CHAPTER VI

Babbitt

by Sinclair Lewis

CHAPTER VI, BABBITT by Sinclair Lewis

I

HE forgot Paul Riesling in an afternoon of not unagreeable details. After a
return to his office, which seemed to have staggered on without him, he drove
a "prospect" out to view a four-flat tenement in the Linton district. He was
inspired by the customer's admiration of the new cigar-lighter. Thrice its
novelty made him use it, and thrice he hurled half-smoked cigarettes from the
car, protesting, "I GOT to quit smoking so blame much!"

Their ample discussion of every detail of the cigar-lighter led them to speak
of electric flat-irons and bed-warmers. Babbitt apologized for being so
shabbily old-fashioned as still to use a hot-water bottle, and he announced
that he would have the sleeping-porch wired at once. He had enormous and
poetic admiration, though very little understanding, of all mechanical
devices. They were his symbols of truth and beauty. Regarding each new
intricate mechanism--metal lathe, two-jet carburetor, machine gun,
oxyacetylene welder--he learned one good realistic-sounding phrase, and used
it over and over, with a delightful feeling of being technical and initiated.

The customer joined him in the worship of machinery, and they came buoyantly
up to the tenement and began that examination of plastic slate roof, kalamein
doors, and seven-eighths-inch blind-nailed flooring, began those diplomacies
of hurt surprise and readiness to be persuaded to do something they had
already decided to do, which would some day result in a sale.

On the way back Babbitt picked up his partner and father-in-law, Henry T.
Thompson, at his kitchen-cabinet works, and they drove through South Zenith, a
high-colored, banging, exciting region: new factories of hollow tile with
gigantic wire-glass windows, surly old red-brick factories stained with tar,
high-perched water-tanks, big red trucks like locomotives, and, on a score of
hectic side-tracks, far-wandering freight-cars from the New York Central and
apple orchards, the Great Northern and wheat-plateaus, the Southern Pacific
and orange groves.

They talked to the secretary of the Zenith Foundry Company about an
interesting artistic project--a cast-iron fence for Linden Lane Cemetery.
They drove on to the Zeeco Motor Company and interviewed the sales-manager,
Noel Ryland, about a discount on a Zeeco car for Thompson. Babbitt and Ryland
were fellow-members of the Boosters' Club, and no Booster felt right if he
bought anything from another Booster without receiving a discount. But Henry
Thompson growled, "Oh, t' hell with 'em! I'm not going to crawl around
mooching discounts, not from nobody." It was one of the differences between
Thompson, the old-fashioned, lean Yankee, rugged, traditional, stage type of
American business man, and Babbitt, the plump, smooth, efficient,
up-to-the-minute and otherwise perfected modern. Whenever Thompson twanged,
"Put your John Hancock on that line," Babbitt was as much amused by the
antiquated provincialism as any proper Englishman by any American. He knew
himself to be of a breeding altogether more esthetic and sensitive than
Thompson's. He was a college graduate, he played golf, he often smoked
cigarettes instead of cigars, and when he went to Chicago he took a room with
a private bath. "The whole thing is," he explained to Paul Riesling, "these
old codgers lack the subtlety that you got to have to-day."

This advance in civilization could be carried too far, Babbitt perceived. Noel
Ryland, sales-manager of the Zeeco, was a frivolous graduate of Princeton,
while Babbitt was a sound and standard ware from that great department-store,
the State University. Ryland wore spats, he wrote long letters about City
Planning and Community Singing, and, though he was a Booster, he was known to
carry in his pocket small volumes of poetry in a foreign language. All this
was going too far. Henry Thompson was the extreme of insularity, and Noel
Ryland the extreme of frothiness, while between them, supporting the state,
defending the evangelical churches and domestic brightness and sound business,
were Babbitt and his friends.

With this just estimate of himself--and with the promise of a discount on
Thompson's car--he returned to his office in triumph.

But as he went through the corridor of the Reeves Building he sighed, "Poor
old Paul! I got to--Oh, damn Noel Ryland! Damn Charley McKelvey! Just
because they make more money than I do, they think they're so superior. I
wouldn't be found dead in their stuffy old Union Club! I--Somehow, to-day, I
don't feel like going back to work. Oh well--"


II

He answered telephone calls, he read the four o'clock mail, he signed his
morning's letters, he talked to a tenant about repairs, he fought with Stanley
Graff.

Young Graff, the outside salesman, was always hinting that he deserved an
increase of commission, and to-day he complained, "I think I ought to get a
bonus if I put through the Heiler sale. I'm chasing around and working on it
every single evening, almost."

