III
He stopped to inform Howard Littlefield, his scholarly neighbor,
that though the day had been springlike the evening might
be cold. He went in to shout "Where are you?'' at his wife,
with no very definite desire to know where she was. He
examined the lawn to see whether the furnace-man had raked
it properly. With some satisfaction and a good deal of discussion
of the matter with Mrs. Babbitt, Ted, and Howard Littlefield,
he concluded that the furnace-man had not raked it
properly. He cut two tufts of wild grass with his wife's largest
dressmaking-scissors; he informed Ted that it was all
nonsense having a furnace-man—"big husky fellow like you
ought to do all the work around the house;'' and privately he
meditated that it was agreeable to have it known throughout
the neighborhood that he was so prosperous that his son never
worked around the house.
He stood on the sleeping-porch and did his day's exercises:
arms out sidewise for two minutes, up for two minutes, while
he muttered, "Ought take more exercise; keep in shape;''
then went in to see whether his collar needed changing before
dinner. As usual it apparently did not.
The Lettish-Croat maid, a powerful woman, beat the dinner-gong.
The roast of beef, roasted potatoes, and string beans were
excellent this evening and, after an adequate sketch of the
day's progressive weather-states, his four-hundred-and-fifty-dollar
fee, his lunch with Paul Riesling, and the proven merits
of the new cigar-lighter, he was moved to a benign, "Sort
o' thinking about buyin, a new car. Don't believe we'll get
one till next year, but still we might.''
Verona, the older daughter, cried, "Oh, Dad, if you do, why
don't you get a sedan? That would be perfectly slick! A
closed car is so much more comfy than an open one.''
"Well now, I don't know about that. I kind of like an open
car. You get more fresh air that way.''
"Oh, shoot, that's just because you never tried a sedan.
Let's get one. It's got a lot more class,'' said Ted.
"A closed car does keep the clothes nicer,'' from Mrs. Babbitt;
"You don't get your hair blown all to pieces,'' from Verona;
"It's a lot sportier,'' from Ted; and from Tinka, the
youngest, "Oh, let's have a sedan! Mary Ellen's father has
got one.'' Ted wound up, "Oh, everybody's got a closed car
now, except us!''
Babbitt faced them: "I guess you got nothing very terrible
to complain about! Anyway, I don't keep a car just to enable
you children to look like millionaires! And I like an open car,
so you can put the top down on summer evenings and go out
for a drive and get some good fresh air. Besides— A closed
car costs more money.''
"Aw, gee whiz, if the Doppelbraus can afford a closed car,
I guess we can!'' prodded Ted.
"Humph! I make eight thousand a year to his seven! But
I don't blow it all in and waste it and throw it around, the
way he does! Don't believe in this business of going and
spending a whole lot of money to show off and—''
They went, with ardor and some thoroughness, into the matters
of streamline bodies, hill-climbing power, wire wheels,
chrome steel, ignition systems, and body colors. It was much
more than a study of transportation. It was an aspiration
for knightly rank. In the city of Zenith, in the barbarous
twentieth century, a family's motor indicated its social rank
as precisely as the grades of the peerage determined the rank
of an English family—indeed, more precisely, considering the
opinion of old county families upon newly created brewery
barons and woolen-mill viscounts. The details of precedence
were never officially determined. There was no court to decide
whether the second son of a Pierce Arrow limousine should
go in to dinner before the first son of a Buick roadster, but
of their respective social importance there was no doubt; and
where Babbitt as a boy had aspired to the presidency, his son
Ted aspired to a Packard twin-six and an established position
in the motored gentry.
The favor which Babbitt had won from his family by speaking
of a new car evaporated as they realized that he didn't
intend to buy one this year. Ted lamented, "Oh, punk! The
old boat looks as if it'd had fleas and been scratching its varnish
off.'' Mrs. Babbitt said abstractedly, "Snoway talkcher
father.'' Babbitt raged, "If you're too much of a high-class
gentleman, and you belong to the bon ton and so on, why,
you needn't take the car out this evening.'' Ted explained,
"I didn't mean—'' and dinner dragged on with normal domestic
delight to the inevitable point at which Babbitt protested,
"Come, come now, we can't sit here all evening. Give the
girl a chance to clear away the table.''
