Chapter: I

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

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

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

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

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

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


II

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

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

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

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

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


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


The other six pages were rather like the first.

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

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

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

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

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

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


III

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

"What's the matter with Zenith?"

"She's all right!"

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

"Zeeeeeen-ith!"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


IV

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

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

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

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


V

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

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

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

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

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

The convention was on.

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

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

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

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

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


VI

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

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

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

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


VII

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It was accepted.


VIII

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

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

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

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


IX

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


X

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Old Colony Theatre

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

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


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

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

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


XI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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





THIS autumn a Mr. W. G. Harding, of Marion, Ohio, was appointed
President of the United States, but Zenith was less interested in the
national campaign than in the local election. Seneca Doane, though he
was a lawyer and a graduate of the State University, was candidate for
mayor of Zenith on an alarming labor ticket. To oppose him the Democrats
and Republicans united on Lucas Prout, a mattress-manufacturer with a
perfect record for sanity. Mr. Prout was supported by the banks, the
Chamber of Commerce, all the decent newspapers, and George F. Babbitt.

Babbitt was precinct-leader on Floral Heights, but his district was safe
and he longed for stouter battling. His convention paper had given him
the beginning of a reputation for oratory, so the Republican-Democratic
Central Committee sent him to the Seventh Ward and South Zenith, to
address small audiences of workmen and clerks, and wives uneasy with
their new votes. He acquired a fame enduring for weeks. Now and then a
reporter was present at one of his meetings, and the headlines (though
they were not very large) indicated that George F. Babbitt had addressed
Cheering Throng, and Distinguished Man of Affairs had pointed out the
Fallacies of Doane. Once, in the rotogravure section of the Sunday
Advocate-Times, there was a photograph of Babbitt and a dozen other
business men, with the caption "Leaders of Zenith Finance and Commerce
Who Back Prout."

He deserved his glory. He was an excellent campaigner. He had faith; he
was certain that if Lincoln were alive, he would be electioneering for
Mr. W. G. Harding--unless he came to Zenith and electioneered for
Lucas Prout. He did not confuse audiences by silly subtleties; Prout
represented honest industry, Seneca Doane represented whining laziness,
and you could take your choice. With his broad shoulders and vigorous
voice, he was obviously a Good Fellow; and, rarest of all, he really
liked people. He almost liked common workmen. He wanted them to be well
paid, and able to afford high rents--though, naturally, they must
not interfere with the reasonable profits of stockholders. Thus nobly
endowed, and keyed high by the discovery that he was a natural orator,
he was popular with audiences, and he raged through the campaign,
renowned not only in the Seventh and Eighth Wards but even in parts of
the Sixteenth.


II

Crowded in his car, they came driving up to Turnverein Hall, South
Zenith--Babbitt, his wife, Verona, Ted, and Paul and Zilla Riesling. The
hall was over a delicatessen shop, in a street banging with trolleys and
smelling of onions and gasoline and fried fish. A new appreciation of
Babbitt filled all of them, including Babbitt.

"Don't know how you keep it up, talking to three bunches in one evening.
Wish I had your strength," said Paul; and Ted exclaimed to Verona, "The
old man certainly does know how to kid these roughnecks along!"

Men in black sateen shirts, their faces new-washed but with a hint of
grime under their eyes, were loitering on the broad stairs up to
the hall. Babbitt's party politely edged through them and into the
whitewashed room, at the front of which was a dais with a red-plush
throne and a pine altar painted watery blue, as used nightly by the
Grand Masters and Supreme Potentates of innumerable lodges. The hall
was full. As Babbitt pushed through the fringe standing at the back, he
heard the precious tribute, "That's him!" The chairman bustled down the
center aisle with an impressive, "The speaker? All ready, sir! Uh--let's
see--what was the name, sir?"

Then Babbitt slid into a sea of eloquence:

"Ladies and gentlemen of the Sixteenth Ward, there is one who cannot be
with us here to-night, a man than whom there is no more stalwart Trojan
in all the political arena--I refer to our leader, the Honorable Lucas
Prout, standard-bearer of the city and county of Zenith. Since he is not
here, I trust that you will bear with me if, as a friend and neighbor,
as one who is proud to share with you the common blessing of being a
resident of the great city of Zenith, I tell you in all candor, honesty,
and sincerity how the issues of this critical campaign appear to one
plain man of business--to one who, brought up to the blessings of
poverty and of manual labor, has, even when Fate condemned him to sit
at a desk, yet never forgotten how it feels, by heck, to be up at
five-thirty and at the factory with the ole dinner-pail in his hardened
mitt when the whistle blew at seven, unless the owner sneaked in ten
minutes on us and blew it early! (Laughter.) To come down to the basic
and fundamental issues of this campaign, the great error, insincerely
promulgated by Seneca Doane--"

There were workmen who jeered--young cynical workmen, for the most part
foreigners, Jews, Swedes, Irishmen, Italians--but the older men, the
patient, bleached, stooped carpenters and mechanics, cheered him; and
when he worked up to his anecdote of Lincoln their eyes were wet.

