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Babbitt
to keep these damn foreigners out of the country. Thank
the Lord, were putting a limit on immigration. These
Dagoes and Hunkies have got to learn that this is a white
mans country, and they aint wanted here. When weve
assimilated the foreigners we got here now and learned
em the principles of Americanism and turned em into
regular folks, why then maybe well let in a few more.
You bet. Thats a fact, they observed, and passed on
to lighter topics. They rapidly reviewed motor-car prices,
tire-mileage, oil-stocks, fishing, and the prospects for the
wheat-crop in Dakota.
But the fat man was impatient at this waste of time. He
was a veteran traveler and free of illusions. Already he
had asserted that he was an old he-one. He leaned
forward, gathered in their attention by his expression of
sly humor, and grumbled, Oh, hell, boys, lets cut out the
formality and get down to the stories!
They became very lively and intimate.
Paul and the boy vanished. The others slid forward on
the long seat, unbuttoned their vests, thrust their feet up
on the chairs, pulled the stately brass cuspidors nearer,
and ran the green window-shade down on its little trolley,
to shut them in from the uncomfortable strangeness of
night. After each bark of laughter they cried, Say, jever
hear the one about Babbitt was expansive and virile.
When the train stopped at an important station, the four
men walked up and down the cement platform, under the
vast smoky train-shed roof, like a stormy sky, under the
elevated footways, beside crates of ducks and sides of
beef, in the mystery of an unknown city. They strolled
abreast, old friends and well content. At the long-drawn
Alllll aboarrrrrd like a mountain call at dusk they
hastened back into the smoking-compartment, and till two
of the morning continued the droll tales, their eyes damp
with cigar-smoke and laughter. When they parted they
shook hands, and chuckled, Well, sir, its been a great
session. Sorry to bust it up. Mighty glad to met you.
Babbitt lay awake in the close hot tomb of his Pullman
berth, shaking with remembrance of the fat mans limerick
about the lady who wished to be wild. He raised the
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Sinclair Lewis
shade; he lay with a puffy arm tucked between his head
and the skimpy pillow, looking out on the sliding silhouettes
of trees, and village lamps like exclamation-points. He was
very happy.
Chapter XI
I
They had four hours in New York between trains. The
one thing Babbitt wished to see was the Pennsylvania
Hotel, which had been built since his last visit. He stared
up at it, muttering, Twenty-two hundred rooms and twentytwo hundred baths! Thats got everything in the world
beat. Lord, their turnover must be well, suppose price of
rooms is four to eight dollars a day, and I suppose maybe
some ten and four times twenty-two hundred-say six
times twenty-two hundred well, anyway, with restaurants
and everything, say summers between eight and fifteen
thousand a day. Every day! I never thought Id see a thing
like that! Some town! Of course the average fellow in
Zenith has got more Individual Initiative than the fourflushers
here, but I got to hand it to New York. Yes, sir, town,
youre all right some ways. Well, old Paulski, I guess
weve seen everything thats worth while. Howll we kill
the rest of the time? Movie?
But Paul desired to see a liner. Always wanted to go
to Europe and, by thunder, I will, too, some day
before I past out, he sighed.
From a rough wharf on the North River they stared at
the stern of the Aquitania and her stacks and wireless
antenna lifted above the dock-house which shut her in.
By golly, Babbitt droned, wouldnt be so bad to go
over to the Old Country and take a squint at all these
ruins, and the place where Shakespeare was born. And
think of being able to order a drink whenever you
wanted one! Just range up to a bar and holler out loud,
Gimme a cocktail, and darn the police! Not bad at all.
What juh like to see, over there, Paulibus?
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Babbitt
Paul did not answer. Babbitt turned. Paul was standing
with clenched fists, head drooping, staring at the liner
as in terror. His thin body, seen against the summerglaring planks of the wharf, was childishly meager.
Again, What would you hit for on the other side,
Paul?
