Babbitt
Ordinarily the men found it hard to talk to the women; flirtation was an
art unknown on Floral Heights, and the realms of offices and of kitchens
had no alliances. But under the inspiration of the cocktails,
conversation was violent. Each of the men still had a number of
important things to say about prohibition, and now that each had a loyal
listener in his dinner-partner he burst out:
“I found a place where I can get all the hootch I want at eight a
quart--”
“Did you read about this fellow that went and paid a thousand dollars
for ten cases of red-eye that proved to be nothing but water? Seems this
fellow was standing on the corner and fellow comes up to him--”
“They say there’s a whole raft of stuff being smuggled across at
Detroit--”
“What I always say is--what a lot of folks don’t realize about
prohibition--”
“And then you get all this awful poison stuff--wood alcohol and
everything--”
“Course I believe in it on principle, but I don’t propose to have
anybody telling me what I got to think and do. No American’ll ever stand
for that!”
But they all felt that it was rather in bad taste for Orville Jones--and
he not recognized as one of the wits of the occasion anyway--to say, “In
fact, the whole thing about prohibition is this: it isn’t the initial
cost, it’s the humidity.”
Not till the one required topic had been dealt with did the conversation
become general.
It was often and admiringly said of Vergil Gunch, “Gee, that fellow can
get away with murder! Why, he can pull a Raw One in mixed company and
all the ladies’ll laugh their heads off, but me, gosh, if I crack
anything that’s just the least bit off color I get the razz for fair!”
Now Gunch delighted them by crying to Mrs. Eddie Swanson, youngest of
the women, “Louetta! I managed to pinch Eddie’s doorkey out of his
pocket, and what say you and me sneak across the street when the folks
aren’t looking? Got something,” with a gorgeous leer, “awful important
to tell you!”
The women wriggled, and Babbitt was stirred to like naughtiness. “Say,
folks, I wished I dared show you a book I borrowed from Doc Patten!”
“Now, George! The idea!” Mrs. Babbitt warned him.
“This book--racy isn’t the word! It’s some kind of an anthropological
report about--about Customs, in the South Seas, and what it doesn’t
_say_! It’s a book you can’t buy. Verg, I’ll lend it to you.”
“Me first!” insisted Eddie Swanson. “Sounds spicy!”
Orville Jones announced, “Say, I heard a Good One the other day about a
coupla Swedes and their wives,” and, in the best Jewish accent, he
resolutely carried the Good One to a slightly disinfected ending. Gunch
capped it. But the cocktails waned, the seekers dropped back into
cautious reality.
Chum Frink had recently been on a lecture-tour among the small towns,
and he chuckled, “Awful good to get back to civilization! I certainly
been seeing some hick towns! I mean-- Course the folks there are the best
on earth, but, gee whiz, those Main Street burgs are slow, and you
fellows can’t hardly appreciate what it means to be here with a bunch of
live ones!”
“You bet!” exulted Orville Jones. “They’re the best folks on earth,
those small-town folks, but, oh, mama! what conversation! Why, say, they
can’t talk about anything but the weather and the ne-oo Ford, by
heckalorum!”
“That’s right. They all talk about just the same things,” said Eddie
Swanson.
“Don’t they, though! They just say the same things over and over,” said
Vergil Gunch.
“Yes, it’s really remarkable. They seem to lack all power of looking at
things impersonally. They simply go over and over the same talk about
Fords and the weather and so on,” said Howard Littlefield.
“Still, at that, you can’t blame ’em. They haven’t got any intellectual
stimulus such as you get up here in the city,” said Chum Frink.
“Gosh, that’s right,” said Babbitt. “I don’t want you highbrows to get
stuck on yourselves but I must say it keeps a fellow right up on his
toes to sit in with a poet and with Howard, the guy that put the con in
economics! But these small-town boobs, with nobody but each other to
talk to, no wonder they get so sloppy and uncultured in their speech,
and so balled-up in their thinking!”
Orville Jones commented, “And, then take our other advantages--the
movies, frinstance. These Yapville sports think they’re all-get-out if
they have one change of bill a week, where here in the city you got your
choice of a dozen diff’rent movies any evening you want to name!”
“Sure, and the inspiration we get from rubbing up against high-class
hustlers every day and getting jam full of ginger,” said Eddie Swanson.
“Same time,” said Babbitt, “no sense excusing these rube burgs too easy.
Fellow’s own fault if he doesn’t show the initiative to up and beat it
to the city, like we done--did. And, just speaking in confidence among
friends, they’re jealous as the devil of a city man. Every time I go up
to Catawba I have to go around apologizing to the fellows I was brought
up with because I’ve more or less succeeded and they haven’t. And if you
talk natural to ’em, way we do here, and show finesse and what you might
call a broad point of view, why, they think you’re putting on side.
There’s my own half-brother Martin--runs the little ole general store my
Dad used to keep. Say, I’ll bet he don’t know there is such a thing as a
Tux--as a dinner-jacket. If he was to come in here now, he’d think we
were a bunch of--of-- Why, gosh, I swear, he wouldn’t know what to think!
Yes, sir, they’re jealous!”
Chum Frink agreed, “That’s so. But what I mind is their lack of culture
and appreciation of the Beautiful--if you’ll excuse me for being
highbrow. Now, I like to give a high-class lecture, and read some of my
best poetry--not the newspaper stuff but the magazine things. But say,
when I get out in the tall grass, there’s nothing will take but a lot of
cheesy old stories and slang and junk that if any of us were to indulge
in it here, he’d get the gate so fast it would make his head swim.”
