The S. A. R. E. B., as its members called it, with the universal passion for mysterious and important-sounding initials, was the State Association of Real Estate Boards; the organization of brokers1 and operators. It was to hold its annual convention at Monarch3, Zenith's chief rival among the cities of the state. Babbitt was an official delegate; another was Cecil Rountree, whom Babbitt admired for his picaresque speculative4 building, and hated for his social position, for being present at the smartest dances on Royal Ridge6. Rountree was chairman of the convention program-committee.
Babbitt had growled7 to him, “Makes me tired the way these doctors and profs and preachers put on lugs8 about being 'professional men.' A good realtor has to have more knowledge and finesse10 than any of 'em.”
“Right you are! I say: Why don't you put that into a paper, and give it at the S. A. R. E. B.?” suggested Rountree.
“Well, if it would help you in making up the program—Tell you: the way I look at it is this: First place, we ought to insist that folks call us 'realtors' and not 'real-estate men.' Sounds more like a reg'lar profession. Second place—What is it distinguishes a profession from a mere12 trade, business, or occupation? What is it? Why, it's the public service and the skill, the trained skill, and the knowledge and, uh, all that, whereas a fellow that merely goes out for the jack13, he never considers the-public service and trained skill and so on. Now as a professional—”
“Rather! That's perfectly14 bully15! Perfectly corking16! Now you write it in a paper,” said Rountree, as he rapidly and firmly moved away.
II
However accustomed to the literary labors18 of advertisements and correspondence, Babbitt was dismayed on the evening when he sat down to prepare a paper which would take a whole ten minutes to read.
He laid out a new fifteen-cent school exercise-book on his wife's collapsible sewing-table, set up for the event in the living-room. The household had been bullied19 into silence; Verona and Ted5 requested to disappear, and Tinka threatened with “If I hear one sound out of you—if you holler for a glass of water one single solitary20 time—You better not, that's all!” Mrs. Babbitt sat over by the piano, making a nightgown and gazing with respect while Babbitt wrote in the exercise-book, to the rhythmical21 wiggling and squeaking22 of the sewing-table.
When he rose, damp and jumpy, and his throat dusty from cigarettes, she marveled, “I don't see how you can just sit down and make up things right out of your own head!”
“Oh, it's the training in constructive23 imagination that a fellow gets in modern business life.”
He had written seven pages, whereof the first page set forth24:
{illustration omitted: consists of several doodles and “(1) a profession (2) Not just a trade crossed out (3) Skill & vision (3) Shd be called “realtor” & not just real est man"}
The other six pages were rather like the first.
For a week he went about looking important. Every morning, as he dressed, he thought aloud: “Jever stop to consider, Myra, that before a town can have buildings or prosperity or any of those things, some realtor has got to sell 'em the land? All civilization starts with him. Jever realize that?” At the Athletic25 Club he led unwilling26 men aside to inquire, “Say, if you had to read a paper before a big convention, would you start in with the funny stories or just kind of scatter27 'em all through?” He asked Howard Littlefield for a “set of statistics about real-estate sales; something good and impressive,” and Littlefield provided something exceedingly good and impressive.
But it was to T. Cholmondeley Frink that Babbitt most often turned. He caught Frink at the club every noon, and demanded, while Frink looked hunted and evasive, “Say, Chum—you're a shark on this writing stuff—how would you put this sentence, see here in my manuscript—manuscript now where the deuce is that?—oh, yes, here. Would you say 'We ought not also to alone think?' or 'We ought also not to think alone?' or—”
One evening when his wife was away and he had no one to impress, Babbitt forgot about Style, Order, and the other mysteries, and scrawled29 off what he really thought about the real-estate business and about himself, and he found the paper written. When he read it to his wife she yearned30, “Why, dear, it's splendid; beautifully written, and so clear and interesting, and such splendid ideas! Why, it's just—it's just splendid!”
Next day he cornered Chum Frink and crowed, “Well, old son, I finished it last evening! Just lammed it out! I used to think you writing-guys must have a hard job making up pieces, but Lord, it's a cinch. Pretty soft for you fellows; you certainly earn your money easy! Some day when I get ready to retire, guess I'll take to writing and show you boys how to do it. I always used to think I could write better stuff, and more punch and originality31, than all this stuff you see printed, and now I'm doggone sure of it!”
He had four copies of the paper typed in black with a gorgeous red title, had them bound in pale blue manilla, and affably presented one to old Ira Runyon, the managing editor of the Advocate-Times, who said yes, indeed yes, he was very glad to have it, and he certainly would read it all through—as soon as he could find time.
Mrs. Babbitt could not go to Monarch. She had a women's-club meeting. Babbitt said that he was very sorry.
III
Besides the five official delegates to the convention—Babbitt, Rountree, W. A. Rogers, Alvin Thayer, and Elbert Wing—there were fifty unofficial delegates, most of them with their wives.