Scowling at the steamer, his breast heaving, Paul
whispered, Oh, my God! While Babbitt watched him
anxiously he snapped, Come on, lets get out of this,
and hastened down the wharf, not looking back.
Thats funny, considered Babbitt. The boy didnt
care for seeing the ocean boats after all. I thought hed
be interested in em.
II
Though he exulted, and made sage speculations about
locomotive horse-power, as their train climbed the Maine
mountain-ridge and from the summit he looked down the
shining way among the pines; though he remarked, Well,
by golly! when he discovered that the station at
Katadumcook, the end of the line, was an aged freight-car;
Babbitts moment of impassioned release came when they
sat on a tiny wharf on Lake Sunasquam, awaiting the
launch from the hotel. A raft had floated down the lake;
between the logs and the shore, the water was transparent,
thin-looking, flashing with minnows. A guide in black felt
hat with trout-flies in the band, and flannel shirt of a
peculiarly daring blue, sat on a log and whittled and was
silent. A dog, a good country dog, black and woolly gray,
a dog rich in leisure and in meditation, scratched and
grunted and slept. The thick sunlight was lavish on the
bright water, on the rim of gold-green balsam boughs, the
silver birches and tropic ferns, and across the lake it
burned on the sturdy shoulders of the mountains. Over
everything was a holy peace.
Silent, they loafed on the edge of the wharf, swinging
their legs above the water. The immense tenderness of the
place sank into Babbitt, and he murmured, Id just like to
sit here the rest of my life and whittle and sit. And
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Sinclair Lewis
never hear a typewriter. Or Stan Graff fussing in the
phone. Or Rone and Ted scrapping. Just sit. Gosh!
He patted Pauls shoulder. How does it strike you,
old snoozer?
Oh, its darn good, Georgie. Theres something sort of
eternal about it.
For once, Babbitt understood him.
III
Their launch rounded the bend; at the head of the lake,
under a mountain slope, they saw the little central diningshack of their hotel and the crescent of squat log cottages
which served as bedrooms. They landed, and endured the
critical examination of the habitues who had been at the
hotel for a whole week. In their cottage, with its high
stone fireplace, they hastened, as Babbitt expressed it, to
get into some regular he-togs. They came out; Paul in an
old gray suit and soft white shirt; Babbitt in khaki shirt
and vast and flapping khaki trousers. It was excessively
new khaki; his rimless spectacles belonged to a city office;
and his face was not tanned but a city pink. He made a
discordant noise in the place. But with infinite satisfaction
he slapped his legs and crowed, Say, this is getting back
home, eh?
They stood on the wharf before the hotel. He winked
at Paul and drew from his back pocket a plug of chewingtobacco, a vulgarism forbidden in the Babbitt home. He
took a chew, beaming and wagging his head as he tugged
at it. Um! Um! Maybe I havent been hungry for a wad of
eating-tobacco! Have some?
They looked at each other in a grin of understanding.
Paul took the plug, gnawed at it. They stood quiet, their
jaws working. They solemnly spat, one after the other, into
the placid water. They stretched voluptuously, with lifted
arms and arched backs. From beyond the mountains came
the shuffling sound of a far-off train. A trout leaped, and
fell back in a silver circle. They sighed together.
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Babbitt
IV
They had a week before their families came. Each
evening they planned to get up early and fish before
breakfast. Each morning they lay abed till the breakfastbell, pleasantly conscious that there were no efficient
wives to rouse them. The mornings were cold; the fire was
kindly as they dressed.
Paul was distressingly clean, but Babbitt reveled in a
good sound dirtiness, in not having to shave till his spirit
was moved to it. He treasured every grease spot and fishscale on his new khaki trousers.
All morning they fished unenergetically, or tramped the
dim and aqueous-lighted trails among rank ferns and moss
sprinkled with crimson bells. They slept all afternoon, and
till midnight played stud-poker with the guides. Poker was
a serious business to the guides. They did not gossip; they
shuffled the thick greasy cards with a deft ferocity menacing
to the sports; and Joe Paradise, king of guides, was
sarcastic to loiterers who halted the game even to scratch.
