CHAPTER XVI

by Sinclair Lewis

　　CHAPTER XVITHE certainty that he was not going to be accepted by the McKelveys madeBabbitt feel guilty and a little absurd. But he went more regularly tothe Elks; at a Chamber of Commerce luncheon he was oratorical regardingthe wickedness of strikes; and again he saw himself as a ProminentCitizen.His clubs and associations were food comfortable to his spirit.Of a decent man in Zenith it was required that he should belong toone, preferably two or three, of the innumerous "lodges" andprosperity-boosting lunch-clubs; to the Rotarians, the Kiwanis, or theBoosters; to the Oddfellows, Moose, Masons, Red Men, Woodmen, Owls,Eagles, Maccabees, Knights of Pythias, Knights of Columbus, and othersecret orders characterized by a high degree of heartiness, soundmorals, and reverence for the Constitution. There were four reasons forjoining these orders: It was the thing to do. It was good for business,since lodge-brothers frequently became customers. It gave to Americansunable to become Geheimrate or Commendatori such unctuous honorifics asHigh Worthy Recording Scribe and Grand Hoogow to add to the commonplacedistinctions of Colonel, Judge, and Professor. And it permitted theswaddled American husband to stay away from home for one evening a week.The lodge was his piazza, his pavement cafe. He could shoot pool andtalk man-talk and be obscene and valiant.Babbitt was what he called a "joiner" for all these reasons.Behind the gold and scarlet banner of his public achievements was thedun background of office-routine: leases, sales-contracts, lists ofproperties to rent. The evenings of oratory and committees and lodgesstimulated him like brandy, but every morning he was sandy-tongued. Weekby week he accumulated nervousness. He was in open disagreement with hisoutside salesman, Stanley Graff; and once, though her charms had alwayskept him nickeringly polite to her, he snarled at Miss McGoun forchanging his letters.But in the presence of Paul Riesling he relaxed. At least once a weekthey fled from maturity. On Saturday they played golf, jeering, "Asa golfer, you're a fine tennis-player," or they motored all Sundayafternoon, stopping at village lunchrooms to sit on high stools at acounter and drink coffee from thick cups. Sometimes Paul came over inthe evening with his violin, and even Zilla was silent as the lonely manwho had lost his way and forever crept down unfamiliar roads spun outhis dark soul in music.IINothing gave Babbitt more purification and publicity than his labors forthe Sunday School.His church, the Chatham Road Presbyterian, was one of the largest andrichest, one of the most oaken and velvety, in Zenith. The pastor wasthe Reverend John Jennison Drew, M.A., D.D., LL.D. (The M.A. and theD.D. were from Elbert University, Nebraska, the LL.D. from WaterburyCollege, Oklahoma.) He was eloquent, efficient, and versatile. Hepresided at meetings for the denunciation of unions or the elevation ofdomestic service, and confided to the audiences that as a poor boy hehad carried newspapers. For the Saturday edition of the Evening Advocatehe wrote editorials on "The Manly Man's Religion" and "The Dollars andSense Value of Christianity," which were printed in bold type surroundedby a wiggly border. He often said that he was "proud to be known asprimarily a business man" and that he certainly was not going to "permitthe old Satan to monopolize all the pep and punch." He was a thin,rustic-faced young man with gold spectacles and a bang of dull brownhair, but when he hurled himself into oratory he glowed with power.He admitted that he was too much the scholar and poet to imitate theevangelist, Mike Monday, yet he had once awakened his fold to new life,and to larger collections, by the challenge, "My brethren, the realcheap skate is the man who won't lend to the Lord!"He had made his church a true community center. It contained everythingbut a bar. It had a nursery, a Thursday evening supper with a shortbright missionary lecture afterward, a gymnasium, a fortnightlymotion-picture show, a library of technical books for youngworkmen--though, unfortunately, no young workman ever entered the churchexcept to wash the windows or repair the furnace--and a sewing-circlewhich made short little pants for the children of the poor while Mrs.Drew read aloud from earnest novels.Though Dr. Drew's theology was Presbyterian, his church-buildingwas gracefully Episcopalian. As he said, it had the "most perdurablefeatures of those noble ecclesiastical monuments of grand Old Englandwhich stand as symbols of the eternity of faith, religious and civil."It was built of cheery iron-spot brick in an improved Gothic style, andthe main auditorium had indirect lighting from electric globes in lavishalabaster bowls.On a December morning when the Babbitts went to church, Dr. JohnJennison Drew was unusually eloquent. The crowd was immense. Ten briskyoung ushers, in morning coats with white roses, were bringing foldingchairs up from the basement. There was an impressive musical program,conducted by Sheldon Smeeth, educational director of the Y.M.C.A.,who also sang the offertory. Babbitt cared less for this, because somemisguided person had taught young Mr. Smeeth to smile, smile, smilewhile he was singing, but with all the appreciation of a fellow-oratorhe admired Dr. Drew's sermon. It had the intellectual quality whichdistinguished the Chatham Road congregation from the grubby chapels onSmith Street."At this abundant harvest-time of all the year," Dr. Drew chanted,"when, though stormy the sky and laborious the path to