Babbitt frequently remarked to his wife that it was better to "con your
office-help along and keep 'em happy 'stead of jumping on 'em and poking 'em
up--get more work out of 'em that way," but this unexampled lack of
appreciation hurt him, and he turned on Graff:

"Look here, Stan; let's get this clear. You've got an idea somehow that it's
you that do all the selling. Where d' you get that stuff? Where d' you think
you'd be if it wasn't for our capital behind you, and our lists of properties,
and all the prospects we find for you? All you got to do is follow up our tips
and close the deal. The hall-porter could sell Babbitt-Thompson listings! You
say you're engaged to a girl, but have to put in your evenings chasing after
buyers. Well, why the devil shouldn't you? What do you want to do? Sit
around holding her hand? Let me tell you, Stan, if your girl is worth her
salt, she'll be glad to know you're out hustling, making some money to furnish
the home-nest, instead of doing the lovey-dovey. The kind of fellow that kicks
about working overtime, that wants to spend his evenings reading trashy novels
or spooning and exchanging a lot of nonsense and foolishness with some girl,
he ain't the kind of upstanding, energetic young man, with a future--and with
Vision!--that we want here. How about it? What's your Ideal, anyway? Do you
want to make money and be a responsible member of the community, or do you
want to be a loafer, with no Inspiration or Pep?"

Graff was not so amenable to Vision and Ideals as usual. "You bet I want to
make money! That's why I want that bonus! Honest, Mr. Babbitt, I don't want
to get fresh, but this Heiler house is a terror. Nobody'll fall for it. The
flooring is rotten and the walls are full of cracks"

"That's exactly what I mean! To a salesman with a love for his profession,
it's hard problems like that that inspire him to do his best. Besides,
Stan--Matter o' fact, Thompson and I are against bonuses, as a matter of
principle. We like you, and we want to help you so you can get married, but
we can't be unfair to the others on the staff. If we start giving you bonuses,
don't you see we're going to hurt the feeling and be unjust to Penniman and
Laylock? Right's right, and discrimination is unfair, and there ain't going
to be any of it in this office! Don't get the idea, Stan, that because during
the war salesmen were hard to hire, now, when there's a lot of men out of
work, there aren't a slew of bright young fellows that would be glad to step
in and enjoy your opportunities, and not act as if Thompson and I were his
enemies and not do any work except for bonuses. How about it, heh? How about
it?"

"Oh--well--gee--of course--" sighed Graff, as he went out, crabwise.

Babbitt did not often squabble with his employees. He liked to like the
people about him; he was dismayed when they did not like him. It was only when
they attacked the sacred purse that he was frightened into fury, but then,
being a man given to oratory and high principles, he enjoyed the sound of his
own vocabulary and the warmth of his own virtue. Today he had so passionately
indulged in self-approval that he wondered whether he had been entirely just:

"After all, Stan isn't a boy any more. Oughtn't to call him so hard. But
rats, got to haul folks over the coals now and then for their own good.
Unpleasant duty, but--I wonder if Stan is sore? What's he saying to McGoun
out there?"

So chill a wind of hatred blew from the outer office that the normal comfort
of his evening home-going was ruined. He was distressed by losing that
approval of his employees to which an executive is always slave. Ordinarily he
left the office with a thousand enjoyable fussy directions to the effect that
there would undoubtedly be important tasks to-morrow, and Miss McGoun and Miss
Bannigan would do well to be there early, and for heaven's sake remind him to
call up Conrad Lyte soon 's he came in. To-night he departed with feigned and
apologetic liveliness. He was as afraid of his still-faced clerks--of the eyes
focused on him, Miss McGoun staring with head lifted from her typing, Miss
Bannigan looking over her ledger, Mat Penniman craning around at his desk in
the dark alcove, Stanley Graff sullenly expressionless--as a parvenu before
the bleak propriety of his butler. He hated to expose his back to their
laughter, and in his effort to be casually merry he stammered and was
raucously friendly and oozed wretchedly out of the door.

But he forgot his misery when he saw from Smith Street the charms of Floral
Heights; the roofs of red tile and green slate, the shining new sun-parlors,
and the stainless walls.


III

He stopped to inform Howard Littlefield, his scholarly neighbor, that though
the day had been springlike the evening might be cold. He went in to shout
"Where are you?" at his wife, with no very definite desire to know where she
was. He examined the lawn to see whether the furnace-man had raked it
properly. With some satisfaction and a good deal of discussion of the matter
with Mrs. Babbitt, Ted, and Howard Littlefield, he concluded that the
furnace-man had not raked it properly. He cut two tufts of wild grass with
his wife's largest dressmaking-scissors; he informed Ted that it was all
nonsense having a furnace-man--"big husky fellow like you ought to do all the
work around the house;" and privately he meditated that it was agreeable to
have it known throughout the neighborhood that he was so prosperous that his
son never worked around the house.

