poker in their unceiled shack, wise
in woodcraft as they tramped the forest and shot the rapids. He
particularly remembered Joe Paradise, half Yankee, half Indian. If he
could but take up a backwoods claim with a man like Joe, work hard with
his hands, be free and noisy in a flannel shirt, and never come back to
this dull decency!

Or, like a trapper in a Northern Canada movie, plunge through the
forest, make camp in the Rockies, a grim and wordless caveman! Why not?
He COULD do it! There'd be enough money at home for the family to live
on till Verona was married and Ted self-supporting. Old Henry T. would
look out for them. Honestly! Why NOT? Really LIVE--

He longed for it, admitted that he longed for it, then almost believed
that he was going to do it. Whenever common sense snorted, "Nonsense!
Folks don't run away from decent families and partners; just simply
don't do it, that's all!" then Babbitt answered pleadingly, "Well, it
wouldn't take any more nerve than for Paul to go to jail and--Lord,
how I'd' like to do it! Moccasins--six-gun--frontier town--gamblers--sleep
under the stars--be a regular man, with he-men like Joe Paradise--gosh!"

So he came to Maine, again stood on the wharf before the camp-hotel,
again spat heroically into the delicate and shivering water, while the
pines rustled, the mountains glowed, and a trout leaped and fell in a
sliding circle. He hurried to the guides' shack as to his real home,
his real friends, long missed. They would be glad to see him. They would
stand up and shout? "Why, here's Mr. Babbitt! He ain't one of these
ordinary sports! He's a real guy!"

In their boarded and rather littered cabin the guides sat about the
greasy table playing stud-poker with greasy cards: half a dozen wrinkled
men in old trousers and easy old felt hats. They glanced up and nodded.
Joe Paradise, the swart aging man with the big mustache, grunted, "How
do. Back again?"

Silence, except for the clatter of chips.

Babbitt stood beside them, very lonely. He hinted, after a period of
highly concentrated playing, "Guess I might take a hand, Joe."

"Sure. Sit in. How many chips you want? Let's see; you were here with
your wife, last year, wa'n't you?" said Joe Paradise.

That was all of Babbitt's welcome to the old home.

He played for half an hour before he spoke again. His head was reeking
with the smoke of pipes and cheap cigars, and he was weary of pairs and
four-flushes, resentful of the way in which they ignored him. He flung
at Joe:

"Working now?"

"Nope."

"Like to guide me for a few days?"

"Well, jus' soon. I ain't engaged till next week."

Only thus did Joe recognize the friendship Babbitt was offering him.
Babbitt paid up his losses and left the shack rather childishly. Joe
raised his head from the coils of smoke like a seal rising from surf,
grunted, "I'll come 'round t'morrow," and dived down to his three aces.

Neither in his voiceless cabin, fragrant with planks of new-cut pine,
nor along the lake, nor in the sunset clouds which presently eddied
behind the lavender-misted mountains, could Babbitt find the spirit of
Paul as a reassuring presence. He was so lonely that after supper
he stopped to talk with an ancient old lady, a gasping and steadily
discoursing old lady, by the stove in the hotel-office. He told her of
Ted's presumable future triumphs in the State University and of Tinka's
remarkable vocabulary till he was homesick for the home he had left
forever.

Through the darkness, through that Northern pine-walled silence, he
blundered down to the lake-front and found a canoe. There were no
paddles in it but with a board, sitting awkwardly amidships and poking
at the water rather than paddling, he made his way far out on the lake.
The lights of the hotel and the cottages became yellow dots, a cluster
of glow-worms at the base of Sachem Mountain. Larger and ever more
imperturbable was the mountain in the star-filtered darkness, and the
lake a limitless pavement of black marble. He was dwarfed and dumb and
a little awed, but that insignificance freed him from the pomposities of
being Mr. George F. Babbitt of Zenith; saddened and freed his heart.
Now he was conscious of the presence of Paul, fancied him (rescued
from prison, from Zilla and the brisk exactitudes of the tar-roofing
business) playing his violin at the end of the canoe. He vowed, "I will
go on! I'll never go back! Now that Paul's out of it, I don't want to
see any of those damn people again! I was a fool to get sore because Joe
Paradise didn't jump up and hug me. He's one of these woodsmen; too wise
to go yelping and talking your arm off like a cityman. But get him back
in the mountains, out on the trail--! That's real living!"


IV

Joe reported at Babbitt's cabin at nine the next morning. Babbitt
greeted him as a fellow caveman:

"Well, Joe, how d' you feel about hitting the trail, and getting away
from these darn soft summerites and these women and all?"

"All right, Mr. Babbitt."

"What do you say we go over to Box Car Pond--they tell me the shack
there isn't being used--and camp out?"

"Well, all right, Mr. Babbitt, but it's nearer to Skowtuit Pond, and you
can get just about as good fishing there."

"No, I want to get into the real wilds."

"Well, all right."

"We'll put the old packs on our backs and get into the woods and really
hike."

"I think maybe it would be easier to go by water, through Lake Chogue.
We can go all the way by motor boat--flat-bottom boat with an Evinrude."

"No, sir! Bust up the quiet with a chugging motor? Not on your life! You
just throw a pair of socks in the old pack, and tell 'em what you want
for eats. I'll be ready soon 's you are."

"Most of the sports go by boat, Mr. Babbitt. It's a long walk.

"Look here, Joe: are you objecting to walking?"

"Oh, no, I guess I can do it. But I haven't tramped that far for sixteen
years. Most of the sports go by boat. But I can do it if you say so--I
guess." Joe walked away in sadness.

Babbitt had recovered from his touchy wrath before Joe returned. He
pictured him as warming up and telling the most entertaining stories.
But Joe had not yet warmed up when they took the trail. He persistently
kept behind Babbitt, and however much his shoulders ached from the pack,
however sorely he panted, Babbitt could hear his guide panting equally.
But the trail was satisfying: a path brown with pine-needles and rough
with roots, among the balsams, the ferns, the sudden groves of white
birch. He became credulous again, and rejoiced in sweating. When he
stopped to rest he chuckled, "Guess we're hitting it up pretty good for
a couple o' old birds, eh?"

"Uh-huh," admitted Joe.

"This is a mighty pretty place. Look, you can see the lake down through
the trees. I tell you, Joe, you don't appreciate how lucky you are to
live in woods like this, instead of a city with trolleys grinding and
typewriters clacking and people bothering the life out of you all the
time! I wish I knew the woods like you do. Say, what's the name of that
little red flower?"

Rubbing his back, Joe regarded the flower resentfully "Well, some folks
call it one thing and some calls it another I always just call it Pink
Flower."

Babbitt blessedly ceased thinking as tramping turned into blind
plodding. He was submerged in weariness. His plump legs seemed to go
on by themselves, without guidance, and he mechanically wiped away the
sweat which stung his eyes. He was too tired to be consciously glad as,
after a sun-scourged mile of corduroy tote-road through a swamp where
flies hovered over a hot waste of brush, they reached the cool shore of
Box Car Pond. When he lifted the pack from his back he staggered from
the change in balance, and for a moment could not stand erect. He lay
beneath an ample-bosomed maple tree near the guest-shack, and joyously
felt sleep running through his veins.

He awoke toward dusk, to find Joe efficiently cooking bacon and eggs and
flapjacks for supper, and his admiration of the woodsman returned. He
sat on a stump and felt virile.

"Joe, what would you do if you had a lot of money? Would you stick
to guiding, or would you take a claim 'way back in the woods and be
independent of people?"

For the first time Joe brightened. He chewed his cud a second, and
bubbled, "I've often thought of that! If I had the money, I'd go down to
Tinker's Falls and open a swell shoe store."

After supper Joe proposed a game of stud-poker but Babbitt refused with
brevity, and Joe contentedly went to bed at eight. Babbitt sat on the
stump, facing the dark pond, slapping mosquitos. Save the snoring guide,
there was no other human being within ten miles. He was lonelier than he
had ever been in his life. Then he was in Zenith.

