Babbit by Sinclair Lewis Read Free Book Online Page A

choirs
and was merry at home over games of Hearts and Old Maid. He had a
tenor voice, wavy chestnut hair, and a mustache like a camel's-hair
brush. Babbitt considered it excusable in a family-man to growl,
"Seen this new picture of the kid - husky little devil, eh?" but
Laylock's domestic confidences were as bubbling as a girl's.
      "Say, I think I got a peach of an ad for the Glen,
Mr. Babbitt. Why don't we try something in poetry? Honest, it'd
have wonderful pulling-power. Listen:
      'Mid pleasures and palaces, Wherever you may roam,
You just provide the little bride And we'll provide the home.
      Do you get it? See - like 'Home Sweet Home.' Don't
you - "
      "Yes, yes, yes, hell yes, of course I get it. But -
Oh, I think we'd better use something more dignified and forceful,
like 'We lead, others follow,' or 'Eventually, why not now?' Course
I believe in using poetry and humor and all that junk when it turns
the trick, but with a high-class restricted development like the
Glen we better stick to the more dignified approach, see how I
mean? Well, I guess that's all, this morning, Chet."
      II
      By a tragedy familiar to the world of art, the April
enthusiasm of Chet Laylock served only to stimulate the talent of
the older craftsman, George F. Babbitt. He grumbled to Stanley
Graff, "That tan-colored voice of Chet's gets on my nerves," yet he
was aroused and in one swoop he wrote:
      DO YOU RESPECT YOUR LOVED ONES?
      When the last sad rites of bereavement are over, do
you know for certain that you have done your best for the Departed?
You haven't unless they lie in the Cemetery Beautiful LINDEN LANE
the only strictly up-to-date burial place in or near Zenith, where
exquisitely gardened plots look from daisy-dotted hill-slopes
across the smiling fields of Dorchester.
      Sole agents BABBITT-THOMPSON REALTY COMPANY Reeves
Building
      He rejoiced, "I guess that'll show Chan Mott and his
weedy old Wildwood Cemetery something about modern
merchandizing!"
      III
      He sent Mat Penniman to the recorder's office to dig
out the names of the owners of houses which were displaying For
Rent signs of other brokers; he talked to a man who desired to
lease a store-building for a pool-room; he ran over the list of
home-leases which were about to expire; he sent Thomas Bywaters, a
street-car conductor who played at real estate in spare time, to
call on side-street "prospects" who were unworthy the strategies of
Stanley Graff. But he had spent his credulous excitement of
creation, and these routine details annoyed him. One moment of
heroism he had, in discovering a new way of stopping smoking.
      He stopped smoking at least once a month. He went
through with it like the solid citizen he was: admitted the evils
of tobacco, courageously made resolves, laid out plans to check the
vice, tapered off his allowance of cigars, and expounded the
pleasures of virtuousness to every one he met. He did everything,
in fact, except stop smoking.
      Two months before, by ruling out a schedule, noting
down the hour and minute of each smoke, and ecstatically increasing
the intervals between smokes, he had brought himself down to three
cigars a day. Then he had lost the schedule.
      A week ago he had invented a system of leaving his
cigar-case and cigarette-box in an unused drawer at the bottom of
the correspondence-file, in the outer office. "I'll just naturally
be ashamed to go poking in there all day long, making a fool of
myself before my own employees!" he reasoned. By the end of three
days he was trained to leave his desk, walk to the file, take out
and light a cigar, without knowing that he was doing it.
      This morning it was revealed to him that it had been
too easy to open the file. Lock it, that was the thing! Inspired,
he rushed out and locked up his cigars, his cigarettes, and even
his box of safety matches; and the key to the file drawer he hid in
his desk. But the crusading passion of it made him so
tobacco-hungry