“Rats, old man, it lets off steam.”
“Oh, I know! After spending all noon sneering
at the conventional stuff, I’m conventional
enough to be ashamed of saving my life by busting out
with my fool troubles!”
“Old Paul, your nerves are kind of on the bum.
I’m going to take you away. I’m going
to rig this thing. I’m going to have an
important deal in New York and—and sure,
of course!—I’ll need you to advise
me on the roof of the building! And the ole deal
will fall through, and there’ll be nothing for
us but to go on ahead to Maine. I—Paul,
when it comes right down to it, I don’t care
whether you bust loose or not. I do like having
a rep for being one of the Bunch, but if you ever needed
me I’d chuck it and come out for you every time!
Not of course but what you’re—course
I don’t mean you’d ever do anything that
would put—that would put a decent position
on the fritz but—See how I mean? I’m
kind of a clumsy old codger, and I need your fine
Eyetalian hand. We—Oh, hell, I can’t
stand here gassing all day! On the job! S’
long! Don’t take any wooden money, Paulibus!
See you soon! S’ long!”
He forgot Paul Riesling in an afternoon of not
unagreeable details. After a return to his office,
which seemed to have staggered on without him, he
drove a “prospect” out to view a four-flat
tenement in the Linton district. He was inspired
by the customer’s admiration of the new cigar-lighter.
Thrice its novelty made him use it, and thrice he hurled
half-smoked cigarettes from the car, protesting, “I
got to quit smoking so blame much!”
Their ample discussion of every detail of the cigar-lighter
led them to speak of electric flat-irons and bed-warmers.
Babbitt apologized for being so shabbily old-fashioned
as still to use a hot-water bottle, and he announced
that he would have the sleeping-porch wired at once.
He had enormous and poetic admiration, though very
little understanding, of all mechanical devices.
They were his symbols of truth and beauty. Regarding
each new intricate mechanism—metal lathe,
two-jet carburetor, machine gun, oxyacetylene welder—he
learned one good realistic-sounding phrase, and used
it over and over, with a delightful feeling of being
technical and initiated.
The customer joined him in the worship of machinery,
and they came buoyantly up to the tenement and began
that examination of plastic slate roof, kalamein doors,
and seven-eighths-inch blind-nailed flooring, began
those diplomacies of hurt surprise and readiness to
be persuaded to do something they had already decided
to do, which would some day result in a sale.
On the way back Babbitt picked up his partner and
father-in-law, Henry T. Thompson, at his kitchen-cabinet
works, and they drove through South Zenith, a high-colored,
banging, exciting region: new factories of hollow
tile with gigantic wire-glass windows, surly old red-brick
factories stained with tar, high-perched water-tanks,
big red trucks like locomotives, and, on a score of
hectic side-tracks, far-wandering freight-cars from
the New York Central and apple orchards, the Great
Northern and wheat-plateaus, the Southern Pacific and
orange groves.
