United States or Finland ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Babbitt thought that personal appeals might bring citizens to the rescue, and in an interval of black darkness between lightning flashes, escaped through a back cellar way, and had almost reached the shelter of a cornfield adjoining the garden, when the lightning revealed her and three men started in pursuit. It was two months before the birth of one of her children, and Mr.
Major Grover stepped in front of him and leveled a forefinger straight at the crimson Babbitt nose. "Stop!" he ordered, sharply. "Stop? What right have you got to tell me to stop? By " "Stop! Listen to me. I don't know what you've been saying about this lady " "I ain't been saying anything, except what I know, and that is that " "Stop! And I don't care.
The boy'll be goin' to war pretty soon, you know, and " Babbitt sprang to his feet. His chin trembled so that he could scarcely speak. "Shut up!" he snarled. "Don't let me hear you say that again, Jed Winslow. Who sent him to war? Who filled his head full of rubbish about patriotism, and duty to the country, and all the rest of the rotten Wall Street stuff?
With a jar Babbitt realized that his wife was too busy to be impressed by that moral indignation with which males rule the world, and he went humbly up-stairs to dress. He had an impression of a glorified dining-room, of cut-glass, candles, polished wood, lace, silver, roses.
His fancied wit had been drivel; his gay humors nothing but the noisy vagaries of a sot. But, never again! "A glass of seltzer," he said to the bartender. A little silence fell upon the group of his cronies, who had been expecting him to join them. "Going off the stuff, Bob?" one of them asked politely and with more formality than the highballs ever called forth. "Yes," said Babbitt.
"Well, when I was out with the girls I didn't spend all the time telling 'em about the strike in the knitting industry!" They roared together, and together lighted cigars. "What are we going to do with 'em?" Babbitt consulted. "Gosh, I don't know.
The members rush into the lobby as though they were shopping and hadn't much time for it. Thus did Babbitt enter, and to the group standing by the cigar-counter he whooped, "How's the boys? How's the boys? Well, well, fine day!"
Just a moment while I get my coat." Swollen with greatness, slightly afraid lest the noble blood of Nottingham change its mind and leave him at any street corner, Babbitt paraded with Sir Gerald Doak to the movie palace and in silent bliss sat beside him, trying not to be too enthusiastic, lest the knight despise his adoration of six-shooters and broncos.
It was Ted who most worried Babbitt. With conditions in Latin and English but with a triumphant record in manual training, basket-ball, and the organization of dances, Ted was struggling through his Senior year in the East Side High School. At home he was interested only when he was asked to trace some subtle ill in the ignition system of the car.
They fell joyfully into shop-talk, the purest and most rapturous form of conversation: "How'd this fellow Rountree make out with this big apartment-hotel he was going to put up? Whadde do? Get out bonds to finance it?" asked a Sparta broker. "Well, I'll tell you," said Babbitt. "Now if I'd been handling it "
Word Of The Day