“Go on, quit your kidding,” said Babbitt
feebly, but at this tribute from Gunch, himself a
man of no mean oratorical fame, he expanded with delight
and wondered how, before his vacation, he could have
questioned the joys of being a solid citizen.
His march to greatness was not without disastrous
stumbling.
Fame did not bring the social advancement which the
Babbitts deserved. They were not asked to join
the Tonawanda Country Club nor invited to the dances
at the Union. Himself, Babbitt fretted, he didn’t
“care a fat hoot for all these highrollers,
but the wife would kind of like to be Among Those
Present.” He nervously awaited his university
class-dinner and an evening of furious intimacy with
such social leaders as Charles McKelvey the millionaire
contractor, Max Kruger the banker, Irving Tate the
tool-manufacturer, and Adelbert Dobson the fashionable
interior decorator. Theoretically he was their
friend, as he had been in college, and when he encountered
them they still called him “Georgie,” but
he didn’t seem to encounter them often, and
they never invited him to dinner (with champagne and
a butler) at their houses on Royal Ridge.
All the week before the class-dinner he thought of
them. “No reason why we shouldn’t
become real chummy now!”
Like all true American diversions and spiritual outpourings,
the dinner of the men of the Class of 1896 was thoroughly
organized. The dinner-committee hammered like
a sales-corporation. Once a week they sent out
reminders:
Old man, are you going to be with us at the livest
Friendship Feed the alumni of the good old U have
ever known? The alumnae of ’08 turned out
60% strong. Are we boys going to be beaten by
a bunch of skirts? Come on, fellows, let’s
work up some real genuine enthusiasm and all boost
together for the snappiest dinner yet! Elegant
eats, short ginger-talks, and memories shared together
of the brightest, gladdest days of life.
The dinner was held in a private room at the Union
Club. The club was a dingy building, three pretentious
old dwellings knocked together, and the entrance-hall
resembled a potato cellar, yet the Babbitt who was
free of the magnificence of the Athletic Club entered
with embarrassment. He nodded to the doorman,
an ancient proud negro with brass buttons and a blue
tail-coat, and paraded through the hall, trying to
look like a member.
Sixty men had come to the dinner. They made islands
and eddies in the hall; they packed the elevator and
the corners of the private dining-room. They
tried to be intimate and enthusiastic. They appeared
to one another exactly as they had in college—as
raw youngsters whose present mustaches, baldnesses,
paunches, and wrinkles were but jovial disguises put
on for the evening. “You haven’t changed
a particle!” they marveled. The men whom
they could not recall they addressed, “Well,
well, great to see you again, old man. What are
you—Still doing the same thing?”