At midnight, as Paul and he blundered to their cottage
over the pungent wet grass, and pine-roots confusing in
the darkness, Babbitt rejoiced that he did not have to
explain to his wife where he had been all evening.
They did not talk much. The nervous loquacity and
opinionation of the Zenith Athletic Club dropped from
them. But when they did talk they slipped into the naive
intimacy of college days. Once they drew their canoe up
to the bank of Sunasquam Water, a stream walled in by
the dense green of the hardhack. The sun roared on the
green jungle but in the shade was sleepy peace, and the
water was golden and rippling. Babbitt drew his hand
through the cool flood, and mused:
We never thought wed come to Maine together!
No. Weve never done anything the way we thought
we would. I expected to live in Germany with my granddads
people, and study the fiddle.
Thats so. And remember how I wanted to be a lawyer
and go into politics? I still think I might have made a go
of it. Ive kind of got the gift of the gab anyway, I can
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Sinclair Lewis
think on my feet, and make some kind of a spiel on most
anything, and of course thats the thing you need in
politics. By golly, Teds going to law-school, even if I
didnt! Well I guess its worked out all right. Myras been
a fine wife. And Zilla means well, Paulibus.
Yes. Up here, I figure out all sorts of plans to keep her
amused. I kind of feel life is going to be different, now
that were getting a good rest and can go back and start
over again.
I hope so, old boy. Shyly: Say, gosh, its been awful
nice to sit around and loaf and gamble and act regular,
with you along, you old horse-thief!
Well, you know what it means to me, Georgie. Saved
my life.
The shame of emotion overpowered them; they cursed
a little, to prove they were good rough fellows; and in a
mellow silence, Babbitt whistling while Paul hummed,
they paddled back to the hotel.
V
Though it was Paul who had seemed overwrought,
Babbitt who had been the protecting big brother, Paul
became clear-eyed and merry, while Babbitt sank into
irritability. He uncovered layer on layer of hidden weariness.
At first he had played nimble jester to Paul and for him
sought amusements; by the end of the week Paul was
nurse, and Babbitt accepted favors with the condescension
one always shows a patient nurse.
The day before their families arrived, the women
guests at the hotel bubbled, Oh, isnt it nice! You must
be so excited; and the proprieties compelled Babbitt and
Paul to look excited. But they went to bed early and
grumpy.
When Myra appeared she said at once, Now, we want
you boys to go on playing around just as if we werent
here.
The first evening, he stayed out for poker with the
guides, and she said in placid merriment, My! Youre a
regular bad one! The second evening, she groaned sleepily,
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Babbitt
Good heavens, are you going to be out every single
night? The third evening, he didnt play poker.
He was tired now in every cell. Funny! Vacation
doesnt seem to have done me a bit of good, he lamented.
Pauls frisky as a colt, but I swear, Im crankier and
nervouser than when I came up here.
He had three weeks of Maine. At the end of the second
week he began to feel calm, and interested in life. He
planned an expedition to climb Sachem Mountain, and
wanted to camp overnight at Box Car Pond. He was
curiously weak, yet cheerful, as though he had cleansed
his veins of poisonous energy and was filling them with
wholesome blood.
He ceased to be irritated by Teds infatuation with a
waitress (his seventh tragic affair this year); he played
catch with Ted, and with pride taught him to cast a fly in
the pine-shadowed silence of Skowtuit Pond.
At the end he sighed, Hang it, Im just beginning to
enjoy my vacation. But, well, I feel a lot better. And its
going to be one great year! Maybe the Real Estate Board
will elect me president, instead of some fuzzy old-fashioned
faker like Chan Mott.
On the way home, whenever he went into the smokingcompartment he felt guilty at deserting his wife and angry
at being expected to feel guilty, but each time he triumphed,
Oh, this is going to be a great year, a great old year!
