Babbit (12 page)

  SHORTCUT EDUCATIONAL PUB. CO. Desk WA Sandpit,
Iowa.

  ARE YOU A 100 PERCENTER OR A 10 PERCENTER?

  Babbitt was again without a canon which would enable
him to speak with authority. Nothing in motoring or real estate had
indicated what a Solid Citizen and Regular Fellow ought to think
about culture by mail. He began with hesitation:

  "Well - sounds as if it covered the ground. It
certainly is a fine thing to be able to orate. I've sometimes
thought I had a little talent that way myself, and I know darn well
that one reason why a fourflushing old back-number like Chan Mott
can get away with it in real estate is just because he can make a
good talk, even when he hasn't got a doggone thing to say! And it
certainly is pretty cute the way they get out all these courses on
various topics and subjects nowadays. I'll tell you, though: No
need to blow in a lot of good money on this stuff when you can get
a first-rate course in eloquence and English and all that right in
your own school - and one of the biggest school buildings in the
entire country!"

  "That's so," said Mrs. Babbitt comfortably, while
Ted complained:

  "Yuh, but Dad, they just teach a lot of old junk
that isn't any practical use - except the manual training and
typewriting and basketball and dancing - and in these
correspondence-courses, gee, you can get all kinds of stuff that
would come in handy. Say, listen to this one:

  'CAN YOU PLAY A MAN'S PART?

  'If you are walking with your mother, sister or best
girl and some one passes a slighting remark or uses improper
language, won't you be ashamed if you can't take her part? Well,
can you?

  'We teach boxing and self-defense by mail. Many
pupils have written saying that after a few lessons they've
outboxed bigger and heavier opponents. The lessons start with
simple movements practised before your mirror - holding out your
hand for a coin, the breast-stroke in swimming, etc. Before you
realize it you are striking scientifically, ducking, guarding and
feinting, just as if you had a real opponent before you.'"

  "Oh, baby, maybe I wouldn't like that!" Ted chanted.
"I'll tell the world! Gosh, I'd like to take one fellow I know in
school that's always shooting off his mouth, and catch him alone -
"

  "Nonsense! The idea! Most useless thing I ever heard
of!" Babbitt fulminated.

  "Well, just suppose I was walking with Mama or Rone,
and somebody passed a slighting remark or used improper language.
What would I do?"

  "Why, you'd probably bust the record for the
hundred-yard dash!"

  "I WOULD not! I'd stand right up to any mucker that
passed a slighting remark on MY sister and I'd show him - "

  "Look here, young Dempsey! If I ever catch you
fighting I'll whale the everlasting daylights out of you - and I'll
do it without practising holding out my hand for a coin before the
mirror, too!"

  "Why, Ted dear," Mrs. Babbitt said placidly, "it's
not at all nice, your talking of fighting this way!"

  "Well, gosh almighty, that's a fine way to
appreciate - And then suppose I was walking with YOU, Ma, and
somebody passed a slighting remark - "

  "Nobody's going to pass no slighting remarks on
nobody," Babbitt observed, "not if they stay home and study their
geometry and mind their own affairs instead of hanging around a lot
of poolrooms and soda-fountains and places where nobody's got any
business to be!"

  "But gooooooosh, Dad, if they DID!"

  Mrs. Babbitt chirped, "Well, if they did, I wouldn't
do them the honor of paying any attention to them! Besides, they
never do. You always hear about these women that get followed and
insulted and all, but I don't believe a word of it, or it's their
own fault, the way some women look at a person. I certainly never
've been insulted by - "

  "Aw shoot. Mother, just suppose you WERE sometime!
Just SUPPOSE! Can't you suppose something? Can't you imagine
things?"

  "Certainly I can imagine things! The idea!"

  "Certainly your mother can imagine things - and
suppose things! Think you're the only member of this household
that's got an imagination?" Babbitt demanded. "But what's the use
of a lot of supposing? Supposing never gets you anywhere. No sense
supposing when there's a lot of real facts to take into considera -
"

  "Look here, Dad. Suppose - I mean, just - just
suppose you were in your office and some rival real-estate man -
"

  "Realtor!"

  " - some realtor that you hated came in - "

  "I don't hate any realtor."

  "But suppose you DID!"

  "I don't intend to suppose anything of the kind!
There's plenty of fellows in my profession that stoop and hate
their competitors, but if you were a little older and understood
business, instead of always going to the movies and running around
with a lot of fool girls with their dresses up to their knees and
powdered and painted and rouged and God knows what all as if they
were chorus-girls, then you'd know - and you'd suppose - that if
there's any one thing that I stand for in the real-estate circles
of Zenith, it is that we ought to always speak of each other only
in the friendliest terms and institute a spirit of brotherhood and
cooperation, and so I certainly can't suppose and I can't imagine
my hating any realtor, not even that dirty, fourflushing society
sneak, Cecil Rountree!"

  "But - "

  "And there's no If, And or But about it! But if I
WERE going to lambaste somebody, I wouldn't require any fancy ducks
or swimming-strokes before a mirror, or any of these doodads and
flipflops! Suppose you were out some place and a fellow called you
vile names. Think you'd want to box and jump around like a
dancing-master? You'd just lay him out cold (at least I certainly
hope any son of mine would!) and then you'd dust off your hands and
go on about your business, and that's all there is to it, and you
aren't going to have any boxing-lessons by mail, either!"

  "Well but - Yes - I just wanted to show how many
different kinds of correspondence-courses there are, instead of all
the camembert they teach us in the High."

  "But I thought they taught boxing in the school
gymnasium."

  "That's different. They stick you up there and some
big stiff amuses himself pounding the stuffin's out of you before
you have a chance to learn. Hunka! Not any! But anyway - Listen to
some of these others."

  The advertisements were truly philanthropic. One of
them bore the rousing headline: "Money! Money!! Money!!!" The
second announced that "Mr. P. R., formerly making only eighteen a
week in a barber shop, writes to us that since taking our course he
is now pulling down $5,000 as an Osteo-vitalic Physician;" and the
third that "Miss J. L., recently a wrapper in a store, is now
getting Ten Real Dollars a day teaching our Hindu System of
Vibratory Breathing and Mental Control."

  Ted had collected fifty or sixty announcements, from
annual reference-books, from Sunday School periodicals,
fiction-magazines, and journals of discussion. One benefactor
implored, "Don't be a Wallflower - Be More Popular and Make More
Money - YOU Can Ukulele or Sing Yourself into Society! By the
secret principles of a Newly Discovered System of Music Teaching,
any one - man, lady or child - can, without tiresome exercises,
special training or long drawn out study, and without waste of
time, money or energy, learn to play by note, piano, banjo, cornet,
clarinet, saxophone, violin or drum, and learn sight-singing."

  The next, under the wistful appeal "Finger Print
Detectives Wanted - Big Incomes!" confided: "YOU red-blooded men
and women - this is the PROFESSION you have been looking for.
There's MONEY in it, BIG money, and that rapid change of scene,
that entrancing and compelling interest and fascination, which your
active mind and adventurous spirit crave. Think of being the chief
figure and directing factor in solving strange mysteries and
baffling crimes. This wonderful profession brings you into contact
with influential men on the basis of equality, and often calls upon
you to travel everywhere, maybe to distant lands - all expenses
paid. NO SPECIAL EDUCATION REQUIRED."

  "Oh, boy! I guess that wins the fire-brick necklace!
Wouldn't it be swell to travel everywhere and nab some famous
crook!" whooped Ted.

  "Well, I don't think much of that. Doggone likely to
get hurt. Still, that music-study stunt might be pretty fair,
though. There's no reason why, if efficiency-experts put their
minds to it the way they have to routing products in a factory,
they couldn't figure out some scheme so a person wouldn't have to
monkey with all this practising and exercises that you get in
music." Babbitt was impressed, and he had a delightful parental
feeling that they two, the men of the family, understood each
other.

  He listened to the notices of mail-box universities
which taught Short-story Writing and Improving the Memory,
Motion-picture-acting and Developing the Soul-power, Banking and
Spanish, Chiropody and Photography, Electrical Engineering and
Window-trimming, Poultry-raising and Chemistry.

