II
Baseball, he determined, would be an excellent hobby. "No
sense a man's working 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, by yelling "Attaboy!'' and "Rotten!'' He performed
the rite scrupulously. He wore a cotton handkerchief about
his collar; he became sweaty; he opened his mouth in a wide
loose grin; and drank lemon soda out of a bottle. He went
to the Game three times a week, for one week. Then he compromised
on watching the Advocate-Times bulletin-board. He
stood in the thickest and steamiest of the crowd, and as the
boy up on the lofty platform recorded the achievements of
Big Bill Bostwick, the pitcher, Babbitt remarked to complete
strangers, "Pretty nice! Good work!'' and hastened back 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 catch with Ted—very gentle, and strictly limited
to ten minutes. But the game was a custom of his clan,
and it gave outlet for the homicidal and sides-taking instincts
which Babbitt called "patriotism'' and "love of sport.''
As he approached the office he walked faster and faster, muttering,
"Guess better hustle.'' All about him the city was
hustling, for hustling's sake. Men in motors were hustling to
pass one another in the hustling traffic. Men were hustling to
catch trolleys, with another trolley a minute behind, and to
leap from the trolleys, to gallop across the sidewalk, to hurl
themselves into buildings, into hustling express elevators. Men
in dairy lunches were hustling to gulp down the food which
cooks had hustled to fry. Men in barber shops were snapping,
"Jus' shave me once over. Gotta hustle.'' Men were feverishly
getting rid of visitors 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 to Say in Six Minutes.''
Men who had made five thousand, year before last, and ten
thousand last year, were urging on nerve-yelping bodies and
parched brains so that they might make twenty thousand this
year; and the men who had broken down immediately after
making their twenty thousand dollars were hustling to catch
trains, to hustle through the vacations which the hustling doctors
had ordered.
Among them Babbitt hustled back to his office, to sit down
with nothing much to do except see that the staff looked as
though they were hustling.
