CHAPTER XII

by Sinclair Lewis

　　CHAPTER XIIIALL the way home from Maine, Babbitt was certain that he was a changedman. He was converted to serenity. He was going to cease worryingabout business. He was going to have more "interests"--theaters, publicaffairs, reading. And suddenly, as he finished an especially heavycigar, he was going to stop smoking.He invented a new and perfect method. He would buy no tobacco; he woulddepend on borrowing it; and, of course, he would be ashamed to borrowoften. In a spasm of righteousness he flung his cigar-case out of thesmoking-compartment window. He went back and was kind to his wifeabout nothing in particular; he admired his own purity, and decided,"Absolutely simple. Just a matter of will-power." He started a magazineserial about a scientific detective. Ten miles on, he was conscious thathe desired to smoke. He ducked his head, like a turtle going into itsshell; he appeared uneasy; he skipped two pages in his story and didn'tknow it. Five miles later, he leaped up and sought the porter. "Say,uh, George, have you got a--" The porter looked patient. "Have you got atime-table?" Babbitt finished. At the next stop he went out and bought acigar. Since it was to be his last before he reached Zenith, he finishedit down to an inch stub.Four days later he again remembered that he had stopped smoking, but hewas too busy catching up with his office-work to keep it remembered.IIBaseball, he determined, would be an excellent hobby. "No sense a man'sworking his fool head off. I'm going out to the Game three times a week.Besides, fellow ought to support the home team."He did go and support the team, and enhance the glory of Zenith, byyelling "Attaboy!" and "Rotten!" He performed the rite scrupulously. Hewore a cotton handkerchief about his collar; he became sweaty; he openedhis mouth in a wide loose grin; and drank lemon soda out of a bottle. Hewent to the Game three times a week, for one week. Then he compromisedon watching the Advocate-Times bulletin-board. He stood in the thickestand steamiest of the crowd, and as the boy up on the lofty platformrecorded the achievements of Big Bill Bostwick, the pitcher, Babbittremarked to complete strangers, "Pretty nice! Good work!" and hastenedback to the office.He honestly believed that he loved baseball. It is true that he hadn't,in twenty-five years, himself played any baseball except back-lot catchwith Ted--very gentle, and strictly limited to ten minutes. But thegame was a custom of his clan, and it gave outlet for the homicidal andsides-taking instincts which Babbitt called "patriotism" and "love ofsport."As he approached the office he walked faster and faster, muttering,"Guess better hustle." All about him the city was hustling, forhustling's sake. Men in motors were hustling to pass one another inthe hustling traffic. Men were hustling to catch trolleys, with anothertrolley a minute behind, and to leap from the trolleys, to gallop acrossthe sidewalk, to hurl themselves into buildings, into hustling expresselevators. Men in dairy lunches were hustling to gulp down the foodwhich cooks had hustled to fry. Men in barber shops were snapping, "Jus'shave me once over. Gotta hustle." Men were feverishly getting rid ofvisitors in offices adorned with the signs, "This Is My Busy Day" and"The Lord Created the World in Six Days--You Can Spiel All You Got toSay in Six Minutes." Men who had made five thousand, year before last,and ten thousand last year, were urging on nerve-yelping bodies andparched brains so that they might make twenty thousand this year;and the men who had broken down immediately after making their twentythousand dollars were hustling to catch trains, to hustle through thevacations which the hustling doctors had ordered.Among them Babbitt hustled back to his office, to sit down withnothing much to do except see that the staff looked as though they werehustling.IIIEvery Saturday afternoon he hustled out to his country club and hustledthrough nine holes of golf as a rest after the week's hustle.In Zenith it was as necessary for a Successful Man to belong to acountry club as it was to wear a linen collar. Babbitt's was the OutingGolf and Country Club, a pleasant gray-shingled building with a broadporch, on a daisy-starred cliff above Lake Kennepoose. There wasanother, the Tonawanda Country Club, to which belonged Charles McKelvey,Horace Updike, and the other rich men who lunched not at the Athleticbut at the Union Club. Babbitt explained with frequency, "You couldn'thire me to join the Tonawanda, even if I did have a hundred and eightybucks to throw away on the initiation fee. At the Outing we've gota bunch of real human fellows, and the finest lot of little women intown--just as good at joshing as the men--but at the Tonawanda there'snothing but these would-be's in New York get-ups, drinking tea! Toomuch dog altogether. Why, I wouldn't join the Tonawanda even if they--Iwouldn't join it on a bet!"When he had played four or five holes, he relaxed a bit, histobacco-fluttering heart beat more normally, and his voice slowed to thedrawling of his hundred generations of peasant ancestors.IVAt least once a week Mr. and Mrs. Babbitt and Tinka went to the movies.Their favorite motion-picture theater was the Chateau, which held threethousand spectators and had an orchestra of fifty pieces which playedArrangements from the Operas and suites portraying a Day on the Farm,or a Four-alarm Fire. In the stone rotunda, decorated withcrown-embroidered velvet chairs and almost medieval tapestries,parrakeets sat on gilded lotos columns.With exclamations of "Well, by golly!" and "You got to go some tobeat this dump!" Babbitt admired the Chateau. As he stared across thethousands of heads, a gray plain in the dimness, as he smelled goodclothes and mild perfume and chewing-gum, he felt as when he had firstseen a mountain and realized how very, very much earth and rock therewas in it.He liked three kinds of films: pretty bathing girls with bare legs;policemen or cowboys and an industrious shooting of revolvers; andfunny fat men who ate spaghetti. He chuckled with immense, moist-eyedsentimentality at interludes portraying puppies, kittens, and chubbybabies; and he wept at deathbeds and old mothers being patient inmortgaged cottages. Mrs. Babbitt preferred the pictures in whichhandsome young women in elaborate frocks moved through sets ticketed asthe drawing-rooms of New York millionaires. As for Tinka, she preferred,or was believed to prefer, whatever her parents told her to.All his relaxations--baseball, golf, movies, bridge, motoring, longtalks with Paul at the Athletic Club, or at the Good Red Beef and OldEnglish Chop House--were necessary to Babbitt, for he was entering ayear of such activity as he had never known.