Read Online Babbit by Sinclair Lewis - Free Book Online Page B

clerk,
"Guess this will prett' near pay for itself in matches, eh?"
      It was a pretty thing, a nickeled cylinder with an
almost silvery socket, to be attached to the dashboard of his car.
It was not only, as the placard on the counter observed, "a dandy
little refinement, lending the last touch of class to a gentleman's
auto," but a priceless time-saver. By freeing him from halting the
car to light a match, it would in a month or two easily save ten
minutes.
      As he drove on he glanced at it. "Pretty nice.
Always wanted one," he said wistfully. "The one thing a smoker
needs, too."
      Then he remembered that he had given up smoking.
      "Darn it!" he mourned. "Oh well, I suppose I'll hit
a cigar once in a while. And - Be a great convenience for other
folks. Might make just the difference in getting chummy with some
fellow that would put over a sale. And - Certainly looks nice
there. Certainly is a mighty clever little jigger. Gives the last
touch of refinement and class. I - By golly, I guess I can afford
it if I want to! Not going to be the only member of this family
that never has a single doggone luxury!"
      Thus, laden with treasure, after three and a half
blocks of romantic adventure, he drove up to the club.
      III
      The Zenith Athletic Club is not athletic and it
isn't exactly a club, but it is Zenith in perfection. It has an
active and smoke-misted billiard room, it is represented by
baseball and football teams, and in the pool and the gymnasium a
tenth of the members sporadically try to reduce. But most of its
three thousand members use it as a cafe in which to lunch, play
cards, tell stories, meet customers, and entertain out-of town
uncles at dinner. It is the largest club in the city, and its chief
hatred is the conservative Union Club, which all sound members of
the Athletic call "a rotten, snobbish, dull, expensive old hole -
not one Good Mixer in the place - you couldn't hire me to join."
Statistics show that no member of the Athletic has ever refused
election to the Union, and of those who are elected, sixty-seven
per cent. resign from the Athletic and are thereafter heard to say,
in the drowsy sanctity of the Union lounge, "The Athletic would be
a pretty good hotel, if it were more exclusive."
      The Athletic Club building is nine stories high,
yellow brick with glassy roof-garden above and portico of huge
limestone columns below. The lobby, with its thick pillars of
porous Caen stone, its pointed vaulting, and a brown glazed-tile
floor like well-baked bread-crust, is a combination of
cathedral-crypt and rathskellar. The members rush into the lobby as
though they were shopping and hadn't much time for it. Thus did
Babbitt enter, and to the group standing by the cigar-counter he
whooped, "How's the boys? How's the boys? Well, well, fine
day!"
      Jovially they whooped back - Vergil Gunch, the
coal-dealer, Sidney Finkelstein, the ladies'-ready-to-wear buyer
for Parcher & Stein's department-store, and Professor Joseph K.
Pumphrey, owner of the Riteway Business College and instructor in
Public Speaking, Business English, Scenario Writing, and Commercial
Law. Though Babbitt admired this savant, and appreciated Sidney
Finkelstein as "a mighty smart buyer and a good liberal spender,"
it was to Vergil Gunch that he turned with enthusiasm. Mr. Gunch
was president of the Boosters' Club, a weekly lunch-club, local
chapter of a national organization which promoted sound business
and friendliness among Regular Fellows. He was also no less an
official than Esteemed Leading Knight in the Benevolent and
Protective Order of Elks, and it was rumored that at the next
election he would be a candidate for Exalted Ruler. He was a jolly
man, given to oratory and to chumminess with the arts. He called on
the famous actors and vaudeville artists when they came to town,
gave them cigars, addressed them by their first names, and -
sometimes - succeeded in bringing them to the Boosters' lunches to
give The Boys a Free