He was fretting, "What a family! I don't know how we
all get to scrapping this way. Like to go off some place and
be able to hear myself think.... Paul ... Maine ...
Wear old pants, and loaf, and cuss.'' He said cautiously to
his wife, "I've been in correspondence with a man in New York
—wants me to see him about a real-estate trade—may not
come off till summer. Hope it doesn't break just when we
and the Rieslings get ready to go to Maine. Be a shame if
we couldn't make the trip there together. Well, no use worrying
now.''
Verona escaped, immediately after dinner, with no discussion
save an automatic "Why don't you ever stay home?''
from Babbitt.
In the living-room, in a corner of the davenport, Ted settled
down to his Home Study; plain geometry, Cicero, and the
agonizing metaphors of Comus.
"I don't see why they give us this old-fashioned junk by
Milton and Shakespeare and Wordsworth and all these has-beens,''
he protested. "Oh, I guess I could stand it to see a
show by Shakespeare, if they had swell scenery and put on a
lot of dog, but to sit down in cold blood and read'em—
These teachers—how do they get that way?''
Mrs. Babbitt, darning socks, speculated, "Yes, I wonder why.
Of course I don't want to fly in the face of the professors and
everybody, but I do think there's things in Shakespeare—not
that I read him much, but when I was young the girls used to
show me passages that weren't, really, they weren't at all nice.''
Babbitt looked up irritably from the comic strips in the
Evening Advocate. They composed his favorite literature and
art, these illustrated chronicles in which Mr. Mutt hit Mr.
Jeff with a rotten egg, and Mother corrected Father's vulgarisms
by means of a rolling-pin. With the solemn face of a
devotee, breathing heavily through his open mouth, he plodded
nightly through every picture, and during the rite he detested
interruptions. Furthermore, he felt that on the subject of
Shakespeare he wasn't really an authority. Neither the
Advocate-Times, the Evening Advocate, nor the Bulletin of the
Zenith Chamber of Commerce had ever had an editorial on
the matter, and until one of them had spoken he found it hard
to form an original opinion. But even at risk of floundering
in strange bogs, he could not keep out of an open controversy.
"I'll tell you why you have to study Shakespeare and those.
It's because they're required for college entrance, and that's
all there is to it! Personally, I don't see myself why they
stuck 'em into an up-to-date high-school system like we have
in this state. Be a good deal better if you took Business English,
and learned how to write an ad, or letters that would pull.
But there it is, and there's no tall, argument, or discussion
about it! Trouble with you, Ted, is you always want to do
something different! If you're going to law-school—and you
are!—I never had a chance to, but I'll see that you do—
why, you'll want to lay in all the English and Latin you
can get.''
"Oh punk. I don't see what's the use of law-school—or
even finishing high school. I don't want to go to college 'specially.
Honest, there's lot of fellows that have graduated from
colleges that don't begin to make as much money as fellows
that went to work early. Old Shimmy Peters, that teaches
Latin in the High, he's a what-is-it from Columbia and he sits
up all night reading a lot of greasy books and he's always
spieling about the `value of languages,' and the poor soak
doesn't make but eighteen hundred a year, and no traveling
salesman would think of working for that. I know what I'd
like to do. I'd like to be an aviator, or own a corking big
garage, or else—a fellow was telling me about it yesterday—
I'd like to be one of these fellows that the Standard Oil Company
sends out to China, and you live in a compound and
don't have to do any work, and you get to see the world and
pagodas and the ocean and everything! And then I could
take up correspondence-courses. That's the real stuff! You
don't have to recite to some frosty-faced old dame that's trying
to show off to the principal, and you can study any subject
you want to. Just listen to these! I clipped out the ads of
some swell courses.''