He stood on the sleeping-porch and did his day's exercises: arms out sidewise
for two minutes, up for two minutes, while he muttered, "Ought take more
exercise; keep in shape;" then went in to see whether his collar needed
changing before dinner. As usual it apparently did not.

The Lettish-Croat maid, a powerful woman, beat the dinner-gong.


The roast of beef, roasted potatoes, and string beans were excellent this
evening and, after an adequate sketch of the day's progressive weather-states,
his four-hundred-and-fifty-dollar fee, his lunch with Paul Riesling, and the
proven merits of the new cigar-lighter, he was moved to a benign, "Sort o'
thinking about buyin, a new car. Don't believe we'll get one till next year,
but still we might."

Verona, the older daughter, cried, "Oh, Dad, if you do, why don't you get a
sedan? That would be perfectly slick! A closed car is so much more comfy than
an open one."

"Well now, I don't know about that. I kind of like an open car. You get more
fresh air that way."

"Oh, shoot, that's just because you never tried a sedan. Let's get one. It's
got a lot more class," said Ted.

"A closed car does keep the clothes nicer," from Mrs. Babbitt; "You don't get
your hair blown all to pieces," from Verona; "It's a lot sportier," from Ted;
and from Tinka, the youngest, "Oh, let's have a sedan! Mary Ellen's father has
got one." Ted wound up, "Oh, everybody's got a closed car now, except us!"

Babbitt faced them: "I guess you got nothing very terrible to complain about!
Anyway, I don't keep a car just to enable you children to look like
millionaires! And I like an open car, so you can put the top down on summer
evenings and go out for a drive and get some good fresh air. Besides--A
closed car costs more money."

"Aw, gee whiz, if the Doppelbraus can afford a closed car, I guess we can!"
prodded Ted.

"Humph! I make eight thousand a year to his seven! But I don't blow it all
in and waste it and throw it around, the way he does! Don't believe in this
business of going and spending a whole lot of money to show off and--"

They went, with ardor and some thoroughness, into the matters of streamline
bodies, hill-climbing power, wire wheels, chrome steel, ignition systems, and
body colors. It was much more than a study of transportation. It was an
aspiration for knightly rank. In the city of Zenith, in the barbarous
twentieth century, a family's motor indicated its social rank as precisely as
the grades of the peerage determined the rank of an English family--indeed,
more precisely, considering the opinion of old county families upon newly
created brewery barons and woolen-mill viscounts. The details of precedence
were never officially determined. There was no court to decide whether the
second son of a Pierce Arrow limousine should go in to dinner before the first
son of a Buick roadster, but of their respective social importance there was
no doubt; and where Babbitt as a boy had aspired to the presidency, his son
Ted aspired to a Packard twin-six and an established position in the motored
gentry.

The favor which Babbitt had won from his family by speaking of a new car
evaporated as they realized that he didn't intend to buy one this year. Ted
lamented, "Oh, punk! The old boat looks as if it'd had fleas and been
scratching its varnish off." Mrs. Babbitt said abstractedly, "Snoway talkcher
father." Babbitt raged, "If you're too much of a high-class gentleman, and you
belong to the bon ton and so on, why, you needn't take the car out this
evening." Ted explained, "I didn't mean--" and dinner dragged on with normal
domestic delight to the inevitable point at which Babbitt protested, "Come,
come now, we can't sit here all evening. Give the girl a chance to clear away
the table."

He was fretting, "What a family! I don't know how we all get to scrapping
this way. Like to go off some place and be able to hear myself think.... Paul
... Maine ... Wear old pants, and loaf, and cuss." He said cautiously to his
wife, "I've been in correspondence with a man in New York--wants me to see him
about a real-estate trade--may not come off till summer. Hope it doesn't break
just when we and the Rieslings get ready to go to Maine. Be a shame if we
couldn't make the trip there together. Well, no use worrying now."

Verona escaped, immediately after dinner, with no discussion save an automatic
"Why don't you ever stay home?" from Babbitt.

In the living-room, in a corner of the davenport, Ted settled down to his Home
Study; plain geometry, Cicero, and the agonizing metaphors of Comus.

"I don't see why they give us this old-fashioned junk by Milton and
Shakespeare and Wordsworth and all these has-beens," he protested. "Oh, I
guess I could stand it to see a show by Shakespeare, if they had swell scenery
and put on a lot of dog, but to sit down in cold blood and READ 'em--These
teachers--how do they get that way?"

Mrs. Babbitt, darning socks, speculated, "Yes, I wonder why. Of course I don't
want to fly in the face of the professors and everybody, but I do think
there's things in Shakespeare--not that I read him much, but when I was young
the girls used to show me passages that weren't, really, they weren't at all
nice."