He was worrying as to whether Miss McGoun wasn't paying too much for
carbon paper. He was at once resenting and missing the persistent
teasing at the Roughnecks' Table. He was wondering what Zilla Riesling
was doing now. He was wondering whether, after the summer's maturity
of being a garageman, Ted would "get busy" in the university. He was
thinking of his wife. "If she would only--if she wouldn't be so darn
satisfied with just settling down--No! I won't! I won't go back! I'll
be fifty in three years. Sixty in thirteen years. I'm going to have some
fun before it's too late. I don't care! I will!"

He thought of Ida Putiak, of Louetta Swanson, of that nice widow--what
was her name?--Tanis Judique?--the one for whom he'd found the flat. He
was enmeshed in imaginary conversations. Then:

"Gee, I can't seem to get away from thinking about folks!"

Thus it came to him merely to run away was folly, because he could never
run away from himself.

That moment he started for Zenith. In his journey there was no
appearance of flight, but he was fleeing, and four days afterward he was
on the Zenith train. He knew that he was slinking back not because it
was what he longed to do but because it was all he could do. He scanned
again his discovery that he could never run away from Zenith and family
and office, because in his own brain he bore the office and the family
and every street and disquiet and illusion of Zenith.

"But I'm going to--oh, I'm going to start something!" he vowed, and he
tried to make it valiant.





I

As he walked through the train, looking for familiar faces, he saw only
one person whom he knew, and that was Seneca Doane, the lawyer who,
after the blessings of being in Babbitt's own class at college and
of becoming a corporation-counsel, had turned crank, had headed
farmer-labor tickets and fraternized with admitted socialists. Though he
was in rebellion, naturally Babbitt did not care to be seen talking
with such a fanatic, but in all the Pullmans he could find no other
acquaintance, and reluctantly he halted. Seneca Doane was a slight,
thin-haired man, rather like Chum Frink except that he hadn't Frink's
grin. He was reading a book called "The Way of All Flesh." It looked
religious to Babbitt, and he wondered if Doane could possibly have been
converted and turned decent and patriotic.

"Why, hello, Doane," he said.

Doane looked up. His voice was curiously kind. "Oh! How do, Babbitt."

"Been away, eh?"

"Yes, I've been in Washington."

"Washington, eh? How's the old Government making out?"

"It's--Won't you sit down?"

"Thanks. Don't care if I do. Well, well! Been quite a while since I've
had a good chance to talk to you, Doane. I was, uh--Sorry you didn't
turn up at the last class-dinner."

"Oh--thanks."

"How's the unions coming? Going to run for mayor again?" Doane seemed
restless. He was fingering the pages of his book. He said "I might" as
though it didn't mean anything in particular, and he smiled.

Babbitt liked that smile, and hunted for conversation: "Saw a bang-up
cabaret in New York: the 'Good-Morning Cutie' bunch at the Hotel
Minton."

"Yes, they're pretty girls. I danced there one evening."

"Oh. Like dancing?"

"Naturally. I like dancing and pretty women and good food better than
anything else in the world. Most men do."

"But gosh, Doane, I thought you fellows wanted to take all the good eats
and everything away from us."

"No. Not at all. What I'd like to see is the meetings of the
Garment Workers held at the Ritz, with a dance afterward. Isn't that
reasonable?"

"Yuh, might be good idea, all right. Well--Shame I haven't seen more
of you, recent years. Oh, say, hope you haven't held it against me,
my bucking you as mayor, going on the stump for Prout. You see, I'm an
organization Republican, and I kind of felt--"

"There's no reason why you shouldn't fight me. I have no doubt you're
good for the Organization. I remember--in college you were an unusually
liberal, sensitive chap. I can still recall your saying to me that you
were going to be a lawyer, and take the cases of the poor for nothing,
and fight the rich. And I remember I said I was going to be one of
the rich myself, and buy paintings and live at Newport. I'm sure you
inspired us all."

"Well.... Well.... I've always aimed to be liberal." Babbitt was
enormously shy and proud and self-conscious; he tried to look like the
boy he had been a quarter-century ago, and he shone upon his old friend
Seneca Doane as he rumbled, "Trouble with a lot of these fellows, even
the live wires and some of 'em that think they're forward-looking, is
they aren't broad-minded and liberal. Now, I always believe in giving
the other fellow a chance, and listening to his ideas."