Modestly, busily, he hurried out of the hall on delicious applause, and
sped off to his third audience of the evening. "Ted, you better drive,"
he said. "Kind of all in after that spiel. Well, Paul, how'd it go? Did
I get 'em?"

"Bully! Corking! You had a lot of pep."

Mrs. Babbitt worshiped, "Oh, it was fine! So clear and interesting, and
such nice ideas. When I hear you orating I realize I don't appreciate
how profoundly you think and what a splendid brain and vocabulary you
have. Just--splendid." But Verona was irritating. "Dad," she worried,
"how do you know that public ownership of utilities and so on and so
forth will always be a failure?"

Mrs. Babbitt reproved, "Rone, I should think you could see and realize
that when your father's all worn out with orating, it's no time to
expect him to explain these complicated subjects. I'm sure when he's
rested he'll be glad to explain it to you. Now let's all be quiet and
give Papa a chance to get ready for his next speech. Just think! Right
now they're gathering in Maccabee Temple, and WAITING for us!"


III

Mr. Lucas Prout and Sound Business defeated Mr. Seneca Doane and Class
Rule, and Zenith was again saved. Babbitt was offered several minor
appointments to distribute among poor relations, but he preferred
advance information about the extension of paved highways, and this a
grateful administration gave to him. Also, he was one of only nineteen
speakers at the dinner with which the Chamber of Commerce celebrated the
victory of righteousness.

His reputation for oratory established, at the dinner of the Zenith Real
Estate Board he made the Annual Address. The Advocate-Times reported
this speech with unusual fullness:

"One of the livest banquets that has recently been pulled off occurred
last night in the annual Get-Together Fest of the Zenith Real Estate
Board, held in the Venetian Ball Room of the O'Hearn House. Mine host
Gil O'Hearn had as usual done himself proud and those assembled feasted
on such an assemblage of plates as could be rivaled nowhere west of New
York, if there, and washed down the plenteous feed with the cup which
inspired but did not inebriate in the shape of cider from the farm
of Chandler Mott, president of the board and who acted as witty and
efficient chairman.

"As Mr. Mott was suffering from slight infection and sore throat, G.
F. Babbitt made the principal talk. Besides outlining the progress of
Torrensing real estate titles, Mr. Babbitt spoke in part as follows:

"'In rising to address you, with my impromptu speech carefully tucked
into my vest pocket, I am reminded of the story of the two Irishmen,
Mike and Pat, who were riding on the Pullman. Both of them, I forgot to
say, were sailors in the Navy. It seems Mike had the lower berth and by
and by he heard a terrible racket from the upper, and when he yelled up
to find out what the trouble was, Pat answered, "Shure an' bedad an' how
can I ever get a night's sleep at all, at all? I been trying to get into
this darned little hammock ever since eight bells!"

"'Now, gentlemen, standing up here before you, I feel a good deal like
Pat, and maybe after I've spieled along for a while, I may feel so darn
small that I'll be able to crawl into a Pullman hammock with no trouble
at all, at all!

"'Gentlemen, it strikes me that each year at this annual occasion when
friend and foe get together and lay down the battle-ax and let the waves
of good-fellowship waft them up the flowery slopes of amity, it
behooves us, standing together eye to eye and shoulder to shoulder as
fellow-citizens of the best city in the world, to consider where we are
both as regards ourselves and the common weal.

"'It is true that even with our 361,000, or practically 362,000,
population, there are, by the last census, almost a score of larger
cities in the United States. But, gentlemen, if by the next census we do
not stand at least tenth, then I'll be the first to request any knocker
to remove my shirt and to eat the same, with the compliments of G.
F. Babbitt, Esquire! It may be true that New York, Chicago, and
Philadelphia will continue to keep ahead of us in size. But aside from
these three cities, which are notoriously so overgrown that no decent
white man, nobody who loves his wife and kiddies and God's good
out-o'doors and likes to shake the hand of his neighbor in greeting,
would want to live in them--and let me tell you right here and now, I
wouldn't trade a high-class Zenith acreage development for the whole
length and breadth of Broadway or State Street!--aside from these three,
it's evident to any one with a head for facts that Zenith is the finest
example of American life and prosperity to be found anywhere.