Babbitt looked up irritably from the comic strips in the Evening Advocate.
They composed his favorite literature and art, these illustrated chronicles in
which Mr. Mutt hit Mr. Jeff with a rotten egg, and Mother corrected Father's
vulgarisms by means of a rolling-pin. With the solemn face of a devotee,
breathing heavily through his open mouth, he plodded nightly through every
picture, and during the rite he detested interruptions. Furthermore, he felt
that on the subject of Shakespeare he wasn't really an authority. Neither the
Advocate-Times, the Evening Advocate, nor the Bulletin of the Zenith Chamber
of Commerce had ever had an editorial on the matter, and until one of them had
spoken he found it hard to form an original opinion. But even at risk of
floundering in strange bogs, he could not keep out of an open controversy.

"I'll tell you why you have to study Shakespeare and those. It's because
they're required for college entrance, and that's all there is to it!
Personally, I don't see myself why they stuck 'em into an up-to-date
high-school system like we have in this state. Be a good deal better if you
took Business English, and learned how to write an ad, or letters that would
pull. But there it is, and there's no tall, argument, or discussion about it!
Trouble with you, Ted, is you always want to do something different! If you're
going to law-school--and you are!--I never had a chance to, but I'll see that
you do--why, you'll want to lay in all the English and Latin you can get."

"Oh punk. I don't see what's the use of law-school--or even finishing high
school. I don't want to go to college 'specially. Honest, there's lot of
fellows that have graduated from colleges that don't begin to make as much
money as fellows that went to work early. Old Shimmy Peters, that teaches
Latin in the High, he's a what-is-it from Columbia and he sits up all night
reading a lot of greasy books and he's always spieling about the 'value of
languages,' and the poor soak doesn't make but eighteen hundred a year, and no
traveling salesman would think of working for that. I know what I'd like to
do. I'd like to be an aviator, or own a corking big garage, or else--a fellow
was telling me about it yesterday--I'd like to be one of these fellows that
the Standard Oil Company sends out to China, and you live in a compound and
don't have to do any work, and you get to see the world and pagodas and the
ocean and everything! And then I could take up correspondence-courses. That's
the real stuff! You don't have to recite to some frosty-faced old dame that's
trying to show off to the principal, and you can study any subject you want
to. Just listen to these! I clipped out the ads of some swell courses."

He snatched from the back of his geometry half a hundred advertisements of
those home-study courses which the energy and foresight of American commerce
have contributed to the science of education. The first displayed the portrait
of a young man with a pure brow, an iron jaw, silk socks, and hair like patent
leather. Standing with one hand in his trousers-pocket and the other extended
with chiding forefinger, he was bewitching an audience of men with gray
beards, paunches, bald heads, and every other sign of wisdom and prosperity.
Above the picture was an inspiring educational symbol--no antiquated lamp or
torch or owl of Minerva, but a row of dollar signs. The text ran:

$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $
POWER AND PROSPERITY IN PUBLIC SPEAKING

A Yarn Told at the Club

Who do you think I ran into the other evening at the De Luxe Restaurant? Why,
old Freddy Durkee, that used to be a dead or-alive shipping clerk in my old
place--Mr. Mouse-Man we used to laughingly call the dear fellow. One time he
was so timid he was plumb scared of the Super, and never got credit for the
dandy work he did. Him at the De Luxe! And if he wasn't ordering a tony feed
with all the "fixings" from celery to nuts! And instead of being embarrassed
by the waiters, like he used to be at the little dump where we lunched in Old
Lang Syne, he was bossing them around like he was a millionaire!

I cautiously asked him what he was doing. Freddy laughed and said, "Say, old
chum, I guess you're wondering what's come over me. You'll be glad to know I'm
now Assistant Super at the old shop, and right on the High Road to Prosperity
and Domination, and I look forward with confidence to a twelve-cylinder car,
and the wife is making things hum in the best society and the kiddies getting
a first-class education.

--------------------------------
WHAT WE TEACH YOU I

How to address your lodge.

How to give toasts.

How to tell dialect stories.

How to propose to a lady.

How to entertain banquets.

How to make convincing selling-talks.

How to build big vocabulary.

How to create a strong personality.

How to become a rational, powerful and original thinker.

How to be a MASTER MAN!
--------------------------------
-----------------------------
PROF. W. F. PEET

author of the Shortcut Course in Public-Speaking, is easily the foremost
figure in practical literature, psychology & oratory. A graduate of some of
our leading universities, lecturer, extensive traveler, author of books,
poetry, etc., a man with the unique PERSONALITY OF THE MASTER MINDS, he is
ready to give YOU all the secrets of his culture and hammering Force, in a few
easy lessons that will not interfere with other occupations.
--------------------------------