"That's fine."

"Tell you how I figure it: A little opposition is good for all of us,
so a fellow, especially if he's a business man and engaged in doing the
work of the world, ought to be liberal."

"Yes--"

"I always say a fellow ought to have Vision and Ideals. I guess some of
the fellows in my business think I'm pretty visionary, but I just let
'em think what they want to and go right on--same as you do.... By
golly, this is nice to have a chance to sit and visit and kind of, you
might say, brush up on our ideals."

"But of course we visionaries do rather get beaten. Doesn't it bother
you?"

"Not a bit! Nobody can dictate to me what I think!"

"You're the man I want to help me. I want you to talk to some of
the business men and try to make them a little more liberal in their
attitude toward poor Beecher Ingram."

"Ingram? But, why, he's this nut preacher that got kicked out of
the Congregationalist Church, isn't he, and preaches free love and
sedition?"

This, Doane explained, was indeed the general conception of Beecher
Ingram, but he himself saw Beecher Ingram as a priest of the brotherhood
of man, of which Babbitt was notoriously an upholder. So would Babbitt
keep his acquaintances from hounding Ingram and his forlorn little
church?

"You bet! I'll call down any of the boys I hear getting funny about
Ingram," Babbitt said affectionately to his dear friend Doane.

Doane warmed up and became reminiscent. He spoke of student days in
Germany, of lobbying for single tax in Washington, of international
labor conferences. He mentioned his friends, Lord Wycombe, Colonel
Wedgwood, Professor Piccoli. Babbitt had always supposed that Doane
associated only with the I. W. W., but now he nodded gravely, as one
who knew Lord Wycombes by the score, and he got in two references to Sir
Gerald Doak. He felt daring and idealistic and cosmopolitan.

Suddenly, in his new spiritual grandeur, he was sorry for Zilla
Riesling, and understood her as these ordinary fellows at the Boosters'
Club never could.


II

Five hours after he had arrived in Zenith and told his wife how hot it
was in New York, he went to call on Zilla. He was buzzing with ideas and
forgiveness. He'd get Paul released; he'd do things, vague but highly
benevolent things, for Zilla; he'd be as generous as his friend Seneca
Doane.

He had not seen Zilla since Paul had shot her, and he still pictured her
as buxom, high-colored, lively, and a little blowsy. As he drove up
to her boarding-house, in a depressing back street below the wholesale
district, he stopped in discomfort. At an upper window, leaning on her
elbow, was a woman with the features of Zilla, but she was bloodless
and aged, like a yellowed wad of old paper crumpled into wrinkles. Where
Zilla had bounced and jiggled, this woman was dreadfully still.

He waited half an hour before she came into the boarding-house parlor.
Fifty times he opened the book of photographs of the Chicago World's
Fair of 1893, fifty times he looked at the picture of the Court of
Honor.

He was startled to find Zilla in the room. She wore a black streaky gown
which she had tried to brighten with a girdle of crimson ribbon. The
ribbon had been torn and patiently mended. He noted this carefully,
because he did not wish to look at her shoulders. One shoulder was lower
than the other; one arm she carried in contorted fashion, as though it
were paralyzed; and behind a high collar of cheap lace there was a gouge
in the anemic neck which had once been shining and softly plump.

"Yes?" she said.

"Well, well, old Zilla! By golly, it's good to see you again!"

"He can send his messages through a lawyer."

"Why, rats, Zilla, I didn't come just because of him. Came as an old
friend."

"You waited long enough!"

"Well, you know how it is. Figured you wouldn't want to see a friend of
his for quite some time and--Sit down, honey! Let's be sensible. We've
all of us done a bunch of things that we hadn't ought to, but maybe we
can sort of start over again. Honest, Zilla, I'd like to do something to
make you both happy. Know what I thought to-day? Mind you, Paul doesn't
know a thing about this--doesn't know I was going to come see you. I got
to thinking: Zilla's a fine? big-hearted woman, and she'll understand
that, uh, Paul's had his lesson now. Why wouldn't it be a fine idea if
you asked the governor to pardon him? Believe he would, if it came from
you. No! Wait! Just think how good you'd feel if you were generous."

