BABBITT
BY
SINCLAIR LEWIS
AUTHOR OF “MAIN STREET”
HBMC
NEW YORK
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1922, BY
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY, INC.
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
To
EDITH WHARTON
BABBITT
CHAPTER I
I
The towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers ofsteel and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silverrods. They were neither citadels nor churches, but frankly andbeautifully office-buildings.
The mist took pity on the fretted structures of earlier generations: thePost Office with its shingle-tortured mansard, the red brick minarets ofhulking old houses, factories with stingy and sooted windows, woodentenements colored like mud. The city was full of such grotesqueries, butthe clean towers were thrusting them from the business center, and onthe farther hills were shining new houses, homes—they seemed—forlaughter and tranquillity.
Over a concrete bridge fled a limousine of long sleek hood and noiselessengine. These people in evening clothes were returning from an all-nightrehearsal of a Little Theater play, an artistic adventure considerablyilluminated by champagne. Below the bridge curved a railroad, a maze ofgreen and crimson lights. The New York Flyer boomed past, and twentylines of polished steel leaped into the glare.
In one of the skyscrapers the wires of the Associated Press were closingdown. The telegraph operators w