Babbitt

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 vie...

The great events of Babbitt’s spring were the secret buying of real-estate options in Linton for certain street-traction officials, before the public announcement that the Linto...

Babbitt’s preparations for leaving the office to its feeble self during the hour and a half of his lunch-period were somewhat less elaborate than the plans for a general Europea...

The assurance of Tanis Judique’s friendship fortified Babbitt’s self-approval. At the Athletic Club he became experimental. Though Vergil Gunch was silent, the others at the Rou...

The S. A. R. E. B., as its members called it, with the universal passion for mysterious and important-sounding initials, was the State Association of Real Estate Boards; the org...

No apartment-house in Zenith had more resolutely experimented in condensation than the Revelstoke Arms, in which Paul and Zilla Riesling had a flat. By sliding the beds into low...

The Zenith Street Traction Company planned to build car-repair shops in the suburb of Dorchester, but when they came to buy the land they found it held, on options, by the Babbi...

This autumn a Mr. W. G. Harding, of Marion, Ohio, was appointed President of the United States, but Zenith was less interested in the national campaign than in the local electio...

To George F. Babbitt, as to most prosperous citizens of Zenith, his motor car was poetry and tragedy, love and heroism. The office was his pirate ship but the car his perilous e...

His visit to Paul was as unreal as his night of fog and questioning. Unseeing he went through prison corridors stinking of carbolic acid to a room lined with pale yellow settees...

The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods. They were neither citadels n...

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, Ba...

It was a morning of artistic creation. Fifteen minutes after the purple prose of Babbitt’s form-letter, Chester Kirby Laylock, the resident salesman at Glen Oriole, came in to r...

He solemnly finished the last copy of the _American Magazine_, while his wife sighed, laid away her darning, and looked enviously at the lingerie designs in a women’s magazine....

The summer before, Mrs. Babbitt’s letters had crackled with desire to return to Zenith. Now they said nothing of returning, but a wistful “I suppose everything is going on all r...

“Good Lord, there’s nothing come over me! Why do you look for trouble all the time?” He was warning himself, “Careful! Stop being so disagreeable. Course she feels it, being lef...

Though he saw them twice daily, though he knew and amply discussed every detail of their expenditures, yet for weeks together Babbitt was no more conscious of his children than...

The Good Citizens’ League had spread through the country, but nowhere was it so effective and well esteemed as in cities of the type of Zenith, commercial cities of a few hundre...

Miss McGoun came into his private office at three in the afternoon with “Lissen, Mr. Babbitt; there’s a Mrs. Judique on the ’phone--wants to see about some repairs, and the sale...

There are but three or four old houses in Floral Heights, and in Floral Heights an old house is one which was built before 1880. The largest of these is the residence of William...

Relieved of Babbitt’s bumbling and the soft grunts with which his wife expressed the sympathy she was too experienced to feel and much too experienced not to show, their bedroom...

He tried to explain to his wife, as they prepared for bed, how objectionable was Sheldon Smeeth, but all her answer was, “He has such a beautiful voice--so spiritual. I don’t th...

Babbitt was fond of his friends, he loved the importance of being host and shouting, “Certainly, you’re going to have smore chicken--the idea!” and he appreciated the genius of...

The certainty that he was not going to be accepted by the McKelveys made Babbitt feel guilty and a little absurd. But he went more regularly to the Elks; at a Chamber of Commerc...

He was busy, from March to June. He kept himself from the bewilderment of thinking. His wife and the neighbors were generous. Every evening he played bridge or attended the movi...

As he walked through the train, looking for familiar faces, he saw only one person whom he knew, and that was Seneca Doane, the lawyer who, after the blessings of being in Babbi...

He awoke to stretch cheerfully as he listened to the sparrows, then to remember that everything was wrong; that he was determined to go astray, and not in the least enjoying the...

The strike which turned Zenith into two belligerent camps, white and red, began late in September with a walk-out of telephone girls and linemen, in protest against a reduction...

When he was away from her, while he kicked about the garage and swept the snow off the running-board and examined a cracked hose-connection, he repented, he was alarmed and asto...

He sat smoking with the piano-salesman, clinging to the warm refuge of gossip, afraid to venture into thoughts of Paul. He was the more affable on the surface as secretly he bec...

The International Organization of Boosters’ Clubs has become a world-force for optimism, manly pleasantry, and good business. Chapters are to be found now in thirty countries. N...

They had four hours in New York between trains. The one thing Babbitt wished to see was the Pennsylvania Hotel, which had been built since his last visit. He stared up at it, mu...

He drove to the City Prison, not blindly, but with unusual fussy care at corners, the fussiness of an old woman potting plants. It kept him from facing the obscenity of fate.

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 mor...