Orville Jones commented, “And, then take our
other advantages—the movies, frinstance.
These Yapville sports think they’re all-get-out
if they have one change of bill a week, where here
in the city you got your choice of a dozen diff’rent
movies any evening you want to name!”
“Sure, and the inspiration we get from rubbing
up against high-class hustlers every day and getting
jam full of ginger,” said Eddie Swanson.
“Same time,” said Babbitt, “no sense
excusing these rube burgs too easy. Fellow’s
own fault if he doesn’t show the initiative to
up and beat it to the city, like we done—did.
And, just speaking in confidence among friends, they’re
jealous as the devil of a city man. Every time
I go up to Catawba I have to go around apologizing
to the fellows I was brought up with because I’ve
more or less succeeded and they haven’t.
And if you talk natural to ’em, way we do here,
and show finesse and what you might call a broad point
of view, why, they think you’re putting on side.
There’s my own half-brother Martin—runs
the little ole general store my Dad used to keep.
Say, I’ll bet he don’t know there is such
a thing as a Tux—as a dinner-jacket.
If he was to come in here now, he’d think we
were a bunch of—of—Why, gosh,
I swear, he wouldn’t know what to think!
Yes, sir, they’re jealous!”
Chum Frink agreed, “That’s so. But
what I mind is their lack of culture and appreciation
of the Beautiful—if you’ll excuse
me for being highbrow. Now, I like to give a
high-class lecture, and read some of my best poetry—not
the newspaper stuff but the magazine things. But
say, when I get out in the tall grass, there’s
nothing will take but a lot of cheesy old stories
and slang and junk that if any of us were to indulge
in it here, he’d get the gate so fast it would
make his head swim.”
Vergil Gunch summed it up: “Fact is, we’re
mighty lucky to be living among a bunch of city-folks,
that recognize artistic things and business-punch
equally. We’d feel pretty glum if we got
stuck in some Main Street burg and tried to wise up
the old codgers to the kind of life we’re used
to here. But, by golly, there’s this you
got to say for ’em: Every small American
town is trying to get population and modern ideals.
And darn if a lot of ’em don’t put it across!
Somebody starts panning a rube crossroads, telling
how he was there in 1900 and it consisted of one muddy
street, count ’em, one, and nine hundred human
clams. Well, you go back there in 1920, and you
find pavements and a swell little hotel and a first-class
ladies’ ready-to-wear shop-real perfection,
in fact! You don’t want to just look at
what these small towns are, you want to look at what
they’re aiming to become, and they all got an
ambition that in the long run is going to make ’em
the finest spots on earth—they all want
to be just like Zenith!”
However intimate they might be with T. Cholmondeley
Frink as a neighbor, as a borrower of lawn-mowers
and monkey-wrenches, they knew that he was also a
Famous Poet and a distinguished advertising-agent;
that behind his easiness were sultry literary mysteries
which they could not penetrate. But to-night,
in the gin-evolved confidence, he admitted them to
the arcanum:
