Gideon Planish by Sinclair Lewis, from Project Gutenberg Canada (2025)

by Sinclair Lewis

No character and no organization in this story isdrawn from any actual person or group of persons.

To MARCELLA POWERS
who explained Carrie Planish and her friends to me

Chapter 1

The urgent whistle of the Manhattan Flyer woke the boy, and his squareface moved with smiling as in half-dreams he was certain that some dayhe would take that train and be welcomed in lofty rooms by millionairesand poets and actresses. He would be one of them, and much admired.

His present state, at the age of ten, in 1902, was well enough. Hisfather was not only a veterinarian but a taxidermist, a man who had notdone so badly in a city like this--for Vulcan, with its population of38,000, was the seventh city in the great State of Winnemac. ThePlanishes' red-brick house, too, was one of the most decorated in thatwhole row on Sycamore Terrace, and they had a telephone and aleather-bound set of the Encyclopedia Americana. A cultured andenterprising household, altogether. But as the small Gideon Planishheard the enticing train, he was certain that he was going far beyondeagle-stuffing and the treatment of water-spaniels' indigestion.

He would be a senator or a popular minister, something rotund andoratorical, and he would make audiences of two and three hundred peoplelisten while he shot off red-hot adjectives about Liberty and PlymouthRock.

But even as the boy was smiling, the last whistle of the train, comingacross the swamps and outlying factory yards, was so lost and lonelythat he fell back into his habitual doubt of himself and of hisrhetorical genius; and that small square face tightened now, with theanxiety and compromise of the prophet who wants both divine sanction anda diet much spicier than locusts and wild honey.

Gid already felt a little dizzy on the path that mounted high above hisfather's business of embalming hoot-owls. He could feel a forecast ofregret that life was going to yank him up to greatness andmountain-sickness.

* * * * *

Into the office of the dean of Adelbert College hastened a chunky youngman with hair like a tortoise-shell cat. He glared down at theastonished dean, upraised a sturdy arm like a traffic officer, andbellowed:

"'If they dare to come out in the open field and defend the goldstandard as a good thing, we will fight them to the uttermost!' Huh?"

"Yes, yes," the dean said, soothingly. He was an aging man and a carefulscholar, for Adelbert was a respectable small Presbyterian college. Andhe was used to freshmen. But Gid Planish was furiously going on:

"'Having behind us the producing masses of this nation and the world,supported by the industrial interests----'"

The dean interrupted, "It's 'commercial interests,' not 'industrialinterests.' If you must quote William Jennings Bryan, do be accurate, myyoung friend."

Gid looked pained. Through all of his long and ambitious life--he wasnow eighteen--he had been oppressed by just such cynicalmisunderstanding. But he knew the Bryan speech clear to the end, and hewas a natural public leader, who never wasted any information that hepossessed. He roared on:

"'----supported by the commercial interests, the laboring interests, andthe toilers everywhere, we will answer their demand for a gold standardby saying to them: "You shall not press down upon the brow of labor thiscrown of thorns, you shall not crucify mankind upon a cross of gold,"'and look, Dean, I got to take Forensics and Extempore Speaking, I gotto, that's what I came to Adelbert for, and I asked the prof----"

"The professor."

"Yuh, I asked the prof, and he said freshmen can't take Forensics, but Igot to take it."

"Don't you think that Freshman Rhetoric and a nice course of FreshmanEnglish, Wordsworth and the daffodils, would satisfy you?"

"No, sir. I guess maybe it sounds highfalutin, but I got a kind ofMessage to deliver."

"And what is your message?"

Gid looked out at the waiting-room. No one was there but the dean'ssecretary. He insisted, mounting on his own eloquence:

"It seems to me, what this country needs is young men in politics thathave higher standards of honesty and more profound knowledge of historyand, uh, well, of civics than the politicians of today, and who willadvance the unfinished work lying before us of leading this country to,uh, higher standards of Freedom, Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, Freedom,and--well, I mean higher standards of--"

"Of Democracy."

"That's it. Of Democracy. So you see I got to take Forensics."

"How do you spell Forensics, young man?"

"I guess it's f-o-r-e-n-s-i-k-s. Can I take it?"

"No."

"What did you say, sir?"

"I said 'no'."

"You mean I can't take Forensics?"

"No."

Gid felt confused. This business of preparing to lead the masses seemedto be going around in circles. And he was aware that a fellow freshman,but a thin, tall, unidealistic and devilish kind of freshman, hadentered the waiting-room, and was listening. Gid urged, more softly:

"I was the star on the debating team at Lincoln High, in Vulcan, andthat's the fifth biggest high-school in the State."

"No. It is a rule. Public Speaking is reserved for upperclassmen."

"And we debated with the Webster High team from Monarch on 'Resolved:Flying-machines will never be useful in war,' and we won."

"My young friend, your fervor is admirable, and so----"

"I can take it? Forensics? Bully!"

"You can not! Please--go--away."

Gid went away, a little bewildered, as later in life he was so often tobe bewildered by the world's inappreciation of people who want to helpit.

The thin devil of a classmate leered at him as he crossed thewaiting-room.

* * * * *

At Doc's Bar-B-Q Lunch, Gid was taking refreshment, this late afternoonof his second day at Adelbert College. To his disillusionment was addedthe stress of choosing between two fraternities, the Philamathean Cluband Tiger Head. Meantime he lived at Mrs. Jones's and endangered thenice fresh digestion that the son of a veterinarian ought to have bydining at Doc's on hamburger sandwiches and pickles.

Next to the broad-armed chair which was also his dining-table he foundthe lean devil whom he had seen in the dean's office.

"How you makin' out?" said the devil.

"Oh, all right, I guess."

"Did you get in on the public-speaking course?"

"No, damn it."

"Why don't you try for the debating team?"

"Gosh, I've tried to try already. I went and saw the captain, and hetold me you can't get on the team till you're a sophomore. Gosh, I guessthey don't want freshmen to be intellectual and idealistic here! But Idon't suppose you care a darn about that."

"What makes you think so?"

"You look so---- Say, what do they call you?"

"Hatch Hewitt, my name is."

"Gideon Planish, mine is."

"Pleasedmeecha."

"Pleasedmeecha."

"What makes you think, do I care can freshmen be idealistic in thisdump, Mr. Planish?"

"Well, I'll tell you, Mr. Hewitt; it's because you look like you'd makefun of sentimentalists."

"Maybe I would, at that, Mr. Planish. But that's because I am anidealist."

"Is that a fact, Hatch! Well, well, is that a fact! Say, I'm tickled todeath! It would knock you for a row of small cottages if you knew howfew idealists I had to discuss things with, in a factory town likeVulcan."

"That's how it is even in Chicago."

"Chi-cago?" Gid was reverent. "Do you come from Chicago?"

"Um-huh."

"Gosh! What do you want with a half-sized place like this, then?"

"Low tuition."

"Wouldn't I like to see Chicago! Holy mackerel! I hear where there's anauditorium there that seats six thousand people. Imagine seeing a ganglike that stretching out before you! And I hear where there's a bigwomen's sufferage organization. That's a very fine cause. Women hadought to have the vote, don't you think so? Don't you think we had oughtto have women for their moral effect in the purification of politics?"

"That isn't exactly my idea of what I want 'em for."

"I thought you said you were an idealist, Hatch!"

"I guess maybe I'm an idealist against. I hate all this fakery. I hatethese rich women bossing clerks in department stores, and these fat boyswith cigars in the corner of their mouths, like elongated warts, and Ihate books like this Mrs. Barclay's The Rosary, that they say isselling by the hundred thousand. See how I mean?"

"Me, I don't hate things so much--only it does kind of make me mad whenI hear about little kids working in cotton mills. But I'm on thepositive side, you might say. I want to kind of, you might say, rousepeople to the idea this nation, under God, shall have a new birth offreedom. I s'pose you think that's sentimental!"

"No--no! Only, I just wish people wouldn't quote Lincoln or the Bible,or hang out the flag or the cross, to cover up something that belongsmore to the bank-book and the three golden balls. But I envy you. I wishI could trust human enthusiasm. But I come from across the tracks. Mydad was an awful smart drayman and he could sing Harry Lauder songs andhe was a good union man, but my God, did he lap up the licker! I went towork as a Western Union messenger at twelve--one Christmas Eve I workedat the joyous Noel business till four A.M.--and I wound up in the SouthChicago bureau of the Chronicle."

"Gosh! A re-porter?"

"Yuh. But I'm a lot older than you are. God, I'm twenty-one!"

They both sighed at that senility, and Hatch went on:

"I got what education I could reading at the branch library. I don'tthink so much of colleges, but maybe I can learn some economics here,and some vocabulary besides 'holocaust' and 'suspended sentence'."

"Maybe you and I can do something in politics together, some time."

Gid felt exultantly that perhaps he had, for the first time in his life,a Friend.

He was a tail-wagging pup, and in high-school he had always been memberof some respectable gang, but it had been only of baseball, fudge,dances and swimming that he had been able to talk, while deeply hedesired a Real Friend, to whom he could confide his intentions towardeloquence and justice and How to Get into the Legislature. He was jarrednow when Hatch Hewitt shook his head, and droned:

"No politics--no spieling. I'm a reporter. I do like Swinburne,though--nice, smooth, slippery, marble words."

"My ideal is Bryan. But I guess maybe you think Bryan does a lot ofspouting."

"He loves dogs and mothers."

"What's the matter with loving dogs and mothers?"

"I don't know. I never had either. Probably I'm just jealous of you,Gid. Maybe I wish I could hypnotize audiences too. Go to it! Sock em!I'll write a speech for you, now and then."

"You bet, Hatch! We'll do that!"

So he did have the friend. But he did not intend to let even a HatchHewitt write his speeches. Himself, he might not be so doggone poetic,but he didn't guess even a big journalist like Hatch could turn outanything better than his own salutatory in Vulcan:

"The fruits of the seven seas and the fruits of our broad fields fromthe legendary East to the broad-bosomed West have been garnered togetherby our illustrious princes of transportation and who have lentthemselves to enlightened barter not to merely expand their own princelyfortunes, so helpful, however, in benefactions to colleges andhospitals, but first and foremost to fill the hungry mouths of theclamoring multitude."

Beat that?

Hatch hinted, "Let's get out of here. C'mon over to my room. I got anidea, and I don't want all these dopes listening."

Indeed the small lunchroom, with its faded green tin ceiling, its fadedblue plaster walls, its gallery of posters advertising gum, was fillingwith young men yelping, "Hey, Bill!" and "Say, is this History of Artstuff a gut course?" and the place smelled now of ham and cabbage andfried onions. As Gid wandered out with Hatch Hewitt, he resembled aplump spaniel trotting beside a wolf hound. Yet it was Gid, thecomparatively prosperous, who was fashionably sloppy and collegiate, inshaggy blue woolen sweater and corduroys and thick brogans; Hatch whowas fussily neat in the cheap gray suit, the plain white shirt, thecautious blue bow-tie, that he was to wear for four years to come.

Hatch's room was a stable, Gid romantically found; an old small stablebuilt for a team of inconsiderable horses, leaning and shaky, withhayseed caked about the windows. But it was as orderly as a widow'stea-room: a cot-bed in one stall, and in the other an old wood-stove anda wooden table with a dozen exactly arranged books.

"I do my own cooking here and just go to Doc's barbecue for a cup ofcoffee and company. With what I've saved, and a syndicate of papers forcollege news that I'm working up, I'll get through," said Hatch. "Butthis dump must look pretty messy."

"It's grand! It's Bohemian! Vie de Bohemia!"

"I hate Bohemians."

"Oh!"

"I like order and precision."

"Oh, you do!" Gid was not too meek about it.

"You--I suppose you have a handsome apartment, with a fumed-oak Morrischair."

"I have not! I just got a stuffy room in a boarding-house till I findout which frat I'll choose."

"So you're going to be a Greek--to join a select young gentlemen'ssocial club."

"Why not?" Gid was admirably angry now; he was not much afraid of otherpeople, only of himself. "I'm a social young gent myself. Just too badyou don't like it!"

"Oh, I didn't mean----"

"You have such a hell of a time admiring yourself as a hater, and I'mexpected to sit at your feet----"

"No, no, Gid! I guess I just have mental sour stomach. You're okay.You're not content with this dumb world, the way it is, either--you'renot mediocre. I don't think you are. Forgive me."

So did Gid find his first friend, and they sat at the table drinkingHatch's privately brewed coffee--very thin and bitter--while Hatchglanced up at the small high window of the stable to make sure theSecret Service wasn't listening, and admitted his perilous secret.

"Gid, if you can't get into the debating club, why don't you---- I'mgoing to start a Socialist Society."

"What? But socialism is against the home and marriage!"

"What of it?"

"Of course there's Gene Debs."

"Exactly."

"I hear he's a grand guy."

"Exactly. And we'll have a lot of debates, and you can be in 'em. Maybewe'll challenge the entire college to a debate."

"That would be swell. I'd like to show up those galoots that wouldn'ttake me in! I sure would! When do you start your society?"

"It's just started this minute. It only takes two fearless guys like meand you to unsettle one little college."

"Let's go!"

That was the entire struggle involved in the conversion of GideonPlanish to socialism. His deconversion was to take longer, a littlelonger.

* * * * *

A train was whistling, and Gideon Planish was lying awake.

He remembered that he had a friend now, not just a companion to gowalking with. Between his brains and Hatch Hewitt's imagination, therewas nothing they might not do. Probably he would never really bePresident of the United States, but if he ever were, it would be apleasure to appoint Hatch Secretary of State--or anyway, postmaster atZenith.

But of course they must think first not of such glories but of the goodthey could do.

Before the train had ceased its piping, he had built a glass and marblehospital in every village in America, he had Christianized China, he hadstopped all wars forever by courts of arbitration, he had given the voteto women--and they had been very grateful. He remembered the co-ed inthe tight blouse whom he had noticed in front of the Library, and heforgot his imperial benignity.

Chapter 2

The first meeting of the Adelbert College Socialist League, with allfive members present, was held in Hatch's stable home. It was felt thatit would be dangerous to meet in the libidinous atmosphere of Tiger Headfraternity, where Gid Planish, as a newly elected member, had a bed, abureau, two chairs and a portrait of Longfellow.

College had been coursing on its wild hunt of culture for two weeks, andit was now September 20, 1910. In those days, Adelbert opened during thefirst week in September, and how innocent and medieval the whole systemwas may be seen in the fact that students came by train instead of intheir private automobiles.

The five Socialists, in their awe at saving the world, gave up cloggingand all the kittenishness that was then considered proper to freshmen.They sat about Hatch's table on two chairs and three boxes: Hatch, Gid,young Francis Tyne, who was going to study for the ministry, aniron-faced older man who had once been a labor organizer, and DavidTraub, a handsome, precise lad from New York, forerunner of the eagerand rather heroic caravan who were later to escape from too much racialdiscussion in New York, and emigrate like their fathers.

Francis Tyne was a thin, earnest youth with a biggish head and finecolorless hair. He suggested their calling one another "Comrade," but itdidn't go. Gid and Hatch were still too close to the horrors of beingcalled "Brother" by loud evangelical pastors.

Gid looked them all over like a born chairman. Back in Limbo, before hewas born, he must have presided over committees of the Young Cherubim'sAnti-Birth-Control Association. He said merrily, "We don't seem to haveany girls with us. We certainly ought to, these days."

"Rot!" said the ex-labor organizer. He was a solid man, named Lou Klock.

"Why?" demanded Francis.

Klock growled, "Women are useful in all left-wing movements--addressingfactory rallies and addressing envelopes--but give 'em a chance on thestrategy and they'll have you wearing red neckties and dancing on thegreen, instead of pounding the bosses for higher wages."

"Wait now!" beamed Gid, with the conciliatory good-fellowship of theprofessional presider. "This ain't 1890, Lou. No! This is 1910! Therevolution has been won, except for a few details. War is finished,except as an instrument of protest, and women are recognized by allthinkers as our equals--practically."

"Rot," said Lou.

"Well, let that pass, for the moment. Frank Tyne, Comrade Tyne here, hasan outline of what he thinks we ought to do, and I vote we hear fromhim."

Hatch Hewitt suggested, "By the way, don't you suppose it might be agood idea if we elected a chairman?"

Gid felt pained and ill-used, for it had not occurred to him thatanybody save Gideon Planish could be chairman. His hard-won glory wasalready being questioned, and that by the one man whom he had these manyyears trusted as his friend and partisan. Somebody snickered--probablyLou Klock--and all his life, however brave and impassioned before anaudience that hated him gravely, Gid would always feel watery in thebacks of his knees when anybody jeered.

David Traub snapped, "Don't be silly, Hewitt. Of course Planish is ourchairman. Or do you want to be?"

"Oh, no, no!"

"Then he's the goat."

Gid blossomed with glory. He commanded, "Go to it, Frank. Let's hearyour plan."

Francis Tyne produced a pack of small filing cards, dark with tinynotations. It was his moment. For years, in his Sunday-school classes,in a village where it was not kosher to admit any doctrine moresubversive than that women might with decency become ruralmail-carriers, he had pictured just this hour, when he should be bandedwith desperate but talented comrades. He looked up from his notes withthe eyes of a cocker spaniel, and Gid's tender heart was touched and hewas ready to go right off and build a barricade with Francis, providedit should be finished in time for supper.

"Well, it's really awfully simple and reasonable, but I suppose therewill be objection to my program in privileged classes," said Francis."First, of course, the Government has to take over the ownership of allmines, waterpower, agricultural land, and all industries employing morethan a hundred people."

None of them looked worried, and the newly converted collectivist, GidPlanish, definitely glowed.

"But I don't think that's enough, Comrades. There's a lot of theseforeign and European Socialists who go that far," said Francis. "Whatwould make a peculiarly American socialism would be to have a statechurch."

"What?" shouted the others, while David Traub proposed, "How about theJewish faith?"

Francis protested, "No, no, Comrade Traub. You don't understand thesethings. Our Savior started an entirely new dispensation. But about theset-up of a true revolutionary church: of course the Catholic Church andChristian Science and the Mormons are out, and the Baptists are prettydoggone super--supererogatory with their immersion, and it's againstScripture to have bishops, like in the Methodist and Episcopal, and theCongregationalists come awful close to verging on heresy andwishy-washiness, and so it seems to me the true American model is thePresbyterian Church--which happens to be my own, but merely bycoincidence."

"Say, what is all this wordage about?" said Klock.

"God knows--maybe," said Hewitt.

"Now wait! I never thought of it in that light, but he's absolutelysound. I'm a Presbyterian, too!" said Gid.

* * * * *

All of them were young--even Lou Klock was but twenty-six--and in theardent next two hours it was variously stated that:

Christianity is exhausted and a failure.

Christianity has never yet been given a chance.

The church is the trap wherein the Capitalist class nabs the workers.

The church is the one union wherein all workers can defy the heathenismof the Capitalists.

The Russians will have socialism first.

The Russians are lazy; they drink tea and read novels, and never willhave socialism.

Adelbert College is in a class with Abraham Lincoln, science, footballand the Packard car.

Adelbert College is snobbish and hasn't had a new idea since 1882.

With each of these opinions, Gid voluptuously agreed. He felt that theywere having a fine, free, enlightening time, but at last he pounded thetable, with Hatch's dollar watch, and announced, "We're beginning to seelight in this discussion. It's a sure-enough round table, all right. Butbefore we try and go any further, it's time to organize. We got todecide on just who will map out each department of our activities."

"That makes sense," said Hatch.

Francis begged, "Oh, not yet! Let's spend a month or so searching eachother's minds and sort of inspiring each other."

As a professional, Gid was horrified. "You mean go on chewing the ragabout all these mighty topics without or-gan-iz-ing?"

"Why, yes. The natural form of organization must grow out of what wethink and then decide to do."

Gid explained, with great sweetness and reasonableness:

"Never! The kind of organization you set up, and who's on thecommittees, decide what you can do, and what you do determines what youthink. Honest, that's the straight goods; that's modern psychology. Iknow by experience. You bet." The veteran nodded sagely. "That's the wayI've seen it work, for many years now--ever since the Sixth Grade. Westarted in to collect litter on the school grounds, but do you know, wehad such an active organization that we improved the whole basic idea,and turned it into a co-operative revolving fund to buy molassespopcorn. Yessir! And how can we raise money unless we have the rightorganization--fearless but flexible?"

"What do we want to raise money for?" they protested.

"So we can send out letters and do publicity and get more members."

Hatch suggested, "Then when we get more members, we can raise more moneyso we can get still more members?"

"Why, certainly! And then when we get a lot of money, we can put on areal campaign and get a whole lot of members! That's what organizationis. That's how you progress, in this ole world!"

David Traub complained, "I don't see that. If you want to promote somereform, and not get all tangled up in jealousy and politics, you want toavoid organizing for the sake of organizing."

"Oh, I agree with you, heartily," said Gid.

Some time during the evening there was an election of officers. Gid hadassumed that he would be president.

He was president. Not only that, but, without the least hesitation, hemade an inaugural address:

However much they might disagree upon minor details, such as the valueof Christianity and of women, they stood shoulder to shoulder, throughfire and obloquy, an army small but determined, invincible in theirloyalty as in their enfranchised intellects and their commondetermination to throw off their chains, a force to make the blindmonster of Capitalism look up from its prey in terror, denouncingunsparingly the capitalistic tyranny of Compulsory Latin and demandinglower prices on tennis balls at the Co-op.

He, their leader, would retire for meditation and consolidate his plans.They must not Breathe a Word. It would take some time to win over theentire student body and, though on principle he was opposed to Fabiantactics, it might be better to enlist the undergrads before lining upthe faculty and the president--and particularly that damn dean--andgiving them the choice of joining the revolution or resigning. As toimmediate strategy, they must decide whether their next step should be amass meeting in the college chapel, or the publication of a weeklymagazine, illustrated, and including articles by Eugene V. Debs andGeorge Bernard Shaw. He himself would be willing to write to ComradesDebs and Shaw and instruct them to shoot along the articles, quick. Butwhatever they did, they might now say that socialism had alreadytriumphed at good ole Adelbert!

After this springing verbiage, Comrades Traub, Klock and Tyne filed out,looking dazed.

Gid fretted, "Hatch, do you suppose we can trust those dubs to keep ourplot absolutely dark till we're ready to spring socialism on the world?"

"Gid, do you think that pikers like me ought to have even a vote? Doesyour sea-green radicalism go that far?"

"Oh, yes."

"What's your real plan? To turn this thing into a rival of the orthodoxDebating Society?"

Gid brought out a smile that Hatch could not withstand. "I haven't anyidea! What do you think we ought to pull, Hatch? Anyway, we got to getrid of Frank Tyne. Why, that goat would actually like to overthrow theRepublican Party! But you're the brains in this gang. What shall we dowith the League?"

"I'll think about it," said Hatch, in subjugation to a man whom he likedand envied and despised.

Chapter 3

The Dean of Adelbert College said feebly, "You again?"

Gid's expression declared that they were old and helpful friends; thathe was fond of this aged pal, and glad to give him new vigor and ideas.

"Yes, sir. I thought you ought to know that I have founded a secretSocialist club."

"Well?"

"I just thought, if it was forbidden to have revolutionary clubs, I'dbetter report it, so it would be okay. Gosh, I guess it must be awfulunusual to have secret juntas in Adelbert!"

"No, not unusual; a little annoying, perhaps, but not unusual. Someyears we have an anarchist club, and frequently a nihilist club or anatheist club, and once we had a nudist club--I really had to speak tothe inaugurator of that one, a very nice young fellow who is nowassistant rector of St. Dimity's, in Philadelphia. But with mostsubversive organizations, we don't do anything unless they parade innightshirts or trample the shrubbery. But it is somewhat rare for thechief instigator to come in and inform us."

"Would you like me to wind up the club, Dean? I'd be glad to, if you'dlet me in on the course in Forensics. And in the circumstances, I guessI'd have to be taken into the debating society, too."

"Please--go--away!"

"Well, sir, you'll remember I warned you."

"Just let me know well beforehand any particularly destructive sabotageor direct action that you may plan. I wouldn't foresee them--my curiouslearnings are rather along theological and ichthyological lines. You'lllet me know, won't you?"

"Oh, I couldn't do that, Dean. I have to be loyal to my gang. But Ithink I may say I have a lot of influence, and I'll see they don'tperpetrate anything too dangerous. And if you'll just think over thatForensics course----"

"Please--go--away!"

* * * * *

Upon Gid's suggestion, the Socialist League challenged the collegedebating society to a discussion of the government ownership ofrailroads, and that official body accepted, with the notion of having apractice match before the classic annual contest with the greatUniversity of Winnemac.

Hatch Hewitt, who didn't really believe in government ownership ofanything except congressional spittoons, and whose idea of socialism wasthat under it an enlightened young man could tell the city editor to goto the devil; Gid, who hadn't believed in government ownership untiltoday; and Francis Tyne, who always had, sat together in the collegelibrary, garnering statistics about socialized railroads in Germany. In1910 that country, under the enlightened and scholarly leadership ofKaiser William, was universally known to be the brightest nation in theworld.

As he was often to do in his later career as a professional promoter ofideas, Gid nearly convinced himself of the truth of his own crusade. Hewas deciding to go out and nationalize all rails, he was beginning tobelieve he had invented collectivism, when the catastrophe struck them.

On October 2nd, they had the news that the plant of the Los AngelesTimes, which had been warring with union labor, had been blown up,with nineteen deaths. And the Adelbert Socialist League blew up with it.

The League now had nine members. Most of them would have preferred tomeet dramatically at Hatch's stable, in conspiratorial darkness, butthey were up against reality. They weren't merely defying God and theHouse of Morgan now; they were in danger of getting demerits from thedean. The executive committee gathered in a corner of the Y.M.C.A.lounge at three o'clock on a bright afternoon.

Gid panted, "Meancometorder. Lissen, Comrades, I think we better get thehell out of this Socialist club, or turn it into a literary society."

"You're going to lay down and take it? You mean you don't dare to facethe ruling class and defy 'em when there's something to defy 'em about?"demanded Hatch.

"Not at all! We'll call our literary society the Walt Whitman League.That's defiant enough for anybody! Whitman never went to college!"explained Gid. "There's nobody wants to hammer tyranny more than I do,but this isn't the time for it."

All the rest of his life, in crises, Gideon Planish was to say, "Butthis isn't the time for it." It is the slogan of discreet Liberalism, asprofound as St. Francis's "The beasts are my brothers," or GovernorAlfred E. Smith's war-cry, "Slice it where you will, it's stillbaloney."

Hatch Hewitt was demanding, "Why isn't it the time for it?"

"Because there may be a chance that these labor agitators, the McNamarabrothers, did blow up the Times."

"Impossible!" protested Hatch, while Lou Klock challenged, "And supposethey did? Wouldn't you guys still support them? Do you know what waris?" Unanswered, he walked out of the room, out of the Socialist Leagueand, in a few weeks, out of Adelbert College.

Hatch reflected, "I don't agree with Lou--yet. But I see his idea. Now,Gid, you run to the dean again and tell him we've ducked for cover!" Andhe followed Lou out of the Y.M.C.A., while Gid wailed after him, "Me?Run to the dean? Me?"

That was the death of the Adelbert Socialist League, and for the funeralthere were no hymns, no flowers, and only such exhibits of Christianresignation as were provided by Francis Tyne.

* * * * *

For a month Hatch looked at Gid with bleakness, and there were nointellectual gallops in his stableyard. But Hatch Hewitt was a lonelyyoung man; he loved people too much and he despised them too much tohave long and casual friendships. When Lou Klock had gone and Dave Traubhad wandered on to the University of Chicago, Hatch was leftcompanionless, and by the end of their freshman year there had beenrestored between him and Gid a flinching amiability. They sneaked overto a neighboring city and drank beer and discussed the danger of warwith Mexico.

"I don't think a country as big as what we are had ought to pick on aneighboring state," said Gid, the old Liberal.

"Is that a fact?" marveled Hatch.