Chapter XII
I
All the way home from Maine, Babbitt was certain that
he was a changed man. He was converted to serenity. He
was going to cease worrying about business. He was
going to have more interests theaters, public affairs,
reading. And suddenly, as he finished an especially heavy
cigar, he was going to stop smoking.
He invented a new and perfect method. He would buy
no tobacco; he would depend on borrowing it; and, of
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Sinclair Lewis
course, he would be ashamed to borrow often. In a spasm
of righteousness he flung his cigar-case out of the smokingcompartment window. He went back and was kind to his
wife about nothing in particular; he admired his own
purity, and decided, Absolutely simple. Just a matter of
will-power. He started a magazine serial about a scientific
detective. Ten miles on, he was conscious that he desired
to smoke. He ducked his head, like a turtle going into its
shell; he appeared uneasy; he skipped two pages in his
story and didnt know it. Five miles later, he leaped up
and sought the porter. Say, uh, George, have you got a
The porter looked patient. Have you got a time-table?
Babbitt finished. At the next stop he went out and bought
a cigar. Since it was to be his last before he reached
Zenith, he finished it down to an inch stub.
Four days later he again remembered that he had
stopped smoking, but he was too busy catching up with
his office-work to keep it remembered.
II
Baseball, he determined, would be an excellent hobby.
No sense a mans working his fool head off. Im 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 bulletinboard. 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 hadnt, in twenty-five years, himself played any
baseball except back-lot catch with Ted very gentle, and
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Babbitt
strictly limited to ten minutes. But the game was a custom
of his clan, and it gave outlet for the homicidal and sidestaking 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 hustlings 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.
III
Every Saturday afternoon he hustled out to his country
club and hustled through nine holes of golf as a rest after
the weeks hustle.
In Zenith it was as necessary for a Successful Man to
belong to a country club as it was to wear a linen collar.
Babbitts was the Outing Golf and Country Club, a pleasant
gray-shingled building with a broad porch, on a daisystarred cliff above Lake Kennepoose. There was another,
the Tonawanda Country Club, to which belonged Charles
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Sinclair Lewis
McKelvey, Horace Updike, and the other rich men who
lunched not at the Athletic but at the Union Club. Babbitt
explained with frequency, You couldnt hire me to join
the Tonawanda, even if I did have a hundred and eighty
bucks to throw away on the initiation fee. At the Outing
weve got a bunch of real human fellows, and the finest
lot of little women in town just as good at joshing as the
men but at the Tonawanda theres nothing but these
would-bes in New York get-ups, drinking tea! Too much
dog altogether. Why, I wouldnt join the Tonawanda even
if they I wouldnt join it on a bet!
When he had played four or five holes, he relaxed a
bit, his tobacco-fluttering heart beat more normally, and
his voice slowed to the drawling of his hundred generations
of peasant ancestors.
IV
At least once a week Mr and Mrs Babbitt and Tinka
went to the movies. Their favorite motion-picture theater
was the Chateau, which held three thousand spectators
and had an orchestra of fifty pieces which played
Arrangements from the Operas and suites portraying a
Day on the Farm, or a Four-alarm Fire. In the stone
rotunda, decorated with crown-embroidered velvet chairs
and almost medieval tapestries, parrakeets sat on gilded
lotos columns.
With exclamations of Well, by golly! and You got to
go some to beat this dump! Babbitt admired the Chateau.
As he stared across the thousands of heads, a gray plain
in the dimness, as he smelled good clothes and mild
perfume and chewing-gum, he felt as when he had first
seen a mountain and realized how very, very much earth
and rock there was in it.
He liked three kinds of films: pretty bathing girls
with bare legs; policemen or cowboys and an industrious
shooting of revolvers; and funny fat men who ate
spaghetti. He chuckled with immense, moist-eyed
sentimentality at interludes portraying puppies, kittens,
and chubby babies; and he wept at deathbeds and old
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