CHAPTER I

by Sinclair Lewis

　　CHAPTER ITHE towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers ofsteel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate assilver rods. They were neither citadels nor churches, but frankly andbeautifully office-buildings.The mist took pity on the fretted structures of earlier generations: thePost Office with its shingle-tortured mansard, the red brick minaretsof hulking old houses, factories with stingy and sooted windows, woodentenements colored like mud. The city was full of such grotesqueries, butthe clean towers were thrusting them from the business center, andon the farther hills were shining new houses, homes--they seemed--forlaughter and tranquillity.Over a concrete bridge fled a limousine of long sleek hood and noiselessengine. These people in evening clothes were returning from an all-nightrehearsal of a Little Theater play, an artistic adventure considerablyilluminated by champagne. Below the bridge curved a railroad, a mazeof green and crimson lights. The New York Flyer boomed past, and twentylines of polished steel leaped into the glare.In one of the skyscrapers the wires of the Associated Press were closingdown. The telegraph operators wearily raised their celluloid eye-shadesafter a night of talking with Paris and Peking. Through the buildingcrawled the scrubwomen, yawning, their old shoes slapping. The dawn mistspun away. Cues of men with lunch-boxes clumped toward the immensity ofnew factories, sheets of glass and hollow tile, glittering shops wherefive thousand men worked beneath one roof, pouring out the honest waresthat would be sold up the Euphrates and across the veldt. The whistlesrolled out in greeting a chorus cheerful as the April dawn; the song oflabor in a city built--it seemed--for giants.IIThere was nothing of the giant in the aspect of the man who wasbeginning to awaken on the sleeping-porch of a Dutch Colonial house inthat residential district of Zenith known as Floral Heights.His name was George F. Babbitt. He was forty-six years old now, inApril, 1920, and he made nothing in particular, neither butter nor shoesnor poetry, but he was nimble in the calling of selling houses for morethan people could afford to pay.His large head was pink, his brown hair thin and dry. His face wasbabyish in slumber, despite his wrinkles and the red spectacle-dents onthe slopes of his nose. He was not fat but he was exceedingly well fed;his cheeks were pads, and the unroughened hand which lay helpless uponthe khaki-colored blanket was slightly puffy. He seemed prosperous,extremely married and unromantic; and altogether unromantic appearedthis sleeping-porch, which looked on one sizable elm, two respectablegrass-plots, a cement driveway, and a corrugated iron garage. YetBabbitt was again dreaming of the fairy child, a dream more romanticthan scarlet pagodas by a silver sea.For years the fairy child had come to him. Where others saw but GeorgieBabbitt, she discerned gallant youth. She waited for him, in thedarkness beyond mysterious groves. When at last he could slip away fromthe crowded house he darted to her. His wife, his clamoring friends,sought to follow, but he escaped, the girl fleet beside him, and theycrouched together on a shadowy hillside. She was so slim, so white, soeager! She cried that he was gay and valiant, that she would wait forhim, that they would sail--Rumble and bang of the milk-truck.Babbitt moaned; turned over; struggled back toward his dream. He couldsee only her face now, beyond misty waters. The furnace-man slammed thebasement door. A dog barked in the next yard. As Babbitt sank blissfullyinto a dim warm tide, the paper-carrier went by whistling, and therolled-up Advocate thumped the front door. Babbitt roused, his stomachconstricted with alarm. As he relaxed, he was pierced by the familiarand irritating rattle of some one cranking a Ford: snap-ah-ah,snap-ah-ah, snap-ah-ah. Himself a pious motorist, Babbitt cranked withthe unseen driver, with him waited through taut hours for the roar ofthe starting engine, with him agonized as the roar ceased and againbegan the infernal patient snap-ah-ah--a round, flat sound, a shiveringcold-morning sound, a sound infuriating and inescapable. Not till therising voice of the motor told him that the Ford was moving was hereleased from the panting tension. He glanced once at his favorite tree,elm twigs against the gold patina of sky, and fumbled for sleep as for adrug. He