* * * * *

On the day after the decease of the Socialist League, Gid sought out thesecretary of the college debating society, reminded him that it had beenannounced on all bulletin boards that the society would debate with theSocialists, who had blown up the Times personally, and suggested thatthe only way out of such a perilous connection would be for the debatingsociety to elect Gid a member. Then, he might possibly think aboutkilling off and generally disowning the League.

The debating society met, in haste, changed its constitution so thatfreshmen might be admitted, elected Gid, and thanked him forsomething--they weren't quite sure what--that he had done to saveAdelbertan oratory from shame. Late in the spring he was actually on thedebating team which invaded and conquered Erasmus College; and the fameof Gideon Planish promised to be as firmly established in the gloriousannals of the college as that of Old Pug, for eleven years the baseballmascot.

Erasmus College was in Eastern Ohio, and Gid had never been so farEast--almost into New York State!

With his associate debaters, including a very large junior who sanggrand opera in Dakotan, he traveled on a day coach to Erasmus. They hadlarge stickers, "Adelbert Champion Debaters," on their suitcases, andthey talked in enormous voices about taxation, to improve the minds oftheir fellow passengers.

They were met by a cheering crowd of nine, and put up at a fine hotel:twenty-two rooms, twenty-two pitchers, and twenty-two bowls. Gid hadnever before stayed at a hotel, except with his fussy father and mother,who kept telling him about the fire-escape. He had a room of his own,and he proudly raised the shade, felt the bed, as he had seen his motherdo, demanded a luggage rack of the cynical bellboy, and unpacked the twoshirts, the chemistry textbook and the shoeshine rag.

They were all dressing for the debate, in dark-blue suits--practicallyin evening clothes, felt Gid. He sat down to his debate notes, not verynervously. He might not be a William Jennings Bryan, but he had workedhard, he was full of earnestness, he had a great message for the studentaudience of Erasmus, and there was no reason to suppose that God wasn'tenthusiastically with him.

They were entertained at dinner in the college, and when the Adelbertheroes came into the Erasmus Commons, very modestly, just one of themcarrying a small banner lettered

Adelbert
Will
Win

the student body clapped their hands, all six hundred hands, and some ofthem threw bread in an affectionate way, while Gideon Planish tasted thefiery brandy of public greatness and just acclaim.

At the debate, in the college chapel, there wasn't as large a crowd ashe had hoped; in fact, there were less than a hundred--in fact, therewere less than seventy-five. The hosts explained that it just happenedthat there was also a basketball game tonight. But as Gid spoke, thecrowd seemed to stretch out endless, and they were all his, all lookingat him, all listening to him, and his power was on them.

For a moment he found it amusing that what he had to say was theopposite of what he would have said for the Socialist League. Then itwas the truth, and the only truth, and he had invented it. He maintainedthat the government ownership of railroads was not only inefficient butnaughty. He played on figures as on cello strings, and wound up hisMessage like a Beethoven finale:

"I think we have shown by the statistics of railroad operation in NewKamchatka how wasteful is the political control of transportation. Butthere is another aspect that is even more important: the spiritual sideof this economic crime against suffering mankind.

"How would you like it if you were one of our fine, honest toilers, say,like a conductor on your own K Line here, a man who has supported hisfamily and paid his debts and his charities and his lodge dues, and beenloyal to his State, his country, his God, and his company, and he findsthat some apparently innocent passenger is nothing but a snooper, aGovernment spy, put there on the train by inimical politicians andbosses to see how many cash fares the conductor knocks down? Do youthink any man could carry on, like the fine, honest workmen ought to inour land of liberty, in that atmosphere of political intrigue anddistrust? Oh, to ask that question is to answer it! And so, finally, doyou know what that kind of stuff is? It is nothing less than thatmenacing, that subversive, that most European doctrine--SOCIALISM!"

And Gid and God and the Adelbert team won the debate.

* * * * *

He came down the Erasmus Hotel corridor, broad, confident, shining withyouth and victory.

The night maid was a German woman of thirty, unmarried but not veryvirginal, just from the farm, and lonely for her Otto. She had a radiantskin, and a smile for returning heroes.

"Well, you been out," she said.

"Yes! I won a debate!"

"A debate? Well!"

It was the first time that he had ever encountered a person who wascompletely worldly-wise. Marta had the sophistication that came fromseeing a mortgage foreclosed, a father killed by falling on a scythe, athousand animals bred and a hundred suitors smirking. He wasoverwhelmed, and he said, by her volition more than by his, "Don't I geta kiss after winning the debate?"

"Yuh--maybe."

Her lips were as sweet as fresh-made johnnycake with honey. Heunbuttoned her bodice, kissed her again and shakily unlocked the door ofhis room. She followed him in, cheerfully, and much later she told himhe was a fine young man--just like her Otto.

But as Gid went to sleep, quite happily, to the urgent whistle of anexpress flying through town, he was thinking not of the dark blind chasmof Marta's love, but of how the applause had marched across hisaudience, and he muttered:

"Now, nothing can stop me! United States Senator--why, I got itcinched!"

Chapter 4

All that summer after his freshman year, Gid went to sea and met hairymen who had known fog and shipwreck. He talked with passengers who couldtoss you off a Capetown hotel or a Viennese countess or a Saskatchewanfishing trip as easily as you could toss off a game of checkers.

He was a waiter on a Great Lakes steamer, running from Buffalo toDuluth, and he learned something about navigation and more about beerand the surprising varieties of cheese. He had time to think of girlsand religion and making money and all the things he could do in the wayof organizing the loose high spirits and good nature of his fellowstudents. Standing in darkness on the lowest of the four sprawling opendecks, he listened to the lake water singing past him, and made tworomantic vows.

He would be a Good Man, a bringer of Messages to the poor old longingworld--Messages about brotherhood and democracy and the regular use ofgreen (including yellow) vegetables. He'd show 'em that there wasnothing to all this predatory vice. He'd inform them that the waitersand deck-hands who gambled and got drunk had no bank accounts nor evenmuch jollity to show for it.

Otherhand, he perceived that most of the Good Men, such as his collegeinstructors, had little to show for their virtue. The trouble, hedecided, was that they fooled their time away, without direction.

He selected virtue as his lot, but virtue had to be organized.

There were but few born organizers; few that had his gifted combinationof imagination, power and accuracy. He wasn't sure but that he was aneven greater organizer than orator. Among Good Men, he would be the MostGood Man, and their chairman.

In some slight awe he perceived that this was probably Destiny speaking,and not just his humble willingness to serve mankind.

As for girls, God, scenery, also family life and physical fitness, hewas glad to find that he considered them all very nice things. He hopedthat he would never refer to any of them in any speech without saying,"God bless 'em!" But for a devoted artist like himself, he felt, theywere important only as they could be organized and so made available tomankind.

* * * * *

He returned to college with some acclaim. The dean was almost polite tohim, and the debaters assured him that if he would be patient, theywould elect him their captain in another year. The football captainasked his advice as to whether there really was anything to all thisReading that he kept hearing about in his classes, and the leadingbootlegger in the village gave Gid a box of thirty Turkish cigarettes.

Diligently harkening to the voice of the Lord, the first GreatOrganizer, Gid started on his new plans.

The pants-pressing situation in Adelbert was deplorable. Pressing wascarried on, without co-ordination, by the village tailor shop, by thejanitor of a fraternity house, and by two students; the elapsed-timefactor was variable; and the prices ran anywhere from fifteen cents tohalf a dollar, with collections, Gid estimated, not over 67%.

He disliked the tailor shop--he had had words about his bill--so heeliminated it from the blessed society of justifiable pants pressers. Hecalled the janitor and the two student pants craftsmen together; hesmothered them with words, and set them all up in the janitor's basementroom, as The Adelbert Snappy Dressers' Pantorium--Terms Cash. Heincreased their joint business by persuading the football captain tocome out for pressedness instead of manly sloppiness, he got sixteenco-eds to sign a vow not to be "dated" by unpressed males, he coaxed theeditor of the Weekly Delbertan to run an article, written by Gid,stating that visitors from Yale and Harvard were shocked by the normalstate of the Adelbert trouser, and he even tried to remember not tothrow his own clothes on the floor when he went to bed.

He spent joyful hours in the basement pressing shop, sniffing thepleasant steaminess, watching the tailors' geese--or gooses--turnwrinkled cloth into smooth elegance, and going over the account book,looking like the founding Rothschild. And the Pantorium prospered andthe rival tailor shop went gratifyingly bankrupt. Gid collectedtwenty-five per cent of the Pantorium profits. And so, by April of hissophomore year, he was so busy and so expanded that he was two hundreddollars in debt, and likely to be suspended from college.

To set up the business, he had had to provide better irons and a quickerfurnace, to advance rent on the basement and, particularly, to pay forthe dodgers which communicated his first printed messages to a surprisedpublic. It is doubtful if ever in his life he was to be more forcefulthan in the hot rhetoric of "Hey, fellows, do you want to look likecollege men or town muckers? The garment oft bespeaks the man. Don't goaround bespeaking that you don't belong to the bon ton. Co-eds' suitsalso pressed scientifically. Welcome, girls. YE OLDE PANTORIUM. Termscash."

For this enterprise, which was in the true American tradition of JimHill, the Rockefellers and Jesse James, Gid had borrowed three hundreddollars from an aunt who read nothing but the Boston Cook Book and whowas deaf and pious, though she lived in the great city of Zenith. He hadpromised to repay her within a month.

But his student patrons interpreted the phrase "terms cash" just as Gidhimself would have interpreted it: as somewhere between a poor joke anda threat of horrid tyranny. In five months, Gid was able to pay backonly one hundred dollars, and his doting aunt stopped doting. She wroteto his father on the same day on which the Adelbert Sportshop reportedto the dean that Gid owed them seventy-two dollars.

Gid's father arrived, a melancholy veterinary insignificance with a thingray mustache, and while the dean listened with small smiling, Gid'sfather explained to him that the worst of all sins, excepting treasonand the neglect of sickness among domestic animals, was being in debt.At the end of it all, Gideon cried out, as Gideon Planish was so oftento cry out, "It just seems like people don't appreciate it when you tryto do things for them."

* * * * *

He really got more credit for other enterprises which did not requirehalf the boldness involved in the Pantorium and which may havebrightened up the college public far less than a year of well-pressedtrousers. He organized the first Sophomore Prom ever known in Adelbert.It is true that this Prom never did come off, but there were weeks ofsplendid committee meetings, and, after them, Gid was elected presidentof the class. He then combined the warring Student Volunteers and theSociety for the Study of Missions into one body, and he got the ZenithElectric Lighting Company to invite the Social Conditions class to go upto the city and inspect the plant, with free transportation andlemonade.

He seemed to have won back the friendship of Hatch Hewitt, who said tohim something which Gid never quite made out, but which he felt to becomplimentary: "If I just stick around with you, I'll understand all ofAmerican education and American benevolence."

Gid was glad to hear that, because one of the intelligentsia had beencomplaining that though he was useful at starting great culturalmovements, like the evening class in Great Women of the Bible, he was notrue executive, and incapable of keeping his crusades alive.

Well, by gosh, Gid reflected, if he could hold onto the worship of anole bandit like Hatch, he certainly was a better executive than mostpeople, by gosh!

And so he flashed on into junior year and senior year, as classpresident, assistant chairman of the Junior Prom, business manager ofthe baseball team, vice-president of the Y.M.C.A., vice-fourflush of theFour Aces and Growler Association, and as a scholar whose A's inRhetoric and Forensics made up for his C's in everything else. He was asenior, and it was time for him and Hatch to decide which of the rewardsin the world outside college they would prefer to pluck.

Gid's professor in the speech department had hinted that if he would"settle down to work and quit trying to uphold the arms of Moses andteach everybody on the campus how to go to the bathroom," he mightbecome a fairly good teacher. But Gid saw himself and a whole armamentof Messages in a larger arena.

* * * * *

"I suppose you still intend to go back to newspaper work," said Gid.

"Sure. And what mode of gracious living have you picked on thismorning?" said Hatch Hewitt.

"Say, I wish you wouldn't always try to kid me."

"I admire you, Gid. I think you're cockeyed when you look in the mirrorand talk about 'doing something for humanity'--which usually meansgiving 'em another excuse for getting into war. But after four beers,you have virtue. What are you really going to apply it to?"

"I'm still more tempted by politics than by anything else. I tell you,politics needs men with intellectual training. I could be a doctor, butI don't like sick people. Or a lawyer, but I hate sticking in an office.Or a clergyman. Yes, I been a lot tempted by the ministry. But I do likea glass of beer now and then, and anyway, I don't know as I could workup the real feeling of instant communion with God that I'd like to, if Iwas going to go around doing a lot of public praying. So, you see, I doreally feel a call to politics.

"Gosh, what I could put over! Old-age pensions for every man, woman andchild, and scientific measures of free trade, and adequate defense,which would be the surest guaranty of world peace and----"

"Sure, sure, I know. Which party do you feel yourself called upon torevive?"

"I don't care a damn which it is, as long as it isn't the Socialist.Yuh, I got to hand both the major parties something. I'm all forJefferson, but then I think very highly of Lincoln, too."

"Really?"

"Yes, I certainly do."

"Look, Gid. The State Legislature is in session. Why don't we get a dayoff and go up and visit it? I've been thinking about going intopolitical reporting myself."

(Years later, Gid explained to his wife that by taking Hatch to theState capital, Galop de Vache, he had started him off as anewspaperman.)

The dean gave them leave, and this time he said almost nothing aboutbeer. He had come to feel that young Planish was a really useful memberof the college, and that, no matter what the psychology professor saidabout the boy's "bumbling busyness," he did have a fine, earnestinterest in Christian missions.

The dean was growing old.

* * * * *

Galop de Vache was a smallish town surrounding a State capitol building,and the capitol was a jungle of marble corridors and onyx pillars andcases of Civil War flags and marble ex-governors in frock coats,together with eight or ten rooms in which the State business was done.The gaudiest of these was the senate chamber, and when Gid, with Hatch,teetered down the steep stairs in the visitors' gallery, he wasimpressed.

The chamber was lined with mahogany, save for the front wall, which, inone vast mosaic splashed with rose and gilt and scarlet, recalled thehistory of the State: pioneers beside their ox-teams, tall river-boatswith buckskin huntsmen, and Stephen A. Douglas addressing a crowd, womenin bright calico and men with beaver hats, on this same spot where thecapitol stood. In front of the mural was the Lieutenant-Governor's desk,upraised on yellow-and-black marble, and over the chamber the vastskylight was jeweled with the arms of every State in the Union.

Here was glory, here was high politics, here was marble, and Gid wantedto be standing upon this lofty and burning stone.

But he noticed, as he settled down and looked for flaws--a collegesenior has to be practical--that the thirty-six seats for senators werenothing but mahogany school-desks. And how sick he was of schoolroomsand desks!

He had hoped for high oratory, about flags and eagles and the brawny armof labor, but a bald fat man was on his feet and, while nobody seemed tolisten, while one senator ate a sandwich and another snapped spit balls,was mumbling:

"This bill--this 179--I know there's been some opposition to it--thegentleman from Grolier County has been kicking about it--but it's beenpretty well talked over in committee and I guess it's a sound bill, Idon't know much about it--it's about muzzling dogs in the southern tierof counties."

Gid groaned, "Good God! So that's how senators trifle around when weelect 'em to preserve our liberties!"

Down on the floor, a silver-haired man with schoolmaster spectaclesrose, yawned, handed a peanut to the senator who was speaking, walked tothe back of the chamber, and stood yawning again.

"That old fellow seems as much bored as we are," approved Gid.

"Yes, and I know who he is--he really is something--that's SenatorKurtshaw, the minority leader," said Hatch.

The man on the throne, presumably the Lieutenant-Governor, saidsomething rapid and entirely incomprehensible about the dog-muzzle bill,there was a growl from the caged senators, and the measure seemedincredibly to have passed. It wouldn't have if he had been a senator,Gid asserted. But he was to hear still more abysmal legislation slidethrough, presented in the reading clerk's furry mumble----

"To amend the markets law in relation to the definition of 'limburgcheese'."

"To amend the education law in relation to school camps for children."

"To revive and extend the corporate existence of The Highlife BrewingCompany of Monarch."

It was on this last that the silvery Senator Kurtshaw yawned mostdestructively, and walked out of the chamber.

"Now there's one representative of the people that seems to have an ideawhat it's all about!" said Gid. "Gosh, I wish I had a chance to talkwith him and ask him if we can ever really do anything with thiscastiron political machine."

"Why don't we just butt in and do it?"

Gid appreciated the gall and ingenuity of his journalistic friend. Someday he might give Hatch a newspaper of his own.

A doorman suggested that they might find Senator Kurtshaw in theFinancial Committee Room. Unaware that senators themselves slip up anddown in small smelly elevators, the two young seekers descended theNapoleonic flight of the Grand Staircase--the first persons ever to doso except scrubwomen, sparrows and General Lew Wallace. Gid wasdeclaiming, "Certainly a swell lot of legislative junk our guardians ofliberty are fussing over, while widows starve and the myrmidons, orwhatever you call 'em, beat up protesting wage-slaves! 'An act to taxthe State for red paint for the noses of brewery salesmen, to enchant, Iguess it's enhance, the sales of Old Dog Rover ales and lager.' Now Iknow I got to go into politics and clean up the mess!"

The Financial Committee Room was a bareness of plaster and steel filingcabinets. Senator Kurtshaw was at the end of a ponderous table, readingthe Zenith Advocate-Times--the sports page.

"How do you do, Senator?" said Gid.

"Huh?"

"We're a couple of college men, from Adelbert."

"Well?"

"I could see how amused you were by that Highlife Brewery Bill."

"What d'you mean, amused? Very necessary bill. What do you want?"

"Well, to be frank, I wanted to talk about entering politics."

"Go ahead. There's nothing to prevent you, if you're a citizen, andtwenty-one. Why talk to me about it?"

"I thought I might find it a little complicated, as a college man inpolitics."

"What about it? I'm a college man in politics. In fact, I once taught inthe university law school, and I suppose I was a conceited damn skinnynuisance, just as you're a damn fat nuisance."

"I am not fat!"

"You will be. Now what do you expect to do in politics, with yourespecial knowledge of Cro-Magnon tribal lore?"

Gid was becoming decently angry. "I'd speak up for the people, that'swhat I'd do, and get 'em shorter hours and longer wages, more wages, Imean--but I mean, of course, without allowing any of this tyranny ofunion labor. I'd denounce all these consolidations of predatoryinterests that----"

"What predatory interests you mean? The farm-bloc or the MedicalAssociation or the Methodist Church or your Adelbert AthleticAssociation?"

"You know what I mean! Anyway, I'd do something about justice andeducation and, well, I mean the Larger Issues, and not waste the publictime on a lot of tripe about dog-muzzles and limburger cheese!"

"And just who do you think is hired by the people to see they get goodlimburger cheese, to see that we have food inspectors who know cheesefrom Euclid? Do you think these things get themselves done by prayer andreading the Gettysburg Address and listening to lectures by EmmaGoldman? If you get gypped on a street-car fare, or your mayor appointsa chief of police that steals your shirt, or your eggs are rotten, oryour car breaks a spring on a bad road, then who do you blame? The StateLegislature! And then you don't re-elect us. We're not a bunch of actorsplaying Julius Caesar. We're business men, and badly paid ones, tryingto carry out what the citizens want, or think they want, or some boyorator from the River Platte, like you, tells 'em they want. If you'dlike to get into politics--all right. Go to your county committee, wherethey know how good you are, and tell 'em you're fixing to step out andsave the country. I'm sure they'll cry with delight--but don't come andtell me! I didn't walk out on the session upstairs because I was boredor 'amused'. I had a toothache. And it's getting worse every minute!"

* * * * *

For ten miles, on the train to Adelbert, Gid was silent with a silentHatch. Then he broke up:

"Say it! I know. He was right. I'm just another college amateur. Andfat! I don't know one doggone thing about how a government is carriedon. That senator has certainly knocked all the ambition out of me! And Ihaven't got any deep philosophy. Why, this question I noticed in theZenith paper--if there was a fire and you had to decide between savingthe Mona Lisa and a two-year-old child--I don't know which I'd save."

"Neither did the joker that wrote it."

"But it shows me I'm not so gosh-awful profound. I guess I better justget into the teaching game and hand out the correct-speech guff, like myprof thinks I had ought to." Then Gid became cheerful. "Maybe some dayI'll be a college president and get the alumni really lined up oncontributions, and double the college attendance. I could do that,don't you think?"

"I'm sure of it," said Hatch.

Chapter 5

He had a rich brown small beard, a good thick beard for a man oftwenty-nine. He had grown it to give a more interesting look to acertain commonplace squatness, and he had cultivated a trick of glancingsharply at people who spoke to him, then casually looking away, asthough he had already learned everything about them. He wore browntweeds and a bright-blue shirt and a loose purple bow-tie. He hoped thatall the respectable people on the Pullman chair-car would be puzzled andexcited, and wonder whether he was a college professor or the kind ofEnglishman you read about in H. G. Wells, the kind who was intellectualbut who rockgardened in front of an artistic converted mill in Surrey.

And at twenty-nine, in 1921, he really was a college professor. He wasProfessor Gideon Planish, Dr. Planish, Ph.D. of the University of Ohio,Professor of Rhetoric and Speech in Kinnikinick College, Iowa.

That was a small college with beautiful elm trees, a faint Episcopalflavor--esthetic but responsible--and a pleasant feeling thatscholarship and piety were good old historical principles but shouldn'tbe overdone. The college was attended by the sons and daughters ofmanufacturers and physicians in Iowa, Minnesota and the Dakotas, and ithad football, but not too much, music, but not too much, andco-educational flirtation, but not too public.

Professor Planish was well esteemed, in Kinnikinick. He looked at theathletes, he looked at girl students who came to beg him prettily toraise their marks from C Minus to C, he looked at the trustees and thenew president, new since last Christmas, as though he was on to alltheir charming little dodges, but was amused by them and didn't mind.

He also did some teaching, in a fair routine way.

He did well at lectures to the women's clubs in Central Iowa, for whichhe was often paid twenty-five dollars and expenses, with attendance fortea at the banker's house obligatory. The clubwomen admired him, admiredhis beard, admired his merry eyes, admired his trick of becoming moistlyecstatic as he recited W. B. Yeats, then chuckling at himself and atthem for their emotion.

Yet he was not quite happy. He was, he felt, too young and strong to goon sitting in classrooms. He was a bachelor, and the girls bothered him,their legs bothered him, their knees mocked him, and he was obsessed andextremely annoyed by their sailor blouses. He was afraid that he wanted,even more than crowds and glory, to be holding one of these sweet,collapsible little flappers in his arms. It seemed, he groaned, to bethe Lord's incomprehensible purpose that a pure and studious young manwho took cold showers regularly and played tennis and was willing toserve the people as a United States Senator should keep having EvilThoughts about the flashy way in which these young women crossed theirlegs as they sat in front of him.

Of course the way out, and the Biblical way at that, as suggested bythat wise old Y.M.C.A. man, St. Paul, was to be married. But ProfessorPlanish had never yet found a young woman who combined the threeimperative elements: that she should be young and curving; that sheshould appreciate his humanitarianism and his gift for high hotwordings; and that she should have the bland social talent that wouldhelp him to go higher. He had not found her as yet, but meantime he wasable to control himself by his early Christian training and by theconstant availability of his mistress.

She was Teckla Schaum, and she was really a good soul, with money of herown.

* * * * *

He had spent the summer of 1921 in the Yale Library, being snubbed bysuch professors as were not up in Vermont being snubbed by the farmersor over in England being snubbed by the professors at Oxford. Hebelieved that he had been trying to write a book on what he called TheGenius of American Orators: Webster, Lincoln, Calhoun, Bryan, IgnatiusDonnelly and all persons named Roosevelt. He had done only two chaptersof the book. Years afterward, he found them in a trunk, and turned theminto a singularly useful pamphlet which showed that True Americanism wassynonymous with extensive giving to uplift organizations. But he had hadgood luck with the daughter of his landlady, out on Orange Street, andhe had learned to appreciate lobsters, salt water and dancing cheek tocheek. He had spent a week in New York, and he could find his way fromthe Grand Central Station to the Public Library to Billy's speakeasy inGreenwich Village.

He was ready to take his place in the world of the Eastern Seaboard, butthose damned snobs of Columbia and Harvard and Princeton and Yale, thosehigh-voiced academic Pharisees, did not encourage him. Perhaps what heneeded was a loving girl who would, like a domesticated Joan of Arc,show him the path.

* * * * *

Professor Planish decided that the passengers on the chair-car fromChicago to Kinnikinick hadn't even noticed him. He looked gloomily athis new tan-leather kit bag, with the grand gold letters GP. It didn'tseem worth while to have paid so much for it.

He sighed, shook his head at the porter's "Brush you off, sir?" andcarried his own bag to the vestibule.

Kinnikinick was now galloping past the train: two fat-bellied oil tanks,a yard littered with shattered old automobiles, two ganglinggrain-elevators, one exclamatory in red and the other of gray galvanizediron, standing raw against the faded prairie. It all seemed clutteredand flimsy to Professor Planish, after the shaded security of New Haven,but he was comforted when, as he hitched down the train steps, carryingthe big bag, he was greeted by the station agent with a hearty "Welcomeback, Prof!"

He was home. On the plank platform, by the small red frame station, apretty girl junior was evidently pointing him out to a garland of stillprettier freshmen--pointing at him and whispering, while the girls alllooked at him gravely, without giggling. He was home, and he wasimportant, and the driver of the flivver taxicab was calling, "Backagain, Prof? Can I drive you up to the house?"

It was the custom at that time and place for the young men to painttheir ancient and derivative automobiles with such texts as "Pike's Peakor Bust--Busted" or "How about it, Babe?" None of these amateur exhibitswas so florid as this taxi, this open Ford touring car, which waslabeled "Kinnikinick's Komical Kommon Karrier," and decorated with amural of young men in white evening ties and ladies in indiscreetevening gowns attending a rural picnic at which was served nothing butbananas and hard-boiled eggs. Professor Planish felt humiliated athaving to come back from the elms of Hillhouse Avenue to such frippery,and he sat in the flivver glaring, his stout little beard straight out.

It all seemed better when they came to the campus. On the bluffs of theKinnikinick River, which curved like a question mark, the half-dozengray Tudor buildings enclosed a quadrangle shady with oak and maple, aplace for contemplation. Looking at it, young Professor Planish exulted,"Not as big as Yale, maybe, but a lot purer architecture and sounderscholarship--and a damn sight more human!"

The flivver left him at his residence, a bedroom and a study in thesquare white house of Mrs. Hilp, a widow woman whom no one ever noticedand nobody has ever described. She stood on the wide screened porch,crying "Welcome home, Professor!" and heating up his sense of his ownimportance. He unpacked by throwing his clothes on the bed and leavingthem for Mrs. Hilp. He was not a particularly tidy man.

It was still warm enough for him to show off the new linen suit he hadbought in New Haven, and in that pale angelic glory he started out onhis errands--a man who was again wanted and needed. He looked into hisprivate office, a grim and slate-floored coop in the basement of theAdministration Building, and looked at his secretary, a lady who adoredhim but who was stringy and virginal. She had answered all his mail, andhe hadn't a thing for her to do, so he patted her on the shoulder, toshow that he was friendly but also keeping his sharp eye on everything.

He went through the memorial gateway, ornamented with the shields ofnine New England colleges, and walked down Wallace Avenue to the KollegeKlothes Korner, where he bought a bright green tie that he didn't need,and to the Smokes & Book Co-op, where he bought a red rubber eraser thathe didn't like. Thus he was able to receive from the clerks, "Well,well, we missed you, Professor. Glad you're back with us."

He had planned his call upon Mr. W. C. Pridmore, president of theDrovers' National Bank and Chairman of the Board of Trustees ofKinnikinick College, for half-past three, when the bank would be closedto the public--a caste to which he still referred as "the hoi polloi."At five he would call on the new president of the college. This expertschedule of weighty conferences would give him, in between,three-quarters of an hour for the demands of love, which just nowconcerned the slim person of Dr. Miss Edith Minton.