"Here's how it happened. I ran across an ad of a course that claimed to teach
people how to talk easily and on their feet, how to answer complaints, how to
lay a proposition before the Boss, how to hit a bank for a loan, how to hold a
big audience spellbound with wit, humor, anecdote, inspiration, etc. It was
compiled by the Master Orator, Prof. Waldo F. Peet. I was skeptical, too, but
I wrote (JUST ON A POSTCARD, with name and address) to the publisher for the
lessons--sent On Trial, money back if you are not absolutely satisfied. There
were eight simple lessons in plain language anybody could understand, and I
studied them just a few hours a night, then started practising on the wife.
Soon found I could talk right up to the Super and get due credit for all the
good work I did. They began to appreciate me and advance me fast, and say, old
doggo, what do you think they're paying me now? $6,500 per year! And say, I
find I can keep a big audience fascinated, speaking on any topic. As a
friend, old boy, I advise you to send for circular (no obligation) and
valuable free Art Picture to:--


SHORTCUT EDUCATIONAL PUB. CO.
Desk WA Sandpit, Iowa.

ARE YOU A 100 PERCENTER OR A 10 PERCENTER?


Babbitt was again without a canon which would enable him to speak with
authority. Nothing in motoring or real estate had indicated what a Solid
Citizen and Regular Fellow ought to think about culture by mail. He began with
hesitation:

"Well--sounds as if it covered the ground. It certainly is a fine thing to be
able to orate. I've sometimes thought I had a little talent that way myself,
and I know darn well that one reason why a fourflushing old back-number like
Chan Mott can get away with it in real estate is just because he can make a
good talk, even when he hasn't got a doggone thing to say! And it certainly is
pretty cute the way they get out all these courses on various topics and
subjects nowadays. I'll tell you, though: No need to blow in a lot of good
money on this stuff when you can get a first-rate course in eloquence and
English and all that right in your own school--and one of the biggest school
buildings in the entire country!"

"That's so," said Mrs. Babbitt comfortably, while Ted complained:

"Yuh, but Dad, they just teach a lot of old junk that isn't any practical
use--except the manual training and typewriting and basketball and
dancing--and in these correspondence-courses, gee, you can get all kinds of
stuff that would come in handy. Say, listen to this one:

'CAN YOU PLAY A MAN'S PART?

'If you are walking with your mother, sister or best girl and some one passes
a slighting remark or uses improper language, won't you be ashamed if you
can't take her part? Well, can you?

'We teach boxing and self-defense by mail. Many pupils have written saying
that after a few lessons they've outboxed bigger and heavier opponents. The
lessons start with simple movements practised before your mirror--holding out
your hand for a coin, the breast-stroke in swimming, etc. Before you realize
it you are striking scientifically, ducking, guarding and feinting, just as if
you had a real opponent before you.'"


"Oh, baby, maybe I wouldn't like that!" Ted chanted. "I'll tell the world!
Gosh, I'd like to take one fellow I know in school that's always shooting off
his mouth, and catch him alone--"

"Nonsense! The idea! Most useless thing I ever heard of!" Babbitt
fulminated.

"Well, just suppose I was walking with Mama or Rone, and somebody passed a
slighting remark or used improper language. What would I do?"

"Why, you'd probably bust the record for the hundred-yard dash!"

"I WOULD not! I'd stand right up to any mucker that passed a slighting remark
on MY sister and I'd show him--"

"Look here, young Dempsey! If I ever catch you fighting I'll whale the
everlasting daylights out of you--and I'll do it without practising holding
out my hand for a coin before the mirror, too!"

"Why, Ted dear," Mrs. Babbitt said placidly, "it's not at all nice, your
talking of fighting this way!"

"Well, gosh almighty, that's a fine way to appreciate--And then suppose I was
walking with YOU, Ma, and somebody passed a slighting remark--"

"Nobody's going to pass no slighting remarks on nobody," Babbitt observed,
"not if they stay home and study their geometry and mind their own affairs
instead of hanging around a lot of poolrooms and soda-fountains and places
where nobody's got any business to be!"

"But gooooooosh, Dad, if they DID!"

Mrs. Babbitt chirped, "Well, if they did, I wouldn't do them the honor of
paying any attention to them! Besides, they never do. You always hear about
these women that get followed and insulted and all, but I don't believe a word
of it, or it's their own fault, the way some women look at a person. I
certainly never 've been insulted by--"

"Aw shoot. Mother, just suppose you WERE sometime! Just SUPPOSE! Can't you
suppose something? Can't you imagine things?"

"Certainly I can imagine things! The idea!"

"Certainly your mother can imagine things--and suppose things! Think you're
the only member of this household that's got an imagination?" Babbitt
demanded. "But what's the use of a lot of supposing? Supposing never gets you
anywhere. No sense supposing when there's a lot of real facts to take into
considera--"

"Look here, Dad. Suppose--I mean, just--just suppose you were in your office
and some rival real-estate man--"

"Realtor!"

"--some realtor that you hated came in--"

"I don't hate any realtor."