who had been a boy very credulous of life was no longer greatlyinterested in the possible and improbable adventures of each new day.He escaped from reality till the alarm-clock rang, at seven-twenty.IIIIt was the best of nationally advertised and quantitatively producedalarm-clocks, with all modern attachments, including cathedral chime,intermittent alarm, and a phosphorescent dial. Babbitt was proudof being awakened by such a rich device. Socially it was almost ascreditable as buying expensive cord tires.He sulkily admitted now that there was no more escape, but he lay anddetested the grind of the real-estate business, and disliked his family,and disliked himself for disliking them. The evening before, he hadplayed poker at Vergil Gunch's till midnight, and after such holidayshe was irritable before breakfast. It may have been the tremendoushome-brewed beer of the prohibition-era and the cigars to which thatbeer enticed him; it may have been resentment of return from this fine,bold man-world to a restricted region of wives and stenographers, and ofsuggestions not to smoke so much.From the bedroom beside the sleeping-porch, his wife's detestablycheerful "Time to get up, Georgie boy," and the itchy sound, the briskand scratchy sound, of combing hairs out of a stiff brush.He grunted; he dragged his thick legs, in faded baby-blue pajamas, fromunder the khaki blanket; he sat on the edge of the cot, running hisfingers through his wild hair, while his plump feet mechanically feltfor his slippers. He looked regretfully at the blanket--forever asuggestion to him of freedom and heroism. He had bought it for a campingtrip which had never come off. It symbolized gorgeous loafing, gorgeouscursing, virile flannel shirts.He creaked to his feet, groaning at the waves of pain which passedbehind his eyeballs. Though he waited for their scorching recurrence, helooked blurrily out at the yard. It delighted him, as always; it wasthe neat yard of a successful business man of Zenith, that is, it wasperfection, and made him also perfect. He regarded the corrugatediron garage. For the three-hundred-and-sixty-fifth time in a year hereflected, "No class to that tin shack. Have to build me a frame garage.But by golly it's the only thing on the place that isn't up-to-date!"While he stared he thought of a community garage for his acreagedevelopment, Glen Oriole. He stopped puffing and jiggling. His arms wereakimbo. His petulant, sleep-swollen face was set in harder lines. Hesuddenly seemed capable, an official, a man to contrive, to direct, toget things done.On the vigor of his idea he was carried down the hard, dean,unused-looking hall into the bathroom.Though the house was not large it had, like all houses on FloralHeights, an altogether royal bathroom of porcelain and glazed tile andmetal sleek as silver. The towel-rack was a rod of clear glass set innickel. The tub was long enough for a Prussian Guard, and above theset bowl was a sensational exhibit of tooth-brush holder, shaving-brushholder, soap-dish, sponge-dish, and medicine-cabinet, so glittering andso ingenious that they resembled an electrical instrument-board. But theBabbitt whose god was Modern Appliances was not pleased. The air of thebathroom was thick with the smell of a heathen toothpaste. "Verona beenat it again! 'Stead of sticking to Lilidol, like I've re-peat-ed-lyasked her, she's gone and gotten some confounded stinkum stuff thatmakes you sick!"The bath-mat was wrinkled and the floor was wet. (His daughter Veronaeccentrically took baths in the morning, now and then.) He slipped onthe mat, and slid against the tub. He said "Damn!" Furiously he snatchedup his tube of shaving-cream, furiously he lathered, with a belligerentslapping of the unctuous brush, furiously he raked his plump cheekswith a safety-razor. It pulled. The blade was dull. He said,"Damn--oh--oh--damn it!"He hunted through the medicine-cabinet for a packet of new razor-blades(reflecting, as invariably, "Be cheaper to buy one of these dinguses andstrop your own blades,") and when he discovered the packet, behind theround box of bicarbonate of soda, he thought ill of his wife for puttingit there and very well of himself for not saying "Damn." But he did sayit, immediately afterward, when with wet and soap-slippery fingers hetried to remove the horrible little envelope and crisp clinging oiledpaper from the new blade. Then there was the problem, oft-pondered,never solved, of what to do with the old blade, which might imperilthe fingers of his young. As usual, he tossed it on top of themedicine-cabinet, with a mental note that some day he must remove thefifty or sixty other blades that were also temporarily, piled up there.He finished his shaving in a growing testiness increased by his spinningheadache and by the emptiness in his stomach. When he was done, hisround face smooth and streamy and his eyes stinging from soapy water,he reached for a towel. The family towels were wet, wet and clammy andvile, all of them wet, he found, as he blindly snatched them--hisown face-towel, his wife's, Verona's, Ted's, Tinka's, and the lonebath-towel with the huge welt of initial. Then George F. Babbitt dida dismaying thing. He wiped his face on the guest-towel! It was apansy-embroidered trifle which always hung there to indicate that theBabbitts were in the best Floral Heights society. No one had ever usedit. No guest had ever dared to. Guests secretively took a corner of thenearest regular towel.He was raging, "By golly, here they go and use up all the towels, everydoggone one of 'em, and they use 'em and get 'em all wet and sopping,and never put out a dry one for me--of course, I'm the goat!--and thenI want one and--I'm the only person in the doggone house that's gotthe slightest doggone bit of consideration for other people andthoughtfulness and consider there may be others that may want to use thedoggone bathroom after me and consider--"He was pitching the chill abominations into the bath-tub, pleased bythe vindictiveness of that desolate flapping sound; and in the midst hiswife serenely trotted in, observed serenely, "Why Georgie dear, what areyou doing? Are you going to wash out the towels? Why, you needn't washout the towels. Oh, Georgie, you didn't go and use the guest-towel, didyou?"It is not recorded that he was able to answer.For the first time in weeks he was sufficiently roused by his wife tolook at her.IVMyra Babbitt--Mrs. George F. Babbitt--was definitely mature. She hadcreases from the corners of her mouth to the bottom of her chin, and herplump neck bagged. But the thing that marked her as having passed theline was that she no longer had reticences before her husband, and nolonger worried about not having reticences. She was in a petticoat now,and corsets which bulged, and unaware of being seen in bulgy corsets.She had become so dully habituated to married life that in her fullmatronliness she was as sexless as an anemic nun. She was a good woman,a kind woman, a diligent woman, but no one, save perhaps Tinka herten-year-old, was at all interested in her or entirely aware that shewas alive.After a rather thorough discussion of all the domestic and socialaspects of towels she apologized to Babbitt for his having an alcoholicheadache; and he recovered enough to endure the search for a B.V.D.undershirt which had, he pointed out, malevolently been concealed amonghis clean pajamas.He was fairly amiable in the conference on the brown suit."What do you think, Myra?" He pawed at the clothes hunched on a chair intheir bedroom, while she moved about mysteriously adjusting and pattingher petticoat and, to his jaundiced eye, never seeming to get on withher dressing. "How about it? Shall I wear the brown suit another day?""Well, it looks awfully nice on you.""I know, but gosh, it needs pressing.""That's so. Perhaps it does.""It certainly could stand being pressed, all right.""Yes, perhaps it wouldn't hurt it to be pressed.""But gee, the coat doesn't need pressing. No sense in having the wholedarn suit pressed, when the coat doesn't need it.""That's so.""But the pants certainly need it, all right. Look at them--look at thosewrinkles--the pants certainly do need pressing.""That's so. Oh, Georgie, why couldn't you wear the brown coat with theblue trousers we were wondering what we'd do with them?""Good Lord! Did you ever in all my life know me to wear the coat ofone suit and the pants of another? What do you think I am? A bustedbookkeeper?""Well, why don't you put on the dark gray suit to-day, and stop in atthe tailor and leave the brown trousers?""Well, they certainly need--Now where the devil is that gray suit? Oh,yes, here we are."He was able to get through the other crises of dressing with comparativeresoluteness and calm.His first adornment was the sleeveless dimity B.V.D. undershirt, inwhich he resembled a small boy humorlessly wearing a cheesecloth tabardat a civic