Vergil Gunch summed it up: “Fact is, we’re mighty lucky to be living
among a bunch of city-folks, that recognize artistic things and
business-punch equally. We’d feel pretty glum if we got stuck in some
Main Street burg and tried to wise up the old codgers to the kind of
life we’re used to here. But, by golly, there’s this you got to say for
’em: Every small American town is trying to get population and modern
ideals. And darn if a lot of ’em don’t put it across! Somebody starts
panning a rube crossroads, telling how he was there in 1900 and it
consisted of one muddy street, count ’em, one, and nine hundred human
clams. Well, you go back there in 1920, and you find pavements and a
swell little hotel and a first-class ladies’ ready-to-wear shop--real
perfection, in fact! You don’t want to just look at what these small
towns are, you want to look at what they’re aiming to become, and they
all got an ambition that in the long run is going to make ’em the finest
spots on earth--they all want to be just like Zenith!”
III
However intimate they might be with T. Cholmondeley Frink as a neighbor,
as a borrower of lawn-mowers and monkey-wrenches, they knew that he was
also a Famous Poet and a distinguished advertising-agent; that behind
his easiness were sultry literary mysteries which they could not
penetrate. But to-night, in the gin-evolved confidence, he admitted them
to the arcanum:
“I’ve got a literary problem that’s worrying me to death. I’m doing a
series of ads for the Zeeco Car and I want to make each of ’em a real
little gem--reg’lar stylistic stuff. I’m all for this theory that
perfection is the stunt, or nothing at all, and these are as tough
things as I ever tackled. You might think it’d be harder to do my
poems--all these Heart Topics: home and fireside and happiness--but
they’re cinches. You can’t go wrong on ’em; you know what sentiments any
decent go-ahead fellow must have if he plays the game, and you stick
right to ’em. But the poetry of industrialism, now there’s a literary
line where you got to open up new territory. Do you know the fellow
who’s really _the_ American genius? The fellow who you don’t know his
name and I don’t either, but his work ought to be preserved so’s future
generations can judge our American thought and originality to-day? Why,
the fellow that writes the Prince Albert Tobacco ads! Just listen to
this:
It’s P.A. that jams such joy in jimmy pipes. Say--bet you’ve often
bent-an-ear to that spill-of-speech about hopping from five to
f-i-f-t-y p-e-r by “stepping on her a bit!” Guess that’s going
some, all right--BUT--just among ourselves, you better start a
rapidwhiz system to keep tabs as to how fast you’ll buzz from low
smoke spirits to _tip-top-high_--once you line up behind a jimmy
pipe that’s all aglow with that peach-of-a-pal, Prince Albert.
Prince Albert is john-on-the-job--always joy’usly more-_ish_ in
flavor; always delightfully cool and fragrant! For a fact, you
never hooked such double-decked, copper-riveted, two-fisted smoke
enjoyment!
Go to a pipe--speed-o-quick like you light on a good thing!
Why--packed with Prince Albert you can play a joy’us jimmy straight
across the boards! _And you know what that means!_”
“Now that,” caroled the motor agent, Eddie Swanson, “that’s what I call
he-literature! That Prince Albert fellow--though, gosh, there can’t be
just one fellow that writes ’em; must be a big board of classy
ink-slingers in conference, but anyway: now, him, he doesn’t write for
long-haired pikers, he writes for Regular Guys, he writes for _me_, and
I tip my benny to him! The only thing is: I wonder if it sells the
goods? Course, like all these poets, this Prince Albert fellow lets his
idea run away with him. It makes elegant reading, but it don’t say
nothing. I’d never go out and buy Prince Albert Tobacco after reading
it, because it doesn’t tell me anything about the stuff. It’s just a
bunch of fluff.”
Frink faced him: “Oh, you’re crazy! Have I got to sell you the idea of
Style? Anyway, that’s the kind of stuff I’d like to do for the Zeeco.
But I simply can’t. So I decided to stick to the straight poetic, and I
took a shot at a highbrow ad for the Zeeco. How do you like this:
The long white trail is calling--calling--and it’s over the hills
and far away for every man or woman that has red blood in his veins
and on his lips the ancient song of the buccaneers. It’s away with
dull drudging, and a fig for care. Speed--glorious Speed--it’s more
than just a moment’s exhilaration--it’s Life for you and me! This
great new truth the makers of the Zeeco Car have considered as much
as price and style. It’s fleet as the antelope, smooth as the glide
of a swallow, yet powerful as the charge of a bull-elephant. Class
breathes in every line. Listen, brother! You’ll never know what the
high art of hiking is till you TRY LIFE’S ZIPPINGEST ZEST--THE
ZEECO!”
“Yes,” Frink mused, “that’s got an elegant color to it, if I do say so,
but it ain’t got the originality of ‘spill-of-speech!’”
The whole company sighed with sympathy and admiration.
CHAPTER IX
I
Babbitt was fond of his friends, he loved the importance of being host
and shouting, “Certainly, you’re going to have smore chicken--the idea!”
and he appreciated the genius of T. Cholmondeley Frink, but the vigor of
the cocktails was gone, and the more he ate the less joyful he felt.
Then the amity of the dinner was destroyed by the nagging of the
Swansons.
In Floral Heights and the other prosperous sections of Zenith,
especially in the “young married set,” there were many women who had