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 Geheimrate 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 cafe.  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,”