"'I don't mean to say we're perfect. We've got a lot to do in the way
of extending the paving of motor boulevards, for, believe me, it's the
fellow with four to ten thousand a year, say, and an automobile and a
nice little family in a bungalow on the edge of town, that makes the
wheels of progress go round!

"'That's the type of fellow that's ruling America to-day; in fact, it's
the ideal type to which the entire world must tend, if there's to be a
decent, well-balanced, Christian, go-ahead future for this little old
planet! Once in a while I just naturally sit back and size up this Solid
American Citizen, with a whale of a lot of satisfaction.

"'Our Ideal Citizen--I picture him first and foremost as being busier
than a bird-dog, not wasting a lot of good time in day-dreaming or going
to sassiety teas or kicking about things that are none of his business,
but putting the zip into some store or profession or art. At night he
lights up a good cigar, and climbs into the little old 'bus, and maybe
cusses the carburetor, and shoots out home. He mows the lawn, or sneaks
in some practice putting, and then he's ready for dinner. After dinner
he tells the kiddies a story, or takes the family to the movies, or
plays a few fists of bridge, or reads the evening paper, and a
chapter or two of some good lively Western novel if he has a taste for
literature, and maybe the folks next-door drop in and they sit and visit
about their friends and the topics of the day. Then he goes happily to
bed, his conscience clear, having contributed his mite to the prosperity
of the city and to his own bank-account.

"'In politics and religion this Sane Citizen is the canniest man on
earth; and in the arts he invariably has a natural taste which makes him
pick out the best, every time. In no country in the world will you find
so many reproductions of the Old Masters and of well-known paintings on
parlor walls as in these United States. No country has anything like our
number of phonographs, with not only dance records and comic but also
the best operas, such as Verdi, rendered by the world's highest-paid
singers.

"'In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby
bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America
the successful writer or picture-painter is indistinguishable from any
other decent business man; and I, for one, am only too glad that the man
who has the rare skill to season his message with interesting reading
matter and who shows both purpose and pep in handling his literary wares
has a chance to drag down his fifty thousand bucks a year, to mingle
with the biggest executives on terms of perfect equality, and to show
as big a house and as swell a car as any Captain of Industry! But, mind
you, it's the appreciation of the Regular Guy who I have been depicting
which has made this possible, and you got to hand as much credit to him
as to the authors themselves.

"'Finally, but most important, our Standardized Citizen, even if he is a
bachelor, is a lover of the Little Ones, a supporter of the hearthstone
which is the basic foundation of our civilization, first, last, and
all the time, and the thing that most distinguishes us from the decayed
nations of Europe.

"'I have never yet toured Europe--and as a matter of fact, I don't know
that I care to such an awful lot, as long as there's our own mighty
cities and mountains to be seen--but, the way I figure it out, there
must be a good many of our own sort of folks abroad. Indeed, one of
the most enthusiastic Rotarians I ever met boosted the tenets of
one-hundred-per-cent pep in a burr that smacked o' bonny Scutlond
and all ye bonny braes o' Bobby Burns. But same time, one thing that
distinguishes us from our good brothers, the hustlers over there, is
that they're willing to take a lot off the snobs and journalists and
politicians, while the modern American business man knows how to talk
right up for himself, knows how to make it good and plenty clear that
he intends to run the works. He doesn't have to call in some highbrow
hired-man when it's necessary for him to answer the crooked critics
of the sane and efficient life. He's not dumb, like the old-fashioned
merchant. He's got a vocabulary and a punch.

"'With all modesty, I want to stand up here as a representative
business man and gently whisper, "Here's our kind of folks! Here's the
specifications of the Standardized American Citizen! Here's the new
generation of Americans: fellows with hair on their chests and smiles
in their eyes and adding-machines in their offices. We're not doing any
boasting, but we like ourselves first-rate, and if you don't like us,
look out--better get under cover before the cyclone hits town!"

