第 十六 章 · Chapter XVI

I

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 Commerce luncheon he was oratorical regarding

the wickedness of strikes; and again he saw himself as a Prominent

Citizen.

His clubs and associations were food comfortable to his spirit.

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 Geheimräte 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 café. 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,” which were printed in bold

type surrounded by a wiggly border. He often said that he was “proud to

be known as primarily a business man” and that he certainly was not

going to “permit the old Satan to monopolize all the pep and punch.” He

was a thin, rustic-faced young man with gold spectacles and a bang of

dull brown hair, but when he hurled himself into oratory he glowed with

power. He admitted that he was too much the scholar and poet to imitate

the evangelist, Mike Monday, yet he had once awakened his fold to new

life, and to larger collections, by the challenge, “My brethren, the

real cheap skate is the man who won’t lend to the Lord!”

He had made his church a true community center. It contained everything

but a bar. It had a nursery, a Thursday evening supper with a short

bright missionary lecture afterward, a gymnasium, a fortnightly

motion-picture show, a library of technical books for young

workmen--though, unfortunately, no young workman ever entered the church

except to wash the windows or repair the furnace--and a sewing-circle

which made short little pants for the children of the poor while Mrs.

Drew read aloud from earnest novels.

Though Dr. Drew’s theology was Presbyterian, his church-building was

gracefully Episcopalian. As he said, it had the “most perdurable

features of those noble ecclesiastical monuments of grand Old England

which stand as symbols of the eternity of faith, religious and civil.”

It was built of cheery iron-spot brick in an improved Gothic style, and

the main auditorium had indirect lighting from electric globes in lavish

alabaster bowls.

On a December morning when the Babbitts went to church, Dr. John

Jennison Drew was unusually eloquent. The crowd was immense. Ten brisk

young ushers, in morning coats with white roses, were bringing folding

chairs up from the basement. There was an impressive musical program,

conducted by Sheldon Smeeth, educational director of the Y.M.C.A., who

also sang the offertory. Babbitt cared less for this, because some

misguided person had taught young Mr. Smeeth to smile, smile, smile

while he was singing, but with all the appreciation of a fellow-orator

he admired Dr. Drew’s sermon. It had the intellectual quality which

distinguished the Chatham Road congregation from the grubby chapels on

Smith Street.

“At this abundant harvest-time of all the year,” Dr. Drew chanted,

“when, though stormy the sky and laborious the path to the drudging

wayfarer, yet the hovering and bodiless spirit swoops back o’er all the

labors and desires of the past twelve months, oh, then it seems to me

there sounds behind all our apparent failures the golden chorus of

greeting from those passed happily on; and lo! on the dim horizon we see

behind dolorous clouds the mighty mass of mountains--mountains of

melody, mountains of mirth, mountains of might!”

“I certainly do like a sermon with culture and thought in it,” meditated

Babbitt.

At the end of the service he was delighted when the pastor, actively

shaking hands at the door, twittered, “Oh, Brother Babbitt, can you wait

a jiffy? Want your advice.”

“Sure, doctor! You bet!”

“Drop into my office. I think you’ll like the cigars there.” Babbitt did

like the cigars. He also liked the office, which was distinguished from

other offices only by the spirited change of the familiar wall-placard

to “This is the Lord’s Busy Day.” Chum Frink came in, then William W.

Eathorne.

Mr. Eathorne was the seventy-year-old president of the First State Bank

of Zenith. He still wore the delicate patches of side-whiskers which had

been the uniform of bankers in 1870. If Babbitt was envious of the Smart

Set of the McKelveys, before William Washington Eathorne he was

reverent. Mr. Eathorne had nothing to do with the Smart Set. He was

above it. He was the great-grandson of one of the five men who founded

Zenith, in 1792, and he was of the third generation of bankers. He could

examine credits, make loans, promote or injure a man’s business. In his

presence Babbitt breathed quickly and felt young.

The Reverend Dr. Drew bounced into the room and flowered into speech:

“I’ve asked you gentlemen to stay so I can put a proposition before you.

The Sunday School needs bucking up. It’s the fourth largest in Zenith,

but there’s no reason why we should take anybody’s dust. We ought to be

first. I want to request you, if you will, to form a committee of advice

and publicity for the Sunday School; look it over and make any

suggestions for its betterment, and then, perhaps, see that the press

gives us some attention--give the public some really helpful and

constructive news instead of all these murders and divorces.”