Mr. W. C. Pridmore sat near the entrance to the bank, in a compartmentrailed with golden oak and of the general size of a pigpen. But neater,much neater. He was a gentle, anxious man, with a stubby mustache, andhe was always sorry when he had to foreclose a mortgage. And as hethought that Professor Planish was going to marry his widowed daughter,Teckla, and as he considered Professor Planish to be the most book-readand eloquent young man that he knew, yet with sound principles about theRepublican Party and with a decent salary, he rose from his steeldesk--the look of which gave money-borrowers a headache--he held out hisshaky hand, and cried, "Well, well! Teckla and I missed you, Gideon.You're a sight for sore eyes!"

Professor Planish wondered if it really would take as much as ten yearsfor him to become president of the college.

He told Mr. Pridmore that there were fine bank buildings and largefactories in New Haven, also some scattered college buildings, but asfor him, he was mighty glad to be back among friends.

At five minutes to four, Professor Planish was at Lambda Lambda LambdaHouse, slightly nervous, to call upon Dr. Edith Minton, proctor of theHouse and instructor in English. All summer he had been thinking abouther, remembering her as a quartz crystal, as a doe with large eyes andtiny elegant hoofs. What a mistake he had made, this past school year,not to have seen more of her!

He had to wait in the Lambda reception-room, an apartment with MaxfieldParrish prints, and throne chairs so straight and stiff and hard thatthey caused you to wonder whether it was really the heads of thecrown-wearers that got so uneasy.

Edith Minton slipped in, and his bounding heart told him that here washis true love wending; that Edith would be a credit to him and adorn hisdinner parties, no matter how great a magnifico he might become. He wasa little touched by his own cleverness in having recalled her soaccurately: pale, reedy, erect, and undoubtedly very soft and pleasingunder that armor of gray suit and crisp lace jabot. He thought abouttrying to kiss her, but the Infinite shot a warning to him. He shook herhand, her thin strong hand, and waved her to a chair--in her own house.

"You're looking fine, Edith. Have a good summer?"

"Not bad. I spent two weeks at a Wisconsin lake, but mostly I stayed inChicago and worked on Chaucer."

'Oh, I forgot to thank you for your card. I enjoyed hearing from you.Well... You're looking fine. You look as if you'd had a good summer.'

"Yes."

"Well, back to the mine."

"What do you mean?"

"Back to work."

She thought this over. "Yes, that's so. Back to work now."

"Yup. On the job now."

"I suppose you liked New Haven better than here."

"I did not! They want to see your passport and a certificate signed bythree respectable clergymen that you attended Hotchkiss, before they'llsay good morning. No!"

"And yet you aren't content to be here, either!"

"A man has to keep on advancing, doesn't he? But why am I being jumpedon, my dear?"

"Oh, I'm sorry, Gideon. I forget you're my superior officer, don't I!"

"Nonsense--nonsense--nonsense! Academic democracy--all on the samelevel--even undergraduates--in some respects. But why so grouchy?"

"Oh, I've just had an afternoon of girl freshmen who couldn't make uptheir minds whether they wanted to be scholars or women or have careers.I get a little cranky."

"You'll get over it!" He arose in a superior sort of way and patted hershoulder as chastely as he had that of his secretary. "Now get a goodrest. See you soon."

* * * * *

"She doesn't think so doggone much of me. She'd never be one toappreciate me and help advance my career. God but she's bloodless andsexless and conceited!... No, she's all right. Maybe she sees throughme! Maybe there isn't so much in me to appreciate, except punchfulwords. I'll have to realize that and profit by it--study and do a lot ofhard, quiet thinking," meditated young Professor Planish.

He was clumping back to Administration Hall, his beard bright in theSeptember sun. With his self-confidence and his determination to make animpression on the new regime flowing back into him, he walked boldlyinto the green-carpeted, portrait-fretted anteroom to the president'soffice.

He was a full professor; he was kept waiting only five minutes andadmitted to the fervid cordiality of the Rev. Dr. T. Austin Bull, thenew president of Kinnikinick.

There are rambling and rustic fellows, beanpoles with long noses anddisordered hair, who prove to be suave Men About Town in New York orLondon, polo players or editors of gossip magazines, up to the latestthing in music and morals. By contrary, there are sleek, slender,quick-moving men, curly-headed and neat-featured, who wear their clotheslike popular actors, who are as quick as cavalry captains and poised asinfantry majors, but who prove to be studious pastors, doctors ofdivinity, or teachers of manual training.

Of these deceptive elegants was T. Austin Bull who, after a Methodistboyhood, a decade as an eloquent and money-raising Episcopal minister,and a couple of years as secretary of an elephantine university, had, atforty-four, come to Kinnikinick as president.

The business was under new management; the sales and advertisingdepartments were being reorganized; and the highest standards ofAmerican business, piety, learning and manhood were to be advanced. Dr.Bull was against sloth, debt, the teaching of Greek except in graduateschools and the seduction of co-eds.

His handshake was virile, small though he was, and he greeted ProfessorPlanish in the best of glee-club tenors:

"Thank you for coming to call so early, Professor, but I'm not sure butthat I should have called on you. I'm so new to this job that I imagineI'll have to lean heavily on your experience.

"Let's see now: three years you've been at old Kinnikinick. I can't tellyou what splendid reports I get of your splendid teaching and your, uh,your splendid effect on the morale of the students. Oh, everywhere.But---- There is one thing, one small detail, that I should like to takeup with you--oh, more in a spirit of asking advice than of giving it,perhaps.

"Will you have a cigar, Professor? Of course as an ex-parson, I don'tsmoke much, but I find that a really good cigar at once cheers the heartand clears the head, provided it's a really good cigar, I mean, not afive-cent one--and light, I mean. Good! Now settle back in your chair,all comfy, and try and have the patience to hear me out.

"What I've ventured to think about, in a very tentative way, is: I'msure you make every effort to shelter our darling girl undergraduatesjust as much from yourself as from any other man, but have you evergiven thought to the somewhat disturbing position of a strong, young,unmarried man among so many lovely girls?"

"Oh, yes, I've given thought to it!"

"I imagined perhaps you had. And may I, in the most impersonal way, askif you have any plans for getting married?"

"I can't say anything definite just at this moment--only rash foolstempt the gods by prophecy, you know."

"How true that is!"

"But I hope before long to have something very interesting to tell you."

"That's fine, that's fine. I'm very pleased, Professor."

* * * * *

To himself Professor Planish grunted, "Yeh, it would be interesting toknow who the dickens this is that I'm going to marry! And it would beinteresting to Prexy if he shadowed me for the next few hours and foundout why I'm not likely to be a menace to the cute co-eds!"

So he tramped to the little gray widow's-house where lived TecklaSchaum.

He knocked, instead of bursting in as he usually did. It would be apleasure to see her tremblingly peeping out, in hope. She'd be at home,all right; hadn't he telephoned her that he was back! She would neverspoil the perfect art of his return.

He knocked and rang the bell, and with perfect timing, as rehearsed inhis mind, there she was, edging the door open, then throwing it wide asshe whimpered, "Oh, Gid, you're here!"

"Me? No! I'm in New Haven. You know--in Connecticut."

He closed the door behind him, to shut off the censorious eyes ofKinnikinick, and kissed her profoundly, holding her small frail figureclose to him, conscious of her fine springy back.

"I've missed you so," she was sighing.

"Missed you, too. Nobody I could talk to."

"But you must have met some wonderful people in New Haven."

"Sure. Some swell English scholars--some real word-painters--makeBeowulf sit up and beg. And boy! What buildings and old New Englandchurches, and a very fine old town, Guilford, quite convenient on thetrolley, but--Jesus, Teckla darling, how I did miss talking to you! Youknow--natural."

He was relieved to find that he could, without straining, tell her thetruth. He reflected that for all his talent, maybe genius, he was asimple fellow who hated talking through pink gauze to Edith Minton orPresident Bull. He wondered if he might not actually be a little in lovewith Teckla. There was only one thing against the theory--he didn't likeher very much.

Teckla Pridmore Schaum, daughter of the head of the college trustees,was four years older than Professor Planish. For two years she had beenmarried to a promising young townsman, head of the Power and LightCompany, who had been killed when an automobile turned over. She wasincessantly hungry for the smell of a man's pipe, the horizon thunder ofhis grumbling. All the past winter she had been going to bed withProfessor Planish, but she didn't know much about him. She thought hewas a simple and friendly young man who wanted to help his students. Shewas four years older, and thin, and she hadn't much of a complexion,nothing very interesting in the way of hair or a nose or wit; nothing atall but a rigid passion for him and an unquestioning joy when she couldcomfort him and assure him that he was a superior man. She knew that hewas not in love with her, but she went on convincing herself that someday the darling boy would see the gold she gave him.

"That's the sweetest new linen suit!" she adored.

"Like it? From the East! God-awful expensive!"

"It's so smart."

"Huh! I bet you think President Bull dresses better than I do. I justsaw him. He wore a double-breasted gray suit with the waist cut in likea chorus man, and damned if he wasn't wearing a red carnation--thecurly-headed dude! Don't you think so?"

"Father and I always thought he was such a good scholar. But now youspeak of it, I guess he is a little dandified. You're so deep anddiscerning about people."

"No, I just get around a lot."

"Dear, why don't you take your coat off? It's terribly hot, forSeptember."

"That's not such a bad idea, at that."

"And I know you'd like a highball."

"That proposition certainly has a lot of merit in it."

With such delightful love talk and academic interchange of ideas, theyplayed along.

There was no Prohibition-era drinking at Kinnikinick, which was moralthough Episcopal. There were no saloons in town; Holy Communion wasdrunk in grape-juice; and at large public dinners, the bishop and thefootball team were toasted in Coca-Cola. The students carried abstinenceso far that they never drank in the dormitories, except in the evening,and perhaps afternoons. The president had to be known as a teetotaler,and it was only in the houses of the professors who had married moneythat there were any very large private cellars.

Not having had a drink since he had left his rooms at Mrs. Hilp's, theProfessor chummily helped Teckla crack the ice, open the White Rockbottle, and look over her Prohibition stock: four bottles of Bourbonwhisky, two of Scotch, twenty-seven gin, and a bottle of rock-and-ryelike an anatomical specimen in a museum.

Teckla had no servant, but her kitchen was nearly automatic, andbrutally handsome. The electric stove resembled a mahogany hope chest;the sink was of stainless steel; the cupboard of steel enameled a paleblue; and off the kitchen was the "breakfast nook," a pair of cherry-redsettees facing each other across a blue metal-topped table, withwallpaper flourishing strawberries and bluebirds.

In this metallic lovers' bower, where the rosebuds were pink electricbulbs, Professor Planish and his Aspasia grew happily drunk. Beforethat, the Professor gloated, "You haven't asked about my present foryou."

"You don't mean you brought me a present?"

"Ha, ha, who else would I bring a present to!"

He curvetted back into the living-room, which was in blue and silverwith an Arthur Rackham print, and from his coat pocket he took ajewelry-box of the most elegant pasteboard, icy to the fingers outside,with the most luxurious honey-colored satin lining. His left hand on hershoulder, leaning over her, he flashed the bright costume-jewelrybracelet which he had anxiously bought on Madison Avenue, in New York($11.99 cash).

"Oh, darling, it's lovely, just lovely! It shines so--like diamonds! Youshouldn't of!"

He kissed her, and for some seconds he was almost certain that he lovedher. But he was thirsty, and the ice and amber of his drink lured himback to the settee across from her.

"Gideon, I think I've done something really useful for you this summer."

"What's that?"

"I've been reading Trollope for you."

"Oh, yes--uh--Trollope."

"You know: Barchester Towers."

"Oh, I remember. I tackled that guy once, but he was pretty stronggoing. Not even a shooting. Too slow for me."

"Well, you know in your Rhetoric lectures, where you say an author canhave humor and excitement without falling into bad taste and immorality,like all these young writers, Trollope would be a dandy illustration. Imade some notes for you on his plots and moral principles."

"Oh, swell! Fellow busy as I am, trying to ram art and eloquence down alot of boneheads, to say nothing of all the work I do on committees, hedon't get time to do all the reading he'd like. It's a great sorrow tome, sometimes, Teckla. What I always say is, there's no friend like agreat book."

"Oh, I know how it is. Gideon! There's a hero in Trollope that's so muchlike you--the same combination of learning and virility. He's aclergyman, but he has a beard just like yours."

"Do you think I ought to go on wearing a beard? I thought President Bulllooked at it kind of funny."

"Don't you ever dare take it off! It makes you so distinguished. Likethat minister in the book."

"You know, I've worried a good deal, off and on, whether I hadn't oughtto gone into the ministry, instead of teaching. Of course what I alwayssay is, a man can do as much good by training these young minds inoratory as in purity, but I guess I'm kind of a perfectionist--I'm funnythat way--I can't seem to be satisfied unless I follow the highest andnoblest and no compromise, yes, sir, and no matter how practical we are,still we had ought to imitate the lives of the saints and sacrifice ourall to humanity without flinching and HOORAY, I feel wonderful!"

He had a quick one, without ice or soda. Was he--he pinched his mind, tosee if it hurt--was he getting lit? Oh, what the devil! He had tocelebrate his homecoming, didn't he? And Teckla looked at him with suchadmiration and surrender. Pity she was so much older than he.

She was breathing, "Oh, I know how you want to help and lift up thispoor bewildered world. But I honestly don't see how you could do anymore good in a church than in your wonderful work of teaching yourstudents to write and orate so beautifully, and then those of them thatget a call to go out and influence mankind will be just that much moregifted."

"Anyway, I'm not sure I've got the right kind of a voice for aclergyman."

"Do you know the kind of voice you ought to have?"

"What?"

"Just the kind you got now, dear!"

"Oh... But do you think it's deep enough?"

"It doesn't sound like a rainbarrel, if that's what you mean--thankHeaven! But listen, darling: you haven't told me one word about NewHaven. Of course I understood perfectly that you were working so hardyou didn't have time for much letter-writing. But now tell me about it.Did they offer you a position there?"

"I've got a more interesting idea than New Haven." He rose. "Come!"

Mutely she followed him into the living-room, sat on his lap, fondlyrubbed her cheek against his chest, while he stroked her knee.

The Professor sighed to himself, "She's a good woman. She's one personthat does appreciate what I am. It's a darn shame that she's sosmall-town and ordinary. It wouldn't be fair to her to take her off toNew York and Washington and face those snobs and intriguers."

She said, as though the words meant something quite different, "Gettinghungry? I've got the nicest little steak for you."

"Don't you think that can wait a while, sweetheart?"

"Yes, maybe it can," she whispered.

Chapter 6

Professor Gideon Planish was not satisfied with the workings ofProvidence, at the beginning of this college year of 1921-22. He was notsatisfied with Teckla Schaum. Oh, she admired him, in her shallowwomanly way, but she did not understand the complications of astatesman's career, did not even understand the problem of hisbeard--how he looked rustic if he had one, and yet if he took it offnow, everybody would laugh.

She couldn't tell him how to jump from college to the Senate chamberwithout going through a lot of sticky handshaking. She actually thoughthe might go on teaching, and yet she didn't see how embarrassing it wasfor him to have, as rival star in his department, a new Englishprofessor who had taken the advantage of actually being English.

No, he was alone with his high dreams, no one to help him, no one tohold his hand while he followed the road to the stars.

Damn it, he wasn't even quite sure that he ought to go on being Teckla'slover. Maybe it wasn't altogether moral.

One of his most prickly grievances was that in this small college, withonly thirty-one on the faculty, he had to take the huge requiredfreshman class in Introductory Rhetoric and Composition. He was happyenough in his small seminars in inspirational subjects likeArgumentative Composition, Oral Interpretation of the Drama, Persuasion,and Speech Psychology, but to process this knotty raw material of almosta hundred freshmen of every state of sex and unenlightenment was to pantand strain at an intellectual assembly-line. Yet all that Teckla saidabout it was, "You ought to feel that it's a privilege to stir up allthese young minds."

So it was with a shaky feeling of having been unjustly used that hebegan his first lecture to the class in Freshman Rhetoric.

He came through the R. U. E. entrance into Atkinson Amphitheater,carrying only a thin notebook. He was proud that he was too wellorganized to need the green bag or the pile of shaggy brown books withwhich the old troupers among the faculty messed up their unstylizedentrances.

With stilled and waiting power he looked at the huge class--ninety-sevenof them, all green. With most of them he hadn't even had consultations.Ninety-seven children from supercilious but provincial households, allbusy with apples, chocolate, tennis rackets, newspapers, and with oneanother, boy drawn to girl already, in the first week of college, in ajungle of young life that was uninterested in professors--even thosewith rich beards. If he did manage to stand there, looking a littleamused, a symbol of cold dominant wisdom, it was entirely an act and hean actor. Inside, he felt lonely and, at best, he hoped they wouldn'tfind him very funny or intolerably dull.

He gravely laid down his notebook, rapped his desk, and croaked:

"Young ladies and gentlemen, let us start this consortium, in which weare compelled to be associated for the next nine months, nine long longmonths [he did get a smile on that line], by firmly understandingcertain fundamental principles. Doubtless some of you are Shakespeares,piping your native woodnotes wild, but for most of us, the magic art ofRhetoric is rules, rules, rules, and yet more rules.

"It is discipline. It is a humble and willing subjection to the greatformulae worked out for us long ago by the Masters. We are not here toshow off or to think we are smart enough to do everything in new ways. Ishall tell you, and I shall expect acute attention when I tell you, whatthe Masters have decided, in all such supreme mysteries as style,beauty, conciseness, aspirations toward the Divine, the correct ratio,in fiction, of analysis and narrative and description to dialogue,scientific paragraphing, appeal to the nobler emotions such as love andpatriotism, the accepted punctuation and gosh----"

The last word had not been said aloud.

He couldn't be sure that her name did begin with an A or B, the girl atthe right end of the center section of the front row, for the ushers hadnot yet assorted the class alphabetically. Maybe she was sitting thereso close to him because she wanted to listen to him. But whether shebegan with an A or a B or a C or a Z, she was his true love forever.

It was true that her shoulders, like his own, were menaced by plumpness,but her legs were sleek, her ankles fairly thin, and if her little paws,twisted together on the writing tablet of her chair as she listened tohim, were not so delicate, they were white and sweet and shapely. Andher face was as amusing as a monkey's, round and pert. She had wise andlively eyes, astonishingly wise and determined for a girl who couldn'tbe over nineteen, and her friendly lips, not tight nor thin, kept movingwith excitement. Her high pride was her brown hair, shining likepolished walnut and, unusual here and now, not bobbed but flauntinglyfeminine.

He was already telling her, under the campus maples by moonlight, thatshe must be careful with her diet and not get fat--lovely child likeher--while his outer voice was rolling on:

"----and take, for instance, the case of a novelist less known thanDickens or Thackeray or Harriet Beecher Stowe, yet always to me one ofthe lords of language, Andrew--ah, Jupiter nods, I mean of courseAnthony--Anthony Trollope. Did a tremendous writer like Trollope thinkthe proper stunt was to go and live with a lot of Bohemians andFrenchmen in an attic and try to invent a lot of new rules? He did not!He was the soul of discipline. While constantly traveling as a--as aschool inspector in a--in a number of parts of England, he made himselfsit down every day and write--and write--and write, and all according tothe accepted RULES!"

* * * * *

His girl in the front row nodded. There was a serious-minded and helpfulyoung woman. He could imagine her being witty at a soda-fountain orbouncing in her seat at a high-ranking basketball game--full of fun, ajolly companion, but with a heart that would appreciate idealism andambition.

He was explaining to the class that elegant language was useful not onlyto preachers and editorial writers but also to businessmen. Which, heput it to them, would sell a vacuum cleaner better: a rich, full,mellifluous address (and he strikingly illustrated it, playing both thesalesman and a pleased housewife), or a mess of crude language, as usedby persons who didn't go to Kinnikinick and love their Rhetoric class?

The girl's eyes forcefully agreed with him.

And for such of them as planned to enter politics--what was it thatelected Woodrow Wilson? His titanic knowledge of history? No, never! Itwas the discriminating way in which he laid words end to end accordingto the rules.

The end of Professor Planish's discourse was somewhat in the style ofthe courtroom scene in The Merchant of Venice. He stopped dead, hefixed them with the eye, he raised the hand, he gave with the voice:"Let me conclude in the words of Alexander Pope's immortal translationfrom Horace." He glanced at a slip filled with the handwriting of TecklaSchaum.

"Sages and chiefs long since had birth
Ere Caesar was or Newton named;
These raised new empires o'er the earth,
And those, new heavens and systems framed.
In vain they schemed, in vain they bled!
They had no poet, and are dead!"

He wondered if, after all, he shouldn't have been a leading actorinstead of a senator or a college president. Wouldn't his girl downthere have appreciated him even more? He calculated that she was near toweeping. He looked at her knowingly, eye understanding eye, heartsnatched out of his body and joined to hers. When all the others hadgone, after only half a hundred fool questions about hours andassignments and at what sort of an establishment did one accomplish theabnormal feat of buying a book, he saw that she was still waiting, atone side of the room.

She came up to his platform-table. Who said her shoulders were tooplump? Why, they were lustrous and soft for a man to lay his head----

Professor Planish caught himself. After all, he wasn't a mooncalf anylonger. This was a jolly-looking young woman, but she was no Theda Bara.Seated with the table safely between them, she standing humbly below, helooked at her like a judge.

"May I bother you a moment, Professor?"

"What is it?"

(These were, definitely, the first words between the celebrated Romeoand Juliet of Kinnikinick.)

"I want to see if you'll let me take Oral Interpretation of the Drama."

"That's an upper-class subject."

"I know. I just want to take it as an auditor, without credit."

"Isn't your schedule full?"

"I'll say!" She shuddered.

"Then why do you want to take it?"

"Oh, I think maybe I might be an actress and----"

"Yes?"

"And I'd like to have another class with you!"

She was delicately shameless, and he stiffened with interest. Hemarveled, "But why?"

"Oh, it was so stimulating today, and the other day I listened to you inthe hall--I was waiting for a vaccination appointment, in front of C7,and I heard you talking to Professor Eakins. He was so sort of dry andcranky--they all are, all but you--and I've snooped into a lot ofclasses and listened--they just grind out a lot of information--gee,Professor, I guess maybe I'm being fresh, but I'll bet you a billiondollars the rest of the faculty think you're too dramatic, too excitingto listen to."

"My dear young lady----" Then his flatulent academic tone changed into aboyish demand: "What's your name?"

"Peony Jackson. From Faribault, Minnesota. I was on the platform whenyou got off the train."

He got back the professorial manner. The self-protective superiority.The armor against the mirth of young women.

"Well, Miss Peony Jackson, from Faribault, Minnesota, I'm sure you meanto be complimentary, but the fact is, the members of the faculty,however much they may differ----"

Never again, in private, did he speak to her with this stage burlesqueof himself--not to Peony. Raw and boyish again, remembering that he wasonly ten years older than she, he cried, "Let's sit in the frontrow--all these dumb freshmen gone now--come on!" They laughed; they satside by side. Probably to the eye even of President T. Austin Bull theywould have seemed decorous enough, but Professor Planish felt as thoughhe were holding her hand.

"Peony--Miss Jackson--you don't want to take that Oral Interpretationjunk. It's a lot of stupid analysis."

"Well, I came here to get educated, didn't I?"

He felt a tiny chill. "Did you?"

"That's what they claim!"

"Don't give it a thought."

"I won't!" They laughed, like freshmen, or very aged professors."Honestly, Professor, I just love the way you treat your students--tell'em they're a bunch of lil Socrateses one minute and then jump rightdown their throats the next. That would make even a dumb bunny like meget busy and learn something--learn K-A-T, the cat, sat on the M-A-T-T,mat. I betcha I learn enough here so's the court will let me getmarried."

"And who may this be that you are going to marry?" Very coldly.

"I haven't got the slightest idea."

Was it possible that she was looking at him with appraisal?

"Look, Miss Jackson--Peony. I've got the idea. Forget the Oral Interp.Did you know that it's part of my job here to coach a play, four times ayear?"

"Swell."

"We'll have try-out for the first one, Poor Papas Prize, in just a fewdays now."

"Swell."

"And will you read for it?"

"Sw---- You mean, try and see if I can act one of the parts?"

"Professionally, we call it 'read for a part'."

"I'll be glad to." Her wrist-watch, he noted, was rather expensive."Gee, I got to be skipping along now."

"Don't go yet!"

"I got a date."

"With some boy, I suppose!"

"Uh-huh."

He was writhing. He was sick. These blab-mouth freshmen boys! Not humanyet!

"Well, look, Peony, I'd like to have more chance--I mean now, at thebeginning of the year, when we're sort of making plans--I mean, for theyear--and I'm very interested--I mean in your reactions to thedifferent--you know, different styles and modes of instruction--and it'sso interesting to get your reactions and----"

"Aw, Professor, you don't want any reactions from a Problem Child."

"Give me some, and see if I don't!"

"Swell!"

"Where are you living?"

"At Lambda House."

"Um! Well, look. I'll be in Postum's drug-store at exactly ten o'clocktonight, buying a soda." He remembered that he had an engagement whichmight be expected to last all evening, but he kicked out the thought. Hecould not wait for forty-eight hours to see Peony again. "Exactly ten.Suppose you happened to be there, and had a soda with me?"

"I thought the co-edibles weren't supposed to have dates with thefaculty."

"They aren't. But if you just happened to be dropping in there to buysome talcum powder----"

"I got some talcum powder!"

"Are you going to be there or are you not?"

"Maybe so. We'll see. G'bye!"

* * * * *

He was nervous. Had he given one of his natural enemies, anundergraduate, a hold over him?

He was jealous. Peony was off to meet some brash and unknown boy, whohad the worst of intentions, while he himself had nothing but aninnocent engagement with Mrs. Teckla Schaum.

Teckla's father, the banker and trustee, owned a one-room cottage with acook-stove and a two-story bunk, six miles out of town, on LakeElizabeth, to be reached by a sandy trail, on foot or with horse andbuggy. The Pridmores had given him a key and told him to call the shackhis own; here he had worked undisturbed on his book about the AmericanOrators--it was, in fact, an excellent place for catching up on sleep.And here, this evening, while the early autumn was still warm, he was topicnic with Teckla.

The road to the lake was deep in scrub oak and hazelnut and sumac; fliesgyrated in a backward dream of summer; and the aged Pridmore horse movedunambitiously. The time should have been full of contentment, butProfessor Planish, driving, his shoulder bundled against Teckla's, feltthat he was wasting his talent. He was impatient even with the glimpsesof the lake through networks of brush, for he wanted to be undisturbedin his thoughts of Peony Jackson. Yet Teckla took this touchy time tochatter, looking at him as though she owned him, as though she were hismother, his true sweetheart.

"Did the Freshman Rhetoric go well, Gideon? Was it a terrible ordeal?"

"What do you mean, 'ordeal'?"

"You always say the freshmen are so stupid----"

"I never said anything of the sort! I said some of 'em are. But some of'em are mighty bright. Mighty bright! Keen, unspoiled minds. They'reeager, not blasé or fussy, like a lot of older people."

"I suppose that's so---- Did you use my stuff about Trollope?"

"No, I didn't!"

"Oh."

"Well, I used part of it. And I had to go to the dentist's, this noon."

"Oh, you poor darling! Did he hurt you?"

"No, he didn't!"

"You sound so tired and cross, dear."

"Me? I'm not tired! Or cross!"

A vast silence, fringed with the tiny barbaric music of the flies andthe thump of reluctant hoofs.

Professor Planish was not a cruel man; at least, he had no definitepleasure in giving pain, not even to those he loved. He saidrepentantly, "I'm sorry if I sound touchy. I'm just worried--about thestudents."

"About what are you worried about about them?"

"About their morals! Freshmen girls making dates with unknown, immatureboys! Very dangerous!"

"Is it?"

"Certainly it is! And then I've got to make out a whole lot of notesfor---- In fact I have to be back in town by 9:30 sharp tonight."