the drudgingwayfarer, yet the hovering and bodiless spirit swoops back o'er all thelabors and desires of the past twelve months, oh, then it seems tome there sounds behind all our apparent failures the golden chorus ofgreeting from those passed happily on; and lo! on the dim horizon wesee behind dolorous clouds the mighty mass of mountains--mountains ofmelody, mountains of mirth, mountains of might!""I certainly do like a sermon with culture and thought in it," meditatedBabbitt.At the end of the service he was delighted when the pastor, activelyshaking hands at the door, twittered, "Oh, Brother Babbitt, can you waita jiffy? Want your advice.""Sure, doctor! You bet!""Drop into my office. I think you'll like the cigars there." Babbitt didlike the cigars. He also liked the office, which was distinguished fromother offices only by the spirited change of the familiar wall-placardto "This is the Lord's Busy Day." Chum Frink came in, then William W.Eathorne.Mr. Eathorne was the seventy-year-old president of the First State Bankof Zenith. He still wore the delicate patches of side-whiskers which hadbeen the uniform of bankers in 1870. If Babbitt was envious of theSmart Set of the McKelveys, before William Washington Eathorne he wasreverent. Mr. Eathorne had nothing to do with the Smart Set. He wasabove it. He was the great-grandson of one of the five men who foundedZenith, in 1792, and he was of the third generation of bankers. He couldexamine credits, make loans, promote or injure a man's business. In hispresence Babbitt breathed quickly and felt young.The Reverend Dr. Drew bounced into the room and flowered into speech:"I've asked you gentlemen to stay so I can put a proposition before you.The Sunday School needs bucking up. It's the fourth largest in Zenith,but there's no reason why we should take anybody's dust. We ought to befirst. I want to request you, if you will, to form a committee ofadvice and publicity for the Sunday School; look it over and make anysuggestions for its betterment, and then, perhaps, see that the pressgives us some attention--give the public some really helpful andconstructive news instead of all these murders and divorces.""Excellent," said the banker.Babbitt and Frink were enchanted to join him.IIIIf you had asked Babbitt what his religion was, he would have answeredin sonorous Boosters'-Club rhetoric, "My religion is to serve my fellowmen, to honor my brother as myself, and to do my bit to make lifehappier for one and all." If you had pressed him for more detail, hewould have announced, "I'm a member of the Presbyterian Church, andnaturally, I accept its doctrines." If you had been so brutal as togo on, he would have protested, "There's no use discussing and arguingabout religion; it just stirs up bad feeling."Actually, the content of his theology was that there was a supreme beingwho had tried to make us perfect, but presumably had failed; that ifone was a Good Man he would go to a place called Heaven (Babbittunconsciously pictured it as rather like an excellent hotel with aprivate garden), but if one was a Bad Man, that is, if he murderedor committed burglary or used cocaine or had mistresses or soldnon-existent real estate, he would be punished. Babbitt was uncertain,however, about what he called "this business of Hell." He explainedto Ted, "Of course I'm pretty liberal; I don't exactly believe in afire-and-brimstone Hell. Stands to reason, though, that a fellow can'tget away with all sorts of Vice and not get nicked for it, see how Imean?"Upon this theology he rarely pondered. The kernel of his practicalreligion was that it was respectable, and beneficial to one's business,to be seen going to services; that the church kept the Worst Elementsfrom being still worse; and that the pastor's sermons, however dull theymight seem at the time of taking, yet had a voodooistic power which "dida fellow good--kept him in touch with Higher Things."His first investigations for the Sunday School Advisory Committee didnot inspire him.He liked the Busy Folks' Bible Class, composed of mature men and womenand addressed by the old-school physician, Dr. T. Atkins Jordan, ina sparkling style comparable to that of the more refined humorousafter-dinner speakers, but when he went down to the junior classes hewas disconcerted. He heard Sheldon Smeeth, educational director of theY.M.C.A. and leader of the church-choir, a pale but strenuous young manwith curly hair and a smile, teaching a class of sixteen-year-old boys.Smeeth lovingly admonished them, "Now, fellows, I'm going to have aHeart to Heart Talk Evening at my house next Thursday. We'll get off byourselves and be frank about our Secret Worries. You can just tell oldSheldy anything, like all the fellows do at the Y. I'm going to explainfrankly about the horrible practises a kiddy falls into unless he'sguided by a Big Brother, and about the perils and glory of Sex." OldSheldy beamed damply; the boys looked ashamed; and Babbitt didn't knowwhich way to turn his embarrassed eyes.Less annoying but also much duller were the minor classes which werebeing instructed in philosophy and Oriental ethnology by earnestspinsters. Most of them met in the highly varnished Sunday School room,but there was an overflow to the basement, which was decorated withvaricose water-pipes and lighted by small windows high up in the oozingwall. What Babbitt saw, however, was the First Congregational Churchof Catawba. He was back in the Sunday School of his boyhood. He smelledagain that polite stuffiness to be found only in church parlors; herecalled the case of drab