He snatched from the back of his geometry half a hundred
advertisements of those home-study courses which the energy
and foresight of American commerce have contributed to the
science of education. The first displayed the portrait of a
young man with a pure brow, an iron jaw, silk socks, and hair
like patent leather. Standing with one hand in his trousers-pocket and the other extended with chiding forefinger, he was
bewitching an audience of men with gray beards, paunches,
bald heads, and every other sign of wisdom and prosperity.
Above the picture was an inspiring educational symbol—no
antiquated lamp or torch or owl of Minerva, but a row of dollar
signs. The text ran:
$ $ $ $ $ $ $ $ $
POWER AND PROSPERITY IN PUBLIC SPEAKING
A Yarn Told at the Club
Who do you think I ran into the other evening at the De Luxe
Restaurant? Why, old Freddy Durkee, that used to be a dead
or-alive shipping clerk in my old place—Mr. Mouse-Man we used
to laughingly call the dear fellow. One time he was so
timid he was plumb scared of the Super, and never got credit
for the dandy work he did. Him
at the De Luxe! And if he wasn't
ordering a tony feed with all the
"fixings'' from celery to nuts! And
instead of being embarrassed by the
waiters, like he used to be at the
little dump where we lunched in
Old Lang Syne, he was bossing them
around like he was a millionaire!
I cautiously asked him what he
was doing. Freddy laughed and
said, "Say, old chum, I guess you're
wondering what's come over me.
You'll be glad to know I'm now
Assistant Super at the old shop, and
right on the High Road to Prosperity
and Domination, and I look
forward with confidence to a twelve-cylinder car, and the wife is making
things hum in the best society and
the kiddies getting a first-class
education.
—
WHAT
WE TEACH
YOU!
How to address your
lodge.
How to give toasts.
How to tell dialect
stories.
How to propose to a
lady.
How to entertain banquets.
How to make convincing
selling-talks.
How to build big vocabulary.
How to create a strong
personality.
How to become a rational,
powerful and
original thinker.
How to be a MASTER
MAN!
—
"Here's how it happened. I ran
across an ad of a course that claimed
to teach people how to talk easily
and on their feet, how to answer
complaints, how to lay a proposition
before the Boss, how to hit a bank
for a loan, how to hold a big audience
spellbound with wit, humor,
anecdote, inspiration, etc. It was
compiled by the Master Orator, Prof.
Waldo F. Peet. I was skeptical, too,
but I wrote (just on a postcard, with
name and address) to the publisher
for the lessons—sent On Trial,
money back if you are not absolutely
satisfied. There were eight
simple lessons in plain language
anybody could understand, and I
studied them just a few hours a
night, then started practising on the
wife. Soon found I could talk right
up to the Super and get due credit
for all the good work I did. They
began to appreciate me and advance
me fast, and say, old doggo, what do you think they're paying me
now? $6,500 per year! And say, I find I can keep a big audience
fascinated, speaking on any topic. As a friend, old boy, I advise
you to send for circular (no obligation) and valuable free Art
Picture to:—
SHORTCUT EDUCATIONAL PUB. CO.
Desk WA . . . .Sandpit, Iowa.
ARE YOU A 100 PERCENTER OR A 10 PERCENTER?
—
PROF. V.. F. PEET
author of the Shortcut
Course in Public-Speaking,
is easily the
foremost figure in practical
literature, psychology
& oratory. A
graduate of some of
our leading universities,
lecturer, extensive traveler,
author of books,
poetry, etc., a man
with the unique
PERSONALITY OF THE
MASTER MINDS, he
is ready to give YOU
all the secrets of his
culture and hammering
Force, in a few
easy lessons that will
not interfere with other
occupations.
—
Babbitt was again without a canon which would enable him
to speak with authority. Nothing in motoring or real estate
had indicated what a Solid Citizen and Regular Fellow ought
to think about culture by mail. He began with hesitation:
"Well—sounds as if it covered the ground. It certainly is a
fine thing to be able to orate. I've sometimes thought I had
a little talent that way myself, and I know darn well that one
reason why a fourflushing old back-number like Chan Mott
can get away with it in real estate is just because he can make
a good talk, even when he hasn't got a doggone thing to say!
And it certainly is pretty cute the way they get out all these
courses on various topics and subjects nowadays. I'll tell
you, though: No need to blow in a lot of good money on this
stuff when you can get a first-rate course in eloquence and
English and all that right in your own school—and one of the
biggest school buildings in the entire country!''
"That's so,'' said Mrs. Babbitt comfortably, while Ted complained:
"Yuh, but Dad, they just teach a lot of old junk that isn't
any practical use—except the manual training and typewriting
and basketball and dancing—and in these correspondence-courses,
gee, you can get all kinds of stuff that would come in
handy. Say, listen to this one:
CAN YOU PLAY A MAN'S PART?
If you are walking with your mother, sister or best
girl and some one passes a slighting remark or uses
improper language, won't you be ashamed if you can't
take her part? Well, can you?
We teach boxing and self-defense by mail. Many
pupils have written saying that after a few lessons
they've outboxed bigger and heavier opponents. The
lessons start with simple movements practised before
your mirror—holding out your hand for a coin, the
breast-stroke in swimming, etc. Before you realize it
you are striking scientifically, ducking, guarding and
feinting, just as if you had a real opponent before you.
"Oh, baby, maybe I wouldn't like that!'' Ted chanted. "I'll
tell the world! Gosh, I'd like to take one fellow I know in
school that's always shooting off his mouth, and catch him
alone—''
"Nonsense! The idea! Most useless thing I ever heard
of!'' Babbitt fulminated.
"Well, just suppose I was walking with Mama or Rone,
and somebody passed a slighting remark or used improper
language. What would I do?''
"Why, you'd probably bust the record for the hundred-yard
dash!''
"I would not! I'd stand right up to any
mucker that passed
a slighting remark on my sister and I'd show
him—''
"Look here, young Dempsey! If I ever catch you fighting
I'll whale the everlasting daylights out of you—and I'll do it
without practising holding out my hand for a coin before the
mirror, too!''
"Why, Ted dear,'' Mrs. Babbitt said placidly, "it's not at
all nice, your talking of fighting this way!''
"Well, gosh almighty, that's a fine way to appreciate— And
then suppose I was walking with you, Ma, and
somebody
passed a slighting remark—''
"Nobody's going to pass no slighting remarks on nobody,''
Babbitt observed, "not if they stay home and study their
geometry and mind their own affairs instead of hanging around
a lot of poolrooms and soda-fountains and places where nobody's
got any business to be!''
"But gooooooosh, Dad, if they DID!''
Mrs. Babbitt chirped, "Well, if they did, I wouldn't do them
the honor of paying any attention to them! Besides, they
never do. You always hear about these women that get followed
and insulted and all, but I don't believe a word of it, or
it's their own fault, the way some women look at a person. I
certainly never 've been insulted by—''
"Aw shoot. Mother, just suppose you weresometime! Just
suppose! Can't you suppose something? Can't you
imagine
things?''
"Certainly I can imagine things! The idea!''
"Certainly your mother can imagine things—and suppose
things! Think you're the only member of this household that's
got an imagination?'' Babbitt demanded. "But what's the use
of a lot of supposing? Supposing never gets you anywhere.
No sense supposing when there's a lot of real facts to take into
considera—''
"Look here, Dad. Suppose—I mean, just—just suppose you
were in your office and some rival real-estate man—''
"Realtor!''
"—some realtor that you hated came in—''
"I don't hate any realtor.''
"But suppose you did!''
"I don't intend to suppose anything of the kind! There's
plenty of fellows in my profession that stoop and hate their
competitors, but if you were a little older and understood business,
instead of always going to the movies and running around
with a lot of fool girls with their dresses up to their knees and
powdered and painted and rouged and God knows what all
as if they were chorus-girls, then you'd know—and you'd suppose—
that if there's any one thing that I stand for in the real-estate
circles of Zenith, it is that we ought to always speak
of each other only in the friendliest terms and institute a spirit
of brotherhood and coöperation, and so I certainly can't suppose
and I can't imagine my hating any realtor, not even that
dirty, fourflushing society sneak, Cecil Rountree!''
"But—''
"And there's no If, And or But about it! But if I
were
going to lambaste somebody, I wouldn't require any fancy
ducks or swimming-strokes before a mirror, or any of these
doodads and flipflops! Suppose you were out some place and
a fellow called you vile names. Think you'd want to box and
jump around like a dancing-master? You'd just lay him out
cold (at least I certainly hope any son of mine would!) and
then you'd dust off your hands and go on about your business,
and that's all there is to it, and you aren't going to have any
boxing-lessons by mail, either!''
"Well but— Yes— I just wanted to show how many different
kinds of correspondence-courses there are, instead of all
the camembert they teach us in the High.''
"But I thought they taught boxing in the school gymnasium.''
"That's different. They stick you up there and some big
stiff amuses himself pounding the stuffin's out of you before
you have a chance to learn. Hunka! Not any! But anyway—
Listen to some of these others.''
The advertisements were truly philanthropic. One of them
bore the rousing headline: "Money! Money!! Money!!!''
The second announced that "Mr. P. R., formerly making only
eighteen a week in a barber shop, writes to us that since taking
our course he is now pulling down $5,000 as an Osteo-vitalic
Physician;'' and the third that "Miss J. L., recently a wrapper
in a store, is now getting Ten Real Dollars a day teaching our
Hindu System of Vibratory Breathing and Mental Control.''
Ted had collected fifty or sixty announcements, from annual
reference-books, from Sunday School periodicals, fiction-magazines,
and journals of discussion. One benefactor implored,
"Don't be a Wallflower—Be More Popular and Make More
Money—You Can Ukulele or Sing Yourself into
Society! By
the secret principles of a Newly Discovered System of Music
Teaching, any one—man, lady or child—can, without tiresome
exercises, special training or long drawn out study, and without
waste of time, money or energy, learn to play by note,
piano, banjo, cornet, clarinet, saxophone, violin or drum, and
learn sight-singing.''
The next, under the wistful appeal "Finger Print Detectives
Wanted—Big Incomes!'' confided: "YOU red-blooded men
and women—this is the PROFESSION you have been looking
for. There's MONEY in it, BIG money, and that rapid change
of scene, that entrancing and compelling interest and fascination,
which your active mind and adventurous spirit crave.
Think of being the chief figure and directing factor in solving
strange mysteries and baffling crimes. This wonderful
profession brings you into contact with influential men on
the basis of equality, and often calls upon you to travel
everywhere, maybe to distant lands—all expenses paid. NO SPECIAL
EDUCATION REQUIRED.''
"Oh, boy! I guess that wins the fire-brick necklace!
Wouldn't it be swell to travel everywhere and nab some
famous crook!'' whooped Ted.
"Well, I don't think much of that. Doggone likely to get
hurt. Still, that music-study stunt might be pretty fair,
though. There's no reason why, if efficiency-experts put their
minds to it the way they have to routing products in a factory,
they couldn't figure out some scheme so a person wouldn't
have to monkey with all this practising and exercises that you
get in music.'' Babbitt was impressed, and he had a delightful
parental feeling that they two, the men of the family, understood
each other.
He listened to the notices of mail-box universities which
taught Short-story Writing and Improving the Memory, Motion-picture-acting
and Developing the Soul-power, Banking
and Spanish, Chiropody and Photography, Electrical Engineering
and Window-trimming, Poultry-raising and Chemistry.
"Well—well—'' Babbitt sought for adequate expression of
his admiration. "I'm a son of a gun! I knew this correspondence-school
business had become a mighty profitable game—
makes suburban real-estate look like two cents!—but I didn't
realize it'd got to be such a reg'lar key-industry! Must rank
right up with groceries and movies. Always figured somebody'd
come along with the brains to not leave education to a lot of
bookworms and impractical theorists but make a big thing out
of it. Yes, I can see how a lot of these courses might interest
you. I must ask the fellows at the Athletic if they ever realized—
But same time, Ted, you know how advertisers, I
means some advertisers, exaggerate. I don't know as they'd
be able to jam you through these courses as fast as they claim
they can.''
