Babbitt
over seventy-nine years old--fought at the Battle of Gettysburg and
doesn’t know it’s over yet--thought I was one of the Confederates, I
guess, from the way he looked at me--and Rip van Winkle took me up to
something-- I found out afterwards they called it a room, but first I
thought there’d been some mistake-- I thought they were putting me in the
Salvation Army collection-box! At seven _per_ each and every _diem_!
Gosh!”
“Yuh, I’ve heard the Rippleton was pretty cheesy. Now, when I go to
Chicago I always stay at the Blackstone or the La Salle--first-class
places.”
“Say, any of you fellows ever stay at the Birchdale at Terre Haute? How
is it?”
“Oh, the Birchdale is a first-class hotel.”
(Twelve minutes of conference on the state of hotels in South Bend,
Flint, Dayton, Tulsa, Wichita, Fort Worth, Winona, Erie, Fargo, and
Moose Jaw.)
“Speaknubout prices,” the man in the velour hat observed, fingering the
elk-tooth on his heavy watch-chain, “I’d like to know where they get
this stuff about clothes coming down. Now, you take this suit I got on.”
He pinched his trousers-leg. “Four years ago I paid forty-two fifty for
it, and it was real sure-’nough value. Well, here the other day I went
into a store back home and asked to see a suit, and the fellow yanks out
some hand-me-downs that, honest, I wouldn’t put on a hired man. Just out
of curiosity I asks him, ‘What you charging for that junk?’ ‘Junk,’ he
says, ‘what d’ you mean junk? That’s a swell piece of goods, all wool--’
Like hell! It was nice vegetable wool, right off the Ole Plantation!
‘It’s all wool,’ he says, ‘and we get sixty-seven ninety for it.’ ‘Oh,
you do, do you!’ I says. ‘Not from me you don’t,’ I says, and I walks
right out on him. You bet! I says to the wife, ‘Well,’ I said, ‘as long
as your strength holds out and you can go on putting a few more patches
on papa’s pants, we’ll just pass up buying clothes.’”
“That’s right, brother. And just look at collars, frinstance--”
“Hey! Wait!” the fat man protested. “What’s the matter with collars? I’m
selling collars! D’you realize the cost of labor on collars is still two
hundred and seven per cent. above--”
They voted that if their old friend the fat man sold collars, then the
price of collars was exactly what it should be; but all other clothing
was tragically too expensive. They admired and loved one another now.
They went profoundly into the science of business, and indicated that
the purpose of manufacturing a plow or a brick was so that it might be
sold. To them, the Romantic Hero was no longer the knight, the wandering
poet, the cowpuncher, the aviator, nor the brave young district
attorney, but the great sales-manager, who had an Analysis of
Merchandizing Problems on his glass-topped desk, whose title of nobility
was “Go-getter,” and who devoted himself and all his young samurai to
the cosmic purpose of Selling--not of selling anything in particular,
for or to anybody in particular, but pure Selling.
The shop-talk roused Paul Riesling. Though he was a player of violins
and an interestingly unhappy husband, he was also a very able salesman
of tar-roofing. He listened to the fat man’s remarks on “the value of
house-organs and bulletins as a method of jazzing-up the Boys out on the
road;” and he himself offered one or two excellent thoughts on the use
of two-cent stamps on circulars. Then he committed an offense against
the holy law of the Clan of Good Fellows. He became highbrow.
They were entering a city. On the outskirts they passed a steel-mill
which flared in scarlet and orange flame that licked at the cadaverous
stacks, at the iron-sheathed walls and sullen converters.
“My Lord, look at that--beautiful!” said Paul.
“You bet it’s beautiful, friend. That’s the Shelling-Horton Steel Plant,
and they tell me old John Shelling made a good three million bones out
of munitions during the war!” the man with the velour hat said
reverently.
“I didn’t mean-- I mean it’s lovely the way the light pulls that
picturesque yard, all littered with junk, right out of the darkness,”
said Paul.
They stared at him, while Babbitt crowed, “Paul there has certainly got
one great little eye for picturesque places and quaint sights and all
that stuff. ’D of been an author or something if he hadn’t gone into the
roofing line.”
Paul looked annoyed. (Babbitt sometimes wondered if Paul appreciated his
loyal boosting.) The man in the velour hat grunted, “Well, personally, I
think Shelling-Horton keep their works awful dirty. Bum routing. But I
don’t suppose there’s any law against calling ’em ‘picturesque’ if it
gets you that way!”
Paul sulkily returned to his newspaper and the conversation logically
moved on to trains.
“What time do we get into Pittsburg?” asked Babbitt.
“Pittsburg? I think we get in at--no, that was last year’s
schedule--wait a minute--let’s see--got a time-table right here.”
“I wonder if we’re on time?”
“Yuh, sure, we must be just about on time.”
“No, we aren’t--we were seven minutes late, last station.”
“Were we? Straight? Why, gosh, I thought we were right on time.”
“No, we’re about seven minutes late.”
“Yuh, that’s right; seven minutes late.”
The porter entered--a negro in white jacket with brass buttons.
“How late are we, George?” growled the fat man.
“’Deed, I don’t know, sir. I think we’re about on time,” said the
porter, folding towels and deftly tossing them up on the rack above the
washbowls. The council stared at him gloomily and when he was gone they
wailed:
“I don’t know what’s come over these niggers, nowadays. They never give
you a civil answer.”