They met at the union Station for the midnight train to Monarch. All of them, save Cecil Rountree, who was such a snob32 that he never wore badges, displayed celluloid buttons the size of dollars and lettered “We zoom33 for Zenith.” The official delegates were magnificent with silver and magenta34 ribbons. Martin Lumsen's little boy Willy carried a tasseled35 banner inscribed36 “Zenith the Zip City—Zeal, Zest37 and Zowie—1,000,000 in 1935.” As the delegates arrived, not in taxicabs but in the family automobile38 driven by the oldest son or by Cousin Fred, they formed impromptu39 processions through the station waiting-room.
It was a new and enormous waiting-room, with marble pilasters, and frescoes40 depicting41 the exploration of the Chaloosa River Valley by Pere Emile Fauthoux in 1740. The benches were shelves of ponderous42 mahogany; the news-stand a marble kiosk with a brass43 grill44. Down the echoing spaces of the hall the delegates paraded after Willy Lumsen's banner, the men waving their cigars, the women conscious of their new frocks and strings45 of beads46, all singing to the tune47 of Auld48 Lang Syne49 the official City Song, written by Chum Frink:
Good old Zenith,
Our kin11 and kith,
Wherever we may be,
Hats in the ring,
We blithely50 sing
Of thy Prosperity.
Warren Whitby, the broker2, who had a gift of verse for banquets and birthdays, had added to Frink's City Song a special verse for the realtors' convention:
Oh, here we come,
The fellows from
Zenith, the Zip Citee.
We wish to state
In real estate
There's none so live as we.
Babbitt was stirred to hysteric patriotism51. He leaped on a bench, shouting to the crowd:
“What's the matter with Zenith?”
“She's all right!”
“What's best ole town in the U. S. A.?”
“Zeeeeeen-ith!”
The patient poor people waiting for the midnight train stared in unenvious wonder—Italian women with shawls, old weary men with broken shoes, roving road-wise boys in suits which had been flashy when they were new but which were faded now and wrinkled.
Babbitt perceived that as an official delegate he must be more dignified52. With Wing and Rogers he tramped up and down the cement platform beside the waiting Pullmans. Motor-driven baggage-trucks and red-capped porters carrying bags sped down the platform with an agreeable effect of activity. Arc-lights glared and stammered53 overhead. The glossy54 yellow sleeping-cars shone impressively. Babbitt made his voice to be measured and lordly; he thrust out his abdomen55 and rumbled56, “We got to see to it that the convention lets the Legislature understand just where they get off in this matter of taxing realty transfers.” Wing uttered approving grunts57 and Babbitt swelled58—gloated.
The blind of a Pullman compartment59 was raised, and Babbitt looked into an unfamiliar60 world. The occupant of the compartment was Lucile McKelvey, the pretty wife of the millionaire contractor61. Possibly, Babbitt thrilled, she was going to Europe! On the seat beside her was a bunch of orchids62 and violets, and a yellow paper-bound book which seemed foreign. While he stared, she picked up the book, then glanced out of the window as though she was bored. She must have looked straight at him, and he had met her, but she gave no sign. She languidly pulled down the blind, and he stood still, a cold feeling of insignificance63 in his heart.
But on the train his pride was restored by meeting delegates from Sparta, Pioneer, and other smaller cities of the state, who listened respectfully when, as a magnifico from the metropolis64 of Zenith, he explained politics and the value of a Good Sound Business Administration. They fell joyfully65 into shop-talk, the purest and most rapturous form of conversation:
“How'd this fellow Rountree make out with this big apartment-hotel he was going to put up? Whadde do? Get out bonds to finance it?” asked a Sparta broker.
“Well, I'll tell you,” said Babbitt. “Now if I'd been handling it—”
“So,” Elbert Wing was droning, “I hired this shop-window for a week, and put up a big sign, 'Toy Town for Tiny Tots,' and stuck in a lot of doll houses and some dinky little trees, and then down at the bottom, 'Baby Likes This Dollydale, but Papa and Mama Will Prefer Our Beautiful Bungalows,' and you know, that certainly got folks talking, and first week we sold—”
The trucks sang “lickety-lick, lickety-lick” as the train ran through the factory district. Furnaces spurted66 flame, and power-hammers were clanging. Red lights, green lights, furious white lights rushed past, and Babbitt was important again, and eager.
IV
He did a voluptuous67 thing: he had his clothes pressed on the train. In the morning, half an hour before they reached Monarch, the porter came to his berth68 and whispered, “There's a drawing-room vacant, sir. I put your suit in there.” In tan autumn overcoat over his pajamas69, Babbitt slipped down the green-curtain-lined aisle70 to the glory of his first private compartment. The porter indicated that he knew Babbitt was used to a man-servant; he held the ends of Babbitt's trousers, that the beautifully sponged garment might not be soiled, filled the bowl in the private washroom, and waited with a towel.
