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traffic than it would have taken to walk the three
and a half blocks to the club.
      II
      As he drove he glanced with the fondness of
familiarity at the buildings.
      A stranger suddenly dropped into the business-center
of Zenith could not have told whether he was in a city of Oregon or
Georgia, Ohio or Maine, Oklahoma or Manitoba. But to Babbitt every
inch was individual and stirring. As always he noted that the
California Building across the way was three stories lower,
therefore three stories less beautiful, than his own Reeves
Building. As always when he passed the Parthenon Shoe Shine Parlor,
a one-story hut which beside the granite and red-brick
ponderousness of the old California Building resembled a bath-house
under a cliff, he commented, "Gosh, ought to get my shoes shined
this afternoon. Keep forgetting it." At the Simplex Office
Furniture Shop, the National Cash Register Agency, he yearned for a
dictaphone, for a typewriter which would add and multiply, as a
poet yearns for quartos or a physician for radium.
      At the Nobby Men's Wear Shop he took his left hand
off the steering-wheel to touch his scarf, and thought well of
himself as one who bought expensive ties "and could pay cash for
'em, too, by golly;" and at the United Cigar Store, with its
crimson and gold alertness, he reflected, "Wonder if I need some
cigars - idiot - plumb forgot - going t' cut down my fool smoking."
He looked at his bank, the Miners' and Drovers' National, and
considered how clever and solid he was to bank with so marbled an
establishment. His high moment came in the clash of traffic when he
was halted at the corner beneath the lofty Second National Tower.
His car was banked with four others in a line of steel restless as
cavalry, while the cross town traffic, limousines and enormous
moving-vans and insistent motor-cycles, poured by; on the farther
corner, pneumatic riveters rang on the sun-plated skeleton of a new
building; and out of this tornado flashed the inspiration of a
familiar face, and a fellow Booster shouted, "H' are you, George!"
Babbitt waved in neighborly affection, and slid on with the traffic
as the policeman lifted his hand. He noted how quickly his car
picked up. He felt superior and powerful, like a shuttle of
polished steel darting in a vast machine.
      As always he ignored the next two blocks, decayed
blocks not yet reclaimed from the grime and shabbiness of the
Zenith of 1885. While he was passing the five-and-ten-cent store,
the Dakota Lodging House, Concordia Hall with its lodge-rooms and
the offices of fortune-tellers and chiropractors, he thought of how
much money he made, and he boasted a little and worried a little
and did old familiar sums:
      "Four hundred fifty plunks this morning from the
Lyte deal. But taxes due. Let's see: I ought to pull out eight
thousand net this year, and save fifteen hundred of that - no, not
if I put up garage and - Let's see: six hundred and forty clear
last month, and twelve times six-forty makes - makes - let see: six
times twelve is seventy-two hundred and - Oh rats, anyway, I'll
make eight thousand - gee now, that's not so bad; mighty few
fellows pulling down eight thousand dollars a year - eight thousand
good hard iron dollars - bet there isn't more than five per cent.
of the people in the whole United States that make more than Uncle
George does, by golly! Right up at the top of the heap! But - Way
expenses are - Family wasting gasoline, and always dressed like
millionaires, and sending that eighty a month to Mother - And all
these stenographers and salesmen gouging me for every cent they can
get - "
      The effect of his scientific budget-planning was
that he felt at once triumphantly wealthy and perilously poor, and
in the midst of these dissertations he stopped his car, rushed into
a small news-and-miscellany shop, and bought the electric
cigar-lighter which he had coveted for a week. He dodged his
conscience by being jerky and noisy, and by shouting at the