Babbitt
Shop in the Hotel Thornleigh, and every time he passed the Reeves
shop--ten times a day, a hundred times--he felt untrue to his own
village.
Now, as one of the squirearchy, greeted with honorable salutations by
the villagers, he marched into his office, and peace and dignity were
upon him, and the morning’s dissonances all unheard.
They were heard again, immediately.
Stanley Graff, the outside salesman, was talking on the telephone with
tragic lack of that firm manner which disciplines clients: “Say, uh, I
think I got just the house that would suit you--the Percival House, in
Linton.... Oh, you’ve seen it. Well, how’d it strike you?... Huh?...
Oh,” irresolutely, “oh, I see.”
As Babbitt marched into his private room, a coop with semi-partition of
oak and frosted glass, at the back of the office, he reflected how hard
it was to find employees who had his own faith that he was going to make
sales.
There were nine members of the staff, besides Babbitt and his partner
and father-in-law, Henry Thompson, who rarely came to the office. The
nine were Stanley Graff, the outside salesman--a youngish man given to
cigarettes and the playing of pool; old Mat Penniman, general utility
man, collector of rents and salesman of insurance--broken, silent, gray;
a mystery, reputed to have been a “crack” real-estate man with a firm of
his own in haughty Brooklyn; Chester Kirby Laylock, resident salesman
out at the Glen Oriole acreage development--an enthusiastic person with
a silky mustache and much family; Miss Theresa McGoun, the swift and
rather pretty stenographer; Miss Wilberta Bannigan, the thick, slow,
laborious accountant and file-clerk; and four freelance part-time
commission salesmen.
As he looked from his own cage into the main room Babbitt mourned,
“McGoun’s a good stenog., smart’s a whip, but Stan Graff and all those
bums--” The zest of the spring morning was smothered in the stale office
air.
Normally he admired the office, with a pleased surprise that he should
have created this sure lovely thing; normally he was stimulated by the
clean newness of it and the air of bustle; but to-day it seemed
flat--the tiled floor, like a bathroom, the ocher-colored metal ceiling,
the faded maps on the hard plaster walls, the chairs of varnished pale
oak, the desks and filing-cabinets of steel painted in olive drab. It
was a vault, a steel chapel where loafing and laughter were raw sin.
He hadn’t even any satisfaction in the new water-cooler! And it was the
very best of water-coolers, up-to-date, scientific, and right-thinking.
It had cost a great deal of money (in itself a virtue). It possessed a
non-conducting fiber ice-container, a porcelain water-jar (guaranteed
hygienic), a dripless non-clogging sanitary faucet, and machine-painted
decorations in two tones of gold. He looked down the relentless stretch
of tiled floor at the water-cooler, and assured himself that no tenant
of the Reeves Building had a more expensive one, but he could not
recapture the feeling of social superiority it had given him. He
astoundingly grunted, “I’d like to beat it off to the woods right now.
And loaf all day. And go to Gunch’s again to-night, and play poker, and
cuss as much as I feel like, and drink a hundred and nine-thousand
bottles of beer.”
He sighed; he read through his mail; he shouted “Msgoun,” which meant
“Miss McGoun”; and began to dictate.
This was his own version of his first letter:
“Omar Gribble, send it to his office, Miss McGoun, yours of twentieth to
hand and in reply would say look here, Gribble, I’m awfully afraid if we
go on shilly-shallying like this we’ll just naturally lose the Allen
sale, I had Allen up on carpet day before yesterday and got right down
to cases and think I can assure you--uh, uh, no, change that: all my
experience indicates he is all right, means to do business, looked into
his financial record which is fine--that sentence seems to be a little
balled up, Miss McGoun; make a couple sentences out of it if you have
to, period, new paragraph.
“He is perfectly willing to pro rate the special assessment and strikes
me, am dead sure there will be no difficulty in getting him to pay for
title insurance, so now for heaven’s sake let’s get busy--no, make that:
so now let’s go to it and get down--no, that’s enough--you can tie those
sentences up a little better when you type ’em, Miss McGoun--your
sincerely, etcetera.”
This is the version of his letter which he received, typed, from Miss
McGoun that afternoon:
BABBITT-THOMPSON REALTY CO.
Homes for Folks
Reeves Bldg., Oberlin Avenue & 3d St., N.E.
Zenith
Omar Gribble, Esq.,
576 North American Building,
Zenith.
Dear Mr. Gribble:
Your letter of the twentieth to hand. I must say I’m awfully afraid
that if we go on shilly-shallying like this we’ll just naturally
lose the Allen sale. I had Allen up on the carpet day before
yesterday, and got right down to cases. All my experience indicates
that he means to do business. I have also looked into his financial
record, which is fine.
He is perfectly willing to pro rate the special assessment and
there will be no difficulty in getting him to pay for title
insurance.
_So let’s go!_
Yours sincerely,
As he read and signed it, in his correct flowing business-college hand,
Babbitt reflected, “Now that’s a good, strong letter, and clear’s a
bell. Now what the-- I never told McGoun to make a third paragraph there!
Wish she’d quit trying to improve on my dictation! But what I can’t
understand is: why can’t Stan Graff or Chet Laylock write a letter like
that? With punch! With a kick!”
The most important thing he dictated that morning was the fortnightly
form-letter, to be mimeographed and sent out to a thousand “prospects.”