"Oh, I'm sorry. It's such lovely soft fall weather. I was hoping wemight stay at the shack all night."

"I'd like that fine--nothing I'd like better--but tonight I just can'tmake it. Have to be back by 9:30 at the latest."

Silence.

She said slowly, "I wonder how long it'll be before some sweet youngthing that's lots younger than I am will take you away from me."

He started to forswear himself, then felt honest. He not infrequentlydid. He spoke affectionately--to the little mother:

"I don't know. Maybe some time. Not for a long time, let's hope. But ifthat ever does happen, no girl can be half as tolerant of me and all myfool talk about fool ambitions as you are."

"No, she won't be. Kiss me!"

* * * * *

The Pridmore shack, unpainted but clean and trim, was of the sameautumnal golden-gray as the long rough grass upon the bluff above thelake, which slept in a stilly haze. Peace came upon the Professor, andfor seconds at a time he forgot Peony Jackson and his need of her.Stripped to trousers and thin ribbed undershirt and looking, with hisbrown beard, like a Manet portrait of an artist picnicking on the Seine,he ran along the pebbly edge of the lake, and skimmed stones across thetender-colored water, savagely breaking its pliant surface. Teckla washappy because his fretfulness seemed to be over, and happily she spreadtheir supper on a black-and-red tablecloth in front of the shack. Thelake was half copper, half rose, now, and the western horizonexclamatory.

When she called him to supper, he felt young and gay. But she waslooking at him with such possessiveness. And she was always doing thingsfor him--oh, he liked to have things done for him, but he certainlydidn't like to have people think that he ought to think that they weredoing things for him.

She had brought out for him a canvas reclining chair, but she herselfsquatted on the grass.

He raged to himself: that was how she'd try to hold him--by pretendingto be so thoughtful that he would try not to hurt her feelings. And shewas so settled and routine. He wanted adventure. "I'm going places," hevowed. Yet he was surprised to hear himself bawling at her, "Oh God, nothard-boiled eggs again!"

He would have thrown himself pettishly into the canvas chair, but itjust wasn't the kind of chair you threw yourself into--not pettishly. Helowered himself into it, as he went on, "You're always kind to me,Teckla, but you haven't got one bit of imagination."

Was this nice, to be hurting her like this? No, maybe not; but he'dbetter get it over, for keeps. "Can't you ever think of anything new?You're in a rut, just like Kinnikinick College. Wake up!"

She mutely turned her eyes away from his scolding. She sat limp andwordless, then crept up into his lap, softly kissing his cheek,forgiveness-begging for whatever terrible thing it was that she musthave done.

He thought, gosh, this chair will collapse with the two of us, but howcan I tell her to get the hell off my lap, the poor darling, the damnsentimentalist?

He thought, she's so hot and sticky, her hand feels sticky as fly-paper,and it beats all get-out how heavy she is for such a thin woman.

He thought, this Peony Jackson is so fresh and jolly and cool. Even ifshe is a little plump. And so brainy. Wouldn't have to keep explainingand apologizing to her all the time.

He said aloud, "Forgive me for being such an old sorehead today. Ialways am, the beginning of the school year. Well, we better get busywith the chow, or the cold eggs will get cold!"

* * * * *

He was at Postum's drug-store at 9:56.

Miss Peony Jackson wiggled in at 9:59. Without looking at him she wentto the cosmetics counter and said, "Have you a small box of ricepowder?" She was even fresher and softer and more miraculously specialthan he had remembered.

As she turned around, he said, "Oh, good evening, Miss Jackson."

She said, "Oh, good evening, Professor."

"Can I buy you a soda?"

"A soda?"

"Why, yes."

"Oh, a soda. I'm afraid it's very late, Professor."

"No, do sit down and have a soda. Or a sundae. I want to ask youropinion about--weekly themes."

"Well----" Her voice was plain, but as she sat down her eyes seducedhim.

Chapter 7

For a gentleman professor in Kinnikinick College to look upon a maidenstudent as a human being was poorly thought of, and to meet her over adish of marshmallow, ground nuts, caramel and two kinds of ice cream wasas dangerous morally as it was dietetically. Now that he had once runthat danger, he did not dare try to see her except across the footlightsin his Rhetoric class.

She was, by alphabetical arrangement, half-way back in the room now, andwhen he started his second lecture, he looked about for herflutteringly, and was reassured by her smile that said, "Yes, here Iam!" Through his discourse, her attention told him that he was good--butafterward she treacherously slipped away with the rest of the class, andhe was in a terror of uncertain love.

He knew that for the first time he was really in love. In all his lifehe would have only four or five people who would completely know him andaccept him. Certainly Teckla Schaum did not. For all his warnings thathe would be stepping out into glory, she thought that he was really aborn progenitor and mower of lawns, who would settle blissfully intodomesticity if she was but loving and patient. Of these four or fiveconnoisseurs of Gideon Planish, Peony would be the only seducible girl,and he no more intended to lose her than to lose his life.

His chance to talk with her came at the Freshman Reception, held in thegymnasium, which was decorated with red and green paper streamers and anenormous sign "Welcome Class o' 1925."

The male costumes at the reception ranged from President Bull's whitetie and tails to old Professor Eakins's eccentric white-flannel suit andred bow, with Professor Planish soundly middle-road in a dinner jacket.The hundred freshmen, in the ancient religious ceremony of the ReceptionLine, filed before the president, the dean of men and the dean of women,and all the full professors, complete with wives, fetishisticallyshaking hands as though they really enjoyed the rite and from the magictouch gained heroic strength. The preceptorial priests themselves werehypnotized and stood mystically flapping their arms and croaking"Spleasure." The only one who kept awake was Professor Planish, and heonly till after he had felt the firm warmth of Peony's young paw.

Yet during the reception he was apparently devoted to Mrs. Bull, thewife of the new president. She was ten years older than ProfessorPlanish, but she looked sparkling; she wore a Chicago dinner-gown and aCedar Rapids hair-wave, and she liked young professors.

Professor Planish felt that he might need influence at court very soon,and he danced with Mrs. Bull twice, stepping high and wiggling his plumpbehind and thrusting out his beard in an ecstasy of social elegance, andtelling her that on the entire Atlantic Seaboard he had not found a ladywith so light a foot and such vital ideas about teaching domesticscience. In return, she gave out everything about her son Eddie, agedeleven.

Just once he danced with Peony, and that far more sedately than withMrs. Bull. But he had been watching her, in her cheery yellow silk frockwith a golden girdle, kicking up hoydenish heels with unspeakable brutesof young freshmen.

Now he was talking to Peony; he was talking to a woman, not to a socialobligation:

"Why didn't you come up after class, last time?"

"I didn't want people talking about me."

"You mean about us!"

"Why, Professor Planish!"

"I'm not Professor Planish, and you know it. I'm Gid."

"Gid!" mockingly.

"I've got to see you."

"It's so hard. I'd like to, but people watch you. You're too popular,Gid!"

"Nonsense. I'm just unmarried. Listen! You know that little park acrossthe tracks from the station? Nobody from the college ever goes there."

Mocking again: "I suppose that's where you always have your dates withco-eds!"

"I've never had a date with a girl there and you know it."

"How would I know it?"

"Because I just told you so, and I never lie--to you. Can't you feelthat's true? Don't you know it?"

"Maybe--yes!"

"Then be there in the park at ten tomorrow evening."

"I'll try."

"Do you like me, Miss Jackson?"

"I can't tell yet, Professor Planish. I don't know how sound you are onthe gold standard."

They laughed. That laugh was the only possible betrayal in atabby-looking conversation, and Professor Planish looked hastily to seeif Teckla and President and Mrs. Bull were observing. No, he was stillsafe.

* * * * *

With Teckla he danced only once. She had been frozen in with thechaperones, the faculty wives, who all had a fixed and smiling look ofintense distaste.

"Having a good time, Teckla?" he glowed.

"All right, but it's not much fun for me to sit back like a Mother inZion."

"I'll dance with you again, and I'll see you home, and now I'll bringyou a bottle of strawberry pop. I know how you like strawberry pop."

He did not dance with her again, but he did bring her a bottle of thathorrible drink, and he did "see her home." He had always been afraid ofscandal for himself--he had sometimes gone so far as to fear it forTeckla--and he rarely was to be seen entering her house later thansuppertime. When she said, "Come on in for a while," he gurgled, "Idon't really think I'd better. Got to think of your reputation, youknow!"

Brightly. Like a professor.

She snapped at him, "Oh, come in!"

In the house, she held him with her hands on his shoulders. "Is theresomething wrong tonight, Gideon?"

"Course not!"

"Because if there is---- Gideon, you never once looked at me. When I wasdancing with you, I was dancing with a stranger--a stranger that didn'tlike me very much. Darling, it's awfully hard to see a man that you knowso well suddenly turn into a stranger right in your arms, with themuscles and the way he moves all different. I knew something wasdistracting you--I really felt frightened."

"Oh, you just imagined----"

"Why do you ever lie to me? I always catch you, you know. Even collegeprofessors or preachers oughtn't to lie unless they can get away withit---- So you fell pretty hard for her! Didn't you!"

He was aghast.

"Oh, I could see it. Gideon, she must be ten years older than you are.At least."

"R?"

"I know she's handsome, but after all, Gideon, Mrs. Bull is thepresident's wife----"

He hooted with noisy joy; he kissed her with fond brotherliness. But hisrelief was not merely in being safe; it was equally in being free fromTeckla's understanding. "She doesn't really know me then. She's nevergot through to me. There's only one girl that can, that ever will," herejoiced to himself, as he palavered aloud, "Mrs. Bull? I don't evenknow she exists. You don't know how funny your jealousy is, Teck! Matterof fact, my crime is much worse than being after a married woman--mycrime is that I was making up to her in order to stand in with thepresident, and that is pretty low!"

"Yes, it is, you bad thing!" She was delighted; she believed him. "Dosit down, and I'll make you a cup of coffee."

"No, I got to be moving."

"Why? It's not late. And you won't do any more work this evening."

"No, I just----"

"Gideon, I do love you so. God knows why, but I do. But you don't haveto make love to me, if you stay. If you'll just go on being a friend----You'll never have any idea what it can mean to a widow, a young widow,who was so happily married, not to have a man around the house to turnto and have him close the shutters and open the bottles and be bossy.It's terrible not to have anybody care enough for you to boss youand---- Oh, sorry I'm sentimental. But don't neglect me again the wayyou have at the reception all evening."

(He was thinking, "Oh, all women are annoying--except one. They poisonthe very instincts that ought to lead a man on and up to a clearerlight. Why don't I be honest with this female? Go on, Dr. Planish--canyou ever be honest? By God, I will!")

"Teck! You've saved my life, out here in Kinnikinick," he flowered.

"And I do give you coffee."

"Very fine coffee! But now I'm going to be very serious, and this maysound like a funny question, but do you think I'll have a chance to be aleader of the United States Senate some day and maybe even gohigher--say a post in the Cabinet?"

"How can I----"

"Do you?"

"No! Frankly, I don't. I think you are a good teacher--you have a sortof zest that makes up for what you lack in scholarship----"

"So I lack in scholarship!"

"----but I don't think you'd ever have the patience or the ideas tobecome a political leader."

"Darling Teckla! Oh, I don't mind. But you don't really believe in me."

"I think I love you--some!"

"That's sorta beside the point. You're tired. You lack the enthusiasm ofyouth. I shall certainly try to keep from it, but I'm afraid that, asyou yourself hinted recently, some day I'll fall in love with some girlthat's--oh, call it credulous, if you want to."

"Have you fallen for one yet?"

"No, of course not!" (He congratulated himself, "That's the only lieI've had to tell her!") "But I might. And if I ever did, I know that sheand I would both turn to you as the wisest and kindest woman living, asa woman----"

"Hey now, wait! I'm only thirty-three, you know, not seventy-three. Oh,yes, I suppose I'd be kind and sensible--damn it!"

He had, then, to get through not over six minutes of farewells.

He felt, on his way home, that he had won a triumph, though he was notquite sure what it was. But it must have something to do with keepinghim free to advance the welfare of mankind. He put on his own halo, andit stuck there till he was asleep--a child in Vulcan, hearing a distanttrain.

* * * * *

On that evening of early October there was neither harvest moon nor thewine stains of afterglow, but only dusty air and an uneasy brilliancefrom the arc light on the station platform. Professor Planish waswriggling on a bench in the sick little park, feeling vaguely foolishyet trembling with the coming glory. He tried to look at a line offlat-looking flatcars, at a bumptious little caboose, but he couldreally see nothing till, miraculously, Peony was crossing the tracks,carefully stepping over the rails. He knew that it was she, but hecouldn't believe it, for she was grown-up and rich and courtly in awhite-flannel cape with a gold-braided military collar.

She said in a small voice, "Hello."

He slipped his arm under her coat, he whispered, "My girl--my girl!" andhe kissed her lips. "Do you know that I'm in love with you?"

She said comfortably, "Oh, you couldn't be."

"Well, darn it, I am!"

"That's good."

"Are you in love with me at all?"

"Sure. I have been for almost a year. Oh, yes. I came down fromFaribault with Daddy, to see about my entrance, and we sneaked into yourRhetoric class. Dad said you were a great spellbinder."

"And what did you think?"

"I thought you were cute. Oh, all right, all right, don't look so cross.I thought you were wonderful."

"You know, all this is extraordinary. What are we going to do?"

"Do, Professor? Why, as I seem to have led you captive already--withpractically no expense for lipstick--we might get married."

"Oh, yes. Married."

"You've heard of it?"

"I certainly have, and we're going to be married, at the proper time,but I want you to finish at least two years of college."

"Why?"

"Oh, to be prepared to take a great place in the world. I'm not going tostay in a dump like Kinnikinick all my life."

"I should hope not! But why can't I be married and still go to school?"

"Against the college rules here for an undergraduate to get married."

"Why, the old meanies! Anyway, there's no rule against being engaged.Will I do some ring-flaunting! (I know where we can borrow a dandy ring,if you're busted.) Will I sit in class and stare at you and embarrassyou! 'Folks, meet Pee Jackson, the fiancée of that charming ProfessorPlanish, the poor dope!' Poor Professor! Darling Professor! Do I callyou Gideon or Gid?"

"Gid, I guess. But darling, look here----"

It had come to him that if Teckla heard of his being engaged, she wouldbe annoyed, and that her father was chairman of the Kinnikinick Board ofTrustees, who could make the place itchy for a professor, contract orno. He picked up Peony's hand and kissed it and put it carefully back,and told her the whole story of himself and Teckla--or enough of it fordaily use. It had never been so nearly easy for him to be so nearlyhonest. He asserted that Teckla was a good and helpful soul, and Peonydid nothing more than snarl, "I don't trust any woman!" and, at theend, demand, "But now you're not even going to have tea, call it tea,with that woman any more, are you!"

Certainly he wasn't. How could she think of such a thing?

"Gideon! If her father and the trustees are likely to cut up--maybe getus scandalized--why do we need to stay here? Maybe it's time for you tobeat it, on and upward. Excelsior!"

"Maybe it is, at that. I'd like to have a job in Columbia University."

"But I see you doing something more active than teaching, Gideon. You'restill so young----"

"Do I seem young to you?"

"A baby! What you could do! You're the kind could buck the businessworld, say, like a banker or running a fifty-thousand-acre farm. Andyou're so eloquent I just love it, but why didn't you take up economicsinstead of rhetoric? Some day maybe you'll be governor or a senator."

"Now isn't that strange, your speaking about that! I've always had ahunch I could do something big in politics--get to the top--and ofcourse do a lot of good for people."

"Yes--sure--do a lot for people."

"You really think I could?"

"Sure you could! I know it! Oh, Gideon, isn't it wonderful! And do youthink I could help you? I bet at dinner at the Governor's Mansion, Icould get all the old bags talking and laughing like a son of a gun,don't you think so?"

"Sure you could! I know it! And it would make all the difference, yourbelieving in me, so I'd have self-confidence and be geared for success.That's what wins--being geared for success, don't you see?"

"Yes, I can see that now."

"Not be willing to take anything but the best--in fame and financialrewards and power--and the ability to do good--and be friendly with allthe big men, like the Rockefellers. Have your machine tooled fortop-notch success and refuse to go on with poky little jobs in placeslike Kinnikinick. That's the formula!"

"Oh, yes!"

"And with you, I'll do it! Darling!"

She kissed him to exhaustion.

"We are engaged then," he said. "But can you keep it secret?"

"I'm the best Mata Hari in college--but of course a good Mata Hari."

He scarcely dared to, but it was a critical question, and he whispered,"How good?"

She whispered back, "That depends. Not too good." Then, loudly andbrashly, sounding like a freshman, she yelped, "Gracious! It's late!I've got to skip."

She was gone before he could grasp her flying white cape, and he didn'tknow when he was to see her again.

For weeks he agitatedly never did know when he was going to see heragain, except at Rhetoric class, where she looked up at him like anamiable monkey.

Chapter 8

Two weeks gone; they were in October, and he had a birthday and wasthirty years old. Teckla gave a birthday party just for the two of them,with cake and ice cream, and a bottle of Iowa corn whisky for a present.Still he could not tell Teckla, except by a cagy flinching which toldher too well, that his love had left her and flown off to the wars.

Yet he was less afraid of Teckla than of Dr. Edith Minton. It wasdistinctly out of his way to pass Lambda House, where Dr. Mintondragoned it and Peony lived in horrid security from seduction, but hepassed it, twice a day. He tried to look like a real professor, bustlingalong in strict devotion to paragraphing and suffixes, but he could nothelp peering hungrily at the yellow wooden Ionic of Lambda House. It didseem reasonable that just once, at least, he might see Peony up there inher room, shining in a chemise, but what he more often saw was theeyeglasses of Dr. Minton.

She would probably rush out some day and grab him and haul him off toPresident Bull. Oh, he was a most harassed young professor!

He hated Dr. Edith Minton, he hated President Bull, he was afraid ofTeckla Schaum and her father, and he was done with college--place oftwittering and of marks. He wanted to be out on the broad highway,skipping hand in hand with Peony, and he was willing now to take anyhighway--even an insurance agency. He had written to a dozen collegesabout a brighter job, but his letters conveyed no huge confidence in hisown ability to go on tenderly leading Youth amid the orchards ofknowledge.

He who had often told his students, "An inspired business letter canpull the heart-strings of the prospect just as well as the best lovelyrics by Shelley or James Whitcomb Riley"--he himself could think ofnothing more forceful to write than, Please, he would like a new job.

He hadn't enough Boosters or Contacts, he decided. He had no one butPresident Bull to recommend him. The authorities at Adelbert College andthe University of Ohio did not, he guessed, feel strongly about him; infact, they had distinctly stopped feeling about him at all. Somebody hadsaid that Hatch Hewitt, his sardonic classmate, was already a powerfulnewspaper reporter in New York, but just where was he?

Professor Planish sighed, and wrote in his notebook, "In future careershd cultivate hold onto friends more esp ones w influence, big bankers,journalists, must be sure to do this, memo: ask P what she thinks, shehas so much sense."

* * * * *

He mustn't let himself get lost in the thicket of academic life, hewarned, and in a fury of contemporary research he read almost entirelythrough a copy of the Nation--until he realized, from the fact that itcommented not too affectionately on Mr. Harding's campaign, that it wasa year old.

Professor Planish persuaded himself that he studied current events ascarefully as an undertaker. But this autumn of Peony, he noticed nothingexcept that Mr. Harding was a handsome, confidence-showering man, andthat, after Wilson's demands, it was "fine to be back to Normalcy." Hestated this often at party dinners full of the two kinds of facultywives: those who sighed and were shabby and talked about diapers, andthose who were hard and flirtatious and shiny, and talked about thelatest shows in New York. Of the two sorts, the latter was the moreprovincial and more likely to send him off yelling for Peony.

* * * * *

The casting and direction of the college play, to which he had lookedforward as an orgy of unacademic art and a much better ground thanclassrooms for getting thick with the pretty girls, proved, entirely onaccount of Peony, to be an embarrassing game of hide and seek.

The play this time was a nasty little work called Poor Papa's Prize,one of those farces (1 set, inter., 3 acts, 6 f. 5 m.) jammed withreferences to Hoboken and mothers-in-law, which in 1921 were still thedelight of provincial colleges that twenty years later would be haughtywith Saroyan and Sherwood and Maxwell Anderson. It was the idea in suchcolleges then, and often much later, that the position of Professor ofSpeech and Rhetoric automatically equipped the holder with a tricky andveteran art in such matters as lights, make-up and stealing lumber forscenery, and that a Professor Gideon Planish ranked with Belasco andLincoln J. Carter.

He agreed, and he considered Poor Papa's Prize as on the same levelwith Aristophanes. He thought it was a very funny scene when Papa'sprize turned out to be ten thousand plugs of tobacco, not dollars. Hefelt masterful about stage business and gestures, but with all thiswizardry he was overthrown by the fact that, even with the grossestnepotism, there was no way of wedging Peony Jackson into the cast.

She came faithfully to the try-outs, happy and handsome in the bestgreen sweater that ever came out of Faribault, Minnesota. She read inturn for the parts of the ingénue, the mother, the comic great-aunt andthe comic Swedish maid, and she read them all with the same pleasedsmile, the same accent, and the same complete lack of meaning. Sittingback in the unlighted auditorium, his hat over his eyes and his legsthrust way out, like a professional director, Professor Planish pitiedher and loved her for her lack of talent.

She stopped, looked down into the dark pit, smiled in unspokenagreement, and said, "My, I am rotten, ain't I! Do you suppose I coulddo the props, Professor Planish?"

"You can! You shall!" he shouted.

But before working the properties, she had first to acquire them, whichwas a combination process of theft and brazen borrowing, and though hisone dream had been of snuggling beside her in the darkness, she wasrarely there at rehearsals. He was cross about it. He scolded theactors, and they hated him; and all this time the letters he was gettingfrom other colleges in answer to his petitions indicated that theythought he had too big a job already.

At last Professor Planish knew every one of the fine and racking sorrowsthat glorify young lovers.

* * * * *

She was there for a moment after rehearsals, painting a pine box whichwas going to impersonate a grandfather's-clock, and he gave her thefirst of all his gifts. In the window at Postum's College Pharmacy hehad seen a "Novelty Gift Make-up Kit" that had tickled everything thatwas young and fanciful in him: a pink, leather-covered box containingnail polish and drying cream and all the feminine idiocies that seemedto him strange and luxurious; with a mirror, inside the lid, that wasshaped somewhat like a shield and somewhat like a diamond and a gooddeal like the map of Africa. It cost $5.65, which was, except in thecase of Teckla's bracelet, $2.65 more than, on any grounds, even thoseof extreme passion, he had hitherto ever been willing to pay as love'stribute. He bought it, but he had them wrap it in plain white paper.Full-Professor Planish did not wish to be seen going about with NoveltyGift Kits.

After rehearsal, back-stage, he was able to slip the package covertlyinto Peony's hands. She yanked off the wrapping, let the paper slide tothe floor--he picked it up--and opened the box.

"Oh!" she squealed, with an ecstasy that delighted and rewarded him. Shewould have made an excellent monkey to have around and smile at, if herface had been thinner and less fair. She picked out each of the charmingbottles, she studied them with pleasure, she pinched them, she smelledthem, and then she kissed him in the double rapture of love andcosmetics.

Every night, without ever having quite agreed upon it, they headed forthat same dim bower behind a prop fireplace--every night until, just ashe scrambled over a sawbuck and a pile of flats to reach her, he saw Dr.Edith Minton watching him from the shadows beside the switchboard.

His talent for swift intrigue was considerable. With no especial stresshe called, "Uh, Miss--Miss Jackson--when can you help Miss Smidley withthe gelatines? Good gracious, I wish I could make you childrenunderstand the importance of lights!"

Peony had an even richer natural intrigue. She could actually seenothing more menacing than a roll of canvas and the beard of ProfessorPlanish, but she replied loudly, in the naked tone of a scared freshman,"Oh, I am trying to get to it, Professor, but I've been studying sohard." (Followed in her miniscule silvery murmuring that could not carrybeyond him, "You little sweet thing. Who is it? Go bite hell out ofhim.")

He turned his back on her, turned his back on everything that was joyfuland fresh and living, and not too elaborately he then proceeded todiscover Dr. Minton, off R. "Why, hel-lo, Edith!"

("The blasted iceberg! I suppose she wants to bawl me out for something.I ain't going to take it. I'm her boss.")

But Dr. Minton was smiling in a puzzling, diffident way, and as hewabbled up to her she hesitated, "I've been listening from the back ofthe auditorium. I think you're doing wonderfully with the rehearsals,Gideon. Have you finished for tonight? You don't happen to be walking myway, do you?"

"Fine! Let's go!"

Professor Count Cagliostro pranced away with the princess. There weretimes when he wished that he were not a charlatan, not even a charlatanof genius, but the ear for applause, the taste for spiced meats, alwaysdragged him on.

Dr. Minton was saying, as they cantered respectably to Lambda House, "Iwas admiring the way you taught that stupid boy his Irish accent for theplay. Do you know, Gid--I've never confessed this to any one atKinnikinick--when I was a girl, I wanted to be an actress."

"No!"

"I had a lot of eagerness and maybe some ability. But I had to take careof mother, and I got into graduate work, and my thesis was so demanding,and there never happened to be any chance and---- Oh, I guess it'sbetter the way it is---- Gideon!"

He jumped. "Yes, Edith?"

"You haven't been at Lambda House for quite a while now. Do drop in,won't you?"

"Oh, yes--yes, sure."

"And Gideon!"

"Ye-es, Edith?"

"Let me know if any of my girls in the play are ever lazy orimpertinent, and I'll take their heads off. It does seem to me that thisyear they're the most undisciplined gang of young female rowdies I'veever had to deal with. You're lucky you don't know any of them outsidethe classroom, as I have to."

"Ee--that's so."

"It's this Post-War Generation, and Prohibition. But I know how tohandle 'em. Don't let them waste your time. Good night. Such a pleasantwalk!"

* * * * *

He was aghast. "She likes me a lot better than I thought. There's avolcano under that ice-cap. How come both Teckla and Edith like me? Oh,I suppose there isn't much for 'em here--nothing but undergraduates, andall married men on the faculty except me and one pansy and one drunk.

"Nothing but undergraduates--but that's what Peony will be fallingfor--some hairy-chested young clown of a football player, as soon as shegets over the novelty of my being crazy about her. Oh God, I'm sure tolose her!

"But Edith Minton--she is good-looking, too, in that Diana sort of way.I might of had a chance, if I'd gone right after her--no, no, I mustn'tthink about such things. I'm absolutely faithful to Peony, absolutely,the damn Cheshire cat, the way she grins at me, she's absolutely onto meand yet she still likes me---- But for her sake, I ought to give her upentirely. After all, she is a freshman. Not twenty yet. Just a baby, thedarling. If Edith, the vixen, ever thought a faculty-member had so muchas patted Peony's hand, out she'd go--they'd send her home, with ascandal tied to her, nobody would know exactly what it was, but it wouldget worse year after year.

"If I could marry her now---- No, she ought to finish her collegecourse. A college course is absolutely necessary, nowadays. I supposecolleges have some value. Hell, of course, they must have! Didn't I dotime breaking rocks for three whole years so I could get a Ph.D.? Thenafter she graduated, I could marry her, if she wanted me, but I'd be tooold and she'd of met so many boys---- Oh God!"

Out of all his babbling as he walked home, as he clumped about his whiteplaster bedroom, nothing came out clearly except that for Peony's dearsake, he ought honestly to give her up.

And for her sake he did honestly give her up; he did incredibly forcehimself to something he did not want to do.

Until the opening of the play, which had a successful run of two nights,it was not difficult to avoid her. He did not go back-stage when hefelt, as he always did feel, that she was there. His dread was that shewould come up after his Rhetoric class and demand to know why he wasneglecting her. All through each class, he was enormously busy notlooking at her, and thinking of the coming horror of her reproach.

The real horror was that she went placidly out with the other students,not glancing at him at all. So! he gasped. She wanted to break it off,too.

That made it harder.