"Oh sure, Dad; of course.'' Ted had the immense and joyful
maturity of a boy who is respectfully listened to by his
elders. Babbitt concentrated on him with grateful affection:
"I can see what an influence these courses might have on the
whole educational works. Course I'd never admit it publicly—
fellow like myself, a State U. graduate, it's only decent
and patriotic for him to blow his horn and boost the Alma
Mater—but smatter of fact, there's a whole lot of valuable
time lost even at the U., studying poetry and French and subjects
that never brought in anybody a cent. I don't know but
what maybe these correspondence-courses might prove to be
one of the most important American inventions.
"Trouble with a lot of folks is: they're so blame material;
they don't see the spiritual and mental side of American supremacy;
they think that inventions like the telephone and
the areoplane and wireless—no, that was a Wop invention,
but anyway: they think these mechanical improvements are all
that we stand for; whereas to a real thinker, he sees that spiritual
and, uh, dominating movements like Efficiency, and Rotarianism,
and Prohibition, and Democracy are what compose
our deepest and truest wealth. And maybe this new
principle in education-at-home may be another—may be another
factor. I tell you, Ted, we've got to have Vision—''
"I think those correspondence-courses are terrible!''
The philosophers gasped. It was Mrs. Babbitt who had
made this discord in their spiritual harmony, and one of Mrs.
Babbitt's virtues was that, except during dinner-parties, when
she was transformed into a raging hostess, she took care of
the house and didn't bother the males by thinking. She went
on firmly:
"It sounds awful to me, the way they coax those poor young
folks to think they're learning something, and nobody 'round
to help them and— You two learn so quick, but me, I always
was slow. But just the same—''
Babbitt attended to her: "Nonsense! Get just as much,
studying at home. You don't think a fellow learns any more
because he blows in his father's hard-earned money and sits
around in Morris chairs in a swell Harvard dormitory with
pictures and shields and table-covers and those doodads, do
you? I tell you, I'm a college man—I know! There
is one
objection you might make though. I certainly do protest
against any effort to get a lot of fellows out of barber shops
and factories into the professions. They're too crowded
already, and what'll we do for workmen if all those fellows
go and get educated?''
Ted was leaning back, smoking a cigarette without reproof.
He was, for the moment, sharing the high thin air of Babbitt's
speculation as though he were Paul Riesling or even Dr. Howard
Littlefield. He hinted:
"Well, what do you think then, Dad? Wouldn't it be
a good idea if I could go off to China or some peppy place,
and study engineering or something by mail?''
"No, and I'll tell you why, son. I've found out it's a mighty
nice thing to be able to say you're a B.A. Some client that
doesn't know what you are and thinks you're just a plug business
man, he gets to shooting off his mouth about economics
or literature or foreign trade conditions, and you just ease in
something like, `When I was in college—course I got my B.A.
in sociology and all that junk—' Oh, it puts an awful crimp
in their style! But there wouldn't be any class to saying `I
got the degree of Stamp-licker from the Bezuzus Mail-order
University! ' You see— My dad was a pretty good old coot,
but he never had much style to him, and I had to work darn
hard to earn my way through college. Well, it's been worth it,
to be able to associate with the finest gentlemen in Zenith,
at the clubs and so on, and I wouldn't want you to drop out
of the gentlemen class—the class that are just as red-blooded
as the Common People but still have power and personality.
It would kind of hurt me if you did that, old man!''
"I know, Dad! Sure! All right. I'll stick to it. Say!
Gosh! Gee whiz! I forgot all about those kids I was going
to take to the chorus rehearsal. I'll have to duck!''
"But you haven't done all your home-work.''
"Do it first thing in the morning.''
"Well—''
Six times in the past sixty days Babbitt had stormed, "You
will not `do it first thing in the morning'! You'll do it right
now!'' but to-night he said, "Well, better hustle,'' and his
smile was the rare shy radiance he kept for Paul Riesling.