"Yes, I wish to be generous." She was sitting primly, speaking icily.
"For that reason I wish to keep him in prison, as an example to
evil-doers. I've gotten religion, George, since the terrible thing that
man did to me. Sometimes I used to be unkind, and I wished for worldly
pleasures, for dancing and the theater. But when I was in the hospital
the pastor of the Pentecostal Communion Faith used to come to see me,
and he showed me, right from the prophecies written in the Word of God,
that the Day of Judgment is coming and all the members of the older
churches are going straight to eternal damnation, because they only do
lip-service and swallow the world, the flesh, and the devil--"

For fifteen wild minutes she talked, pouring out admonitions to flee the
wrath to come, and her face flushed, her dead voice recaptured something
of the shrill energy of the old Zilla. She wound up with a furious:

"It's the blessing of God himself that Paul should be in prison now, and
torn and humbled by punishment, so that he may yet save his soul, and so
other wicked men, these horrible chasers after women and lust, may have
an example."

Babbitt had itched and twisted. As in church he dared not move during
the sermon so now he felt that he must seem attentive, though her
screeching denunciations flew past him like carrion birds.

He sought to be calm and brotherly:

"Yes, I know, Zilla. But gosh, it certainly is the essence of religion
to be charitable, isn't it? Let me tell you how I figure it: What we
need in the world is liberalism, liberality, if we're going to get
anywhere. I've always believed in being broad-minded and liberal--"

"You? Liberal?" It was very much the old Zilla. "Why, George Babbitt,
you're about as broad-minded and liberal as a razor-blade!"

"Oh, I am, am I! Well, just let me tell you, just--let me--tell--you,
I'm as by golly liberal as you are religious, anyway! YOU RELIGIOUS!"

"I am so! Our pastor says I sustain him in the faith!"

"I'll bet you do! With Paul's money! But just to show you how liberal
I am, I'm going to send a check for ten bucks to this Beecher Ingram,
because a lot of fellows are saying the poor cuss preaches sedition and
free love, and they're trying to run him out of town."

"And they're right! They ought to run him out of town! Why, he
preaches--if you can call it preaching--in a theater, in the House of
Satan! You don't know what it is to find God, to find peace, to behold
the snares that the devil spreads out for our feet. Oh, I'm so glad to
see the mysterious purposes of God in having Paul harm me and stop
my wickedness--and Paul's getting his, good and plenty, for the cruel
things he did to me, and I hope he DIES in prison!"

Babbitt was up, hat in hand, growling, "Well, if that's what you call
being at peace, for heaven's sake just warn me before you go to war,
will you?"


III

Vast is the power of cities to reclaim the wanderer. More than mountains
or the shore-devouring sea, a city retains its character, imperturbable,
cynical, holding behind apparent changes its essential purpose. Though
Babbitt had deserted his family and dwelt with Joe Paradise in the
wilderness, though he had become a liberal, though he had been quite
sure, on the night before he reached Zenith, that neither he nor the
city would be the same again, ten days after his return he could not
believe that he had ever been away. Nor was it at all evident to his
acquaintances that there was a new George F. Babbitt, save that he was
more irritable under the incessant chaffing at the Athletic Club, and
once, when Vergil Gunch observed that Seneca Doane ought to be hanged,
Babbitt snorted, "Oh, rats, he's not so bad."

At home he grunted "Eh?" across the newspaper to his commentatory wife,
and was delighted by Tinka's new red tam o'shanter, and announced, "No
class to that corrugated iron garage. Have to build me a nice frame
one."

Verona and Kenneth Escott appeared really to be engaged. In
his newspaper Escott had conducted a pure-food crusade against
commission-houses. As a result he had been given an excellent job in a
commission-house, and he was making a salary on which he could marry,
and denouncing irresponsible reporters who wrote stories criticizing
commission-houses without knowing what they were talking about.