To have a private washroom was luxurious71. However enlivening a Pullman smoking-compartment was by night, even to Babbitt it was depressing in the morning, when it was jammed with fat men in woolen72 undershirts, every hook filled with wrinkled cottony shirts, the leather seat piled with dingy73 toilet-kits, and the air nauseating74 with the smell of soap and toothpaste. Babbitt did not ordinarily think much of privacy, but now he reveled in it, reveled in his valet, and purred with pleasure as he gave the man a tip of a dollar and a half.
He rather hoped that he was being noticed as, in his newly pressed clothes, with the adoring porter carrying his suit-case, he disembarked at Monarch.
He was to share a room at the Hotel Sedgwick with W. A. Rogers, that shrewd, rustic-looking Zenith dealer75 in farm-lands. Together they had a noble breakfast, with waffles, and coffee not in exiguous76 cups but in large pots. Babbitt grew expansive, and told Rogers about the art of writing; he gave a bellboy a quarter to fetch a morning newspaper from the lobby, and sent to Tinka a post-card: “Papa wishes you were here to bat round with him.”
V
The meetings of the convention were held in the ballroom77 of the Allen House. In an anteroom was the office of the chairman of the executive committee. He was the busiest man in the convention; he was so busy that he got nothing done whatever. He sat at a marquetry table, in a room littered with crumpled78 paper and, all day long, town-boosters and lobbyists and orators79 who wished to lead debates came and whispered to him, whereupon he looked vague, and said rapidly, “Yes, yes, that's a fine idea; we'll do that,” and instantly forgot all about it, lighted a cigar and forgot that too, while the telephone rang mercilessly and about him men kept beseeching81, “Say, Mr. Chairman—say, Mr. Chairman!” without penetrating82 his exhausted83 hearing.
In the exhibit-room were plans of the new suburbs of Sparta, pictures of the new state capitol, at Galop de Vache, and large ears of corn with the label, “Nature's Gold, from Shelby County, the Garden Spot of God's Own Country.”
The real convention consisted of men muttering in hotel bedrooms or in groups amid the badge-spotted crowd in the hotel-lobby, but there was a show of public meetings.
The first of them opened with a welcome by the mayor of Monarch. The pastor84 of the First Christian85 Church of Monarch, a large man with a long damp frontal lock, informed God that the real-estate men were here now.
The venerable Minnemagantic realtor, Major Carlton Tuke, read a paper in which he denounced cooperative stores. William A. Larkin of Eureka gave a comforting prognosis of “The Prospects86 for Increased Construction,” and reminded them that plate-glass prices were two points lower.
The convention was on.
The delegates were entertained, incessantly87 and firmly. The Monarch Chamber88 of Commerce gave them a banquet, and the Manufacturers' Association an afternoon reception, at which a chrysanthemum90 was presented to each of the ladies, and to each of the men a leather bill-fold inscribed “From Monarch the Mighty91 Motor Mart.”
Mrs. Crosby Knowlton, wife of the manufacturer of Fleetwing Automobiles92, opened her celebrated93 Italian garden and served tea. Six hundred real-estate men and wives ambled94 down the autumnal paths. Perhaps three hundred of them were quietly inconspicuous; perhaps three hundred vigorously exclaimed, “This is pretty slick, eh?” surreptitiously picked the late asters and concealed95 them in their pockets, and tried to get near enough to Mrs. Knowlton to shake her lovely hand. Without request, the Zenith delegates (except Rountree) gathered round a marble dancing nymph and sang “Here we come, the fellows from Zenith, the Zip Citee.”
It chanced that all the delegates from Pioneer belonged to the Brotherly and Protective Order of Elks96, and they produced an enormous banner lettered: “B. P. O. E.—Best People on Earth—Boost Pioneer, Oh Eddie.” Nor was Galop de Vache, the state capital, to be slighted. The leader of the Galop de Vache delegation97 was a large, reddish, roundish man, but active. He took off his coat, hurled98 his broad black felt hat on the ground, rolled up his sleeves, climbed upon the sundial, spat99, and bellowed100:
“We'll tell the world, and the good lady who's giving the show this afternoon, that the bonniest burg in this man's state is Galop de Vache. You boys can talk about your zip, but jus' lemme murmur101 that old Galop has the largest proportion of home-owning citizens in the state; and when folks own their homes, they ain't starting labor-troubles, and they're raising kids instead of raising hell! Galop de Vache! The town for homey folks! The town that eats 'em alive oh, Bosco! We'll—tell—the—world!”
The guests drove off; the garden shivered into quiet. But Mrs. Crosby Knowlton sighed as she looked at a marble seat warm from five hundred summers of Amalfi. On the face of a winged sphinx which supported it some one had
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