“That’s a fact. They’re getting so they don’t have a single bit of
respect for you. The old-fashioned coon was a fine old cuss--he knew his
place--but these young dinges don’t want to be porters or
cotton-pickers. Oh, no! They got to be lawyers and professors and Lord
knows what all! I tell you, it’s becoming a pretty serious problem. We
ought to get together and show the black man, yes, and the yellow man,
his place. Now, I haven’t got one particle of race-prejudice. I’m the
first to be glad when a nigger succeeds--so long as he stays where he
belongs and doesn’t try to usurp the rightful authority and business
ability of the white man.”
“That’s the i.! And another thing we got to do,” said the man with the
velour hat (whose name was Koplinsky), “is to keep these damn foreigners
out of the country. Thank the Lord, we’re putting a limit on
immigration. These Dagoes and Hunkies have got to learn that this is a
white man’s country, and they ain’t wanted here. When we’ve assimilated
the foreigners we got here now and learned ’em the principles of
Americanism and turned ’em into regular folks, why then maybe we’ll let
in a few more.”
“You bet. That’s a fact,” they observed, and passed on to lighter
topics. They rapidly reviewed motor-car prices, tire-mileage,
oil-stocks, fishing, and the prospects for the wheat-crop in Dakota.
But the fat man was impatient at this waste of time. He was a veteran
traveler and free of illusions. Already he had asserted that he was “an
old he-one.” He leaned forward, gathered in their attention by his
expression of sly humor, and grumbled, “Oh, hell, boys, let’s cut out
the formality and get down to the stories!”
They became very lively and intimate.
Paul and the boy vanished. The others slid forward on the long seat,
unbuttoned their vests, thrust their feet up on the chairs, pulled the
stately brass cuspidors nearer, and ran the green window-shade down on
its little trolley, to shut them in from the uncomfortable strangeness
of night. After each bark of laughter they cried, “Say, jever hear the
one about--” Babbitt was expansive and virile. When the train stopped at
an important station, the four men walked up and down the cement
platform, under the vast smoky train-shed roof, like a stormy sky, under
the elevated footways, beside crates of ducks and sides of beef, in the
mystery of an unknown city. They strolled abreast, old friends and well
content. At the long-drawn “Alllll aboarrrrrd”--like a mountain call at
dusk--they hastened back into the smoking-compartment, and till two of
the morning continued the droll tales, their eyes damp with cigar-smoke
and laughter. When they parted they shook hands, and chuckled, “Well,
sir, it’s been a great session. Sorry to bust it up. Mighty glad to met
you.”
Babbitt lay awake in the close hot tomb of his Pullman berth, shaking
with remembrance of the fat man’s limerick about the lady who wished to
be wild. He raised the shade; he lay with a puffy arm tucked between his
head and the skimpy pillow, looking out on the sliding silhouettes of
trees, and village lamps like exclamation-points. He was very happy.
CHAPTER XI
I
They had four hours in New York between trains. The one thing Babbitt
wished to see was the Pennsylvania Hotel, which had been built since his
last visit. He stared up at it, muttering, “Twenty-two hundred rooms and
twenty-two hundred baths! That’s got everything in the world beat. Lord,
their turnover must be--well, suppose price of rooms is four to eight
dollars a day, and I suppose maybe some ten and--four times twenty-two
hundred--say six times twenty-two hundred--well, anyway, with
restaurants and everything, say summers between eight and fifteen
thousand a day. Every day! I never thought I’d see a thing like that!
Some town! Of course the average fellow in Zenith has got more
Individual Initiative than the fourflushers here, but I got to hand it
to New York. Yes, sir, town, you’re all right--some ways. Well, old
Paulski, I guess we’ve seen everything that’s worth while. How’ll we
kill the rest of the time? Movie?”
But Paul desired to see a liner. “Always wanted to go to Europe--and, by
thunder, I will, too, some day before I pass out,” he sighed.
From a rough wharf on the North River they stared at the stern of the
_Aquitania_ and her stacks and wireless antennæ lifted above the
dock-house which shut her in.
“By golly,” Babbitt droned, “wouldn’t be so bad to go over to the Old
Country and take a squint at all these ruins, and the place where
Shakespeare was born. And think of being able to order a drink whenever
you wanted one! Just range up to a bar and holler out loud, ‘Gimme a
cocktail, and darn the police!’ Not bad at all. What juh like to see,
over there, Paulibus?”
Paul did not answer. Babbitt turned. Paul was standing with clenched
fists, head drooping, staring at the liner as in terror. His thin body,
seen against the summer-glaring planks of the wharf, was childishly
meager.
Again, “What would you hit for on the other side, Paul?”
Scowling at the steamer, his breast heaving, Paul whispered, “Oh, my
God!” While Babbitt watched him anxiously he snapped, “Come on, let’s
get out of this,” and hastened down the wharf, not looking back.
“That’s funny,” considered Babbitt. “The boy didn’t care for seeing the
ocean boats after all. I thought he’d be interested in ’em.”
II
Though he exulted, and made sage speculations about locomotive
horse-power, as their train climbed the Maine mountain-ridge and from
the summit he looked down the shining way among the pines; though he
remarked, “Well, by golly!” when he discovered that the station at
Katadumcook, the end of the line, was an aged freight-car; Babbitt’s
moment of impassioned release came when they sat on a tiny wharf on Lake
Sunasquam, awaiting the launch from the hotel. A raft had floated down
the lake; between the logs and the shore, the water was transparent,
thin-looking, flashing with minnows. A guide in black felt hat with
trout-flies in the band, and flannel shirt of a peculiarly daring blue,
sat on a log and whittled and was silent. A dog, a good country dog,