This September Ted had entered the State University as a freshman in the
College of Arts and Sciences. The university was at Mohalis only fifteen
miles from Zenith, and Ted often came down for the week-end. Babbitt was
worried. Ted was "going in for" everything but books. He had tried to
"make" the football team as a light half-back, he was looking forward
to the basket-ball season, he was on the committee for the Freshman
Hop, and (as a Zenithite, an aristocrat among the yokels) he was being
"rushed" by two fraternities. But of his studies Babbitt could learn
nothing save a mumbled, "Oh, gosh, these old stiffs of teachers just
give you a lot of junk about literature and economics."

One week-end Ted proposed, "Say, Dad, why can't I transfer over from the
College to the School of Engineering and take mechanical engineering?
You always holler that I never study, but honest, I would study there."

"No, the Engineering School hasn't got the standing the College has,"
fretted Babbitt.

"I'd like to know how it hasn't! The Engineers can play on any of the
teams!"

There was much explanation of the "dollars-and-cents value of being
known as a college man when you go into the law," and a truly oratorical
account of the lawyer's life. Before he was through with it, Babbitt had
Ted a United States Senator.

Among the great lawyers whom he mentioned was Seneca Doane.

"But, gee whiz," Ted marveled, "I thought you always said this Doane was
a reg'lar nut!"

"That's no way to speak of a great man! Doane's always been a good
friend of mine--fact I helped him in college--I started him out and you
might say inspired him. Just because he's sympathetic with the aims of
Labor, a lot of chumps that lack liberality and broad-mindedness think
he's a crank, but let me tell you there's mighty few of 'em that rake
in the fees he does, and he's a friend of some of the strongest; most
conservative men in the world--like Lord Wycombe, this, uh, this big
English nobleman that's so well known. And you now, which would you
rather do: be in with a lot of greasy mechanics and laboring-men, or
chum up to a real fellow like Lord Wycombe, and get invited to his house
for parties?"

"Well--gosh," sighed Ted.

The next week-end he came in joyously with, "Say, Dad, why couldn't I
take mining engineering instead of the academic course? You talk about
standing--maybe there isn't much in mechanical engineering, but the
Miners, gee, they got seven out of eleven in the new elections to Nu Tau
Tau!"

 In the morning, Babbitt awakens cheerfully. He reconsiders his behavior of the past few weeks and debates whether or not to continue his "rebellion." He resolves to go on seeking, but promises himself that he will discontinue his futile chasing after girls. In August, Myra comes back to Zenith, but Babbitt has not missed her. He dreads being alone with her, but he tries his best to seem enthusiastic about her return. As a result, Babbitt decides to spend his vacation alone in the Maine woods where he and Paul had such a peaceful time the year before. He hopes to be able to rejuvenate his spirit there. He tells his wife that he is going to New York on a business trip. At Lake Sunasquam, he seeks out the company of the Indian guides, hoping to discover through them the freedom and contentment of a virile, outdoor life. He is disappointed to learn, however, that they are crass and materialistic men -- just like those whom he left behind in Zenith. Even worse, the woods are not the same without Paul. One night, Babbitt begins to understand that he can never escape Zenith; the Zenith way of life is deeply imprinted on his mind and soul. He still does not comprehend what he is seeking, but he knows that there is only one place where he can really find it. A day or so later, he boards the train for home. On the train to Zenith, Babbitt encounters Seneca Doane, with whom he had been friendly in college. They speak together for the rest of the trip, and Babbitt is surprised to discover that Doane is not the revolutionary monster that he has been portrayed to be by the conservative businessmen of Zenith. Babbitt agrees with some of Doane's beliefs and begins to feel like a fledgling idealist. A few hours after his arrival in Zenith, Babbitt calls on Zilla Riesling. She now lives in a cheap boarding house in a poor neighborhood. He is surprised to see how her physical appearance has changed and is shocked to learn that she has become intolerantly religious. She has no mercy for Paul and refuses to cooperate in an effort to get him a pardon. At the Athletic Club, Babbitt defends Seneca Doane when the attorney is bad-mouthed by the members. Otherwise, Babbitt's life continues in its usual fashion.

