Babbitt
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 coöperative 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