I
HIS march to greatness was not without disastrous stumbling.
Fame did not bring the social advancement which the Babbitts
deserved. They were not asked to join the Tonawanda
Country Club nor invited to the dances at the Union. Himself,
Babbitt fretted, he didn't "care a fat hoot for all these
highrollers, but the wife would kind of like to be Among Those
Present.'' He nervously awaited his university class-dinner
and an evening of furious intimacy with such social leaders as
Charles McKelvey the millionaire contractor, Max Kruger
the banker, Irving Tate the tool-manufacturer, and Adelbert
Dobson the fashionable interior decorator. Theoretically he
was their friend, as he had been in college, and when he encountered
them they still called him "Georgie,'' but he didn't
seem to encounter them often, and they never invited him to
dinner (with champagne and a butler) at their houses on
Royal Ridge.
All the week before the class-dinner he thought of them.
"No reason why we shouldn't become real chummy now!''