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!”
CHAPTER XVII I
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 Washington Eathorne, president of the First State Bank.
The Eathorne Mansion preserves the memory of the “nice parts” of Zenith as they appeared from 1860 to 1900.
It is a red brick immensity with gray sandstone lintels and a roof of slate in courses of red, green, and dyspeptic yellow.
There are two anemic towers, one roofed with copper, the other crowned with castiron ferns.
The porch is like an open tomb; it is supported by squat granite pillars above which hang frozen cascades of brick.
At one side of the house is a huge stained-glass window in the shape of a keyhole.
But the house has an effect not at all humorous.
It embodies the heavy dignity of those Victorian financiers who ruled the generation between the pioneers and the brisk “sales-engineers” and created a somber oligarchy by gaining control of banks, mills, land, railroads, mines.
Out of the dozen contradictory Zeniths which together make up the true and complete Zenith, none is so powerful and enduring yet none so unfamiliar to the citizens as the small, still, dry, polite, cruel Zenith of the William Eathornes; and for that tiny hierarchy the other Zeniths unwittingly labor and insignificantly die.
Most of the castles of the testy Victorian tetrarchs are gone now or decayed into boarding-houses, but the Eathorne Mansion remains virtuous and aloof, reminiscent of London, Back Bay, Rittenhouse Square.
Its marble steps are scrubbed daily, the brass plate is reverently polished, and the lace curtains are as prim and superior as William Washington Eathorne himself.
With a certain awe Babbitt and Chum Frink called on Eathorne for a meeting of the Sunday School Advisory Committee; with uneasy stillness they followed a uniformed maid through catacombs of reception-rooms to the library.
It was as unmistakably the library of a solid old banker as Eathorne’s side-whiskers were the side-whiskers of a solid old banker.
The books were most of them Standard Sets, with the correct and traditional touch of dim blue, dim gold, and glossy calf-skin.
The fire was exactly correct and traditional; a small, quiet, steady fire, reflected by polished fire-irons.
The oak desk was dark and old and altogether perfect; the chairs were gently supercilious.
Eathorne’s inquiries as to the healths of Mrs. Babbitt, Miss Babbitt, and the Other Children were softly paternal, but Babbitt had nothing with which to answer him.
It was indecent to think of using the
“How’s tricks, ole socks?” which gratified Vergil Gunch and Frink and Howard Littlefield—men who till now had seemed successful and urbane.
Babbitt and Frink sat politely, and politely did Eathorne observe, opening his thin lips just wide enough to dismiss the words,
“Gentlemen, before we begin our conference—you may have felt the cold in coming here—so good of you to save an old man the journey—shall we perhaps have a whisky toddy?”
So well trained was Babbitt in all the conversation that befits a Good Fellow that he almost disgraced himself with
“Rather than make trouble, and always providin’ there ain’t any enforcement officers hiding in the waste-basket—” The words died choking in his throat. He bowed in flustered obedience.