He went to the Pompeian for his fortnightly hair-trim.  As always, he felt disloyal at deserting his neighbor, the Reeves Building Barber Shop.  Then, for the first time, he overthrew his sense of guilt.  “Doggone it, I don’t have to go here if I don’t want to!  I don’t own the Reeves Building!  These barbers got nothing on me!  I’ll doggone well get my hair cut where I doggone well want to!  Don’t want to hear anything more about it!  I’m through standing by people—­unless I want to.  It doesn’t get you anywhere.  I’m through!”

The Pompeian Barber Shop was in the basement of the Hotel Thornleigh, largest and most dynamically modern hotel in Zenith.  Curving marble steps with a rail of polished brass led from the hotel-lobby down to the barber shop.  The interior was of black and white and crimson tiles, with a sensational ceiling of burnished gold, and a fountain in which a massive nymph forever emptied a scarlet cornucopia.  Forty barbers and nine manicure girls worked desperately, and at the door six colored porters lurked to greet the customers, to care reverently for their hats and collars, to lead them to a place of waiting where, on a carpet like a tropic isle in the stretch of white stone floor, were a dozen leather chairs and a table heaped with magazines.

Babbitt’s porter was an obsequious gray-haired negro who did him an honor highly esteemed in the land of Zenith—­greeted him by name.  Yet Babbitt was unhappy.  His bright particular manicure girl was engaged.  She was doing the nails of an overdressed man and giggling with him.  Babbitt hated him.  He thought of waiting, but to stop the powerful system of the Pompeian was inconceivable, and he was instantly wafted into a chair.

About him was luxury, rich and delicate.  One votary was having a violet-ray facial treatment, the next an oil shampoo.  Boys wheeled about miraculous electrical massage-machines.  The barbers snatched steaming towels from a machine like a howitzer of polished nickel and disdainfully flung them away after a second’s use.  On the vast marble shelf facing the chairs were hundreds of tonics, amber and ruby and emerald.  It was flattering to Babbitt to have two personal slaves at once—­the barber and the bootblack.  He would have been completely happy if he could also have had the manicure girl.  The barber snipped at his hair and asked his opinion of the Havre de Grace races, the baseball season, and Mayor Prout.  The young negro bootblack hummed “The Camp Meeting Blues” and polished in rhythm to his tune, drawing the shiny shoe-rag so taut at each stroke that it snapped like a banjo string.  The barber was an excellent salesman.  He made Babbitt feel rich and important by his manner of inquiring, “What is your favorite tonic, sir?  Have you time to-day, sir, for a facial massage?  Your scalp is a little tight; shall I give you a scalp massage?”