"But suppose you DID!"

"I don't intend to suppose anything of the kind! There's plenty of fellows in
my profession that stoop and hate their competitors, but if you were a little
older and understood business, instead of always going to the movies and
running around with a lot of fool girls with their dresses up to their knees
and powdered and painted and rouged and God knows what all as if they were
chorus-girls, then you'd know--and you'd suppose--that if there's any one
thing that I stand for in the real-estate circles of Zenith, it is that we
ought to always speak of each other only in the friendliest terms and
institute a spirit of brotherhood and cooperation, and so I certainly can't
suppose and I can't imagine my hating any realtor, not even that dirty,
fourflushing society sneak, Cecil Rountree!"

"But--"

"And there's no If, And or But about it! But if I WERE going to lambaste
somebody, I wouldn't require any fancy ducks or swimming-strokes before a
mirror, or any of these doodads and flipflops! Suppose you were out some place
and a fellow called you vile names. Think you'd want to box and jump around
like a dancing-master? You'd just lay him out cold (at least I certainly hope
any son of mine would!) and then you'd dust off your hands and go on about
your business, and that's all there is to it, and you aren't going to have any
boxing-lessons by mail, either!"

"Well but--Yes--I just wanted to show how many different kinds of
correspondence-courses there are, instead of all the camembert they teach us
in the High."

"But I thought they taught boxing in the school gymnasium."

"That's different. They stick you up there and some big stiff amuses himself
pounding the stuffin's out of you before you have a chance to learn. Hunka!
Not any! But anyway--Listen to some of these others."

The advertisements were truly philanthropic. One of them bore the rousing
headline: "Money! Money!! Money!!!" The second announced that "Mr. P. R.,
formerly making only eighteen a week in a barber shop, writes to us that since
taking our course he is now pulling down $5,000 as an Osteo-vitalic
Physician;" and the third that "Miss J. L., recently a wrapper in a store, is
now getting Ten Real Dollars a day teaching our Hindu System of Vibratory
Breathing and Mental Control."

Ted had collected fifty or sixty announcements, from annual reference-books,
from Sunday School periodicals, fiction-magazines, and journals of discussion.
One benefactor implored, "Don't be a Wallflower--Be More Popular and Make More
Money--YOU Can Ukulele or Sing Yourself into Society! By the secret
principles of a Newly Discovered System of Music Teaching, any one--man, lady
or child--can, without tiresome exercises, special training or long drawn out
study, and without waste of time, money or energy, learn to play by note,
piano, banjo, cornet, clarinet, saxophone, violin or drum, and learn
sight-singing."

The next, under the wistful appeal "Finger Print Detectives Wanted--Big
Incomes!" confided: "YOU red-blooded men and women--this is the PROFESSION
you have been looking for. There's MONEY in it, BIG money, and that rapid
change of scene, that entrancing and compelling interest and fascination,
which your active mind and adventurous spirit crave. Think of being the chief
figure and directing factor in solving strange mysteries and baffling crimes.
This wonderful profession brings you into contact with influential men on the
basis of equality, and often calls upon you to travel everywhere, maybe to
distant lands--all expenses paid. NO SPECIAL EDUCATION REQUIRED."

"Oh, boy! I guess that wins the fire-brick necklace! Wouldn't it be swell to
travel everywhere and nab some famous crook!" whooped Ted.

"Well, I don't think much of that. Doggone likely to get hurt. Still, that
music-study stunt might be pretty fair, though. There's no reason why, if
efficiency-experts put their minds to it the way they have to routing products
in a factory, they couldn't figure out some scheme so a person wouldn't have
to monkey with all this practising and exercises that you get in music."
Babbitt was impressed, and he had a delightful parental feeling that they two,
the men of the family, understood each other.

He listened to the notices of mail-box universities which taught Short-story
Writing and Improving the Memory, Motion-picture-acting and Developing the
Soul-power, Banking and Spanish, Chiropody and Photography, Electrical
Engineering and Window-trimming, Poultry-raising and Chemistry.

"Well--well--" Babbitt sought for adequate expression of his admiration. "I'm
a son of a gun! I knew this correspondence-school business had become a
mighty profitable game--makes suburban real-estate look like two cents!--but I
didn't realize it'd got to be such a reg'lar key-industry! Must rank right up
with groceries and movies. Always figured somebody'd come along with the
brains to not leave education to a lot of bookworms and impractical theorists
but make a big thing out of it. Yes, I can see how a lot of these courses
might interest you. I must ask the fellows at the Athletic if they ever
realized--But same time, Ted, you know how advertisers, I means some
advertisers, exaggerate. I don't know as they'd be able to jam you through
these courses as fast as they claim they can."

