Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: May 20, 2025
He prowled through the living-room, and stood in the sun-parlor, that glass-walled room of wicker chairs and swinging couch in which they loafed on Sunday afternoons. Outside only the lights of Doppelbrau's house and the dim presence of Babbitt's favorite elm broke the softness of April night. "Good visit with the boy. Getting over feeling cranky, way I did this morning. And restless.
At the shock, the sudden burning cold on his skull, Babbitt's heart thumped, his chest heaved, and his spine was an electric wire. It was a sensation which broke the monotony of life. He looked grandly about the shop as he sat up. The barber obsequiously rubbed his wet hair and bound it in a towel as in a turban, so that Babbitt resembled a plump pink calif on an ingenious and adjustable throne.
Babbitt was most exasperated when she revealed his boyhood to the children. He had, it seemed, been fond of barley-sugar; had worn the "loveliest little pink bow in his curls" and corrupted his own name to "Goo-goo." Babbitt's half-brother, Martin, with his wife and youngest baby, came down from Catawba for two days. Martin bred cattle and ran the dusty general-store.
Babbitt's table was particularly happy to-day, because Professor Pumphrey had just had a birthday, and was therefore open to teasing. "Let's pump Pump about how old he is!" said Emil Wengert. "No, let's paddle him with a dancing-pump!" said Ben Berkey. But it was Babbitt who had the applause, with "Don't talk about pumps to that guy! The only pump he knows is a bottle!
Phineas Babbitt standing in the doorway of the inner room. And this was the most annoying and disturbing fact connected with the sight the hardware dealer was not scowling, he was laughing. The Winslow foot fell to the floor with a thump and its owner sat up straight. "He, he, he!" chuckled Phineas. Jed regarded him silently. Babbitt's chuckle subsided into a grin. Then he spoke.
Instead he stood stock still, returning Phineas Babbitt's glare with a steady, unwinking gaze. It was the hardware dealer who spoke first. And that, by the way, was precisely what he had not meant to do. "Yes," he observed, with caustic sarcasm, "it's me. You needn't stand there blinkin' like a fool any longer, Shavin's. It's me." Jed set the lamp upon the table.
Another woman whom he could never quite remember. Three overdressed and slightly effeminate young men soda-fountain clerks, or at least born for that profession. A man of his own age, immovable, self-satisfied, resentful of Babbitt's presence. When he had finished his dutiful dance Tanis took him aside and begged, "Dear, wouldn't you like to do something for me?
Eunice plumped down on Babbitt's lap, kissed him, nestled her bobbed hair against his chin, and crowed; "I think you're lots nicer than Howard. Why is it," confidentially, "that Howard is such an old grouch? The man has a good heart, and honestly, he's awfully bright, but he never will learn to step on the gas, after all the training I've given him.
The man "born down to Babbitt's Corners," may find a deep appeal in the simple but acute "Gospel Hymns of the New England camp meetin'," of a generation or so ago.
Fact, I think a fellow that's willing to deliberately up and profit by lying ought to be shot!" Babbitt's value to his clients was rarely better shown than this morning, in the conference at eleven-thirty between himself, Conrad Lyte, and Archibald Purdy. Conrad Lyte was a real-estate speculator. He was a nervous speculator.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking