Babbitt
ourselves and be frank about our Secret Worries. You can just tell old
Sheldy anything, like all the fellows do at the Y. I’m going to explain
frankly about the horrible practises a kiddy falls into unless he’s
guided by a Big Brother, and about the perils and glory of Sex.” Old
Sheldy beamed damply; the boys looked ashamed; and Babbitt didn’t know
which way to turn his embarrassed eyes.
Less annoying but also much duller were the minor classes which were
being instructed in philosophy and Oriental ethnology by earnest
spinsters. Most of them met in the highly varnished Sunday School room,
but there was an overflow to the basement, which was decorated with
varicose water-pipes and lighted by small windows high up in the oozing
wall. What Babbitt saw, however, was the First Congregational Church of
Catawba. He was back in the Sunday School of his boyhood. He smelled
again that polite stuffiness to be found only in church parlors; he
recalled the case of drab Sunday School books: “Hetty, a Humble Heroine”
and “Josephus, a Lad of Palestine;” he thumbed once more the
high-colored text-cards which no boy wanted but no boy liked to throw
away, because they were somehow sacred; he was tortured by the stumbling
rote of thirty-five years ago, as in the vast Zenith church he listened
to:
“Now, Edgar, you read the next verse. What does it mean when it says
it’s easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye? What does this
teach us? Clarence! Please don’t wiggle so! If you had studied your
lesson you wouldn’t be so fidgety. Now, Earl, what is the lesson Jesus
was trying to teach his disciples? The one thing I want you to
especially remember, boys, is the words, ‘With God all things are
possible.’ Just think of that always--Clarence, _please_ pay
attention--just say ‘With God all things are possible’ whenever you feel
discouraged, and, Alec, will you read the next verse; if you’d pay
attention you wouldn’t lose your place!”
Drone--drone--drone--gigantic bees that boomed in a cavern of
drowsiness--
Babbitt started from his open-eyed nap, thanked the teacher for “the
privilege of listening to her splendid teaching,” and staggered on to
the next circle.
After two weeks of this he had no suggestions whatever for the Reverend
Dr. Drew.
Then he discovered a world of Sunday School journals, an enormous and
busy domain of weeklies and monthlies which were as technical, as
practical and forward-looking, as the real-estate columns or the
shoe-trade magazines. He bought half a dozen of them at a religious
book-shop and till after midnight he read them and admired.
He found many lucrative tips on “Focusing Appeals,” “Scouting for New
Members,” and “Getting Prospects to Sign up with the Sunday School.” He
particularly liked the word “prospects,” and he was moved by the rubric:
“The moral springs of the community’s life lie deep in its Sunday
Schools--its schools of religious instruction and inspiration. Neglect
now means loss of spiritual vigor and moral power in years to come....
Facts like the above, followed by a straight-arm appeal, will reach
folks who can never be laughed or jollied into doing their part.”
Babbitt admitted, “That’s so. I used to skin out of the ole Sunday
School at Catawba every chance I got, but same time, I wouldn’t be where
I am to-day, maybe, if it hadn’t been for its training in--in moral
power. And all about the Bible. Great literature. Have to read some of
it again, one of these days.”
How scientifically the Sunday School could be organized he learned from
an article in the _Westminster Adult Bible Class_:
“The second vice-president looks after the fellowship of the class. She
chooses a group to help her. These become ushers. Every one who comes
gets a glad hand. No one goes away a stranger. One member of the group
stands on the doorstep and invites passers-by to come in.”
Perhaps most of all Babbitt appreciated the remarks by William H.
Ridgway in the _Sunday School Times_:
“If you have a Sunday School class without any pep and get-up-and-go in
it, that is, without interest, that is uncertain in attendance, that
acts like a fellow with the spring fever, let old Dr. Ridgway write you
a prescription. Rx. Invite the Bunch for Supper.”
The Sunday School journals were as well rounded as they were practical.
They neglected none of the arts. As to music the _Sunday School Times_
advertised that C. Harold Lowden, “known to thousands through his sacred
compositions,” had written a new masterpiece, “entitled ‘Yearning for
You.’ The poem, by Harry D. Kerr, is one of the daintiest you could
imagine and the music is indescribably beautiful. Critics are agreed
that it will sweep the country. May be made into a charming sacred song
by substituting the hymn words, ‘I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say.’”
Even manual training was adequately considered. Babbitt noted an
ingenious way of illustrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ:
“Model for Pupils to Make. Tomb with Rolling Door.--Use a square covered
box turned upside down. Pull the cover forward a little to form a groove
at the bottom. Cut a square door, also cut a circle of cardboard to more
than cover the door. Cover the circular door and the tomb thickly with
stiff mixture of sand, flour and water and let it dry. It was the heavy
circular stone over the door the women found ‘rolled away’ on Easter
morning. This is the story we are to ‘Go--tell.’”
In their advertisements the Sunday School journals were thoroughly
efficient. Babbitt was interested in a preparation which “takes the
place of exercise for sedentary men by building up depleted nerve
tissue, nourishing the brain and the digestive system.” He was edified
to learn that the selling of Bibles was a hustling and strictly
competitive industry, and as an expert on hygiene he was pleased by the
Sanitary Communion Outfit Company’s announcement of “an improved and
satisfactory outfit throughout, including highly polished beautiful
mahogany tray. This tray eliminates all noise, is lighter and more
easily handled than others and is more in keeping with the furniture of
the church than a tray of any other material.”
IV
He dropped the pile of Sunday School journals.
He pondered, “Now, there’s a real he-world. Corking!
“Ashamed I haven’t sat in more. Fellow that’s an influence in the
community--shame if he doesn’t take part in a real virile hustling
religion. Sort of Christianity Incorporated, you might say.
“But with all reverence.
“Some folks might claim these Sunday School fans are undignified and
unspiritual and so on. Sure! Always some skunk to spring things like
that! Knocking and sneering and tearing-down--so much easier than
building up. But me, I certainly hand it to these magazines. They’ve
brought ole George F. Babbitt into camp, and that’s the answer to the
critics!
“The more manly and practical a fellow is, the more he ought to lead the
enterprising Christian life. Me for it! Cut out this carelessness and
boozing and-- Rone! Where the devil you been? This is a fine time o’
night to be coming in!”
CHAPTER XVII
I
There are but three or four old houses in Floral Heights, and in Floral
Heights an old house is one which was built before 1880. The largest of
these is the residence of William Washington Eathorne, president of the
First State Bank.
The Eathorne Mansion preserves the memory of the “nice parts” of Zenith
as they appeared from 1860 to 1900. It is a red brick immensity with
gray sandstone lintels and a roof of slate in courses of red, green, and
dyspeptic yellow. There are two anemic towers, one roofed with copper,
the other crowned with castiron ferns. The porch is like an open tomb;
it is supported by squat granite pillars above which hang frozen
cascades of brick. At one side of the house is a huge stained-glass
window in the shape of a keyhole.
But the house has an effect not at all humorous. It embodies the heavy
dignity of those Victorian financiers who ruled the generation between
the pioneers and the brisk “sales-engineers” and created a somber
oligarchy by gaining control of banks, mills, land, railroads, mines.
Out of the dozen contradictory Zeniths which together make up the true
and complete Zenith, none is so powerful and enduring yet none so
unfamiliar to the citizens as the small, still, dry, polite, cruel
Zenith of the William Eathornes; and for that tiny hierarchy the other
Zeniths unwittingly labor and insignificantly die.
Most of the castles of the testy Victorian tetrarchs are gone now or
decayed into boarding-houses, but the Eathorne Mansion remains virtuous
and aloof, reminiscent of London, Back Bay, Rittenhouse Square. Its
marble steps are scrubbed daily, the brass plate is reverently polished,
and the lace curtains are as prim and superior as William Washington
Eathorne himself.
With a certain awe Babbitt and Chum Frink called on Eathorne for a
meeting of the Sunday School Advisory Committee; with uneasy stillness
they followed a uniformed maid through catacombs of reception-rooms to
the library. It was as unmistakably the library of a solid old banker as
Eathorne’s side-whiskers were the side-whiskers of a solid old banker.
The books were most of them Standard Sets, with the correct and
traditional touch of dim blue, dim gold, and glossy calf-skin. The fire
was exactly correct and traditional; a small, quiet, steady fire,
reflected by polished fire-irons. The oak desk was dark and old and
altogether perfect; the chairs were gently supercilious.
Eathorne’s inquiries as to the healths of Mrs. Babbitt, Miss Babbitt,
and the Other Children were softly paternal, but Babbitt had nothing
with which to answer him. It was indecent to think of using the “How’s
tricks, ole socks?” which gratified Vergil Gunch and Frink and Howard
Littlefield--men who till now had seemed successful and urbane. Babbitt
and Frink sat politely, and politely did Eathorne observe, opening his
thin lips just wide enough to dismiss the words, “Gentlemen, before we
begin our conference--you may have felt the cold in coming here--so good
of you to save an old man the journey--shall we perhaps have a whisky
toddy?”
So well trained was Babbitt in all the conversation that befits a Good
Fellow that he almost disgraced himself with “Rather than make trouble,
and always providin’ there ain’t any enforcement officers hiding in the
waste-basket--” The words died choking in his throat. He bowed in
flustered obedience. So did Chum Frink.
Eathorne rang for the maid.
The modern and luxurious Babbitt had never seen any one ring for a
servant in a private house, except during meals. Himself, in hotels, had
rung for bell-boys, but in the house you didn’t hurt Matilda’s
feelings; you went out in the hall and shouted for her. Nor had he,
since prohibition, known any one to be casual about drinking. It was
extraordinary merely to sip his toddy and not cry, “Oh, maaaaan, this
hits me right where I live!” And always, with the ecstasy of youth
meeting greatness, he marveled, “That little fuzzy-face there, why, he
could make me or break me! If he told my banker to call my loans--!
Gosh! That quarter-sized squirt! And looking like he hadn’t got a single
bit of hustle to him! I wonder-- Do we Boosters throw too many fits about
pep?”
From this thought he shuddered away, and listened devoutly to Eathorne’s
ideas on the advancement of the Sunday School, which were very clear and
very bad.
Diffidently Babbitt outlined his own suggestions:
“I think if you analyze the needs of the school, in fact, going right at
it as if it was a merchandizing problem, of course the one basic and
fundamental need is growth. I presume we’re all agreed we won’t be
satisfied till we build up the biggest darn Sunday School in the whole