It was diligently imitative of the best literary models of the day; of
heart-to-heart-talk advertisements, “sales-pulling” letters, discourses
on the “development of Will-power,” and hand-shaking house-organs, as
richly poured forth by the new school of Poets of Business. He had
painfully written out a first draft, and he intoned it now like a poet
delicate and distrait:
SAY, OLD MAN!
I just want to know can I do you a whaleuva favor? Honest! No
kidding! I know you’re interested in getting a house, not merely a
place where you hang up the old bonnet but a love-nest for the wife
and kiddies--and maybe for the flivver out beyant (be sure and
spell that b-e-y-a-n-t, Miss McGoun) the spud garden. Say, did you
ever stop to think that we’re here to save you trouble? That’s how
we make a living--folks don’t pay us for our lovely beauty! Now
take a look:
Sit right down at the handsome carved mahogany escritoire and shoot
us in a line telling us just what you want, and if we can find it
we’ll come hopping down your lane with the good tidings, and if we
can’t, we won’t bother you. To save your time, just fill out the
blank enclosed. On request will also send blank regarding store
properties in Floral Heights, Silver Grove, Linton, Bellevue, and
all East Side residential districts.
Yours for service,
P.S.--Just a hint of some plums we can pick for you--some genuine
bargains that came in to-day:
SILVER GROVE.--Cute four-room California bungalow, a.m.i., garage,
dandy shade tree, swell neighborhood, handy car line. $3700, $780
down and balance liberal, Babbitt-Thompson terms, cheaper than
rent.
DORCHESTER.--A corker! Artistic two-family house, all oak trim,
parquet floors, lovely gas log, big porches, colonial, HEATED
ALL-WEATHER GARAGE, a bargain at $11,250.
Dictation over, with its need of sitting and thinking instead of
bustling around and making a noise and really doing something, Babbitt
sat creakily back in his revolving desk-chair and beamed on Miss McGoun.
He was conscious of her as a girl, of black bobbed hair against demure
cheeks. A longing which was indistinguishable from loneliness enfeebled
him. While she waited, tapping a long, precise pencil-point on the
desk-tablet, he half identified her with the fairy girl of his dreams.
He imagined their eyes meeting with terrifying recognition; imagined
touching her lips with frightened reverence and-- She was chirping, “Any
more, Mist’ Babbitt?” He grunted, “That winds it up, I guess,” and
turned heavily away.
For all his wandering thoughts, they had never been more intimate than
this. He often reflected, “Nev’ forget how old Jake Offutt said a wise
bird never goes love-making in his own office or his own home. Start
trouble. Sure. But--”
In twenty-three years of married life he had peered uneasily at every
graceful ankle, every soft shoulder; in thought he had treasured them;
but not once had he hazarded respectability by adventuring. Now, as he
calculated the cost of repapering the Styles house, he was restless
again, discontented about nothing and everything, ashamed of his
discontentment, and lonely for the fairy girl.
CHAPTER IV
I
It was a morning of artistic creation. Fifteen minutes after the purple
prose of Babbitt’s form-letter, Chester Kirby Laylock, the resident
salesman at Glen Oriole, came in to report a sale and submit an
advertisement. Babbitt disapproved of Laylock, who sang in choirs and
was merry at home over games of Hearts and Old Maid. He had a tenor
voice, wavy chestnut hair, and a mustache like a camel’s-hair brush.
Babbitt considered it excusable in a family-man to growl, “Seen this new
picture of the kid--husky little devil, eh?” but Laylock’s domestic
confidences were as bubbling as a girl’s.
“Say, I think I got a peach of an ad for the Glen, Mr. Babbitt. Why
don’t we try something in poetry? Honest, it’d have wonderful
pulling-power. Listen:
’Mid pleasures and palaces,
Wherever you may roam,
You just provide the little bride
And we’ll provide the home.
Do you get it? See--like ‘Home Sweet Home.’ Don’t you--”
“Yes, yes, yes, hell yes, of course I get it. But-- Oh, I think we’d
better use something more dignified and forceful, like ‘We lead, others
follow,’ or ‘Eventually, why not now?’ Course I believe in using poetry
and humor and all that junk when it turns the trick, but with a
high-class restricted development like the Glen we better stick to the
more dignified approach, see how I mean? Well, I guess that’s all, this
morning, Chet.”
II
By a tragedy familiar to the world of art, the April enthusiasm of Chet
Laylock served only to stimulate the talent of the older craftsman,
George F. Babbitt. He grumbled to Stanley Graff, “That tan-colored voice
of Chet’s gets on my nerves,” yet he was aroused and in one swoop he
wrote:
DO YOU RESPECT YOUR LOVED ONES?
When the last sad rites of bereavement are over, do
you know for certain that you have done your best for
the Departed? You haven’t unless they lie in the
Cemetery Beautiful.
LINDEN LANE
the only strictly up-to-date burial place in or near
Zenith, where exquisitely gardened plots look from
daisy-dotted hill-slopes across the smiling fields of
Dorchester.
Sole agents
BABBITT-THOMPSON REALTY COMPANY
Reeves Building
He rejoiced, “I guess that’ll show Chan Mott and his weedy old Wildwood
Cemetery something about modern merchandizing!”
III
He sent Mat Penniman to the recorder’s office to dig out the names of
the owners of houses which were displaying For Rent signs of other
brokers; he talked to a man who desired to lease a store-building for a
pool-room; he ran over the list of home-leases which were about to