"Oh sure, Dad; of course." Ted had the immense and joyful maturity of a boy
who is respectfully listened to by his elders. Babbitt concentrated on him
with grateful affection:

"I can see what an influence these courses might have on the whole educational
works. Course I'd never admit it publicly--fellow like myself, a State U.
graduate, it's only decent and patriotic for him to blow his horn and boost
the Alma Mater--but smatter of fact, there's a whole lot of valuable time lost
even at the U., studying poetry and French and subjects that never brought in
anybody a cent. I don't know but what maybe these correspondence-courses might
prove to be one of the most important American inventions.

"Trouble with a lot of folks is: they're so blame material; they don't see
the spiritual and mental side of American supremacy; they think that
inventions like the telephone and the areoplane and wireless--no, that was a
Wop invention, but anyway: they think these mechanical improvements are all
that we stand for; whereas to a real thinker, he sees that spiritual and, uh,
dominating movements like Efficiency, and Rotarianism, and Prohibition, and
Democracy are what compose our deepest and truest wealth. And maybe this new
principle in education-at-home may be another--may be another factor. I tell
you, Ted, we've got to have Vision--"

"I think those correspondence-courses are terrible!"

The philosophers gasped. It was Mrs. Babbitt who had made this discord in
their spiritual harmony, and one of Mrs. Babbitt's virtues was that, except
during dinner-parties, when she was transformed into a raging hostess, she
took care of the house and didn't bother the males by thinking. She went on
firmly:

"It sounds awful to me, the way they coax those poor young folks to think
they're learning something, and nobody 'round to help them and--You two learn
so quick, but me, I always was slow. But just the same--"

Babbitt attended to her: "Nonsense! Get just as much, studying at home. You
don't think a fellow learns any more because he blows in his father's
hard-earned money and sits around in Morris chairs in a swell Harvard
dormitory with pictures and shields and table-covers and those doodads, do
you? I tell you, I'm a college man--I KNOW! There is one objection you might
make though. I certainly do protest against any effort to get a lot of
fellows out of barber shops and factories into the professions. They're too
crowded already, and what'll we do for workmen if all those fellows go and get
educated?"

Ted was leaning back, smoking a cigarette without reproof. He was, for the
moment, sharing the high thin air of Babbitt's speculation as though he were
Paul Riesling or even Dr. Howard Littlefield. He hinted:

"Well, what do you think then, Dad? Wouldn't it be a good idea if I could go
off to China or some peppy place, and study engineering or something by mail?"

"No, and I'll tell you why, son. I've found out it's a mighty nice thing to
be able to say you're a B.A. Some client that doesn't know what you are and
thinks you're just a plug business man, he gets to shooting off his mouth
about economics or literature or foreign trade conditions, and you just ease
in something like, 'When I was in college--course I got my B.A. in sociology
and all that junk--' Oh, it puts an awful crimp in their style! But there
wouldn't be any class to saying 'I got the degree of Stamp-licker from the
Bezuzus Mail-order University! ' You see--My dad was a pretty good old coot,
but he never had much style to him, and I had to work darn hard to earn my way
through college. Well, it's been worth it, to be able to associate with the
finest gentlemen in Zenith, at the clubs and so on, and I wouldn't want you to
drop out of the gentlemen class--the class that are just as red-blooded as the
Common People but still have power and personality. It would kind of hurt me
if you did that, old man!"

"I know, Dad! Sure! All right. I'll stick to it. Say! Gosh! Gee whiz! I
forgot all about those kids I was going to take to the chorus rehearsal. I'll
have to duck!"

"But you haven't done all your home-work."

"Do it first thing in the morning."

"Well--"

Six times in the past sixty days Babbitt had stormed, "You will not 'do it
first thing in the morning'! You'll do it right now!" but to-night he said,
"Well, better hustle," and his smile was the rare shy radiance he kept for
Paul Riesling.


IV

"Ted's a good boy," he said to Mrs. Babbitt.

"Oh, he is!"

"Who's these girls he's going to pick up? Are they nice decent girls?"

"I don't know. Oh dear, Ted never tells me anything any more. I don't
understand what's come over the children of this generation. I used to have to
tell Papa and Mama everything, but seems like the children to-day have just
slipped away from all control."

"I hope they're decent girls. Course Ted's no longer a kid, and I wouldn't
want him to, uh, get mixed up and everything."

"George: I wonder if you oughtn't to take him aside and tell him
about--Things!" She blushed and lowered her eyes.

"Well, I don't know. Way I figure it, Myra, no sense suggesting a lot of
Things to a boy's mind. Think up enough devilment by himself. But I
wonder--It's kind of a hard question. Wonder what Littlefield thinks about
it?"

"Course Papa agrees with you. He says all this--Instruction is--He says
'tisn't decent."

"Oh, he does, does he! Well, let me tell you that whatever Henry T. Thompson
thinks--about morals, I mean, though course you can't beat the old duffer--"

"Why, what a way to talk of Papa!"

"--simply can't beat him at getting in on the ground floor of a deal, but let
me tell you whenever he springs any ideas about higher things and education,
then I know I think just the opposite. You may not regard me as any great
brain-shark, but believe me, I'm a regular college president, compared with
Henry T.! Yes sir, by golly, I'm going to take Ted aside and tell him why I
lead a strictly moral life."

"Oh, will you? When?"

"When? When? What's the use of trying to pin me down to When and Why and
Where and How and When? That's the trouble with women, that's why they don't
make high-class executives; they haven't any sense of diplomacy. When the
proper opportunity and occasion arises so it just comes in natural, why then
I'll have a friendly little talk with him and--and--Was that Tinka hollering
up-stairs? She ought to been asleep, long ago."

He prowled through the living-room, and stood in the sun-parlor, that
glass-walled room of wicker chairs and swinging couch in which they loafed on
Sunday afternoons. Outside only the lights of Doppelbrau's house and the dim
presence of Babbitt's favorite elm broke the softness of April night.

"Good visit with the boy. Getting over feeling cranky, way I did this
morning. And restless. Though, by golly, I will have a few days alone with
Paul in Maine! . . . That devil Zilla! . . . But . . . Ted's all right. Whole
family all right. And good business. Not many fellows make four hundred and
fifty bucks, practically half of a thousand dollars easy as I did to-day!
Maybe when we all get to rowing it's just as much my fault as it is theirs.
Oughtn't to get grouchy like I do. But--Wish I'd been a pioneer, same as my
grand-dad. But then, wouldn't have a house like this. I--Oh, gosh, I DON'T
KNOW!"

He thought moodily of Paul Riesling, of their youth together, of the girls
they had known.

When Babbitt had graduated from the State University, twenty-four years ago,
he had intended to be a lawyer. He had been a ponderous debater in college; he
felt that he was an orator; he saw himself becoming governor of the state.
While he read law he worked as a real-estate salesman. He saved money, lived
in a boarding-house, supped on poached egg on hash. The lively Paul Riesling
(who was certainly going off to Europe to study violin, next month or next
year) was his refuge till Paul was bespelled by Zilla Colbeck, who laughed and
danced and drew men after her plump and gaily wagging finger.

Babbitt's evenings were barren then, and he found comfort only in Paul's
second cousin, Myra Thompson, a sleek and gentle girl who showed her capacity
by agreeing with the ardent young Babbitt that of course he was going to be
governor some day. Where Zilla mocked him as a country boy, Myra said
indignantly that he was ever so much solider than the young dandies who had
been born in the great city of Zenith--an ancient settlement in 1897, one
hundred and five years old, with two hundred thousand population, the queen
and wonder of all the state and, to the Catawba boy, George Babbitt, so vast
and thunderous and luxurious that he was flattered to know a girl ennobled by
birth in Zenith.

Of love there was no talk between them. He knew that if he was to study law
he could not marry for years; and Myra was distinctly a Nice Girl--one didn't
kiss her, one didn't "think about her that way at all" unless one was going to
marry her. But she was a dependable companion. She was always ready to go
skating, walking; always content to hear his discourses on the great things he
was going to do, the distressed poor whom he would defend against the Unjust
Rich, the speeches he would make at Banquets, the inexactitudes of popular
thought which he would correct.

One evening when he was weary and soft-minded, he saw that she had been
weeping. She had been left out of a party given by Zilla. Somehow her head
was on his shoulder and he was kissing away the tears--and she raised her head
to say trustingly, "Now that we're engaged, shall we be married soon or shall
we wait?"

Engaged? It was his first hint of it. His affection for this brown tender
woman thing went cold and fearful, but he could not hurt her, could not abuse
her trust. He mumbled something about waiting, and escaped. He walked for an
hour, trying to find a way of telling her that it was a mistake. Often, in
the month after, he got near to telling her, but it was pleasant to have a
girl in his arms, and less and less could he insult her by blurting that he
didn't love her. He himself had no doubt. The evening before his marriage was
an agony, and the morning wild with the desire to flee.

She made him what is known as a Good Wife. She was loyal, industrious, and at
rare times merry. She passed from a feeble disgust at their closer relations
into what promised to be ardent affection, but it drooped into bored routine.
Yet she existed only for him and for the children, and she was as sorry, as
worried as himself, when he gave up the law and trudged on in a rut of listing
real estate.

"Poor kid, she hasn't had much better time than I have," Babbitt reflected,
standing in the dark sun-parlor. "But--I wish I could 've had a whirl at law
and politics. Seen what I could do. Well--Maybe I've made more money as it
is."

He returned to the living-room but before he settled down he smoothed his
wife's hair, and she glanced up, happy and somewhat surprised.