pageant. He never put on B.V.D.'s without thanking the God ofProgress that he didn't wear tight, long, old-fashioned undergarments,like his father-in-law and partner, Henry Thompson. His secondembellishment was combing and slicking back his hair. It gave him atremendous forehead, arching up two inches beyond the former hair-line.But most wonder-working of all was the donning of his spectacles.There is character in spectacles--the pretentious tortoiseshell, themeek pince-nez of the school teacher, the twisted silver-framed glassesof the old villager. Babbitt's spectacles had huge, circular, framelesslenses of the very best glass; the ear-pieces were thin bars of gold. Inthem he was the modern business man; one who gave orders to clerks anddrove a car and played occasional golf and was scholarly in regard toSalesmanship. His head suddenly appeared not babyish but weighty, andyou noted his heavy, blunt nose, his straight mouth and thick, longupper lip, his chin overfleshy but strong; with respect you beheld himput on the rest of his uniform as a Solid Citizen.The gray suit was well cut, well made, and completely undistinguished.It was a standard suit. White piping on the V of the vest added a flavorof law and learning. His shoes were black laced boots, good boots,honest boots, standard boots, extraordinarily uninteresting boots.The only frivolity was in his purple knitted scarf. With considerablecomment on the matter to Mrs. Babbitt (who, acrobatically fastening theback of her blouse to her skirt with a safety-pin, did not hear a wordhe said), he chose between the purple scarf and a tapestry effectwith stringless brown harps among blown palms, and into it he thrust asnake-head pin with opal eyes.A sensational event was changing from the brown suit to the gray thecontents of his pockets. He was earnest about these objects. They wereof eternal importance, like baseball or the Republican Party. Theyincluded a fountain pen and a silver pencil (always lacking a supply ofnew leads) which belonged in the righthand upper vest pocket. Withoutthem he would have felt naked. On his watch-chain were a gold penknife,silver cigar-cutter, seven keys (the use of two of which he hadforgotten), and incidentally a good watch. Depending from the chain wasa large, yellowish elk's-tooth-proclamation of his membership in theBrotherly and Protective Order of Elks. Most significant of all was hisloose-leaf pocket note-book, that modern and efficient note-bookwhich contained the addresses of people whom he had forgotten, prudentmemoranda of postal money-orders which had reached their destinationsmonths ago, stamps which had lost their mucilage, clippings of verses byT. Cholmondeley Frink and of the newspaper editorials from which Babbittgot his opinions and his polysyllables, notes to be sure and do thingswhich he did not intend to do, and one curious inscription--D.S.S.D.M.Y.P.D.F.But he had no cigarette-case. No one had ever happened to give himone, so he hadn't the habit, and people who carried cigarette-cases heregarded as effeminate.Last, he stuck in his lapel the Boosters' Club button. With theconciseness of great art the button displayed two words: "Boosters-Pep!"It made Babbitt feel loyal and important. It associated him with GoodFellows, with men who were nice and human, and important in businesscircles. It was his V.C., his Legion of Honor ribbon, his Phi Beta Kappakey.With the subtleties of dressing ran other complex worries. "I feel kindof punk this morning," he said. "I think I had too much dinner lastevening. You oughtn't to serve those heavy banana fritters.""But you asked me to have some.""I know, but--I tell you, when a fellow gets past forty he has to lookafter his digestion. There's a lot of fellows that don't take propercare of themselves. I tell you at forty a man's a fool or his doctor--Imean, his own doctor. Folks don't give enough attention to this matterof dieting. Now I think--Course a man ought to have a good meal afterthe day's work, but it would be a good thing for both of us if we tooklighter lunches.""But Georgie, here at home I always do have a light lunch.""Mean to imply I make a hog of myself, eating down-town? Yes, sure!You'd have a swell time if you had to eat the truck that new stewardhands out to us at the Athletic Club! But I certainly do feel out ofsorts, this morning. Funny, got a pain down here on the left side--butno, that wouldn't be appendicitis, would it? Last night, when I