Main Street & Babbitt. Sinclair LewisЧитать онлайн книгу.
other night, and the Rippleton's near the station — I'd never been there before, but I says to the taxi-driver — I always believe in taking a taxi when you get in late; may cost a little more money, but, gosh, it's worth it when you got to be up early next morning and out selling a lot of crabs — and I said to him, 'Oh, just drive me over to the Rippleton.'
“Well, we got there, and I breezed up to the desk and said to the clerk, 'Well, brother, got a nice room with bath for Cousin Bill?' Saaaay! You'd 'a' thought I'd sold him a second, or asked him to work on Yom Kippur! He hands me the cold-boiled stare and yaps, 'I dunno, friend, I'll see,' and he ducks behind the rigamajig they keep track of the rooms on. Well, I guess he called up the Credit Association and the American Security League to see if I was all right — he certainly took long enough — or maybe he just went to sleep; but finally he comes out and looks at me like it hurts him, and croaks, 'I think I can let you have a room with bath.' 'Well, that's awful nice of you — sorry to trouble you — how much 'll it set me back?' I says, real sweet. 'It'll cost you seven bucks a day, friend,' he says.
“Well, it was late, and anyway, it went down on my expense-account — gosh, if I'd been paying it instead of the firm, I'd 'a' tramped the streets all night before I'd 'a' let any hick tavern stick me seven great big round dollars, believe me! So I lets it go at that. Well, the clerk wakes a nice young bell hop — fine lad — not a day over seventy-nine years old — fought at the Battle of Gettysburg and doesn't know it's over yet — thought I was one of the Confederates, I guess, from the way he looked at me — and Rip van Winkle took me up to something — I found out afterwards they called it a room, but first I thought there'd been some mistake — I thought they were putting me in the Salvation Army collection-box! At seven per each and every diem! Gosh!”
“Yuh, I've heard the Rippleton was pretty cheesy. Now, when I go to Chicago I always stay at the Blackstone or the La Salle — first-class places.”
“Say, any of you fellows ever stay at the Birchdale at Terre Haute? How is it?”
“Oh, the Birchdale is a first-class hotel.”
(Twelve minutes of conference on the state of hotels in South Bend, Flint, Dayton, Tulsa, Wichita, Fort Worth, Winona, Erie, Fargo, and Moose Jaw.)
“Speaknubout prices,” the man in the velour hat observed, fingering the elk-tooth on his heavy watch-chain, “I'd like to know where they get this stuff about clothes coming down. Now, you take this suit I got on.” He pinched his trousers-leg. “Four years ago I paid forty-two fifty for it, and it was real sure-'nough value. Well, here the other day I went into a store back home and asked to see a suit, and the fellow yanks out some hand-me-downs that, honest, I wouldn't put on a hired man. Just out of curiosity I asks him, 'What you charging for that junk?' 'Junk,' he says, 'what d' you mean junk? That's a swell piece of goods, all wool — ' Like hell! It was nice vegetable wool, right off the Ole Plantation! 'It's all wool,' he says, 'and we get sixty-seven ninety for it.' 'Oh, you do, do you!' I says. 'Not from me you don't,' I says, and I walks right out on him. You bet! I says to the wife, 'Well,' I said, 'as long as your strength holds out and you can go on putting a few more patches on papa's pants, we'll just pass up buying clothes.”'
“That's right, brother. And just look at collars, frinstance — ”
“Hey! Wait!” the fat man protested. “What's the matter with collars? I'm selling collars! D' you realize the cost of labor on collars is still two hundred and seven per cent. above — ”
They voted that if their old friend the fat man sold collars, then the price of collars was exactly what it should be; but all other clothing was tragically too expensive. They admired and loved one another now. They went profoundly into the science of business, and indicated that the purpose of manufacturing a plow or a brick was so that it might be sold. To them, the Romantic Hero was no longer the knight, the wandering poet, the cowpuncher, the aviator, nor the brave young district attorney, but the great sales-manager, who had an Analysis of Merchandizing Problems on his glass-topped desk, whose title of nobility was “Go-getter,” and who devoted himself and all his young samurai to the cosmic purpose of Selling — not of selling anything in particular, for or to anybody in particular, but pure Selling.
The shop-talk roused Paul Riesling. Though he was a player of violins and an interestingly unhappy husband, he was also a very able salesman of tar-roofing. He listened to the fat man's remarks on “the value of house-organs and bulletins as a method of jazzing-up the Boys out on the road;” and he himself offered one or two excellent thoughts on the use of two-cent stamps on circulars. Then he committed an offense against the holy law of the Clan of Good Fellows. He became highbrow.
They were entering a city. On the outskirts they passed a steel-mill which flared in scarlet and orange flame that licked at the cadaverous stacks, at the iron-sheathed walls and sullen converters.
“My Lord, look at that — beautiful!” said Paul.
“You bet it's beautiful, friend. That's the Shelling-Horton Steel Plant, and they tell me old John Shelling made a good three million bones out of munitions during the war!” the man with the velour hat said reverently.
“I didn't mean — I mean it's lovely the way the light pulls that picturesque yard, all littered with junk, right out of the darkness,” said Paul.
They stared at him, while Babbitt crowed, “Paul there has certainly got one great little eye for picturesque places and quaint sights and all that stuff. 'D of been an author or something if he hadn't gone into the roofing line.”
Paul looked annoyed. (Babbitt sometimes wondered if Paul appreciated his loyal boosting.) The man in the velour hat grunted, “Well, personally, I think Shelling-Horton keep their works awful dirty. Bum routing. But I don't suppose there's any law against calling 'em 'picturesque' if it gets you that way!”
Paul sulkily returned to his newspaper and the conversation logically moved on to trains.
“What time do we get into Pittsburg?” asked Babbitt.
“Pittsburg? I think we get in at — no, that was last year's schedule — wait a minute — let's see — got a time-table right here.”
“I wonder if we're on time?”
“Yuh, sure, we must be just about on time.”
“No, we aren't — we were seven minutes late, last station.”
“Were we? Straight? Why, gosh, I thought we were right on time.”
“No, we're about seven minutes late.”
“Yuh, that's right; seven minutes late.”
The porter entered — a negro in white jacket with brass buttons.
“How late are we, George?” growled the fat man.
“'Deed, I don't know, sir. I think we're about on time,” said the porter, folding towels and deftly tossing them up on the rack above the washbowls. The council stared at him gloomily and when he was gone they wailed:
“I don't know what's come over these niggers, nowadays. They never give you a civil answer.”
“That's a fact. They're getting so they don't have a single bit of respect for you. The old-fashioned coon was a fine old cuss — he knew his place — but these young dinges don't want to be porters or cotton-pickers. Oh, no! They got to be lawyers and professors and Lord knows what all! I tell you, it's becoming a pretty serious problem. We ought to get together and show the black man, yes, and the yellow man, his place. Now, I haven't got one particle of race-prejudice. I'm the first to be glad when a nigger succeeds — so long as he stays where he belongs and doesn't try to usurp the rightful authority and business ability of the white man.”
“That's the i.! And another thing we got to do,” said the man with the velour hat (whose name was Koplinsky), “is to keep these damn foreigners out of the country. Thank the Lord, we're putting a limit on immigration. These Dagoes and Hunkies have got to learn that this is a white man's country, and they ain't wanted here. When we've assimilated the foreigners we got here now and learned