"'So! In my clumsy way I have tried to sketch the Real He-man, the
fellow with Zip and Bang. And it's because Zenith has so large a
proportion of such men that it's the most stable, the greatest of our
cities. New York also has its thousands of Real Folks, but New York is
cursed with unnumbered foreigners. So are Chicago and San Francisco.
Oh, we have a golden roster of cities--Detroit and Cleveland with their
renowned factories, Cincinnati with its great machine-tool and soap
products, Pittsburg and Birmingham with their steel, Kansas City and
Minneapolis and Omaha that open their bountiful gates on the bosom
of the ocean-like wheatlands, and countless other magnificent
sister-cities, for, by the last census, there were no less than
sixty-eight glorious American burgs with a population of over one
hundred thousand! And all these cities stand together for power and
purity, and against foreign ideas and communism--Atlanta with Hartford,
Rochester with Denver, Milwaukee with Indianapolis, Los Angeles with
Scranton, Portland, Maine, with Portland, Oregon. A good live wire from
Baltimore or Seattle or Duluth is the twin-brother of every like fellow
booster from Buffalo or Akron, Fort Worth or Oskaloosa!

"'But it's here in Zenith, the home for manly men and womanly women and
bright kids, that you find the largest proportion of these Regular Guys,
and that's what sets it in a class by itself; that's why Zenith will
be remembered in history as having set the pace for a civilization that
shall endure when the old time-killing ways are gone forever and the day
of earnest efficient endeavor shall have dawned all round the world!

"'Some time I hope folks will quit handing all the credit to a lot of
moth-eaten, mildewed, out-of-date, old, European dumps, and give proper
credit to the famous Zenith spirit, that clean fighting determination
to win Success that has made the little old Zip City celebrated in
every land and clime, wherever condensed milk and pasteboard cartons
are known! Believe me, the world has fallen too long for these worn-out
countries that aren't producing anything but bootblacks and scenery and
booze, that haven't got one bathroom per hundred people, and that don't
know a loose-leaf ledger from a slip-cover; and it's just about time for
some Zenithite to get his back up and holler for a show-down!

"'I tell you, Zenith and her sister-cities are producing a new type of
civilization. There are many resemblances between Zenith and these other
burgs, and I'm darn glad of it! The extraordinary, growing, and sane
standardization of stores, offices, streets, hotels, clothes, and
newspapers throughout the United States shows how strong and enduring a
type is ours.

"'I always like to remember a piece that Chum Frink wrote for the
newspapers about his lecture-tours. It is doubtless familiar to many of
you, but if you will permit me, I'll take a chance and read it. It's
one of the classic poems, like "If" by Kipling, or Ella Wheeler Wilcox's
"The Man Worth While"; and I always carry this clipping of it in my
note-book:


"When I am out upon the road, a poet with a pedler's load I mostly sing
a hearty song, and take a chew and hike along, a-handing out my samples
fine of Cheero Brand of sweet sunshine, and peddling optimistic pokes
and stable lines of japes and jokes to Lyceums and other folks, to
Rotarys, Kiwanis' Clubs, and feel I ain't like other dubs. And then old
Major Silas Satan, a brainy cuss who's always waitin', he gives his tail
a lively quirk, and gets in quick his dirty work. He fills me up with
mullygrubs; my hair the backward way he rubs; he makes me lonelier than
a hound, on Sunday when the folks ain't round. And then b' gosh, I would
prefer to never be a lecturer, a-ridin' round in classy cars and smoking
fifty-cent cigars, and never more I want to roam; I simply want to be
back home, a-eatin' flap jacks, hash, and ham, with folks who savvy whom
I am!

"But when I get that lonely spell, I simply seek the best hotel, no
matter in what town I be--St. Paul, Toledo, or K.C., in Washington,
Schenectady, in Louisville or Albany. And at that inn it hits my dome
that I again am right at home. If I should stand a lengthy spell in
front of that first-class hotel, that to the drummers loves to cater,
across from some big film theayter; if I should look around and buzz,
and wonder in what town I was, I swear that I could never tell! For all
the crowd would be so swell, in just the same fine sort of jeans they
wear at home, and all the queens with spiffy bonnets on their beans, and
all the fellows standing round a-talkin' always, I'll be bound, the same
good jolly kind of guff, 'bout autos, politics and stuff and baseball
players of renown that Nice Guys talk in my home town!