wasdriving over to Verg Gunch's, I felt a pain in my stomach, too. Righthere it was--kind of a sharp shooting pain. I--Where'd that dime go to?Why don't you serve more prunes at breakfast? Of course I eat an appleevery evening--an apple a day keeps the doctor away--but still, youought to have more prunes, and not all these fancy doodads.""The last time I had prunes you didn't eat them.""Well, I didn't feel like eating 'em, I suppose. Matter of fact, I thinkI did eat some of 'em. Anyway--I tell you it's mighty important to--Iwas saying to Verg Gunch, just last evening, most people don't takesufficient care of their diges--""Shall we have the Gunches for our dinner, next week?""Why sure; you bet.""Now see here, George: I want you to put on your nice dinner-jacket thatevening.""Rats! The rest of 'em won't want to dress.""Of course they will. You remember when you didn't dress for theLittlefields' supper-party, and all the rest did, and how embarrassedyou were.""Embarrassed, hell! I wasn't embarrassed. Everybody knows I can puton as expensive a Tux. as anybody else, and I should worry if I don'thappen to have it on sometimes. All a darn nuisance, anyway. All rightfor a woman, that stays around the house all the time, but when afellow's worked like the dickens all day, he doesn't want to go andhustle his head off getting into the soup-and-fish for a lot of folksthat he's seen in just reg'lar ordinary clothes that same day.""You know you enjoy being seen in one. The other evening you admittedyou were glad I'd insisted on your dressing. You said you felt a lotbetter for it. And oh, Georgie, I do wish you wouldn't say 'Tux.' It's'dinner-jacket.'""Rats, what's the odds?""Well, it's what all the nice folks say. Suppose Lucile McKelvey heardyou calling it a 'Tux.'""Well, that's all right now! Lucile McKelvey can't pull anything onme! Her folks are common as mud, even if her husband and her dad aremillionaires! I suppose you're trying to rub in your exalted socialposition! Well, let me tell you that your revered paternal ancestor,Henry T., doesn't even call it a 'Tux.'! He calls it a 'bobtail jacketfor a ringtail monkey,' and you couldn't get him into one unless youchloroformed him!""Now don't be horrid, George.""Well, I don't want to be horrid, but Lord! you're getting as fussy asVerona. Ever since she got out of college she's been too rambunctiousto live with--doesn't know what she wants--well, I know what shewants!--all she wants is to marry a millionaire, and live in Europe,and hold some preacher's hand, and simultaneously at the same time stayright here in Zenith and be some blooming kind of a socialist agitatoror boss charity-worker or some damn thing! Lord, and Ted is just as bad!He wants to go to college, and he doesn't want to go to college.Only one of the three that knows her own mind is Tinka. Simply can'tunderstand how I ever came to have a pair of shillyshallying childrenlike Rone and Ted. I may not be any Rockefeller or James J. Shakespeare,but I certainly do know my own mind, and I do keep right on pluggingalong in the office and--Do you know the latest? Far as I can figureout, Ted's new bee is he'd like to be a movie actor and--And here I'vetold him a hundred times, if he'll go to college and law-school andmake good, I'll set him up in business and--Verona just exactly as bad.Doesn't know what she wants. Well, well, come on! Aren't you ready yet?The girl rang the bell three minutes ago."VBefore he followed his wife, Babbitt stood at the westernmost window oftheir room. This residential settlement, Floral Heights, was on a rise;and though the center of the city was three miles away--Zenith hadbetween three and four hundred thousand inhabitants now--he could seethe top of the Second National Tower, an Indiana limestone building ofthirty-five stories.Its shining walls rose against April sky to a simple cornice like astreak of white fire. Integrity was in the tower, and decision. Itbore its strength lightly as a tall soldier. As Babbitt stared,the nervousness was soothed from his face, his slack chin lifted inreverence. All he articulated was "That's one lovely sight!" but he wasinspired by the rhythm of the city; his love of it renewed. He beheldthe tower as a temple-spire of the religion of business, a faithpassionate, exalted, surpassing common men; and as he clumped down tobreakfast he whistled the ballad "Oh, by gee, by gosh, by jingo" asthough it were a hymn melancholy and noble.