Sunday School books: "Hetty, a HumbleHeroine" and "Josephus, a Lad of Palestine;" he thumbed once more thehigh-colored text-cards which no boy wanted but no boy liked to throwaway, because they were somehow sacred; he was tortured by the stumblingrote of thirty-five years ago, as in the vast Zenith church he listenedto:"Now, Edgar, you read the next verse. What does it mean when it saysit's easier for a camel to go through a needle's eye? What does thisteach us? Clarence! Please don't wiggle so! If you had studied yourlesson you wouldn't be so fidgety. Now, Earl, what is the lessonJesus was trying to teach his disciples? The one thing I want youto especially remember, boys, is the words, 'With God all thingsare possible.' Just think of that always--Clarence, PLEASE payattention--just say 'With God all things are possible' whenever youfeel discouraged, and, Alec, will you read the next verse; if you'd payattention you wouldn't lose your place!"Drone--drone--drone--gigantic bees that boomed in a cavern ofdrowsiness--Babbitt started from his open-eyed nap, thanked the teacher for "theprivilege of listening to her splendid teaching," and staggered on tothe next circle.After two weeks of this he had no suggestions whatever for the ReverendDr. Drew.Then he discovered a world of Sunday School journals, an enormousand busy domain of weeklies and monthlies which were as technical,as practical and forward-looking, as the real-estate columns or theshoe-trade magazines. He bought half a dozen of them at a religiousbook-shop and till after midnight he read them and admired.He found many lucrative tips on "Focusing Appeals," "Scouting for NewMembers," and "Getting Prospects to Sign up with the Sunday School." Heparticularly liked the word "prospects," and he was moved by the rubric:"The moral springs of the community's life lie deep in its SundaySchools--its schools of religious instruction and inspiration. Neglectnow means loss of spiritual vigor and moral power in years to come....Facts like the above, followed by a straight-arm appeal, will reachfolks who can never be laughed or jollied into doing their part."Babbitt admitted, "That's so. I used to skin out of the ole SundaySchool at Catawba every chance I got, but same time, I wouldn't be whereI am to-day, maybe, if it hadn't been for its training in--in moralpower. And all about the Bible. (Great literature. Have to read some ofit again, one of these days)."How scientifically the Sunday School could be organized he learned froman article in the Westminster Adult Bible Class:"The second vice-president looks after the fellowship of the class. Shechooses a group to help her. These become ushers. Every one who comesgets a glad hand. No one goes away a stranger. One member of the groupstands 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-goin it, that is, without interest, that is uncertain in attendance, thatacts like a fellow with the spring fever, let old Dr. Ridgway write youa 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 Timesadvertised that C. Harold Lowden, "known to thousands through his sacredcompositions," had written a new masterpiece, "entitled 'Yearning forYou.' The poem, by Harry D. Kerr, is one of the daintiest you couldimagine and the music is indescribably beautiful. Critics are agreedthat it will sweep the country. May be made into a charming sacred songby substituting the hymn words, 'I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say.'"Even manual training was adequately considered. Babbitt noted aningenious way of illustrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ:"Model for Pupils to Make. Tomb with Rolling Door.--Use a square coveredbox turned upside down. Pull the cover forward a little to form a grooveat the bottom. Cut a square door, also cut a circle of cardboard to morethan cover the door. Cover the circular door and the tomb thickly withstiff mixture of sand, flour and water and let it dry. It was the heavycircular stone over the door the women found 'rolled away' on Eastermorning. This is the story we are to 'Go-tell.'"In their advertisements the Sunday School journals were thoroughlyefficient. Babbitt was interested in a preparation which "takes theplace of exercise for sedentary men by building up depleted nervetissue, nourishing the brain and the digestive system." He was edifiedto learn that the selling of Bibles was a hustling and strictlycompetitive industry, and as an expert on hygiene he was pleased by theSanitary Communion Outfit Company's announcement of "an improved andsatisfactory outfit throughout, including highly polished beautifulmahogany tray. This tray eliminates all noise, is lighter and moreeasily handled than others and is more in keeping with the furniture ofthe church than a tray of any other material."IVHe 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 thecommunity--shame if he doesn't take part in a real virile hustlingreligion. Sort of Christianity Incorporated, you might say."But with all reverence."Some folks might claim these Sunday School fans are undignified andunspiritual and so on. Sure! Always some skunk to spring things likethat! Knocking and sneering and tearing-down--so much easier thanbuilding up. But me, I certainly hand it to these magazines. They'vebrought ole George F. Babbitt into camp, and that's the answer to thecritics!"The more manly and practical a fellow is, the more he ought to lead theenterprising Christian life. Me for it! Cut out this carelessness andboozing and--Rone! Where the devil you been? This is a fine time o'night to be coming in!"