The opening night of the play should have been his compensation. Thecollege auditorium was full, with sixteen people standing; President andMrs. Bull and Mr. Pridmore and a man from Buffalo, New York, were there;and sixteen newspapers were represented, in the persons of two studentcorrespondents.

But except for Teckla Schaum, Edith Minton and Mrs. Bull, nobodycongratulated Professor Planish, the director. In fact, most of the mobdid not know there was such a thing as a director, and it was the actorsand the student orchestra whom the groundlings applauded. When the comicIrish hired man tried to be Irish and comic, this supposedly culturedaudience (the Professor noted bitterly) clapped and whistled as thoughit hadn't been the director who had hammered every ringing "Shure an' Oiwill" into that stiff Pottawattamie County larynx.

The hall was rich in college flags and fragrant bundles of kinnikinick;the light caressed the actors capering up there in the magic frame ofthe stage picture; and even old Professor Eakins leaned forward with arefined leer. But no one looked gratefully at Professor Planish; no oneknew.

He had to force himself to go back between acts and congratulate hiscast. They scarcely heard him, for they knew how good they were, even ifthey blissfully didn't know how good they weren't. He made much ofignoring Peony, but as she was helping shift scenery, she did notnotice. He left by the stage entrance and walked half-way around thebuilding to the lobby, chilled in the darkness of an early Novembernight, more chilled in the wind of man's ingratitude and woman's greed.In the lobby, he posed a little, not too conspicuously, but it did nogood. President Bull said only, "I think they are doing very well."

They!

Mrs. Bull, Teckla and Edith Minton did recognize him as somebody theyhad seen somewhere, but the rest of the herd did not look at him--theywere right there at the Battle of Waterloo, and Wellington was ridingpast them, and all they talked about was the costumes of the lesserdrummer-boys.

After the play he went home, with the curtest of congratulations to thecast and the stage crew. And Peony had had the nerve to smile at him asif everything were all right!

He was extremely angry with Peony. And it scarcely seemed worth whilenow to have attended two real stage plays in New York and one in NewHaven in order to equip himself as a professional director.

He sat in his room, and earnestly kept from telephoning to Peony atLambda House. She might have known, mightn't she, that he was doingthis, and have telephoned to him instead? Mightn't she?

* * * * *

For the first time in his life, Professor Planish had insomnia, which tohim had been merely a silly word, like prolegomenon. He had sometimeslain awake for five minutes, but then his face, tucked deep into thepillow, would turn peaceful and childish and still. Now, he went to bedtired and drowsy, but there was no sleep. It simply was not there. Hewas as astonished as though he should put down his hand and find hisfamiliar legs missing.

This was all nonsense. He'd lie still and quit thinking about Peony andTeckla and Edith; he'd relax. He did relax, so elaborately that he wasfrantic with the tension of keeping himself limp.

All right then; hell with it. He just wouldn't do anything. He'd trickhimself. He'd pretend not to notice himself, and drift off into sleep.

None of this strategy worked, and he kept on being very noticeableindeed to himself. He was sleepy and there was no sleep. The machine,always as dependable as light or air, was not working.

It was with surprise, and some pride in finding himself so complex aperson, that he realized that this was insomnia--the sort of thing thatMrs. Bull boasted of having. Well, he was a case! Insomnia! Hopelesslove and self-sacrifice and a theatrical opening and insomnia all on thesame day!

He became bored even by his singularity. It was interesting to havespiritual distress up to the point of insomnia, but he wanted to getsome sleep along with it. He was becoming distinctly tireder, but evermore resolutely awake. Well, why not give up the insomnia for thepresent, and try it tomorrow night? Just now, he needed a little sleep,to be fresh for his Oral Persuasion class in the morning.

The insomnia would not be given up. It calmly stayed on, and ProfessorPlanish was annoyed.

Well, he was a man of the world and a psychologist. He'd rise and smokea cigarette and relax and lie down again. Certainly. He was one whocould always turn the current of his thoughts.

He smoked the cigarette and lay down again, and instantly he was asawake and quietly frantic as ever.

He seemed to be in an unfamiliar and unwelcoming world, with its owncold tone and every sensation different from the secure world ofdaytime. Nothing could be identified. There was a rattle that might befar off, on the campus, and might be fearfully near him, in thehouse--something like the rattle of a milk wagon or a lame man walkingor clicks from a revolver. The half-drawn window shade quivered with butlittle breeze, and its half glow seemed to change, as though some onewere passing between it and the street lamp down below. The night soundswere woven together, defying his vulgar daytime ears to identify them.

He had been seeing images of Peony, her young breast and her smile offriendly irony, but now he was not thinking at all, nor feeling. Hefloated in a sublimated current in which no thought was definite, noemotion quite real.

The urgent whistle of the Chicago Special, hastening to the East and allits glories, awoke him, and his square face moved with smiling as inhalf-dreams he was certain that some day he would take that train and bewelcomed in lofty rooms by millionaires and poets and actresses. But hewanted to know them so that he might take their friendship and glory toPeony, he thought in his descending sleep.

Chapter 9

For three nights the insomnia returned, with its mockery. For threenights he told himself that he was protecting Peony and her reputation;for three nights he retorted that he was really afraid only for his ownjob, which he would lose if it should be known that he was a tampererwith virgins. It seemed to him that his rooms, with their suggestions ofa professorial life, their piles of The Annals of the Northern andMidwestern Society for Semantics, brought on his illness. If he couldgo off to a fresh rude place, then he could sleep.

After the third night of torture, on an edged late afternoon of Novemberhe tramped out to the Pridmore shack, by the rustic shore of LakeElizabeth. He had told no one but his landlady. He was not in a mood tohave Teckla come mothering him.

The six-mile walk, the first two miles a panting discomfort but the resta vigorous swing, deep-breathing through the dusk, with the smell ofleaf mold and fresh lake water and cornstalks about him, restored hislife. He carried a professorial briefcase, but he swung it buoyantly.

He had his own key to the shack. Whistling, he opened the door, gropedin the one rough room, lighted a lantern, lighted a fire in the smallstove. The room smelled pleasantly of fresh-cut wood and burning resin,and in it there was healing and woodland peace. From his respectablebriefcase, of unscarred and glossy tan leather with GP stamped on it insleek gold, he took out one large pork chop.

He dropped it into the frying pan, and the sizzle was cheerful andsomehow manly. Sure. He was an outdoor man as well as a deep scholar,and some day he was going to cut down a tree. Maybe not too big a one,for a start.

He gnawed at the pork chop when it was practically cooked and, moredaintily, he ate a chocolate bar, and humped over in a chair beside thestove, his arms hanging between his knees and, without quite rememberingwhat it was, he hummed a lyric of his boyhood:

You hold her hand and she holds yours,
And that's a ve-ry good sign
That she's your tootsy-wootsy
In the GOOD old SUM-mer TIME.

Yes. Everything would come out all right, in the providence of God andPresident T. Austin Bull and the courageous Professor Planish. Helaughed, he opened the stove door and spat into it as gallantly as alumberjack. And then he yawned.... He'd loaf a moment before baskingin the pages of The Americanization of Edward Bok, which was in hisbriefcase, just slightly spotted with pork.

Still dressed, and purring, he lay meditatively on the lower bunk. Justhow everything would come out all right, he was not quite sure, but he'ddo something clever--he'd count on Mrs. Bull--count on Peony, who wassmarter than any of the faculty--good old summer time and that's a verygood sign--summer time, summer meadows, deep meadows with Peony----

* * * * *

The wooden latch of the cottage was creaking. A thousand years later,the door was closing and whole armies were blundering across the roomwith thunderous efforts to be mice. If he just kept hidden in that deepsoft dark well of sleeping, they would go away and not torture him.

A whole history after that, he had a witch-led illusion that he hadheard Peony's giggle. Giggle--chuckle--low laugh--what would he call it?Illusion, all illusion. But revolving aeons after that, he came sharpawake as some one sat on the edge of his bunk. Bewildered, defenseless,he heaved up his ponderous head--and, by God, it was Peony Jacksonsitting there.

"Hello," said Peony.

"What in the---- How did you----"

"Why, I walked, same as you did, great one. My gracious, that's a longdark walk through all those woods, even if I did borrow Mrs. Hilp'selectric torch. Twice I got lost, and I've looked into more darn shacksthat weren't yours--you'd be surprised if you knew how many shacks onthis ole lake aren't this one, even after you prowl around 'em andburgle 'em----"

"But how in----"

"Your landlady said she thought you'd come out here. Of course I knew ina general sort of way. When we had the Lambda picnic out here on thelake, all the girls pointed out the Secret Love Nest of the Widow Schaumand Professor Planish."

"R!"

"But it's simply classic how different it looks in the dark, with allthe cunning ole tree roots reaching out to trip you up."

"LOVE NEST! Now what do you mean by----"

"Oh, yes. That's one of the reasons why you'll have to marry me.Professor Planish, how could you! The other reason is that it's nowseven minutes past midnight----"

"What?"

"You heard me, dearest. So I'll have to stay all night, now---- Cheerup, poor lamb. You don't really have to marry me, you know. I don't carea hoot." She bent, to kiss him lightly. "I want you to quit worryingabout that poor lil freshman gal, Jackson. 'Professor, my feeling isthat a girl like her, with her upbringing and her father the bestwholesale grocer in Southeastern Minnesota, a girl that would do a thinglike that, absolutely pursuing that poor man out to the shack where he'dfled to hide from her after he'd been so careful and not even said aword to her after the college show, why, she deserves all she gets,because she must've known what she was doing.' And did she know?"

Peony was off the bunk, swiftly crossing to his sacred briefcase, whilehe was still rubbing sleep out of his hair and eyes. "Of course she did,the little devil!" said Peony.

Busy and monkeylike as always, brimming and gay with monkeyism, she waspawing into his briefcase and bringing out his chaste bachelorpossessions. "Hm. Silver-mounted hair brush. Pretty choice...Squibb's tooth-paste. You don't keep the tube rolled up tightly enough.I see where I'll have to educate you... A book? Now what do you needa book for? Don't you know?... And pajamas. Aw, the sweet lilbaby-blue pajamas! Aw, Gid-eon! They're too sweet for words! With hislil monogram embroidered on his lil pocket! I'll look lovely in them!"

He was shocked now out of his immense lassitude and he was on his feet,weaving over to her.

"Baby, you've got to go home. I'll take you home."

"Do you think it would be any better for my reputation to have peoplesee me walking into Kinnikinick with you at two o'clock in the morning?"

"Why----"

"Besides, I'm in Davenport. Staying overnight with my aunt. As Iexplained to Dr. Minton. Golly, I'll have to do some work on that aunt.How old do you think she'd be? Gideon, I'm going to stay. You know I'malways right. I always have been, all these years with you, haven't I!"

He rather thought that she always had been right, all these years, andanyway, with this particular young woman, how did you persuade her tolet you be gallant if she didn't see anything in gallantry? With aprodigious effort, Professor Planish rose above the middle-classchivalry which he believed himself to have exemplified all these years.He kissed her, very close to her, and, hastily getting away from that,he commanded--only it sounded more as though he was petitioning--"Allright. Probably it would be safer for you not to show up till tomorrow.You crawl in that lower bunk the way you are, and go to sleep, and I'lltake the upper one. And I'll be good."

"Of course you'll be good, Professor Planish. You'd always be good to apoor freshman, wouldn't you?"

"Oh, shut up! You better take your shoes off."

"Do you honestly think that would be safe? To take my shoes off?"

"Oh, please shut up, darling! Good night."

With dignity he hoisted himself to the upper bunk. She had turned downthe lantern but she had not blown it out. As in a Pullman berth, hewriggled out of his coat and vest and tie, tried to hang them on theedge of the bunk, then in fury threw them into the air, to flop on thefloor.

Lying rigid, he realized that the room was rustling with the soft soundof buttons, of a zipper, of garters being unhooked, of the tiny plump ofsilk on the table. He looked over the edge and he could see his ownpajamas being fantastically flapped in the air as she put them on. Helay back, sternly, and heard her blowing out the lantern; heard then, inthe lake-whispering darkness, small bare feet crossing the floor, andthe creak of the lower bunk.

In twenty seconds he went through a million light-years of sensationswhich he supposed to be thoughts. He had lost his fear of her and of herencroachment. He knew that it was not that she "trusted him," but that,for some imponderable reason, she cared enough for this poor thing,himself, not to care whether he was to be "trusted" or not. He knew thathe was now married, in the most old-fashioned and undivorceablemonogamy.

Then, terrifyingly, she was sobbing, down there below him. He was out ofhis bunk like an alarm rocket, sitting by her and begging, "What is it,what is it, sweet?"

"I feel so shamed!"

"Oh, no!"

"Shamed and scared and lonely. It did seem like such a bright idea, backin town. I thought, 'Maybe he's lonely for me.' I thought, 'Maybe hewants me, dreadfully.' And I was so busy rushing out here, stumbling andgetting sand in my shoes and losing my way and laughing--I thought itwas fun--I never really thought till now, maybe you don't want me here.It's hard to realize, maybe to you I'm just another fool girl----"

He as nearly came of age then as Gideon Planish ever could. He grunted,"Move over." He patted her head down on his shoulder, and as her whimperdied away and she was trustfully sleeping, moving her head only toburrow closer into his shoulder, he lay awake with no insomnia but withhappiness and security.

* * * * *

They laughed as she dressed in the morning--she was approximately modestabout it, but not a fanatic. They breakfasted on the end of thechocolate bar and pure cold water. They tramped, arms about each otherwhile he swung his briefcase high, two miles to a farmhouse, where hehired a Ford. In town, while she sat on the floor of the car, out ofsight, he recovered from the station the suitcase with which she hadostensibly been traveling, then drove her to Aloosia, and put her andthe suitcase on the train there, so that she could return from Davenportin all decorum.

By this time they had been married, had honeymooned in Europe for a halfyear, had produced a family--four sons, and seen United States SenatorPlanish into his second term in Washington, and they thought extremelywell of it all.

He called on Teckla Schaum that morning at 11:30, which for her wasearly. Widowhood had made of her a late lier, an avoider of all theproblems of boredom which daylight brought to a lone woman.

He was shocked that it meant so little to him now to see Teckla innegligee, while to encounter Peony thus meant so much. He was, in fact,sorry for himself that he should have to feel so sorry for Teckla, butPeony's valor was with him, and he plunged:

"Honey, I guess the kindest way would be for me to come right outand----"

She wailed, "The kindest way for you would be to wait till I've had somecoffee before you do whatever unpleasantness you refer to as 'thekindest thing.' Would you like a drink?"

"So early? No indeed!"

"Well, don't be so virtuous about it. Sit down and read the paper andI'll be with you in a minute."

He felt that Teckla was being pretty frivolous. Frivolity was all rightfor a girl like Peony, but Mrs. Schaum was supposed to be tragedy in ablack veil---- Oh, let the poor thing cling to her fool's paradise for afew minutes more, the poor thing.

She was back in the room, dressed in rosy gingham, before he hadfinished sneering at the morning editorials. She said calmly, "Gid, Iimagine you've come to tell me that you've finally managed to fall forsome girl. Is that it?"

"Something like that, I'm afraid. But listen, dear: it's because I was alonely scholar and you accustomed me to a woman's tender care that Iever began looking around----"

He was wondering whether he could get away with it. He was wondering whyhe was always honest--within reason--with Peony, yet capable of suchacrobatics with other women.

She ignored his craft. "Gid, I suppose you wouldn't understand it, wouldyou, if I said that I used to be so fierce and proud and pure that noone ever dared to try and use me; that if I've ever humbled myself toyou, it's because Max's death broke me; and that I'm still at leastproud enough not to hate you? I don't want to know about your girl, andI shan't snoop. Go with my blessing, if you still care for it."

"I do care for it, and I do need it, Teckla. I won't try to beproud----"

"Is that a crack?"

"No, honest to God it isn't! I mean, I can't afford to be proud, becauseif your father, as a trustee, got a down on me, it would probably ruinme, whereas if he thought it was you that---- Don't you see?"

"I suppose that's fair. He might think you'd been trifling with the poorwidow-woman. I suppose he's so strong himself, in a queer, lonely,rustic way, that it wouldn't ever occur to him that, far from being toostrong and vicious, you were so weak that you were perfectly willing tobe my house cat. I'll have to tell him I threw you out----"

He told her that he'd see her in hell first. He was for a moment willingto give up Peony and the mild honor of wearing a professorial whitecollar rather than endure her sneering. Then she kissed him, as fondlyas she ever had, and speculated, "Maybe you will grow up. Maybe I'm fondenough of you to want you to. Maybe that girl, whoever she is--oh, blasther!--can do it. I never could. So run along, and I'll take care ofFather Pridmore---- Oh, Gid, be true to that poor girl, won't you? Womenneed loyalty so much; they're so bewildered when they don't get it, nomatter who they are, young or old or famous or humble."

"I will!" said Professor Planish.

* * * * *

He had always been a good hand at Seeing the Proper People. He wascalling upon the president's wife at five o'clock; he was drinking tea,with no especial distaste, and being eloquent.

Mrs. Bull was the first of many influential women whom he was to call"dear lady."

Dear lady, he explained, he was throwing himself upon her mercy; he wasturning to her as the only human being who would understand. He was inlove. (But purely.) Believe it or not (only she'd better believe it ifshe didn't want to mangle his heart), the first thing that had attractedhim to this girl (no, wait, he'd tell her the name later) was that shewas so much like Mrs. Bull; the same aristocratic manner, the samewomanly sympathy, the same gimlet of intelligence and, if he might be sobrash, the same agate eyes.

But, and here were the old accustomed woes, and Abelard and Heloise, andRutherford B. Hayes and the postmistress, his girl was an undergraduate,here in Kinnikinick, and according to college regulations, and possiblythe Bible and the State Constitution of Iowa, if they were married, shewould have to drop out of college and less agile minds might even hintthat there had been goings-on inconceivable in a rhetoric professor. Andwhat would a lofty Puritan like President T. Austin Bull think about ateacher who confessed himself more enthralled by all women who remindedhim of Mrs. T. Austin Bull than he was by the use of the semi-colon?

"You just leave that man Austy to me!" beamed Mrs. Bull. "Now what isyour girl's name?"

* * * * *

At Christmas Holiday he was, for the first time, part of an authentichome.

There had been little of home in the thin brick house of his father inVulcan--only a resentful contest between parents and children, betweenbrother and brother. Professor Planish did have two brothers and asister, but since he had left home they had existed for him only as atheory.

This Christmas, Peony masterfully carried him up to her family, toWhipple Jackson, vestryman and wholesale grocer, in Faribault. The placewas bursting with brothers, sisters, aunts, sets of Walter Scott andWashington Irving, fudge, plum pudding, mandolin-playing, rum punch andfamily prayers immediately followed by family laughter; a wide whitehouse that had thrown off wings and porches as a fountain throws offspray, up on the bluff near the Immaculate Conception church, lookingacross the noble Cannon River Valley to the towers of a whole tribe ofpreparatory schools.

President Bull had forgiven Peony and Professor Planish; he even seemedto think the marriage an excellent escape. He and the aged dean wouldpermit Peony to take all the courses she wanted, as a special student,and they would manage to break the laws legally and give her a degree.

Teckla had had Peony to tea, and advised her about buying cuts of beef.But Dr. Edith Minton had looked at Professor Planish with astonishmentand a certain fear in her eyes. That was the only thing he had to brushoff in order to be riotous at Christmas. He did brush it off, verysatisfactorily.

His welcome in the Jackson mansion was as warm as the forgiveness atKinnikinick. Whipple Jackson was a rangy, nervous, good-tempered man,with ideas. "Gideon, my boy," he said, "Peony tells me you have ahankering to get into politics."

"I don't know, but anyway, I don't want to be stuck at teaching all mylife."

"Well, if you ever want to start in here, let me know and I'll give youa job and introduce you to all the Boys. You'll like Faribault--bestprep schools in the country, and did you know Faribault is the peonycapital of the world? That's how I happened to name my girl. But ifyou're going in for politics---- Belong to a church, Gid?"

"Presbyterian."

"That's not so bad. The voters sure do like a man to be liberal inmorals and illiberal in theology. But what about a lodge? Do you belongto the Masons? Odd-fellows? Elks? Modern Woodmen? Knights of Pythias?No? Better join 'em all; fine bunch of friends and they'll all vote foryou, and speaking both as a patriotic citizen and a good churchman,there's only one thing a politician ought to bother about--the votes.Heh?"

"That's right, all right," said Professor Planish fervently, rejoicingat having a family to back and guide him.

They were married, Peony and he, in Easter vacation, 1922, with theBishop starring. But if Peony played nothing more than ingénue at thewedding, it was she who took the lead when they returned to Kinnikinick,and she who chose a gold-and-scarlet cabinet to brighten up theircottage, and Professor Planish was so proudly in love that he liked it.

Chapter 10

The Dean of Kinnikinick College, Dean Gideon Planish--he was a new dean;in the fall of 1926, he had been so exalted for only a year--had almostfinished the annual plague of straightening out undergraduate schedules.He was looking amiably at a thin girl with curly hair and troubled eyes,and he was chuckling.

"This won't do, Miss Janes. Your schedule is badly unbalanced. Threecourses in literature! I never heard of such a thing! 'Advanced EnglishPoetry' and 'The History of the Novel' and 'Chaucer and Spenser.' Whatdo you plan to do? Teach?"

"I don't think so."

"What, then? Newspaper work? Write yarns?"

"I'm engaged to be married after I graduate."

"Then, good Lord, what do you want to take all this books-and-readingfor? They're no good for running a household. What is the idea, anyway?"

"I don't think I have any. I just like to read."

"Well, I don't suppose there's any real objection to your taking a lotof literature and stuff if you enjoy it!"

As she went out and left him in peace, in his handsome new office withits partitions of oak and clouded glass, its portraits of ProfessorEdward Lee Thorndike and President Coolidge, he congratulated himself onhaving been so generous and so suave with her. Yet, even after hissummer vacation on Gull Lake, he was a little tired of this unendingpersecution by smart-aleck students who acted as if they knew more thanhe did.

Dean Gideon Planish thought pretty well of literature. He was an expertin all its branches, and though he preferred the bright hard rocks ofOratory in the literary landscape, he could pinch-hit any time for theregular instructors in metaphysical poetry or commercial correspondenceor the rules of play-construction, and he had a fascinating theory thatShakespeare was written by Queen Elizabeth. He knew all about teachingliterature in both of its aspects--as an incentive to morality and as anaid to earning a living. He had figures to prove that he could increasethe vocabularies of freshmen 39.73% in nine months.

But, as he told the Kinnikinick Rotary Club, the teaching of literaturemust be as manly and practical as the teaching of physics or football.He had mastered that doctrine even as far back as 1918 when, after histhree months' service in an army camp in Illinois, he had startedteaching, with his caste-mark of Ph.D. freshly painted on his forehead.At that time there was a universal expectation that literature wouldmodestly take its place, along with advertising and preaching theGospel, as a glad assistant to the expansion of American prosperity.

But now, in 1926, even after more than six years of the NationalProhibition which ought to have produced universal efficiency andpatriotism, there were everywhere hints of subversive ideas, probablyintroduced into America by such Bolsheviks as Emma Goldman, H. L.Mencken and Clarence Darrow, who, a year ago, had practically murderedthe Dean's hero, William Jennings Bryan. And unless literature set itsface like a flint against all such feeble-minded infidelity, he, forone, would actually prefer th' unlettered hind (or farmer), said DeanPlanish.

As dean and as the readiest speaker in Kinnikinick, he had constantly toenlighten the public on such problems as the recent Women's SuffrageAmendment, the Sacco-Vanzetti trial, the progress of the WeimarRepublic, the heroic heart of the martyred president, Mr. Harding, theFlorida Land Boom (in which the Dean had lost a hundred dollars that hebadly needed for payments on Peony's new piano), the pedagogicalsignificance of the fact that Bryn Mawr was permitting students to smokewithin the college, and, always, the crisis of Flaming Youth: gin flasksand giggling from automobiles parked in darkness and such dancing as hadnot been seen since the Serpent and Mother Eve.

Dean Planish was, as his proprietor, President Bull, frequently told thepress, a philosopher and a leader of humanitarianism. The Dean saidright out that regrettable though the Flaming and the Petting and theBootlegging were, there was less danger in yielding to them than intalking about them or in writing about them. He hated to encounterstudents who jeered at all that was sturdy and helpful in literature,and called their cultural murders "experiments." He sometimes said thathe would rather see his daughter lying dead at his feet than readingcallous innovators like Dreiser and Sherwood Anderson, and as hisdaughter was only three years old now, it may be seen that he feltpretty strongly on the subject.

He smiled to himself at his desk. Yes, he could fairly be called "thefighting philosopher." But what was he doing here in Kinnikinick,wasting his time listening over and over to the same dreary bleatingsfrom successive flocks of students, when he ought to be out in theworld, battling for civic righteousness? That's what his wife Peony keptasking, and, reflected the Dean, she was dead right.

He was interrupted then by one of the Flaming Youth in person. As sheslammed in, she might have been a particularly skinny boy; she mighthave been a plucked chicken wrapped in a dish-towel; she might have beenalmost anything except a flame. Her hair was clipped short, her sleeveswere short, her bosom was at once exposed and non-existent, and herrolled stockings advertised her knees, which could have done with alittle washing. She was both an invitation and a denial. She was acollege senior in grade, a babe in intellect and a Hecate in guile.

When he had been a mere young instructor, the Dean might have beenaroused, but Peony took care of all that now, and Peony was not skinny.He merely growled, "What do you want, Gwynn?"

She grinned in an excess of dry youthfulness.

"What have you been up to, young woman? Drinking too much? Roadhouse?"

She giggled, and made the preposterous remark, "I think you'regorgeous!"

"Young woman, is that any way to talk to the dean?"

"Oh, I knew you years before you were a dean!"

"You did not! Only two years before. And even in that brief period,you've been the cause of the gray hairs in my beard."

"There isn't a gray hair in it. It's just as brown as ever. I think it'sgorgeous!"

"You have five other adjectives that you haven't used yet: dandy, slick,swell, cute and lousy. You aren't losing any of 'em, are you? Gwynn,seriously, we're old friends, and I hate to see you graduate from thisinstitution next spring with only a hundred and seven words in yourvocabulary. Can't you make it a hundred and ten?"

He reflected how different, under his influence, Peony had become fromthis brat. Why, Peony must have a hundred and twenty words.

"Honestly, Dean, I didn't get sent in to get hell. I want to change mycourse. I want to major in art and architecture and geography, thisyear, and cut out the physical training and Platonaristotle."

"Heh?"

"You know that Chinese boy in my class--Li?"

"Huh?"

"Well, him and me--he and me--you know what I mean--we were at the samelake this summer. Li says China and India are going to have a bigrenaissance--that's what he calls it--and I thought I'd like to go outto Asia and be an architect."

"You mean as a sort of Christian missionary? Teach the little Orientalbrother?"

"Oh, no. According to what he says, when China and India join up,they'll be teaching us. They're the oldest and the smartest nations inthe world, Li says, and they've decided to chase out all thecarpet-baggers, and I'd be lucky if I was allowed there. What do youthink, Dean?"

"What do I think? I'll tell you what I think! I think that I can standit when you Lost Generation jazz-babies, you unspeakable drug-storecowboys and hot mamas, act like tarts and bootleggers. I have the faithto believe that by the end of these barbaric 1920's, you will all havecome to your senses. That is, if--if, I say--you retain your essentialphilosophy.

"And part of that philosophy is that the white races, America andBritain and France and Spain and Italy--yes, and Germany, now that theGermans have seen their folly and given up warfare as an instrument ofprogress--that we of the superior race are, by some compulsion whosedivine origin and sanction must remain a mystery to us, destined torule, tenderly but firmly, all the yellow, brown and black hordes, andthat they can never be anything but clever children--especiallyincluding your slick friend, Mr. Li--who imitate our civilization toperfection but----

"No, you can't take architecture! And I want to see you behave yourselfthis year, Gwynn, or even though we are old friends, I'll bounce youright out on your ear, and as I told you, I want to see if you can'tdevelop some elegance in speaking and the normal vocabulary of asix-year-old child and--and you know damn well that as dean I'm not toohard on a little drinking or petting, and I trust I'm a Modern Thinkerand a Consistent Liberal, and I think you must admit I'm up to date ifnot a little ahead of it, but when it comes to a point of degeneracywhere you consider subject peoples, whose brain sutures close up quickerthan ours do, as just as good as we are, and you're willing to see thewhole destined world-structure bust up in---- NO!"