“Excellent,” said the banker.

Babbitt and Frink were enchanted to join him.

III

If you had asked Babbitt what his religion was, he would have answered

in sonorous Boosters’-Club rhetoric, “My religion is to serve my fellow

men, to honor my brother as myself, and to do my bit to make life

happier for one and all.” If you had pressed him for more detail, he

would have announced, “I’m a member of the Presbyterian Church, and

naturally, I accept its doctrines.” If you had been so brutal as to go

on, he would have protested, “There’s no use discussing and arguing

about religion; it just stirs up bad feeling.”

Actually, the content of his theology was that there was a supreme being

who had tried to make us perfect, but presumably had failed; that if one

was a Good Man he would go to a place called Heaven (Babbitt

unconsciously pictured it as rather like an excellent hotel with a

private garden), but if one was a Bad Man, that is, if he murdered or

committed burglary or used cocaine or had mistresses or sold

non-existent real estate, he would be punished. Babbitt was uncertain,

however, about what he called “this business of Hell.” He explained to

Ted, “Of course I’m pretty liberal; I don’t exactly believe in a

fire-and-brimstone Hell. Stands to reason, though, that a fellow can’t

get away with all sorts of Vice and not get nicked for it, see how I

mean?”

Upon this theology he rarely pondered. The kernel of his practical

religion was that it was respectable, and beneficial to one’s business,

to be seen going to services; that the church kept the Worst Elements

from being still worse; and that the pastor’s sermons, however dull they

might seem at the time of taking, yet had a voodooistic power which “did

a fellow good--kept him in touch with Higher Things.”

His first investigations for the Sunday School Advisory Committee did

not inspire him.

He liked the Busy Folks’ Bible Class, composed of mature men and women

and addressed by the old-school physician, Dr. T. Atkins Jordan, in a

sparkling style comparable to that of the more refined humorous

after-dinner speakers, but when he went down to the junior classes he

was disconcerted. He heard Sheldon Smeeth, educational director of the

Y.M.C.A. and leader of the church-choir, a pale but strenuous young man

with curly hair and a smile, teaching a class of sixteen-year-old boys.

Smeeth lovingly admonished them, “Now, fellows, I’m going to have a

Heart to Heart Talk Evening at my house next Thursday. We’ll get off by

ourselves and be frank about our Secret Worries. You can just tell old

Sheldy anything, like all the fellows do at the Y. I’m going to explain

frankly about the horrible practises a kiddy falls into unless he’s

guided by a Big Brother, and about the perils and glory of Sex.” Old

Sheldy beamed damply; the boys looked ashamed; and Babbitt didn’t know

which way to turn his embarrassed eyes.

Less annoying but also much duller were the minor classes which were

being instructed in philosophy and Oriental ethnology by earnest

spinsters. Most of them met in the highly varnished Sunday School room,

but there was an overflow to the basement, which was decorated with

varicose water-pipes and lighted by small windows high up in the oozing

wall. What Babbitt saw, however, was the First Congregational Church of

Catawba. He was back in the Sunday School of his boyhood. He smelled

again that polite stuffiness to be found only in church parlors; he

recalled the case of drab Sunday School books: “Hetty, a Humble Heroine”

and “Josephus, a Lad of Palestine;” he thumbed once more the

high-colored text-cards which no boy wanted but no boy liked to throw

away, because they were somehow sacred; he was tortured by the stumbling

rote of thirty-five years ago, as in the vast Zenith church he listened

to:

“Now, Edgar, you read the next verse. What does it mean when it says

it’s easier for a camel to go through a needle’s eye? What does this

teach us? Clarence! Please don’t wiggle so! If you had studied your

lesson you wouldn’t be so fidgety. Now, Earl, what is the lesson Jesus

was trying to teach his disciples? The one thing I want you to

especially remember, boys, is the words, ‘With God all things are

possible.’ Just think of that always--Clarence, _please_ pay

attention--just say ‘With God all things are possible’ whenever you feel

discouraged, and, Alec, will you read the next verse; if you’d pay

attention you wouldn’t lose your place!”

Drone--drone--drone--gigantic bees that boomed in a cavern of

drowsiness--

Babbitt started from his open-eyed nap, thanked the teacher for “the

privilege of listening to her splendid teaching,” and staggered on to

the next circle.

After two weeks of this he had no suggestions whatever for the Reverend

Dr. Drew.

Then he discovered a world of Sunday School journals, an enormous and

busy domain of weeklies and monthlies which were as technical, as

practical and forward-looking, as the real-estate columns or the

shoe-trade magazines. He bought half a dozen of them at a religious

book-shop and till after midnight he read them and admired.

He found many lucrative tips on “Focusing Appeals,” “Scouting for New

Members,” and “Getting Prospects to Sign up with the Sunday School.” He

particularly liked the word “prospects,” and he was moved by the rubric:

“The moral springs of the community’s life lie deep in its Sunday

Schools--its schools of religious instruction and inspiration. Neglect

now means loss of spiritual vigor and moral power in years to come....

Facts like the above, followed by a straight-arm appeal, will reach

folks who can never be laughed or jollied into doing their part.”

Babbitt admitted, “That’s so. I used to skin out of the ole Sunday

School at Catawba every chance I got, but same time, I wouldn’t be where

I am to-day, maybe, if it hadn’t been for its training in--in moral

power. And all about the Bible. Great literature. Have to read some of

it again, one of these days.”

How scientifically the Sunday School could be organized he learned from

an article in the _Westminster Adult Bible Class_:

“The second vice-president looks after the fellowship of the class. She

chooses a group to help her. These become ushers. Every one who comes

gets a glad hand. No one goes away a stranger. One member of the group

stands on the doorstep and invites passers-by to come in.”

Perhaps most of all Babbitt appreciated the remarks by William H.

Ridgway in the _Sunday School Times_:

“If you have a Sunday School class without any pep and get-up-and-go in

it, that is, without interest, that is uncertain in attendance, that

acts like a fellow with the spring fever, let old Dr. Ridgway write you

a prescription. Rx. Invite the Bunch for Supper.”

The Sunday School journals were as well rounded as they were practical.

They neglected none of the arts. As to music the _Sunday School Times_

advertised that C. Harold Lowden, “known to thousands through his sacred

compositions,” had written a new masterpiece, “entitled ‘Yearning for

You.’ The poem, by Harry D. Kerr, is one of the daintiest you could

imagine and the music is indescribably beautiful. Critics are agreed

that it will sweep the country. May be made into a charming sacred song

by substituting the hymn words, ‘I Heard the Voice of Jesus Say.’”

Even manual training was adequately considered. Babbitt noted an

ingenious way of illustrating the resurrection of Jesus Christ:

“Model for Pupils to Make. Tomb with Rolling Door.--Use a square covered

box turned upside down. Pull the cover forward a little to form a groove

at the bottom. Cut a square door, also cut a circle of cardboard to more

than cover the door. Cover the circular door and the tomb thickly with

stiff mixture of sand, flour and water and let it dry. It was the heavy

circular stone over the door the women found ‘rolled away’ on Easter

morning. This is the story we are to ‘Go--tell.’”

In their advertisements the Sunday School journals were thoroughly

efficient. Babbitt was interested in a preparation which “takes the

place of exercise for sedentary men by building up depleted nerve

tissue, nourishing the brain and the digestive system.” He was edified

to learn that the selling of Bibles was a hustling and strictly

competitive industry, and as an expert on hygiene he was pleased by the

Sanitary Communion Outfit Company’s announcement of “an improved and

satisfactory outfit throughout, including highly polished beautiful

mahogany tray. This tray eliminates all noise, is lighter and more

easily handled than others and is more in keeping with the furniture of

the church than a tray of any other material.”

IV

He dropped the pile of Sunday School journals.

He pondered, “Now, there’s a real he-world. Corking!

“Ashamed I haven’t sat in more. Fellow that’s an influence in the

community--shame if he doesn’t take part in a real virile hustling

religion. Sort of Christianity Incorporated, you might say.

“But with all reverence.

“Some folks might claim these Sunday School fans are undignified and

unspiritual and so on. Sure! Always some skunk to spring things like

that! Knocking and sneering and tearing-down--so much easier than

building up. But me, I certainly hand it to these magazines. They’ve

brought ole George F. Babbitt into camp, and that’s the answer to the

critics!

“The more manly and practical a fellow is, the more he ought to lead the

enterprising Christian life. Me for it! Cut out this carelessness and

boozing and-- Rone! Where the devil you been? This is a fine time o’

night to be coming in!”