"Then when I entered that hotel, I'd look around and say, "Well, well!"
For there would be the same news-stand, same magazines and candies
grand, same smokes of famous standard brand, I'd find at home, I'll
tell! And when I saw the jolly bunch come waltzing in for eats at lunch,
and squaring up in natty duds to platters large of French Fried spuds,
why then I'd stand right up and bawl, "I've never left my home at all!"
And all replete I'd sit me down beside some guy in derby brown upon a
lobby chair of plush, and murmur to him in a rush, "Hello, Bill, tell
me, good old scout, how is your stock a-holdin' out?" Then we'd be off,
two solid pals, a-chatterin' like giddy gals of flivvers, weather, home,
and wives, lodge-brothers then for all our lives! So when Sam Satan
makes you blue, good friend, that's what I'd up and do, for in these
States where'er you roam, you never leave your home sweet home."


"'Yes, sir, these other burgs are our true partners in the great game
of vital living. But let's not have any mistake about this. I claim that
Zenith is the best partner and the fastest-growing partner of the whole
caboodle. I trust I may be pardoned if I give a few statistics to back
up my claims. If they are old stuff to any of you, yet the tidings of
prosperity, like the good news of the Bible, never become tedious to the
ears of a real hustler, no matter how oft the sweet story is told! Every
intelligent person knows that Zenith manufactures more condensed milk
and evaporated cream, more paper boxes, and more lighting-fixtures, than
any other city in the United States, if not in the world. But it is not
so universally known that we also stand second in the manufacture of
package-butter, sixth in the giant realm of motors and automobiles,
and somewhere about third in cheese, leather findings, tar roofing,
breakfast food, and overalls!

"'Our greatness, however, lies not alone in punchful prosperity but
equally in that public spirit, that forward-looking idealism and
brotherhood, which has marked Zenith ever since its foundation by the
Fathers. We have a right, indeed we have a duty toward our fair city,
to announce broadcast the facts about our high schools, characterized by
their complete plants and the finest school-ventilating systems in
the country, bar none; our magnificent new hotels and banks and the
paintings and carved marble in their lobbies; and the Second National
Tower, the second highest business building in any inland city in the
entire country. When I add that we have an unparalleled number of miles
of paved streets, bathrooms vacuum cleaners, and all the other signs
of civilization; that our library and art museum are well supported and
housed in convenient and roomy buildings; that our park-system is more
than up to par, with its handsome driveways adorned with grass,
shrubs, and statuary, then I give but a hint of the all round unlimited
greatness of Zenith!

"'I believe, however, in keeping the best to the last. When I remind you
that we have one motor car for every five and seven-eighths persons in
the city, then I give a rock-ribbed practical indication of the kind of
progress and braininess which is synonymous with the name Zenith!

"'But the way of the righteous is not all roses. Before I close I must
call your attention to a problem we have to face, this coming year. The
worst menace to sound government is not the avowed socialists but a
lot of cowards who work under cover--the long-haired gentry who
call themselves "liberals" and "radicals" and "non-partisan" and
"intelligentsia" and God only knows how many other trick names!
Irresponsible teachers and professors constitute the worst of this whole
gang, and I am ashamed to say that several of them are on the faculty of
our great State University! The U. is my own Alma Mater, and I am proud
to be known as an alumni, but there are certain instructors there who
seem to think we ought to turn the conduct of the nation over to hoboes
and roustabouts.

"'Those profs are the snakes to be scotched--they and all their
milk-and-water ilk! The American business man is generous to a
fault. But one thing he does demand of all teachers and lecturers and
journalists: if we're going to pay them our good money, they've got
to help us by selling efficiency and whooping it up for rational
prosperity! And when it comes to these blab-mouth, fault-finding,
pessimistic, cynical University teachers, let me tell you that during
this golden coming year it's just as much our duty to bring influence to
have those cusses fired as it is to sell all the real estate and gather
in all the good shekels we can.

"'Not till that is done will our sons and daughters see that the ideal
of American manhood and culture isn't a lot of cranks sitting around
chewing the rag about their Rights and their Wrongs, but a God-fearing,
hustling, successful, two-fisted Regular Guy, who belongs to some church
with pep and piety to it, who belongs to the Boosters or the Rotarians
or the Kiwanis, to the Elks or Moose or Red Men or Knights of Columbus
or any one of a score of organizations of good, jolly, kidding,
laughing, sweating, upstanding, lend-a-handing Royal Good Fellows,
who plays hard and works hard, and whose answer to his critics is a
square-toed boot that'll teach the grouches and smart alecks to respect
the He-man and get out and root for Uncle Samuel, U.S.A.!'"


