He had three weeks of Maine. At the end of the
second week he began to feel calm, and interested
in life. He planned an expedition to climb Sachem
Mountain, and wanted to camp overnight at Box Car Pond.
He was curiously weak, yet cheerful, as though he
had cleansed his veins of poisonous energy and was
filling them with wholesome blood.
He ceased to be irritated by Ted’s infatuation
with a waitress (his seventh tragic affair this year);
he played catch with Ted, and with pride taught him
to cast a fly in the pine-shadowed silence of Skowtuit
Pond.
At the end he sighed, “Hang it, I’m just
beginning to enjoy my vacation. But, well, I
feel a lot better. And it’s going to be
one great year! Maybe the Real Estate Board will
elect me president, instead of some fuzzy old-fashioned
faker like Chan Mott.”
On the way home, whenever he went into the smoking-compartment
he felt guilty at deserting his wife and angry at
being expected to feel guilty, but each time he triumphed,
“Oh, this is going to be a great year, a great
old year!”
All the way home from Maine, Babbitt was certain
that he was a changed man. He was converted to
serenity. He was going to cease worrying about
business. He was going to have more “interests”—theaters,
public affairs, reading. And suddenly, as he
finished an especially heavy cigar, he was going to
stop smoking.
He invented a new and perfect method. He would
buy no tobacco; he would depend on borrowing it; and,
of course, he would be ashamed to borrow often.
In a spasm of righteousness he flung his cigar-case
out of the smoking-compartment window. He went
back and was kind to his wife about nothing in particular;
he admired his own purity, and decided, “Absolutely
simple. Just a matter of will-power.”
He started a magazine serial about a scientific detective.
Ten miles on, he was conscious that he desired to
smoke. He ducked his head, like a turtle going
into its shell; he appeared uneasy; he skipped two
pages in his story and didn’t know it.
Five miles later, he leaped up and sought the porter.
“Say, uh, George, have you got a—”
The porter looked patient. “Have you got
a time-table?” Babbitt finished. At the
next stop he went out and bought a cigar. Since
it was to be his last before he reached Zenith, he
finished it down to an inch stub.
Four days later he again remembered that he had stopped
smoking, but he was too busy catching up with his
office-work to keep it remembered.
Baseball, he determined, would be an excellent hobby.
“No sense a man’s working his fool head
off. I’m going out to the Game three times
a week. Besides, fellow ought to support the
home team.”