So at last the Dean could scamper home to his sympathetic wife.

* * * * *

The Planishes' rented house was the first of the charming small whitehouses, cheerful and clean and realistic, with wide clapboards andbuilt-in garage and automatic oil heat, that had been erected inKinnikinick. Later, they were to brighten the whole Middlewest.

The weary Dean came up to it, admiring the small sleek lawn--mowed byPeony before breakfast; inspired by the crazy-pattern of the walk--thestones had been picked out by Peony; impressed by the white-paintedsolid oak door--Peony had repainted it after the workmen had made abotch. He edged the door open and remarked, "Oo-hoo!"

His wife answered, "Oo-hoo!"

"How's the baby?"

"Oh, she's just dandy--she's swell--she's just slick--she's so cute.Want to see her? But first----"

Peony led him by hand through the small living-room. She stopped infront of their major treasure, the Chinese Chippendale cabinet, asplendor of gold and scarlet and carved mandarins, which they had boughtin Chicago on their honeymoon, and which had cost approximately tentimes what they could afford. As always, she breathed, "Isn't it slick!It's the swellest cabinet I ever saw!" and as always, he agreed,"Certainly is; it lights up the room like a house afire."

She led him on into their bedroom, with its wallpaper of silversailboats on a green sea, and its twin beds, of which one was morehollowed than the other. She led him to the farthest corner, as thoughit were a secret niche, and kissed him convulsively. There was in theiryoung and parochial love something dark and hidden and fierce,dissolving him to water.

She led him to the second bedroom. It had been planned as aguest-room--here, Father and Mother Jackson would often be staying. ButFather and Mother Jackson had, after a surprisingly short period, beencompelled to stay at the Kinnikinick Inn, for this had become the placesacred to the baby.

At the age of three, Carrie Planish was cheerful and active, a genuinegrocers'-calendar baby, of whom it could be said, of whom it frequentlywas said, "I declare, that baby's got the sunniest disposition I eversaw in all my born days."

Carrie was likely to be darker than either of her parents, and moreslender.

She rose from her business interests--nine leaden soldiers, a decayeddoll, and a water-color portrait of the family cat--she sprinted acrossthe floor and yelled, "Daddy!"

"That's a darn smart baby, Carrie is," the Dean said, as they returnedto the living-room. "She'll be a dean of women, some day."

"She will like hell! She'll be a contented wife and mother. Like me."

"What's the plans for supper? You didn't tell me to bring anythinghome."

"Nope. It's the hired girl's night out, and we're going batting. I'vegot Mrs. Hilp coming, to take care of Baby. We're going to drive down toMabel Grove and eat at the Appleton House."

"That's swell--fine and dandy," said the purist.

Their car was a powerful new Maxwell, with a maximum speed of not muchless than forty-eight miles an hour. The Dean was behind on his paymentson the car, but only a month or two.

They swung south into the rolling cornland.

* * * * *

It was the Dean's happy belief that, despite his own eloquence, forceand tact, it was really Peony who had made him dean, with a salary oftwo hundred dollars a year more than a full professor's, with morecontrol over the students, and with less necessity of pretending that hehad read the latest works of Mrs. Wharton and Miss Cather and this newfellow, Hemingway.

Following their marriage, Peony had called on Teckla Schaum and afterbeing snubbed more than usual, had become Teckla's closest friend, andbeen asked to dine with Teckla's father. She had also, entirely againstthe college etiquette of waiting for the president's wife to call first,popped in on Mrs. Bull and, after being kissed and petted more thanusual, had become Mrs. Bull's closest friend. She had then called on Dr.Edith Minton and, after meeting a blankness which she could never quiteunderstand, had become Dr. Minton's one frank enemy, and as nobody likedDr. Minton very much, that attitude on the part of Young Mrs. ProfessorPlanish was considered pretty deep.

Peony had urged her husband to offer himself to President Bull for everystyle of committee work, and within a year it was expected that whenevera Visiting Celebrity was to be introduced in Assembly, or a program madefor combining the organic chemistry and salad-making courses, it wouldbe Professor Planish who would take on the ordeal. When the old deandied, in harness though also in liquor, the choice of Planish for thedeanship was inescapable, and his child-wife considered not unworthy ofthe purple.

She was an earnest young matron as they drove into the county seat,Mabel Grove (pop., 11,569). One who knew her high position would havesupposed that she was thinking of racial problems or social hygiene, butshe was saying to the Dean:

"I think we can sneak in a glass of beer at the Appleton House withoutgetting caught. But first I got something to show you: the most foolextravagance you ever heard of, and God knows how I want it! Do I getit, Gideon?"

"What are you asking me for?" he said fondly.

She bade him stop at an old brown house with the modest sign, "T Shop &Antiques." She looked nervous as they went up the walk; she yanked thedoor open as if to get it over; she pointed at an object, and tightlyheld his arm. The object was a huge Chinese rug, blue as a June lake,with a border of dragons and fuzzy-headed lions, saffron and sage-greenand yellow.

"Isn't it the most beautiful thing you ever saw?" gurgled Peony.

"Mm."

"That'll be something for us to have when you're Senator from Iowa."

"Sweetie, I guess maybe we better wait till I am Senator."

"It's a thousand years old--well, a hundred years old, I guess--and itused to cost fifteen hundred dollars, but we can get it for threehundred."

"Sweetie, I swear to God we haven't got three hundred dollars in theworld, and we must be over two hundred in debt--I don't really know--Ikind of hate to add up the bills."

"But you can get it for twenty-five dollars down, and it's worth fivehundred. The woman here told me so! That rug--it's got class! Don't youwant it?"

"Oh, yes, I like it fine, but it's utterly impossible----"

They drove up to the Appleton House for dinner with the Chinese rug inthe back of the car.

In celebration they drank not beer but old-fashioned cocktails, and atdinner, looking in a pleased way at all the luxuries, pickled melon rindand ripe olives and nut bread, everything that spelled richness andworldliness and delicacy of taste, Peony said, "Don't forget Dad is acrank about debts. We can count on him to pay up to a thousand, if weget sunk badly enough, and by the time that's all dished out, maybeyou'll be earning more dough. Oh, and I got another surprise, just asbig as the Chinese rug, bless its blue soul!"

The Dean squeaked, in terror, "I hope it won't cost another threehundred!"

"It won't set you back a cent, my boy. Honest it won't. I know how youfeel. I hate to spend money, and I hate to be in debt--I just hate it.It's simply that I like to have things, don't you see?"

"Yes," said the Dean, and "Well----"

They both looked relieved.

"Here's the new stunt, Gideon. We've been talking so much about yourgetting on and taking your proper place in the world, and now it's timeto really start doing something. The chairman of the County CensorshipBoard has just resigned, and they're looking for a new one. And has thatboard got power! I don't suppose it has any legal position at all, butevery movie house and library board in the county listens to it. Sotonight we're going to call on Mrs. William Basswood, and then watch mylittle man become chairman of the board!"

"Mrs. William----?"

"She's the widow of a dental supply house--lives here in Mabel Grove.Looks just like a sweet little ivory statue, but is she hell on wheels!She's so doggone moral she thinks pussy cats ought to wear step-ins. Yoube good now. Try to look like the Y.M.C.A. was named after you."

Mabel Grove had, as happens in the Middlewest, leaped from crossroadhamlet to small city without ever having had the leisure to stop and bemerely a pleasant village. It had concrete paving, a seven-storyoffice-building belonging to a bank, and a dozen rather squashedapartment houses. By 1940 it would also have a radio station, a chromiumcocktail bar, a public swimming pool, and a much-mentioned unmentionablescandal about a male high-school teacher. It showed that in eighty yearsthe prairies can go as far as Europe in eight hundred.

By nature Mrs. Basswood should have lived in a lilac-shaded cottage, butshe was found in a compressed flat with an electric log, and portraitsof Mary Baker Eddy, Tennessee Claflin and Mrs. Hetty Green. She had aradio, which was pretty modern in 1926, but her torso, covered with jetto take away the curse of sex, still creaked in the old-fashioned way.

"Oh, I think it's wonderful that you're interested in our little fightfor godliness, Dr. Planish, and your dear wife, and you must meet Mr.Pederson, the Reverend Chauncey Pederson of the Lutheran Church, butit's affiliated with the English Lutherans now, I mean it doesn't callitself a Norwegian Church any more--I mean, of course, the Norwegiansare a fine, upstanding, God-fearing people but--and--oh yes, I'lltelephone Mr. Pederson right now."

This was Mrs. Basswood speaking. She continued speaking as they awaitedthe Reverend. She always continued speaking.

Mr. Pederson was a wide, middle-sized man, weighing about 190 in hisstocking feet, and he seemed to be entirely free of vice and practicallyfree of everything else. He privately grew sugar corn and asparagus, buthe was without guile. He welcomed the Dean to their censorship board; heexplained that the Dean's name was supposed to be voted upon by theother members of the board, but as those two dogs weren't even very goodProtestants, the Dean could consider himself elected right now; infact--and here Mrs. Basswood and he exchanged some small language ofnods and winks and pious smiling--he might almost say that Dean Planishwas already chairman of the board!

"I know he'll be proud to help you and the cause of Purity, though he isso dreadfully busy and so much in demand for meetings everywhere, butI'm sure he'll accept!" cried Peony, before Mrs. Basswood shouldhesitate, or the Dean put his foot in it.

Mr. Pederson shouted, "That's fine! That's, if I may say so, dandy. Iwant to tell you, Dean, we're all of us mighty proud to associate with aman of your scholarly attainments and vast reputation. Now, Dean, I wantto ask you a question. Don't you feel, as Mrs. Basswood and I do, thatthere is no force or factor which is a stronger factor in producing thedreadful vice that we see rampant about us at this moment, a conditionthat would bring a blush of shame to the cheek of Nero or any of thosenotorious high-rollers of history, with King Alcohol ruling his rowdycrew on all sides of us now, and women, even young women, pursuing themales" (here Peony looked pious) "and doing things and acts that I couldnot describe in the presence of ladies, and don't you think that thereis no factor that more grievously tends to produce these awfulconditions than the so-called popular and best-selling novels, withtheir shameless word-painting of naked women" (he smacked his lips, Mrs.Basswood looked hungry, and the Dean blushed, while only Peony remainedinnocent) "and the at once bold justification, in these novels, of thelowest vice, and malicious sneering at the dauntless defenders of purityin the church and home? Scandalous!"

The Dean said he thought there was a lot to that.

* * * * *

Before the first meeting of the censorship board with the Dean in thechair, Peony prompted him, "I've got something for you to goafter--novel published a couple of years ago--The Tattooed Countess,by Carl Van Vechten. Why don't you get busy and censor hell out of it?"

"You can't! I understand Mr. Van Vechten was born here in Iowa. He's aNative Son!" The Dean referred to Native Son as though it had a closerelationship to the Nativity.

"That's why I picked it. All the guys in the State that knew-him-when,or claim they knew-him-when, will be jealous of him because he went offto New York."

"But is it immoral enough to get folks interested?"

"I haven't read it. I tell you, with all I got to do, I just don't seemto have time to read novels. But I hear there's a woman and a youngfellow interested in each other in the book, without being married! Andit's all laid in Iowa--the setting, I mean."

"I see."

"And then it's kind of highbrow and kind of humorous, and that makesimmorality a lot worse."

"We'll see what we can do to it."

* * * * *

The rest of the committee, when the meeting was held at Mabel Grove,were pleased to censor a refugee Iowan, and they set forth with verbalflaming torches to drive the Tattooed Countess clean out of GarfieldCounty. But in the entire county, though in cities like Dubuque and DesMoines it was rumored to be plentiful, they could discover the book onlyin the homes of a newspaper owner, a doctor, two lawyers and sevenclergymen. There were listed in the county five book shops, of whichthree actually sold books, at Christmastime, but none of these had acopy.

Peony was not satisfied. "There must be some on sale. This is abright, educated county--Yankees and Scandinavians. There must be somepeople here who're cultured enough to read immoral books." Ranging byautomobile, she went into every stand that sold magazines or toys, andright there in Mabel Grove, not ten blocks from the grotto of Mrs.William Basswood, she found two copies of The Tattooed Countess onsale in the cigar-store of one Mr. Rood.

* * * * *

The five members of the censorship board, attended by two admiringwives, waited upon Mr. Rood in his shop.

He looked thin, amiable and dangerous. No, he hadn't read TheCountess. In fact, he never read anything but Chic Sales and sometimesLouisa May Alcott. No, he didn't know how he happened to have two copiesof The Countess; they probably came in with a job-lot of magazines,book-ends and Easter cards. No--truly no--he wouldn't promise not tosell The Countess. He was running his business to suit himself, not abunch of bottle-nosed preachers and--he looked at Peony--dumb bunnies.All right, why didn't they arrest him? There was just as muchdividends in going to jail as in running a cigar-store.

The Dean remarked, "We'll see about this!" and with all the dignity ofhis short beard and gold-rimmed eyeglasses, he led his crusaders out ofthe den of vice.

On suggestion of the Reverend Mr. Pederson, they consulted Mr. BillPeniston, chairman of the commissioners of Garfield County.

Mr. Peniston reported, "You got no legal right to do anything, but Idon't see why us Republicans shouldn't have a fit of morality once in awhile, as well as the Democrats. I'll get the Mabel Grove police to letyou hold a meeting in Hawkeye Park, and you can lambast Brother Rood toa fare-you-well. Say, tell me, Dean: Is this Tattooed Countess prettyhot stuff? I must get me a copy before Rood sells out."

"I haven't had time to read it--I mean, read it all, yet," the Deanexplained.

* * * * *

Dean Planish was a dignified man, an educator and a student ofstatesmanship. It would be very fine indeed to address a teeming throng,provided it teemed in a regularly rented hall, with the sanctities of aBible, a flag, ice water and cane-seated chairs. But to stand in a park,bawling like a street evangelist--he confessed to Peony that he was"scared stiff."

"But sweet Gideon, the newspapers expect you! There'll be reporters fromKinnikinick and Mabel Grove and maybe even from Waterloo and CedarRapids."

"No foolin'?" marveled the Dean, in a delicious commingling of pride andterror.

"I'm practically sure of it."

Peony might well be practically sure of it. She had telephoned to thenewspapers herself.

"But do you think President Bull and the trustees will like thesemonkeyshines?"

"They're sure to think it's a fine campaign."

Again she had reason, for she had told these dignitaries thatKinnikinick needed a little hot moral publicity, and they had sighed,"Well, mebby so."

* * * * *

When the five censors appeared on the bandstand in Hawkeye Park, notmore than fifty persons had gathered to listen, and most of themmuttered, "What are they? Mormons or Seventh Day Advents?"

In a hasty prologue lasting seventeen minutes, the Reverend Mr. Pedersonintroduced Dean Planish.

The Dean was in a deplorable state. It seemed to him that all of thetwenty-three auditors who were still remaining were snickering.

"My--my friends," he groaned, and somebody down there laughed. Hestruggled, he tried to think of something better, and came out with athunderous "My FRIENDS!"

But Peony was looking up at him with eyes that promised that if hewalloped them good, she would be very sweet to him tonight. Withouteffort or any apparent control of it, he heard his voice suddenly startflowing, strong and steady, full of morality and adjectives and grammar.Five minutes later he was trumpeting:

"If you will permit a teacher to use such a phrase, maybe we better quitkidding ourselves into the belief that it's Wall Street and Paris andHollywood that start all this vice. Here's an Ioway boy, Carl VanVechten, and here's Al Rood, a neighbor whom you all know, conniving toflood us with a masterpiece of such insinuation, immorality and wickedbrilliance that we are all tempted to thoughts entirely different fromthose proper to the Middlewest. And what are we going to do about them?"

He never did answer his question, but wound up with Martha Washingtonand the Coast of Maine.

Afterward, Bill Peniston shook his hand, and exclaimed, "First-ratespiel, Doc. You ought to think about getting into politics. Come see meabout it."

As they left Hawkeye Park, the Dean sighed, "Poor Rood! I'm sure he'snot a bad fellow at heart. It's kind of a shame to ruin his business."

As he was driving past Rood's Cigar Store, he stopped. Standing on a boxin front of the shop was Mr. Rood, a pile of a hundred books on a boxbeside him, and he was shouting, "Step right up, folks, and get yourcopy of The Tattooed Countess--all about the French countess and thesheik, in the Arabian desert--wild doings by moonlight on the banks ofthe Congo--the book that's being advertised right now by the presidentof Kinnikinick College, at the meeting in the park, as the hottest yarnsince the Song of Solomon."

They were buying.

Peony urged, "Oh, Gideon, I want to get a couple of copies. PresidentBull said he'd love to read it, and I think I might send one to Daddyfor his birthday."

* * * * *

Like mightier men before him, actors and murderers and generals andpugilists, the Dean nervously prepared for the worst and had the shockof not having any worst or best. The State newspapers mentioned thecrusade, variously giving the title of the book as At Tattoo, TheTattooed Count, and The Stewed Countess, and the author's name asCarl Van Doren, Marie Van Vorst, Hendrik Van Loon and Upton Sinclair,but reporting nothing more sensational about Dean Planish than that he"also spoke."

The Des Moines Register did have a small editorial, suggesting that ifthe Dean had stayed home, he might have learned that on the same eveningcertain of his own students had broken nine street lamps, and placed agoat in the office of the Professor of Biblical Literature. Thiseditorial was mailed to the Dean by twenty-seven old friends, most ofwhom he had not seen since graduation from college. But with this orgyof friendliness, the incident dropped.

Bright balm descended upon him, then, in a letter from the Governor of aneighboring State. His Excellency stated that he was always glad whenany of the teachers in institutions of higher learning showed that theycould leave the cloistered life and bring the benefit of their learningto the Man in the Street. Dean Planish galloped over to show this wreathto President Bull, who said, "Now that's fine--that makes me feel betterabout the whole business." He galloped home to show it to Peony, whosaid, "Oh, slick! Tell the Gov we'll call on him and Mrs. Gov some dayand look over his mansion and see which bedroom we'll give Carrie whenwe move in there."

"Meaning I'm going to be the governor of some state?"

"I don't know about that, but meaning I'm going to be the governor'swife of some state---- Aw, the poor little man, I didn't mean it. Heshall be a gov!"

Bill Peniston came over to the Planishes' for dinner, and Bill Penistonsaid:

"Dean, if you want to get in on politics, you better get acquainted withthe voters. You might have a chance at a seat in the Iowa House, twoyears from now. We're going to have a Republican County Harvest-HomeFestival at the armory at Mabel, next Friday evening. You and your girlcome--bring some pickles and a banana layer-cake--I'll introduce you toeverybody that counts."

The Dean told Peony afterward that they might just as well go down nowand reserve their compartment to Washington. Peony said no, better makeit a drawing-room--it only cost a little more, and after all, they'dhave Carrie along, wouldn't they?

He gloated, "You watch me be chummy with the Garfield County peasantry,next Friday. I'll kiss all the babies, in Swede, Plattdeutsch and Czech,and I'll admire all the old ladies' elderberry wine receipts, and listento every old hound that wants to tell me about whitewashing hiscorncrib. Seriously, they'll be lucky to have a man with my knowledgeand experience in their political horse-trading. Come kiss SenatorPlanish, sweetie."

For reasons unknown, the baby Carrie started yelling in the next room.

* * * * *

The National Guard Armory was decorated, as the derivatively urbanPlanishes had expected, with strings of pumpkins, garlands of summersquash, gonfalons of sumac, and a mural made of kernels of corn, yellow,red and purple, depicting Indians on horseback. The long pine tableswere, as in the Dean's evangelical boyhood, brave with seven kinds ofpie, nine kinds of cake and three kinds of meat loaf. The Planishes werea little disappointed that the farmers were so well dressed, inmail-order blue suits and brown silk dresses, but their necks were asbrown as cigars, creased like eroded hills, and the Dean felt superioragain.

Bill Peniston did not, as expected, have them shake hundreds of handsand be delightfully sympathetic about babies. He said, "I'm going tohave you two set with the county committee, and you can size 'em up--andvice versa." The Planishes were mandated to a table with a dozen peoplewho were uncomfortably lacking in awe: a doctor, a superintendent ofschools, a lady milliner, an auctioneer who was a state representative,and a stock farmer who was a state senator.

The Dean tried to think of a Message to hand out, but what could youtalk about to such a calm-eyed jury as this? Certainly not aboutparagraph formation, and probably not even Flaming Youth. While he wastrying to tack together something in regard to the recently martyredWilliam Jennings Bryan, he listened to these backfield politicians.

They talked of taxes. Dean Planish hadn't known there were so many kindsof taxes: federal and state and county and city, road and improvementand amusement, licenses to sell tobacco and to sell pop. They talked ofthe congressional candidates for this fall, and they talked of caucuses.The Dean had always assumed that he knew what a caucus was, just as heassumed that he knew what an aardvark was, but suddenly he wasn't surethat he knew how either of them looked.

They talked of road commissioners and warehouse commissioners and thestate railway board, all mysteries to the Dean. They even talked, andapprovingly, of young Henry Agard Wallace, editor of Wallaces' Farmer.

"You seem to think well of him," suggested the Dean.

"Sure we do!" said the state senator.

"But I thought he was friendly with the Democrats."

"Well, I'll tell you: way we feel, an Iowa Republican is smarter than anIowa Democrat, but an Iowa Democrat is smarter than an IllinoisRepublican."

"Oh, I see," said Dean Planish.

* * * * *

As they drove back to Kinnikinick, the Dean was forceful.

"It's too late for me to get started in politics. Those partyleaders--they kept talking about some fellow here in the county namedGeorge, like he runs everything, and I didn't even dare ask whatGeorge's last name is. George Washington, probably."

"I thought he was dead," said Peony.

"And that's just typical. There's too much I don't understand. Caucuses.Now why caucuses? Who starts caucuses? Who does what to who? Damncaucuses! I'm too old to start in acting like I knew all about caucuses.It's a shame, too, because---- Did I ever tell you how Senator Kurtshawbegged me to join him in the party, when I was in college?"

"Sometimes."

"Yes--well--no. I could be a governor. Those fellows don't have to knowanything; they got guys they can ask. But to be a local politician inGarfield County, you got to know too many mere facts. Darn it, Isuppose I'll go on the rest of my life, telling a lot of collegechildren that we don't hold classes just to be mean. It's a shame, too.When I think of what I could bring to politics--freedom and democracyand normalcy! High strategy; not a lot of bayonet practice. Warehousecommissions! Huh!"

"Gideon, sweetie, you shall have your lil ole high strategy!"

"Whom do you think you are? George?"

"We'll find out how you can get one of the big politicalappointments--not these snide elective jobs. You'd make a wonderfulSecretary of the Treasury--you're so cute the way you add up my billsand almost always get the same total. Or Governor General of thePhilippines. Gee, I'd love to live in the Governor General's palace--allpalms and parrots and parades!"

"Wouldn't mind that myself," said the Dean, gratefully.

* * * * *

The Dean discovered that his career as dean was interfered with by hisbusiness as dean. He was tired of having a new crew of freshmen bring upa lot of silly questions every year that he had settled for all time ayear ago. But his position did enable him to do one or two things thatwere lovely with careerism.

Peony, who played at Chopin perhaps twice a month, had revealed to him athing called Music. He saw that this fad promised to go a long way inAmerica, and therefore needed to be organized, and he burstingly calleda meeting and created the Kinnikinick Music Guild.

Its members were to compose symphonies and mammy songs, to found anorchestra, and to tour around advertising the college. He was proud ofthe Guild, and he continued to be so for weeks after it had, without hisknowing, broken up in a riot about whether an accordion-player couldhave as pure a talent as a violinist.

Chapter 11

It was Peony who suggested that, since they were so very much in debt,they must economize all that next summer and fall. Peony was alwaysbeing spectacular.

She said, "I love to blow money in, and I'd give my virtue for theChinese rug and the Chippendale cabinet, but I can save, too--I can savelike a son of a gun." During vacation she found for them a three-roomcottage in Northern Minnesota, and she cooked, swept, scrubbed, amusedCarrie. She would let the Dean help her only with the dishes; she hadhim reading economics, anthropology, history, and they both felt veryadvanced and improved. Neither of them saw any difference betweenLothrop Stoddard and William Graham Sumner. Any book was good and veryuseful if it said anything about head-measurements, the training ofyouth for democracy, or the increased production of gas-stoves.

With advisory aid from an Episcopal clergyman who smoked a pipe and wasfrank and helpful about Sex and was therefore called "Father," Peony hadthe Dean inducted into the Episcopal Church. She felt that if he evergot to be a leader of progressive thought in New York or Washington, hecouldn't very well be a Presbyterian; he had to be either anEpiscopalian or an atheist, and for an employee of an Episcopal college,the former seemed a lot more thoughtful. Later, he was to know that thiswas a mistake, and to see that if he was to be either a great Liberal ora staunch Illiberal, and if he was to raise money extensively, he oughtto be a Methodist, a Baptist, a Congregationalist, a Quaker or a Russianprince.

The Planishes came back to the campus in the autumn with many new ideas,first-rate tans and only two hundred dollars in debts.

* * * * *

The Garfield County Censorship Board had gone on attacking andadvertising good books, and Mr. Rood had, with amazement at himself,taken to reading, and had established the first adequate book shop inthe county. The name of Chairman Planish, "a scholar who isn't afraid toget out into the dust of the streets" (Waterloo Courier), had beenadvertised almost as loudly as the books. Through the whole State therebegan to slide a feeling that he was a very sound man, though nobodyexcept Peony was sure what he was sound at, and he was appointed amember of the Legislative Advisory Electrification and Creative PlanningCommittee.

Suddenly he was dashing to Ottumwa, to Mason City, to Sioux City, toMuscatine, over a period of two months; his name was in the newspapersdaily--on page 7; he took Peony to public dinners of more than threehundred persons, with sixteen speeches; and at the end of themeritorious crusade, the Planishes were four hundred dollars in debt,and Whipple Jackson sent a check to cover half the amount, and with itPeony bought a rock-crystal lamp and five hundred shares in a diamondmine.

* * * * *

Dean Planish had been honored by his first invitation to become a"national director" of a great organization with its office in New York:The Sympathizers with the Pacifistic Purposes of the New DemocraticTurkey. He was assured that they desired only the use of hisdistinguished name, and he need give no time nor money unless he waseager to.

He wasn't.

Afterward he was often to have the experience, as warming to the stomachas hot toddy, of seeing his name on organizational stationery. But thiswas his first drink. He viewed the Turkish Sympathizers' letter,lavishly signed by a Dartmouth professor, as a symbol of culturaladvance and the international low-down. Centered at the top was the headof a fezless Turkish workman, with the mystic letters S.P.P.N.D.T.circling him like a necktie blown in the wind.

To a resident of Kinnikinick, the address was inspiring: Fifth Avenueand 43d Street, New York City.

In the upper right-hand corner of the letter were the National Officers,who included three prominent clergymen, a Chicago corporation lawyer,and a treasurer who was the fourteenth vice president of the SixteenthNational Bank of Manhattan. The Dean did not know that all propernational organizations, including many that pass away after a run of sixnights, have New York bankers for treasurers.

Beneath the list of officers was the item, "Constantine Kelly, ExecutiveDirector," in letters so modest that the Planishes, amateurs in theorganizational world, did not notice it. They were interested in theleft-hand side of the stationery where, among the forty-eight directors,appeared:

Iowa
Gideon Planish, Ph.D.
Dean, Kinnikinick Cge.

The Dean and Peony looked at each other, and looked at Carrie, and allthree of them sighed--the elders with radiant joy, Carrie with boredomand possibly wind.

The news of this honor appeared in the Iowa newspapers, and the Deanreceived invitations to become a director of two other nationalorganizations, and to contribute to sixty-three of them. He accepted thefirst two.

His duties in the S.P.P.N.D.T. did not tax him. After having appointedhim, that body seemed to have forgotten him, except for breezy monthlyletters, theoretically signed by the Dartmouth professor, explaining whyno one in Europe or Asia would ever go to war again, and suggesting thathe get more people in his State to contribute. It would be all rightwith the S.P.P.N.D.T. if he held meetings and shipped them thecollections.

His many honors had now started the Dean on a meaty career of oratoryand public enlightenment. As the Kinnikinick Record said, "Thisgentleman is always in great demand as the speaker at alumni banquets,high-school commencements, conventions, annual Rotary and Kiwanisjollifications, and other occasions where there is a demand for wit andculture, in this and neighboring counties, and there is no hand we areprouder to shake than that of Dean 'Giddy'."

The invitations to speak were coming in, two a day, three a day, andPeony took charge.

"Gideon, honey, you've been doing all this spieling free, and it's achance to cash in. We'll pay up that ole five-hundred-dollar debt in jigtime, and I can get me a real evening dress that tinkles. You let meanswer these bids. I'm going to stick 'em twenty-five and fifty bucksapiece, and up to seventy-five, with traveling expenses, and there's noreason why they shouldn't pay for a chair car, even if you don't feellike taking one."

The Dean meditated, "I do get a lot of spiritual satisfaction out ofstimulating their intellects, but I swear, people that want free oratoryare the naggingest beggars there are, especially the women that runcommittees. They got no mercy. If I let 'em, they'd have me makingaddresses twenty-four hours a day, and look pained if I stopped to blowmy nose. Sure. Go ahead and soak 'em. I just never had the nerve."

"Nerve? Why the man never even had the nerve to seduce me, and Heavenknows, that wouldn't have been hard."

"H?"

"Listen. I might pick out a regular topic for you and advertise it alittle--mention it in all my letters."

"Ausgezeichnet! Peony! Which do you think would draw more--a lecturemaintaining that the Post-War Generation are okay, and will get over it,or just the opposite--a message that they're a gang of cockeyed hellionsand harlots? This is very important. A lecturer has got to get hismessage straight, and more or less know what he's really talking about,even if he isn't so eloquent."

"Oh, give 'em the young-generation-gone-to-hell number. Nobody wants topay their good dough to hear that the kids are simply human beings.What's the use of a forum, if you only tell folks to act natural and tryto have some common sense? Besides! I got a wonderful name for the kidsthat are tough: singe cats! Isn't that beautiful?"

"Wow! You're the poet of this household, Peony! That ought to drag 'emin. 'Don't Be a Singe Cat.' Okay! Let's go!"

This was the real origin of the term "singe cat," which spread over theUnited States and became one of the permanent treasures of Americanfancy.

* * * * *

The suggestion that vulgar money might be involved lessened the numberof invitations to toss the torches, but eight or ten times a month, now,Dean Planish was called out of town, sometimes a hundred and fifty milesfrom home, and the family debt was reduced to three hundred dollars, andPeony did buy an evening dress that tinkled, and one, very soft andfeminine, which unfortunately made her look maternal.

President Bull was crosser and crosser as he saw his dean, whose job wasreally to run the college and let the president go out and sell it, bothneglecting his duty and getting the pretty orange checks that shouldhave gone to T. Austin Bull.

* * * * *

Dean Planish was to speak this evening at the joint dinner of theDaughters of Pilgrims, and the Upsala Bach Society, at New Ipswich,sixty miles from Kinnikinick. He would drive there. The roads were snowybut passable, and he had bought new chains for the Maxwell. He came homeat four-thirty in the afternoon, kissed his wife, spanked her slightly,kissed the baby and put on dinner clothes.

He decided that the dress-shirt would do one more time, but he'd betterchange the collar. It had a spot on it from the quick one he had grabbedin the men's-room at the Hotel Grampion in Des Moines, last Tuesday,when he had addressed the Hawkeye Association of Agronomists. That hadbeen a sixty-dollar fee, but worth more, because he had had to make upan entirely new lecture, something about the History of Agriculture, ofwhich he knew nothing whatever.

He ate a tuna-fish sandwich, hastily sucked in a straight rye, and puton a dogskin coat, a plush cap and coonskin gauntlets, which utterlydisguised the scholar and philosopher. The visible remnants of him, thebrown short beard and the brown cheerful eyes and the ruddy nose, lookedsomehow like a horse doctor's.

Peony bade her warrior, "Be a good boy. Have you got your key? Keep yourmuffler tight around your neck. Don't go bringing any blondes home withyou, or I'll gouge their eyes out. Oh, where's that ten dollars you weregoing to leave me? I have a feeling I'm going to buy me some silverslippers before the store closes. Oh, nemmine, don't unbutton your coatjust to get it. I'll charge 'em. I love to charge things, anyway. Oh,darling, do slow down on the curves, and remember to call your typicalsinge cat 'Mamie,' not 'Meggie'--don't forget what a hell of a time youhad with that real Meggie at Clinton. Good-bye, lover."

As he lighted a cigar and eased his car into gear, Dean Planishreflected, "That's the best little wife any man's had since----" Hebalked. Since Caesar? Since Alfred Lord Tennyson? Since U. S. Grant?

"The best little wife any man ever had," he finished it.

He went buzzing, steady as a train, through a gray, steady wind over theprairie. His car was a small fast bug, lost in that immensity. Hethought about the young men who had come to his office today, about theluscious girls--but none of them could touch Peony--about his salary,about how pleasant it would be to live in New York and not drive his owncar, about Professor Eakins's statement that he had heard of an explorerwho got $750 a lecture, about giving Peony some day an ivory-colored bedwith carved and gilded cupids, and, briefly, about his coming lecture.

Tonight he was, in a craftsmanlike way, going to combine his spicyrevelations about Youth's naughtiness with a denial that they were evennaughty, and he was calling the talk "It's up to the Parents."

Ten billion acres of flat grayness slipped by as the cozy philosopherbrooded:

"Must remember not bring the term singe cat in till after the touristcamp story--oh, must be careful to tell that tactfully, so nobody willrealize I'm referring to contraceptives. Then introduce the phrase witha rising inflection: singe--cat. Like that.

"Damn that farmer! What's he think he's trying to do? Crowd me over intothe ditch?

"She's not a bit fat. Just a good figure.

"Yes, in New York, have our bedroom like she'd like it: carved bed anda great big dressing-table, mirror big's a barn, and every kind of soapand rouge and cream in the world--fun to arrange it and then take her inthere and surprise her.... Don't kid yourself now, Doc! Fat chanceyour ever having a say about furnishing any room. Well, now, shut up!That's the way it ought to be. I'm the scholar and a crank for high-tonetalk and accuracy, but she's got the punch and the genius. I wish I werekissing her right now.

"Hm. Missouri license, eh? Wonder what he's doing up here, this time ofyear. Nice job. La Salle, I guess. Gracious, is he going fast!

"Explain that it isn't the surface appearance of vice that matters, butare the kids, no matter if they do tumble into the Slew--what is it?slew, slau, sluff?--of Despond, still, are they trying to march ontoward intellectual solidarity with the leaders? (Like me.) Better bringthis in dramatically: youth with banners--mud on their robes may merelyshow the fact that they been in the what-d'yuh-call-it of Despond,fighting. Plenty dramatic.

"This will make a hundred and ten bucks extra this week. Wow! Well, I'mworth it. They don't get many lecturers that hand 'em thoughts the way Ido. 'There's Dr. Planish--he's read just about everything, and he'scompletely honest. I'll bet he's satisfied with the part he's playing inthe march to moral victory!' I don't care if she gets three pairs ofsilver slippers, bless her!

"By golly, here we are in the outskirts right now. That wasn't so bad.I'm certainly a good driver. These kids, these students, that think theycan speed so! It's skill and steadiness like mine that covers thedistance.

"I wonder if any of these undergraduates do do the things I tell aboutin the lecture."

* * * * *

New Ipswich, Iowa, was exactly like Chicago, except that it was only onetwo-hundred-and-fiftieth as large, and the March of Empire Hotel, in NewIpswich, was exactly like the nobler Chicago hotels, except that it hadonly one-tenth as many rooms. It had four stories of red brick trimmedwith gray limestone, and in the lobby was a mural depicting Richelieuselling the glories of New France to Louis XIII.

The Bach-Pilgrims dinner was held in the Royal Bourbon Banquet and BallRoom, on the mezzanine floor, with its own Pompadour Coatroom. But DeanPlanish could not venture up on that gala floor looking like a farmer.At the main coatroom, downstairs, he took off his dogskin coat and plushcap, tipped up his imitation silver pocket flask, combed his hair andbeard with a small baby-blue pocket comb, and put on his harness ofgold-rimmed eye-glasses with a broad black silk ribbon. Their lenseswere of plain window-glass.

As he ambled up to the mezzanine, he looked the perfect Maestro,unafraid of ideologies or chicken croquettes.

He could without an introduction tell who his chairwoman was. She wouldbe the sharp-nosed and prosperous but slender lady who looked sick withanxiety. The Dean sailed down on her, as she stood with herprogram-flapping gang by the double door to the Banquet Hall; he heldout his hand, and purred in his deepest tomcat voice, "Mrs. Wiggleman?Mr. Planish."

By all union rules, his job was done now, except for the mere eating andlecturing; he was there, he was on time, he was sober, he was in dinnerclothes, and he had not forgotten his necktie.

* * * * *

He was not one of your nervous lecturers who poke at theirapple-pineapple-peach-creamcheese salad, who shakily fill up on coffee,and look glassily at the ladies to left and right, who answer "Ladiesand gentlemen" when anybody asks if it is cold enough for them, andwonder how many cigarettes they can get in without being consideredlibidinous. Dean Planish ate stolidly, and he thought very well of theSurprise Ice Cream, while to Mrs. Wiggleman, the chairwoman, on hisright, he was saying, Yes, he did think the movies were a perniciousinfluence on the young. After that he said to the lady on his left thatYes, he did think the movies stimulated the imaginations and slicked upthe manners of the young.

All this he did with one lobe of his brain tied behind him.

He was not jumpy even when Mrs. Wiggleman introduced him. She hadneither of the virtues that a lecturer longs for in an introducer: tokeep it down to forty seconds, and to get the lecturer's name right.Mrs. Wiggleman kicked up her palsied heels for two minutes andforty-three seconds, by the Dean's wrist-watch, and she called him"Professor" instead of "Dean." Yet when she had collapsed and satshrieking to herself in a whisper, he rose, put on his fraudulenteyeglasses with a flourish, and sailed his plane steadily into thetradewinds of intellectuality:

"Madame Chairman, Right Reverend Sir, ladies and friends, it isaltogether fitting and proper and a happy portent for the future thatthe descendants of the Yankees, my own stern but noble forbears, and thesons and daughters of the great Swedish race should thus have mettogether, and that I should endeavor to address you on the ever-burningtopic of Today's Youth, for in what have these titan races better unitedthan in their emphasis on the scrupulous rearing of our children?"

He pushed his crumpled napkin away from him on the tired andgeographical-looking tablecloth behind which he was standing, and reallytook flight. That he could soar at all while standing on a level withthe customers showed his skill, for normally the wisdom and stimulationthat will be tolerated from a lecturer are in ratio to the number offeet he is elevated above the audience.

Sixty-two minutes later, he made his landing, a little dazed now, andthey yelled and hammered the tables. He enjoyed that, but it did notkeep him from getting down to the real climax.

The first rule of all professional lecturers, whether inspirational,comic or travel, is to get your check before you leave the hall, forotherwise, in the spell of your wizardry, they might forget to send iton to you. So after he had shaken hands with forty-seven ladies and fivemen, he turned merrily to Mrs. Wiggleman and said, as though it werejust a little joke between them, "I think I can save your committee awhole postage stamp if I take my check along with me!"

Mrs. Wiggleman looked shocked, but before he went down to shrug himselfinto his dogskin overcoat, he had the check tucked into his billfold.

He was weary now. He drove back to Kinnikinick in so still a paralysisthat he noted only that it had started to snow, and that he must see ifhe couldn't find a not too expensive snakeskin belt for Peony.

She was asleep on the new chintz-covered chaise longue when he came in,but she jumped up and kissed him.

"Were you wonderful? I got some hot beef-tea waiting for you. Did youget your check?" she said.

Chapter 12

Mr. A. J. Joslin had been a country school teacher, a country banker, acountry editor. He now owned an excellent printing plant in Des Moines,and he was publishing a bi-monthly magazine called Rural AdultEducation, which had a reputation that extended into Saskatchewan but acirculation that didn't reach much beyond Osceola.

Mr. Joslin had twice heard the inspirational service furnished by DeanPlanish, and during January, 1927, he wrote begging the Dean for a fewarticles. He would pay two cents a word. The suggestion came just whenthe Dean and Peony were looking over the Christmas bills. It was Peonywho had had the courage to add them up, and she was grunting, "Believeit or not--I guess it's witchcraft--we seem to be seven hundred dollarsin debt."

They looked at Mr. Joslin's letter, they looked at each other, and Peonytook him by the lapel, led him to the corner of the living-room whichthey called his "study," pointed to his portable typewriter, and wentout to mix him a drink--and to telephone to the furniture dealer that hecould send up that leather floor-cushion after all.

Within three hours, the Dean had written an article on the consolidatedcountry high-school as a means of preparation for college. Mr. Joslinaccepted it and sent a check for $52.60; the Dean made the check over toPeony; and she went out and bought an imitation French imitationporcelain mantel clock. Two weeks later, he wrote some spirited adviceto college girls about teaching district school; he received $63.44, andPeony paid a dry-cleaning bill and bought a lovely thing in the way of apicture map of Iowa, depicting Jack of the Beanstalk climbing aforty-foot stalk of corn, and Neptune and attendant dolphins frisking inthe Des Moines River.

The Dean was cheered thus into doing a rather larger essay on theimportant books of the day (for his material he had to read clearthrough the advertisements in a New York Sunday Herald-Times) and onthe use of college libraries by rural communities. This check, for$93.88, Peony banked, unlooted. They both felt wonderful over the way inwhich they were tackling their debts, and in this mood the Dean dashedoff a fantasy on farm boys earning their way through college.

This check was for only $25.94. Peony took it and went out and ordered anew motor car, a Buick, and paid down part of the price, and this time,when she added up their debts, they came to $1,687.79.

"I just don't know how it happened!" she wailed.

"I'm afraid you'll have to stop buying things--for a little while, Imean," fretted the Dean.

"Oh, lover, don't be cross and beat me!"

"No, I won't do that. But we both got to restrain ourselves."

"And just when I've gone and written a letter ordering that Englishpicnic basket with the silver fittings. I suppose I can tear up theletter."

"No, no, sweetie, don't do that. It would go so beautifully with the newautomobile. But after that, we simply got to do without things."

"Gideon! Why don't you write an article for Rural Adult about howfolks can economize on the farm?"

"I've never hardly been on a farm.... But I'll write it."

"Oh, goody! That solves everything! And it was my idea, wasn't it!"

* * * * *

Before the end of March, when the faculty appointments for the nextschool year in Kinnikinick were made definite, Mr. A. J. Joslin wrote tothe Dean that he was discharging the editor of Rural Adult, who was avery poor public speaker, and would the Dean like to give up his presentjob and take the editorship? The emolument (a word used among theloftier teachers and the more amateur editors, and meaning "wages," justas the wages of lecturers are called the "honorarium") would be $4,200 ayear.

As dean, he had been receiving $3,800 a year and, despite afive-hundred-dollar check--and an irritated letter--from hisfather-in-law, he now seemed to be $1,200 in debt. He fluttered home toPeony; they talked for half an hour; the Dean accepted the editorship bylong-distance telephone; then ceremoniously called upon President Bull,to ask whether he ought to accept the editorship.

The locks of T. Austin Bull were still theatrically curly, but they weregray; and, with executive scheming, his face had grown more folded."Poor old devil, he must be over fifty now," thought the Dean. Feelingtolerant of this hedge schoolmaster who would never get invited to goand be a big man in Des Moines, the Dean finished his speech:

"Of course it's a great honor to be offered the editorship, and I'm notsure but that I can do even more good there than I can here--reachingthousands with the message of education, instead of just a few hundred.But I always feel that a man's first duty is to be loyal, and if you canpersuade the college Board of Trustees to raise my stipend fromthirty-eight hundred to forty-five hundred a year, I'll see if I can'tstay with you."

The President was a little abrupt:

"Dean, I'm glad you came in. I'd been thinking of asking you to drop inbefore we confirm the next year's appointments. And the fact is, I thinkyou better take this editorship."

"Eh?"

"The fact is, I'm afraid you've outlived your usefulness as aneducator."

"Eh?"

"You're a good speaker, and you're popular with the students, and you'vestarted some interesting novelties--the course in Russian and the MusicGuild and the abolition of hazing. But you've seen the Russian and theGuild fade and die, and you haven't done a thing about it. You're notreally an executive--you're a promoter--and the activities that youpromote aren't very sound. You just dream 'em and let 'em float off insmoke. And you've been increasingly neglectful of plodding day-by-daydetails. You haven't even been here very much. So I guess both sides areperfectly satisfied, and we can say farewell with the best of goodfeelings."

President Bull arose and stuck out his manicured hand, with his popularactor's smile, his smile of a popular ex-clergyman, but the Dean, thattrained practitioner of scholarly good-fellowship, could not smile inanswer.

* * * * *

Peony said, "I knew it all along. It's because he's been jealous of yourspeeches, and wanted all those lil fifties and twenty-fiveses forhimself. I'm glad we're going, and I hope we never see this dump again.I hate Bull and Mrs. Bull and Teckla and her stuffy father and everybodyexcept Edie Minton--she never liked me and never pretended to. On avong!Lez go!"

So Gideon Planish firmly set his plump foot upon the upward path thatwould lead through the miasma of lecturing and the bleak wind of editingto the glory of cloud-cuckoo-land, yes, even unto the world ofcommittees and conferences and organizations and leagues, ofimplementing ideals and crystallizing public opinion and molding publicopinion and producing informed public opinion and finding the greatestcommon denominator in all shades of opinion----

Of grass roots and liberal thinking and blue prints for democracy andthe system of free enterprise and far-flung armies and far-flung empiresand far-flung money-raising campaigns, together with far-flungnight-letter-telegrams about the imminence of the crisis and far-flungpetitions to Congress about the state of politics in Chile or Iran, andideologies and ideological warfare and in general the use of the word"ideology" as meaning everything except Far-Flung and Coca-Cola, and thelonging to serve and the need of discussion and constitutional measuresand challenges and rallying-points and crises, lots of crises,practically daily crises, and basic appeals and spiritual ideals and theprotection of the home, and directives, and the sickness in ourcivilization----

Of firm beliefs and doing the job without further discussion andoutstanding events and outstanding personalities and the logic of eventsand catching history at the tide, high tide or low tide or neap tide,and resisting pressure groups and also the formation of pressure groupsto exert influence, and upholding morals and reaffirming principles andagreeing in principle and getting the average voter's reactions, andeducational campaigns----

Of prospectuses and money-raising letters and three-color-job circularsthat were folded in a funny way and if you opened the little pasteboarddoor you would find out what the message was, and testimonial dinnersand organizational dinners and round tables and speakers' tables up ondaises and microphones and P.A. systems and lousy acoustics and deadspots in the hall----

Of constructive philanthropy and the appeal to the heart and theprivilege of giving and the spiritual values inherent in giving and thepressing necessity of giving at once and the higher levels of giving andplanned giving and systematic giving and the allocation of gifts andsubscription cards, sign on the second line, and generous responses andunparalleled responses to this appeal and the joy of giving and the dutyof giving and giving till it hurts the giver and non-giving till ithurts the hired hands at the organization----

And Conditions and Situations, Conditions and Situations in theChancelleries of Mitteleuropa, Conditions and Situations in Washingtonand the A.F. of L. and the C.I.O., and inside information and thelow-down--always the low-down on Conditions and Situations, to bediscussed by little groups of authorities on foreign affairs, from 8P.M. till 1:30 A.M., Conditions and Situations discussed over and overand over and over and----

Of organizators and philanthrobbers and propheteers and directors andexecutive secretaries and executive directors and managing directors andthe honorary chairmen and the sponsors and the trustees and the board ofadvisers and national headquarters and Chicago headquarters and localunits and appeals to the press to give publicity to the unexampled needsof this great cause and you ought to be able to get this picture of MissViv de Vere, in bathing suit and holding a coin box, into therotogravure sections and maybe get five minutes on Station WSOB andphotographs and Dr. Geschwighorst addressing the students' forums orfora at all the far-flung colleges on imperative giving and Conditionsand Situations----

Up into this earthly paradise was trudging a new Intellectual Leaderwhose fresh and eager voice would inspire the philanthrobbers to givetill it hurt them, but enable him to provide his wife Peony with sandalshoes and symphony season-tickets and five-pound boxes of Fanny Farmercandy and his undiminishing love.

Though he had lost the Christian name Dean, still he was Dr. Planish,always Dr. Planish--that was his first name: Dr.; and as such, alongwith every Colonel, every Reverend Doctor, every M.D., every Monsignor,every Rabbi, every Herr Geheimrat, every Judge, every Lord, everyGovernor, he was so highly exalted that he was not merely a man, but atitle.

Chapter 13

"When we get to Des Moines, we'll rent a flat. I've always wanted tolive in a flat. It's so citified," said Peony.

"Aw, don't you think it would be better to take a nice little house, soCarrie can play in the yard?" urged Dr. Planish. "Sure! We'll take ahouse."

They took a flat.

The flat was, crowed Peony, the most tremendous bargain: only fiftydollars a month, provided they did all the repairs; and theirKinnikinick furniture would fit it perfectly. The blue Chinese rug, theChinese Chippendale cabinet, the French porcelain clock, and the leatherpouf, she pointed out, looked as if they had been made for this brightlittle flat, with its balcony sun-room and its electric fireplace andonly two flights to climb. All they had to pay for was papering theflat, in soft yellow, scraping and painting the floors, white-enamelingthe woodwork, replacing a few warped window-frames, and buying a newelectric refrigerator, which was, Peony impersonally reported, thedearest little jewel she had ever seen.

So, though rather grumblingly, her father sent them another check.

They were welcomed to Des Moines in July with a party given by Mr. A. J.Joslin, a small and nervous man who had bright eyes but a mouth that wasalways slightly open. The party was operated in a private dining-room atthe Count Frontenac Hotel, with Iowa vodka and Mississippi River caviar,and they met a society editor, a congressman, and the chief agent forthe whole Middle-west of a great tractor company, who sang "Here's toGiddy, he's true blue; he's a drunkard through and through."

Mr. Joslin stated that under the inspired genius, lofty humanitarianismand practical hustle of the new editor, he expected to see Rural AdultEducation on every parlor table from Kalispell to Paducah.

Then he called Dr. Planish aside and explained that he had left hiswallet home, and could the Doctor let him have fifty dollars tilltomorrow? (But on the morrow, he did not seem to remember it.)

So the Planishes were launched on a metropolitan stream of elegance,excitement and fame.

* * * * *

"At heart you're a complete rustic. I believe you'd rather have a housethan our ducky flat. You'd like to mow the lawn and shovel the walks.You like the soil, even when it sticks to you. Maybe you were born ina bigger town than I was, but it's me that's got the zip. But I'm goingto make a city slicker out of you yet," said Peony--but fondly--butseriously.

And in the city, free from the spying of students, master of his ownoffice hours, among people whom Peony pronounced "fit to meet"--men withthree cars, women who were just as used to Le Grand Pension des DeuxMondes et de Tooting, t.c.m., in Cannes, as they were to Charley's Eats,Counter Service--he did enjoy the sea-change of becoming urbanized. Atleast, he enjoyed Peony's becoming urbanized.... Though they neverdid seem to meet any of the people with the three cars and privateBaedekers. But matter of time when they would be frisking in swimmingpools with the richest and most public-spirited. And from the first theyhad what the Doctor called Urban Opportunities.

They could go, any evening, to a choice of a dozen movies, a dozenrestaurants--one of them with real Parisian red-leather wall-seats. Atany time, night or day, they could hear motor horns, radios, ticklishlovers and riveting. They could adventure in department stores so largethat they never found what they wanted. They could read in the socialcolumns that right there in the city, not twenty blocks from them, abona-fide artist was promoting a studio party, that Madame Fitzinger, ofNew York and Stuttgart, was conducting a children's class in the ballet,and the Z. Edward Matzes were giving a whole series of parties tocelebrate the engagement of their daughter--in fact, the Matzes seemedpretty relieved about it.

So Dr. and Mrs. Planish were Successes in Life, according to the bestAmerican tradition: they resided in a larger city than before, and theyknew many more people much less well, if you counted in all thestreet-car conductors whom they met professionally, and they had asomewhat larger income and very much larger expenses. So Peony sangoftener, and next winter Carrie had a new snow-suit of white imitationfur, and only Dr. Planish was slightly bewildered.

* * * * *

His job as editor of Rural Adult was not working out as he haddreamed. He had expected to spend his time in reading entertainingmanuscripts and being interviewed by the newspapers regarding hisopinions on politics and the American woman and, instead of having totalk with boorish college students, being witty in a large leather chairwith sparkling but grateful authors.

But he found that authors were stammering in speech, vicious in theirdemand for quick payment, reluctant to give anecdotes out of which tomake publicity notes, and yet insistent on getting the publicity. In ahurt and jumpy way, he found that they were very vain, poisonouslyjealous, and usually musty of aspect.

For usable conversation, the printers and stenographers were muchbetter.

He had to learn painfully, from his own assistant--an aged party whowould himself have been the editor if he had not been a periodicdrunk--a whole tiresome technique of getting out the magazine: how toread manuscripts by smell, without wearing out the eyes; how to get athousand-word article into an eight-hundred-word space; how to choosethe lead article and, with a stern printer waiting, rewrite its title;and, most of all, how to obtain photographs for illustrations. Heusually telephoned to the press agent for a railroad or a factory andpromised him a credit which would undoubtedly sell ten threshing enginesor 10,000 passenger-miles.

Particularly, he had to learn taboos and libel laws. He must invariablyspeak reverently of mothers, duck-hunting, the Y.M.C.A., the SalvationArmy, the Catholic Church, Rabbi Wise, the American flag, cornbread,Robert E. Lee, carburetors and children up to the age of eleven.

All these mysteries the Doctor could learn and did learn. What troubledhim was that he was getting only half of his handsome salary.

Mr. Joslin explained that this wasn't his fault; that he was,conservatively, ten times as anxious to pay up as Dr. Planish was to bepaid up or Mrs. Planish to get the check. It was the fault of theprinters, who insisted on getting their wages every week; it was theadvertisers, always so slow to meet their bills; it was the papermanufacturers, always so intolerant about credit; it was the dead-beatsubscribers; it was everything except the publisher himself.

When he did pay, Mr. Joslin handed the Doctor a job-lot of wrinkled banknotes, hotel due-bills given in exchange for advertising, due-bills forschool blackboards, and an occasional precious silver dollar.

Jittery now for the first time since their marriage, the Planishes hadtheir landlord dunning them for the fifty dollars a month, the cornergrocer refusing to charge it, and the maid becoming so impudent thatthey had to pawn Peony's wrist-watch. The Doctor was terrified. Thewarmth and faith of Peony were even more important to him than the goodsteak dinners which he was not getting and of which he thought allthrough the hungry days. And it bothered him even more that Peony wasnot getting the brown juicy steak either. But she did not nag.

She scoffed, "Well, look at us! The hometown boy and girl that went tothe city and made good! One bottle of milk in the house, and thatbelongs to that yelping young sparrow, Carrie. Oh, honey-sweet, I thinkmaybe it was all my fault. I was too greedy!"

She sobbed against his shoulder, she sobbed and looked up at him withthe face of a little girl who has been naughty. He kissed her, and hersobs dwindled to a tired little whimpering.