IV

Babbitt promised to become a recognized orator. He entertained a Smoker
of the Men's Club of the Chatham Road presbyterian Church with Irish,
Jewish, and Chinese dialect stories.

But in nothing was he more clearly revealed as the Prominent Citizen
than in his lecture on "Brass Tacks Facts on Real Estate," as delivered
before the class in Sales Methods at the Zenith Y.M.C.A.

The Advocate-Times reported the lecture so fully that Vergil Gunch said
to Babbitt, "You're getting to be one of the classiest spellbinders in
town. Seems 's if I couldn't pick up a paper without reading about your
well-known eloquence. All this guff ought to bring a lot of business
into your office. Good work! Keep it up!"

"Go on, quit your kidding," said Babbitt feebly, but at this tribute
from Gunch, himself a man of no mean oratorical fame, he expanded with
delight and wondered how, before his vacation, he could have questioned
the joys of being a solid citizen.

 Babbitt, like all his business colleagues, is a member of the State Association of Real Estate Boards. The annual convention of this organization is to be held in the city of Monarch this year, and Babbitt is selected to be one of Zenith's delegates. While meeting with Cecil Rountree, the delegation chairman, Babbitt repeats his favorite ideas about real estate's being a profession with the same dignity as medicine or law. Rountree is impressed and invites Babbitt to read a paper on the subject at the convention. For the next few days, Babbitt spends all his spare time working on his speech, making his family miserable with his intense concentration. He makes no progress at all until one night when he decides to ignore what little he knows about style, form, order, and other rhetorical rules. He writes down what he feels -- just as it occurs to him -- and in a short time, the speech is complete. The Zenith delegation leaves for the convention with all the noise and fanfare that is typical of such affairs. On the train and later at the meeting itself, there is a wide variety of horseplay -- with costumes, placards, and much friendly rivalry between representatives of different cities. Babbitt delivers a stirring speech on the nobility and responsibility of the realtor's profession, and he suddenly finds that he has become one of the most popular and well-known figures at the convention. Everyone seeks his acquaintance, and he is appointed to an important committee. The next day, the convention ends and most of the delegates go home. Babbitt and several friends decide to stay in Monarch for an additional night of fun and good fellowship. They spend a few hours playing cards and drinking heavily; then after a good dinner, they attend a burlesque theater and a night club. By this time, most of the men have little self-control or discretion left and are eager to cut loose in a way they cannot do at home. The tipsy group decides to visit a red-light district. Babbitt is terrified by the idea and tries to escape from the taxi, but he realizes that he actually wants to go to a whorehouse. He joins the other men, loudly proclaiming that Zenith has "got more houses and hootch-parlors . . . than any burg in the state." The next morning Babbitt, like the others, has a terrible hangover; he returns to Zenith and tells no one of his late-night escapade. Before long, Babbitt has almost forgotten the night of debauchery. In the autumn, election time comes around. Seneca Doane, the radical attorney, is a candidate for mayor, running on a pro-labor platform. The Democrats and Republicans join forces to support Lucas Prout, a wealthy and respectable manufacturer. Prout is also supported by the banks, the newspapers, the Chamber of Commerce, and all the reputable businessmen in the city. Babbitt is the precinct leader in Floral Heights, but there is no contest in this solid district, and he desires a more challenging assignment. He volunteers his services as an orator for the Prout campaign. Before long, he is one of Prout's most active supporters, making speeches and conducting meetings every night in Zenith's working-class neighborhoods. Babbitt's name appears in the newspapers several times during the campaign, and he begins to develop an impressive reputation. He enjoys his new role immensely. When Prout is elected, Babbitt is one of nineteen speakers at the victory banquet. He is rewarded for his campaign work by being given secret advance information about the extension of paved highways in the city. This will be of great value to him in the real-estate business. Later that year, Babbitt delivers the key address at the annual dinner of the Zenith Real Estate Board. In his speech, he praises Zenith as a jewel among American cities, and he extols at great length the standardized, middle-class American way of life. In addition, he attacks socialism, "long-haired" liberalism and intellectualism, and all the college professors and writers who have the audacity to question the long-held beliefs of people like himself and his audience. The speech is reprinted in the Advocate-Times and is well received. Babbitt continues to make additional orations on a number of subjects, in and around Zenith. He is frequently mentioned in the newspapers. Even Vergil Gunch, an already well-known local speaker, compliments Babbitt on his speechmaking abilities.