  "Well - well - " Babbitt sought for adequate
expression of his admiration. "I'm a son of a gun! I knew this
correspondence-school business had become a mighty profitable game
- makes suburban real-estate look like two cents! - but I didn't
realize it'd got to be such a reg'lar key-industry! Must rank right
up with groceries and movies. Always figured somebody'd come along
with the brains to not leave education to a lot of bookworms and
impractical theorists but make a big thing out of it. Yes, I can
see how a lot of these courses might interest you. I must ask the
fellows at the Athletic if they ever realized - But same time, Ted,
you know how advertisers, I means some advertisers, exaggerate. I
don't know as they'd be able to jam you through these courses as
fast as they claim they can."

  "Oh sure, Dad; of course." Ted had the immense and
joyful maturity of a boy who is respectfully listened to by his
elders. Babbitt concentrated on him with grateful affection:

  "I can see what an influence these courses might
have on the whole educational works. Course I'd never admit it
publicly - fellow like myself, a State U. graduate, it's only
decent and patriotic for him to blow his horn and boost the Alma
Mater - but smatter of fact, there's a whole lot of valuable time
lost even at the U., studying poetry and French and subjects that
never brought in anybody a cent. I don't know but what maybe these
correspondence-courses might prove to be one of the most important
American inventions.

  "Trouble with a lot of folks is: they're so blame
material; they don't see the spiritual and mental side of American
supremacy; they think that inventions like the telephone and the
areoplane and wireless - no, that was a Wop invention, but anyway:
they think these mechanical improvements are all that we stand for;
whereas to a real thinker, he sees that spiritual and, uh,
dominating movements like Efficiency, and Rotarianism, and
Prohibition, and Democracy are what compose our deepest and truest
wealth. And maybe this new principle in education-at-home may be
another - may be another factor. I tell you, Ted, we've got to have
Vision - "

  "I think those correspondence-courses are
terrible!"

  The philosophers gasped. It was Mrs. Babbitt who had
made this discord in their spiritual harmony, and one of Mrs.
Babbitt's virtues was that, except during dinner-parties, when she
was transformed into a raging hostess, she took care of the house
and didn't bother the males by thinking. She went on firmly:

  "It sounds awful to me, the way they coax those poor
young folks to think they're learning something, and nobody 'round
to help them and - You two learn so quick, but me, I always was
slow. But just the same - "

  Babbitt attended to her: "Nonsense! Get just as
much, studying at home. You don't think a fellow learns any more
because he blows in his father's hard-earned money and sits around
in Morris chairs in a swell Harvard dormitory with pictures and
shields and table-covers and those doodads, do you? I tell you, I'm
a college man - I KNOW! There is one objection you might make
though. I certainly do protest against any effort to get a lot of
fellows out of barber shops and factories into the professions.
They're too crowded already, and what'll we do for workmen if all
those fellows go and get educated?"

  Ted was leaning back, smoking a cigarette without
reproof. He was, for the moment, sharing the high thin air of
Babbitt's speculation as though he were Paul Riesling or even Dr.
Howard Littlefield. He hinted:

  "Well, what do you think then, Dad? Wouldn't it be a
good idea if I could go off to China or some peppy place, and study
engineering or something by mail?"

  "No, and I'll tell you why, son. I've found out it's
a mighty nice thing to be able to say you're a B.A. Some client
that doesn't know what you are and thinks you're just a plug
business man, he gets to shooting off his mouth about economics or
literature or foreign trade conditions, and you just ease in
something like, 'When I was in college - course I got my B.A. in
sociology and all that junk - ' Oh, it puts an awful crimp in their
style! But there wouldn't be any class to saying 'I got the degree
of Stamp-licker from the Bezuzus Mail-order University! ' You see -
My dad was a pretty good old coot, but he never had much style to
him, and I had to work darn hard to earn my way through college.
Well, it's been worth it, to be able to associate with the finest
gentlemen in Zenith, at the clubs and so on, and I wouldn't want
you to drop out of the gentlemen class - the class that are just as
red-blooded as the Common People but still have power and
personality. It would kind of hurt me if you did that, old
man!"