CHAPTER XIII

Our Mr. Wrenn

by Sinclair Lewis

CHAPTER XIII, OUR MR. WRENN by Sinclair Lewis

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 nowsing 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.