Of a decent man in Zenith it was required that he
should belong to one, preferably two or three, of
the innumerous “lodges” and prosperity-boosting
lunch-clubs; to the Rotarians, the Kiwanis, or the
Boosters; to the Oddfellows, Moose, Masons, Red Men,
Woodmen, Owls, Eagles, Maccabees, Knights of Pythias,
Knights of Columbus, and other secret orders characterized
by a high degree of heartiness, sound morals, and
reverence for the Constitution. There were four
reasons for joining these orders: It was the
thing to do. It was good for business, since
lodge-brothers frequently became customers. It
gave to Americans unable to become Geheimrate or Commendatori
such unctuous honorifics as High Worthy Recording
Scribe and Grand Hoogow to add to the commonplace
distinctions of Colonel, Judge, and Professor.
And it permitted the swaddled American husband to
stay away from home for one evening a week. The
lodge was his piazza, his pavement cafe. He could
shoot pool and talk man-talk and be obscene and valiant.
Babbitt was what he called a “joiner”
for all these reasons.
Behind the gold and scarlet banner of his public achievements
was the dun background of office-routine: leases,
sales-contracts, lists of properties to rent.
The evenings of oratory and committees and lodges
stimulated him like brandy, but every morning he was
sandy-tongued. Week by week he accumulated nervousness.
He was in open disagreement with his outside salesman,
Stanley Graff; and once, though her charms had always
kept him nickeringly polite to her, he snarled at Miss
McGoun for changing his letters.
But in the presence of Paul Riesling he relaxed.
At least once a week they fled from maturity.
On Saturday they played golf, jeering, “As a
golfer, you’re a fine tennis-player,” or
they motored all Sunday afternoon, stopping at village
lunchrooms to sit on high stools at a counter and
drink coffee from thick cups. Sometimes Paul came
over in the evening with his violin, and even Zilla
was silent as the lonely man who had lost his way
and forever crept down unfamiliar roads spun out his
dark soul in music.
II
Nothing gave Babbitt more purification and publicity
than his labors for the Sunday School.
His church, the Chatham Road Presbyterian, was one
of the largest and richest, one of the most oaken
and velvety, in Zenith. The pastor was the Reverend
John Jennison Drew, M.A., D.D., LL.D. (The M.A. and
the D.D. were from Elbert University, Nebraska, the
ll.D. from Waterbury College, Oklahoma.) He was
eloquent, efficient, and versatile. He presided
at meetings for the denunciation of unions or the elevation
of domestic service, and confided to the audiences
that as a poor boy he had carried newspapers.
For the Saturday edition of the Evening Advocate he
wrote editorials on “The Manly Man’s Religion”
and “The Dollars and Sense Value of Christianity,”