Her fault? he thought. Her greedy? Why, she was the one person in theworld who didn't know how to be greedy. By God, she'd have a palace onLong Island and a marble swimming-pool before he was through!

This time it was the Doctor who wrote to Whipple Jackson, and heenclosed a promissory note, and they had steak again, and dry martinis.

* * * * *

Though he did receive only half his pay, it was not easy for the Doctorto quit Rural Adult Education. He enjoyed the small distinction ofbeing a real editor and he, the one time Dean and Professor, had littlevalue on the labor market now.

President T. Austin Bull would not give him any ardent recommendation,and, anyway, not till late winter would the slave philosophers bestanding in that labor market while the trustees and presidents of theseveral colleges looked at their teeth and wind and conservatism.

So the Doctor again took up the traveling-salesman's routine of theitinerant lecturer.

This time, he went at it professionally. Instead of having Peony bookhis engagements in her chatty pink notes to the committees, he submittedhimself, inspiration and beard and all, to a minor lady lecture-agentwho was not superior to dates at the Kosciusko High School Lyceum or theKiwanis Ladies' Night. She liked cross-word puzzles, and in the tradeshe was known as "The Dragon."

Under her skilled hand, the Doctor scheduled a whole repertory of showsfrom which the local committees could pick:

W. J. Bryan: Soldier-Saint
Don't Be a Singe Cat
Trust in Youth
The Dangerous Age
Home Learning for Grownups
How to Keep the Young Generation at Home
Is College Worth While?
Should Girls Go to College?
What's the Best School for Your Children?

The answer to the last query was "the nearest one." This discourse wasdescribed by the Dragon as "sixty-one minutes of fun, learning, brightanecdote and sound advice, by a great professional educator." Thesetopics, with a half-tone of Dr. Planish smiling sidewise at the cord onhis eyeglasses, were emblazoned in a leaflet sent out to all customersinterested in cultural wares. When the leaflet was shown to Carrie, agedfour, she laughed so much that her parents looked at her suspiciously.

For two weeks out of every six, that winter, Dr. Planish pounded thepebbly trail of the small-time lecturer.

He arrived in Washout at 5 A.M., caught the connecting train at 5:45,rode two hours in the red dust of a day coach, and arrived at Napoleonat 7:37. He felt dusty, his eyes felt glued, and his hope for the younggeneration was that they would quit it and grow up.

He was met by the Committee, three women and a husband, and asked towait just a minute, because the reporter and the photographer had gotmixed up and gone to the C.B.&Q. depot instead of the Union Station. Hesat on a wooden bench for forty minutes, wanting coffee but talkingabout education, while the husband looked at the Doctor's beard andloathed it.

At 8:17, they gave up the Press, and the husband drove the Doctor to hishotel. Barking with weariness, the Doctor telephoned down for coffee,stripped off all his disguise except a gray flannel union suit--and thebeard--gulped the coffee, stuck the tray out in the hall so that hewould not be disturbed by the return of the room-waiter, drowsily forgotto lock the door and cut off the telephone, fell on the bed, lookedcynically at the hotel picture of Marquises Horsing Around with Pages,and was asleep at 8:58.

At 9:16, the reporter and the photographer walked in, without knocking,and laughed very much at the union suit. The Doctor could scarcely seehis clothes as he wallowed back into them. He sat in an armchair withhis forefinger to his temple, and when the photographer's flashlightwent off, he hoped that the hotel had caught fire and that this wouldend it all.

In answer to the reporter's questions, Dr. Planish stated that heconsidered Napoleon the most beautiful city in the State--though theymust also permit him to say a word for the cities in his own belovedState of Iowa; that he thought women had a perfect right to studychiropractic or parachute-jumping but doubted if in these arts theywould be as happy as in bringing up a nice little family; that therewere many, many college girls who did not get seduced; and thatPresident Hoover was an even greater man than Coolidge.

At 9:41, after having locked the door, Dr. Planish was asleep again. At9:52, the telephone exploded.

"Yesh," said the Doctor, blurrily.

"I bet you can't guess who this is."

"Well, I'm afraid you're right."

"How is the old rooster?"

"Fine--fine. Who is this?"

"You don't sound so fine. You sound cockeyed to me."

"Well, I'm not! Who is this?"

"Can't you guess?"

"I'm sorry, but somehow I don't seem to recognize the voice. I didn'tremember I knew anybody in Napoleon."

"So you're giving people the big Des Moines run-around now, are you!"

"Not a bit of it, but--who is this?"

"Well, who do you think it is?"

"I haven't any idea."

"Well, you old lobster, this is Bert!"

"Oh----Bert."

"You heard me!"

"Which Bert?"

"Well, for God's sake! Your cousin!"

"I'm terribly sorry, but----"

"Bert Twitching, your second cousin! From Akron!"

"Oh----Say, did we ever meet?"

"Why, of course we did! What's the matter--losing your memory from somuch chasing? You ought to watch that! You remember--Dad and I stoppedby your house about twenty-five years ago--you were ten-eleven yearsold. And we didn't get such a hell of a friendly reception either, as Irecall it. But I'm the kind of a guy can always forgive and forget.Well, well, well, well, what you waiting for? I can't loaf around allday like you gab-artists! Get busy--put your bonnet on and come down tothe office and I'll buy you a drink."

"I'm afraid I can't, just now. There's a lot of people here. What's yourtelephone number, and I'll call you up. Or say--will you be at mylecture tonight?"

"Of course I won't be at your lecture tonight! Don't you think I gotanything more important to do with my evenings?"

* * * * *

He told the hotel exchange not to put through any more calls; he sleptalmost till noon, and bathed, and cursed with a small impotent cursingthat sounded more like weeping, and wrote his Rural Adult editorial onhis portable typewriter. He had had the telephone connected again, andduring his period of inspiration he answered calls from an insurance manwho wanted to know whether he had ever given any thought to his wife andlittle family of sons, from three several girl reporters on the samehigh-school magazine, from an unknown lady who wished to submit to hismagazine song lyrics upholding Prohibition, and from another lady whowished to know whether he was Joseph F. Snyder and, irately, why not?

The chambermaid came in, slapped his pillows once, and wanted hisautograph for her little lame son. He happily asked her how she hadfound out who he was. She hadn't. She had no clear ideas about himbeyond the facts that he was a Doctor and had a beard and thereforeprobably was a goat-gland specialist.

At 12:49, the silent and anonymous husband who had met him at the traincame in and took him to a luncheon of the Wholesale Stocking Dealers'convention, at which he had to speak (gratis). This first husband wasrelieved after the luncheon by a second and equally unwilling husband,who drove him out to Maplewood Park and to the seventh Pioneer Log Cabin(replica) that he had inspected in twelve days.

From 3:30 till 8, the hour of his lecture, he blessedly had all his timeto himself, except for being interviewed by the three high-school girls,each of whom asked the Doctor what he thought about education, eighteentelephone calls, a tea, at which he had to stand up beside the signedphotograph of Hugh Walpole and speak for five minutes, dressing for thelecture, and a dinner of forty people--at a private house and yet nococktails--during which he had to explain the philosophy of Plotinus,whom he had never read, to his hostess, who hadn't either.

His lecture was under the auspices of the Ladies' Current Events Club ofthe Percival Boulevard Methodist Church, and it was held in the churchauditorium, which meant that he could not have a cigarette just beforespeaking, that he could not say damn during the lecture nor refer toabortions or garters nor tell his one prize story about the drunkenDeacon, and that he had to be hopeful about the Future ofAmerica--regarding which, in view of sixteen more days of lecturing, heactually felt very black.

He was met at the stage entrance to the church by his lady chairwomanand the pastor, the Reverend Dr. Bowery, who pressed his hand, andwhistled, "It's a great privilege for us to have you with us tonight.Let's see; I believe you were dean of old Kinnikinick. Did you ever knowProfessor Epop of Bowdoin College, Maine, Doctor?"

"I'm afraid I don't, Doctor."

"You don't, Doctor?"

Dr. Planish had a distinct feeling that he'd better, or get thrown out."Oh, I know him by reputation, of course." The Reverend Bowery stilllooked suspicious. "Know him very well, by reputation. A fine scholarand gentleman."

"He's a stinker. He drinks liquor," said Dr. Bowery, and sniffed at Dr.Planish's breath.

The local newspaper photographer came in to do another bombardment, notbecause the paper or anybody else wanted a picture of Dr. Planish, butbecause no committee considers a lecturer fit to go to work unless, justbefore the show, he has been fed to a state of coma, talked-out at alarge dinner, and finally blinded by flashlights.

Meanwhile the chairwoman was going crazy trying to remember herintroductory speech. She was circling round and round the vestry like aMexican bean, muttering "One who--than whom--one whom--than who." Dr.Planish grasped her shoulder, shook her, and snapped, "Stop it, willyou, young woman! Don't worry about the audience. Those boneheads arelucky to have a superior gal like you say anything to them!"

She looked at him with surprised adoration, and from then on it was hisday, his night, and he was tolerably happy in the skilled performance ofhis grisly professional duties. At 9:17 P.M., grasping the edges of thepulpit, looking serenely out on all those rouge-patches and red hats andblunt mustaches, feeling how all their attention poured in on him, andloving it, he ended, "And so, my friends, I leave with you the thoughtthat it is not by asking advice or expecting a miracle that we shallbring security to our children and solidarity to our families, but bypatiently doing what we know is right."

He got through the question-period afterward with only one nastymoment--the inevitable heckling by the ubiquitous Communist. After that,he had only to get his check in hand, and the gay funeral was over.

* * * * *

Sometimes there was a party after the show. Sometimesunremarkable-looking people, whom he hadn't even noticed down in theaudience, came up and asked him if he didn't want a drink, and he wastaken to a real home, with a private bar and sufficient ash-trays andgood ribald conversation, and thus recovered from the sickness offluency before he had to take another train. But there was no such oasistonight, not in the Percival Boulevard Church, and in his hotel room hisonly joys were the check, which he took out of his wallet and lightlykissed, and his nightly long-distance call to Peony, at eleven; a joywhich he never denied himself unless at that hour he was on the train.If that happened, he called her whenever he got to the new town--1 A.M.,3 A.M., it did not matter. She always awoke quickly and sweetly, andspoke as though his voice was the greatest surprise she had ever had.

Tonight----

"Hello, baby!"

"Oh, Gid-e-on! Lover! Where are you?"

"Napoleon."

"Now stop it! What would you be doing in a place like that for?"

"For eighty-five bucks, minus twenty per cent to the Dragon."

"You can consider it already spent, toy-man. Oh, Gideon, I do miss youso, every minute. Even with Carrie yellin' her crazy head off, this flatseems so empty, with no big bear bumbling around. I was just thinkingtonight, if you were here, we'd go chasing all over town, laughing likefools, and have a drink and go to a movie and hold hands. Tell me,lover, how are you?"

"Oh, fine. My throat is holding out fine. That's better than I can sayfor the behind, on the seats in all these trains every day."

"Why, Gid-e-on!"

"And you're all right, dear?"

"Just dandy."

"And Carrie?"

"Oh, she's swell."

"Well, I got to hang up now. Take care of yourself."

"You take care of yourself."

"I will, pet, you bet I will. Kiss Carrie for me. And be sure and takecare of yourself and--and---- God, I wish I were there with you, rightnow! Good-bye, my dear--so long."

* * * * *

His train did not go till 12:30, and it was too late for the secondmovie houses. Till 12 he sat bolt up, keeping himself awake by reading aTrue Confessions magazine, the financial page of the Napoleon eveningpaper, and, several times, the interview with himself in the same. Itwas pleasant when at last he could close his bag and call for a bellboyto take it down.

As he sat in his Pullman berth, fumblingly undressing, he wished that hewere back in Kinnikinick, going to bed in the honorable cottage of thedean. The picture of the placid campus reached out before him as he wasshaken to sleep--and then the porter was twitching his pillow, and itwas time to get up and do it all over again, and he knew that at thedepot, waiting, was another cultural posse of three nice but resolutewomen and an anonymous husband, and maybe the Reverend Dr. Bowery,swanking under another name, with girl high-school reporters lurkingbehind every baggage truck, and all of them expecting these damn quips.

He came home, to his wife's embraces and to Des Moines' surprise that hehad ever been away, with a handful of checks which he threw into the airbefore Peony, so that they fell about her in a flashing storm. He hadfive clear weeks before he had to go out on tour again, and they plannedto put in practically every moment of it making love, playing withCarrie, shopping, drinking martinis and doing enough editing to keepfrom being fired.

Before the next summer, they had eleven hundred dollars in the bank, thenew car and the newest piano had been paid for--nearly--and they hadcautiously put up a little money on margin with a conservative firm ofstockbrokers. For this was in the late 1920's, and with their reading ineconomics, their unusual clarity and imagination, Dr. and Mrs. Planishcould foresee a rise in prosperity which might make them millionaires inanother ten years.

"What if that ole meanie, A.J., don't pay your salary very often,"crowed Peony. "We're going to have the marble swimming-pool withouthim!"

* * * * *

After their financial recovery, the Planishes were able to step up on afairly high plane of society: investment counselors and general managersof packing plants and high-school principals and lawyers and dealers inmusic, with wives who had most of them been born middle-aged. Theylooked on Dr. Planish as their proprietary Intellectual, and he nowfirst had the pleasure of being taken out to play golf, clad in theshort, baggy, Persian-looking trousers then called "plus fours."

"We're going ahead again!" Peony crowed. "These people ain't so hot, butwait'll we get to New York! We'll be chumming up with the Rockefellersand Mary Pickford and Nicholas Murray Butler!"

One of their warmer friends at this time was a gasoline dealer who owneda new radio station. He invited Dr. Planish to make a regularSaturday-morning fifteen-minute address for three weeks, and even paidhim ten dollars per augury.

No longer was Dr. Planish an old-fashioned schoolmaster at a meager deskin a stale classroom which might just as well have been in the 1820'sinstead of the 1920's. He was a master of modern machinery, a lord ofthe airways, as spiritual and up to date as a safety razor. He couldreach and influence thousands now--indeed, far-flung thousands, andpretty soon it would be far-flung millions--instead of dubious hundredsuncomfortable in lecture halls. He was coming into his own, he wasputting on the robes of prophecy, and he had always known that theywould fit him.

So, on the miraculous radio waves, carrying his message at 186,000 milesa second, the streamlined philosopher told the far-flungs that theyought to read the Bible, that wealth did not ensure happiness, that justthe other day he had talked, personally, with the Governor of a populousState, and that all conscientious citizens ought to vote--a virtuous actthat Dr. Gideon Planish had never yet performed.

Chapter 14

Back in 1924 there appeared a book which, like Das Kapital orShakespeare or the Koran, inspired a generation and enriched an age. Itwas The Man Nobody Knows, by Mr. Bruce Barton, a treatise which provedthat Christ Jesus was not a rebel or a peasant, but a society gent, areal sport, a press agent and the founder of modern business.

This Epistle to the Babbitts had upon Dr. Planish such an effect ascannot be comprehended by the wild children of an age which is moreconcerned with Hitler and Expressionism. They miss the quivering zestwith which Dr. Planish said, "I learned a whale of a lot more about thewriting racket from Mr. Barton than I ever did from Walter Pater."

He proved it in what became the most beloved feature of Rural AdultEducation: his witty column called "Cornpone and Popcorn." In thisappeared his essay "Mental Elbow Grease," and this little masterpiecewas to be more quoted than any other foam from his pen. It began:

"As the Swede fellow says, the saws and chisels in your tool chest von'tyump up into your hand. And the books on your shelves aren't going tocrawl down and get inside your brain. It isn't the number of books thatcounts in your mental development, but how you read and re-read them.Books don't give up their inner secrets to the man who snubs them andisn't friendly with them and doesn't try to coax out their confidence.The proverbial old-time country doctor's library, just Shakespeare andthe Bible and Gray's Anatomy, contained plenty for the man who dug outevery word as though it were a golden nugget."

This pasticcio was reprinted by little treadmill magazines and tradejournals all over the country, and from these lifted as a filler by somehundreds of newspapers. Occasionally they even gave credit to Dr.Planish, and he began to receive letters about it addressed to him incare of everything from the Salt Lake City Manna to the AlabamaDepartment of Education.

One of the warmest letters was from the Reverend James Severance Kitto,S.T.D., pastor of the Abner Jones Christian Church of Evanston,Illinois, and president of the famous Heskett Rural School Foundation ofChicago.

Dr. Planish knew him by mail, though he had never yet looked into hisred and friendly Scottish face. Dr. Kitto had contributed to RuralAdult a small panegyric on a handsome new illustrated edition of BenHur, a classic which, as he wrote, lives on with the Bible andWentworth's Algebra. He had written to Rural Adult that he was notsure that he ought to keep their generous payment of $7.44. He did not,however, return the check.

A. J. Joslin had lunched with Dr. Kitto in Chicago, and reported that hewas a learned but hearty fellow, who felt that the Kremlin was plottingagainst rural church work in Nebraska, Missouri, and portions ofSouthern Illinois. But this interested Dr. Planish less than Joslin'stip that the paid executives of the Heskett Rural SchoolFoundation--known to all professional good-doers as theH.R.S.F.--weren't cashing in adequately on the large funds of theFoundation. Dr. Kitto had taken Mr. Joslin to the Foundation offices,and they had found no one there except the managing secretary, aspinster named Bernardine Nimrock, and two stenographers, who weren't somuch as sending out red and green circulars to supply the far-flungwastebaskets of our broad land with information about the beauties ofrural education and with the plea that unless the wastebasket send in agenerous contribution at once, the little red schoolhouses and the biggray consolidated schoolhouses would all be turned into speakeasies.

It appeared that old Heskett, the gents' furnishings chain-store king,had left three million dollars to the H.R.S.F., but it was not usinghalf the interest. It did occasionally publish a report fly-specked withstatistics, it did give grants-in-aid to a few worthy schools, butnever, said Mr. Joslin, did the officers perform these deeds with enoughballyhoo. They were regular bushel-hiders.

Dr. Kitto who, as president, was unpaid, was too busy with otheridealistic jobs to think up new ways of spending the Foundation'sincome, and the salaried Bernardine Nimrock too timid, and both of them,marveled Mr. Joslin, too lazy or conceivably too honest to take theopportunity of giving their nephews, sisters-in-law, ex-lovers andclassmates such suitable jobs with the Foundation as knitting, copyingpoetry, telephoning and drinking tea.

"I'd like to have my hands on that show. I'd make it take care of theproper people---- Oh, by the way, Doc, I'm going to be able to pay youthat two hundred smackers I owe you by the end of the month,positively," said Mr. Joslin.

All this Dr. Planish recalled when there came from Dr. James SeveranceKitto the letter praising his essay, and inviting him to accept aNational Directorship in the H.R.S.F. and to attend its Annual MidsummerConference. (Conference, not Convention, because Convention meansstrip-tease shows and illicit liquor and the singing of "Happy birthday,dear Henry Hargett Huisenkamp, happy birthday to you," while Conferenceindicates only mental stripping.)

Dr. Planish accepted, and had his own Conference, with Peony.

Her father made a dozen trips a year to Chicago, and on the next one helooked up certain things, and wrote to the Doctor:

"I went in the Heskett place and got acquainted, and I even took the virtuous Bunny Nimrock, the secy, out to lunch. I didn't know I was so much of a beau, your father-in-law, the little devil, I had her quite flustered.

"I think you ought to let her alone, the poor gal thinks she is doing a good job and getting city folks to take country schools seriously and trying to do a little amateur lobbying with State Legislatures, but if you want her job, go to it, she does not look so hot and I imagine you could expand it into a pretty well-paying proposition. I found, as you asked, that the fellow to honey up to, besides Reverend Kitto, is another preacher, Reverend Christian Stern of New York City, a slick politician who is in all the uplift rackets and will certainly be in Chi for the conference.

"I also went out to the North Shore and sponged supper off my cousin Lucy and got to meet Reverend Kitto himself by accident on purpose and what shd we get to talking about but you, and I told him you were a national director of this New Turk outfit and a trustee of this Standard English society, whatever its name is, and cd have been president of Kinnikinick if you'd wanted to. Got Kitto so het up he is ready to give you the keys of the city, if you want to go there, I don't know why, personally wd much prefer Faribault or even Northfield or Winona.

"The Nimrock woman gets only $2,200 but sure that cd be jacked up to $4,500 by the right second-story worker. Don't be too hard on Bunny Nimrock, try and get her a pension, she is OK, likes checkers and cats same as I do.

"Yr. afft father,
"W. Jackson."

It has never been quite clear whether it was Peony or Dr. Planish whooriginally decided that because he loved country schools so much, rightdown to the tin washbasins, he ought to take over the Rural SchoolFoundation. Certainly it was Peony who, on her own impulse, skipped upto Kinnikinick for a week-end. She came back cooing.

"Lover, you'll be interested to know that old Prexy Bull is going tointerrupt his summer vacation and attend the Heskett Conference inChicago, and Teckla Schaum is still in love with you, and she and herpappy have become Sustaining Members of Heskett."

"What's all this?"

"I told Bull that even if you are so popular among the alumni, you'reopposed to this new movement to make you president of Kinnikinick----"

"What movement?"

"----instead of him, and just as I suspected, he is a member of theHeskett Foundation, and he's promised to be there with bells on andsupport this project to make you managing secretary of it. And I toldTeckla that, frankly, I wasn't sure but that she'd of been a much betterwife for you than I am, and that I suspected you thought so too, and----You don't, do you, Gideon? I'd murder you, if you did! Say you don't!Okay. Now go down and tell Joslin that if he doesn't show up in Chicagoand support you with Kitto and Doc Stern, you'll sue him for the salaryhe owes you. I mean it. Now skip, hero."

He skipped.

* * * * *

Before the annual conference of the Heskett Foundation, Dr. Planish hadlearned everything about it except why it existed at all.

The two mysteries regarding any organization for philanthropy are whoreally owns it and what, if anything, it actually does, besides create apretty letterhead and provide a warm office for the chief executive totake naps in.

In the business, the term "Foundation" usually means an institutionwhich is entirely supported by a trust fund established by aphilanthropist (meaning a man with more money than he can spend onhouses and pearls) and which does not solicit donations, but somewhatcoldly picks out worthy persons or enterprises to which it does thegiving. Occasionally, organizations call themselves Foundations withoutthe benefit of large enough or oily enough trust funds, and send outbegging letters like any League or Committee.

But the Heskett Foundation was mixed. It had the trust fund, but it alsourged the pious or the guilty of mind to become Sustaining Members at$100 a year, or even Founding Members, at $1000 flat.

But more mixed were its accomplishments. Neither Dr. Kitto, thepresident, nor Dr. Christian Stern, the chairman of the board, gotanything more than carfare and glory, and that was all right with Dr.Planish, but he was sorry to find that the Foundation was not moredevoted to guaranteeing a worthy living for the managing secretary, whowas a regular employee.

It published speeches about rural education by Kitto and Stern and byone H. Sanderson Sanderson-Smith, Esq., in flat little gray pamphlets,but no country teacher seemed ever to have received them. They were sentto managing editors, who turned them over to the drama editors, whothrew them into the wastebasket, along with Hollywood releases aboutMiss Sylvia Silva's goat farm. The Foundation had been known to giveblackboards to a school in Kansas, two motion-picture films to ateachers' college in Dakota, and a collection of Turkish stamps to aHawaiian institute for pineapple growers, but the pattern for thesebenefactions seemed to exist only in the head of Miss BernardineNimrock. Dr. Planish studied the Foundation reports, he talked to ruralcontributors to his magazine, but he found nothing more.

Well, he said to his wife Peony, he'd change all that. Under hisdirection, the Foundation might not make more gifts, but they'd bebrighter and a lot more talked-about.

On the hot evening before they set off for Chicago, the Planishes satlate in their flat, the Doctor in saffron pajamas open on his chubbychest, Peony in mules and a wisp of nightgown.

"Well, looks as if we're going to take a shot at something new," hesaid.

"Aren't you excited, Gidjums?"

"Oh, I guess so, but---- Same time. We don't always want to go onshifting and changing. I've got pretty fond of Des Moines and the bunchhere--I don't even mind playing golf--and I get kind of homesick forKinnikinick sometimes. I liked our little white house. We ought to havea dog for Carrie to play with----"

"Big tiny, I know how you feel. I want to be settled down, too. Butfirst we got to make New York. You'll be boss of the Boy Scouts or theRed Cross or some really big philanthropy in another five-ten years, andthen we'll get a house out in some lovely suburb, with elm trees and astone wall around it--and yes, we'll get a dog for her. We can't stopnow, with that ahead of us, can we! It--wouldn't be fair to youngCarrie!"

"Maybe not--maybe not."

"And wait till you see the new red velvet opera cape I got today. It'llknock Chicago's eyes out!"

"But won't it be kind of warm, this weather, on the poor girl's littleshoulders?" he protested fondly, and kissed her shoulder by way ofillustration.

Chapter 15

The Heskett Foundation conference did not assemble in a hotel, withthunderous celluloid badges, sales managers boosting quotas by awardingto the best go-getter a golden calf, and a procession of delegatestrotting damply to the bar and their wives to the Powder Room. Itconvened at the Foundation Building, and there were only a hundreddelegates.

Dr. and Mrs. Planish, a little rustic with suitcases and a paper parcel,went to the fabulous Golden Strand Hotel, on the north side ofChicago--naturally they went there, and naturally they took a suite, forthe Foundation was paying the expenses of delegates.

A little muted and impressed, Peony looked at the lilac-colored couchwith silver-brocade pillows, in front of it a carved teak coffee tablecovered with glass, at one end of it a super-heterodyne radio in aSheraton cabinet, and at the other a Russian brass table holding a Swisssmoking-set made in Japan, while behind it stood a Japanese screen madein Switzerland--she looked at all this richness, and sighed, "This iswhat I like! This is by golly what we're going to have all the time,from now on. I tell you, most people don't understand will-power, if youchoose to use it, isn't that so?"

He agreed.

The Heskett Foundation Building, when they found it, was less thanmagnificent: a barracks made by throwing two brownstone houses together.The lower floor was all in offices lathered with enlarged photographs ofunhappy country schoolchildren, and the second leaked pamphlets, but thethird floor an auditorium which, packing them close, would hold threehundred people, especially educative people, who are not very well fed."This hall is fancied up real nice, with those silk curtains," admiredPeony. There were two murals, showing a teacher leading her flock fromdark pigpens up to a lighted mountain peak--nobody ever did say how itwould have been if the pigpens had been lighted and the peak indarkness--and of Madame Montessori chatting with William Penn, Socratesand Bronson Alcott.

Peony giggled. "That ole girl's got some awful stuffy boy-friends," shesaid.

"Sweet one, you mustn't sneer. All earnest effort is commendable," theDoctor gently instructed.

"Oh, I know. I'm sorry, lover," she whimpered.

"And I'll bet they laid out not less than ten thousand bucks on thosemurials," admired the Doctor.

"Well I'll be damned!" his wife said fondly.

Then, at the secretarial and registrative desk of Miss BernardineNimrock, they met their first leaders of the organizational world. Theyhad not experienced such handshaking, such a counterpoint ofcongratulatory voices, since their last Freshman Reception atKinnikinick.

Dr. James Severance Kitto shook hands with them as though he enjoyed it.He had a broad soft red face and a broad soft white hand, and his voicewas wonderful: molasses basso with a stick of Scotch in it.

"I feel that you and I can do great things together, Dr. Kitto, and Iwant you to meet my wife," said Dr. Planish.

Dr. Kitto held Peony's ardent paw almost permanently; he looked at herand then he looked at Dr. Planish, and he boomed, "Right you are! GREATthings!"

More satisfying, even, was the meeting with the Reverend Dr. ChristianStern, of New York, chairman of the executive board. He was asandy-looking man in his late thirties, dry, thin and galvanic. He saidthat he was fond of Tolstoy and canoeing, and his sandy hair was partedin the middle, but his handshake was powerful.

Dr. Planish bubbled, "It's most annoying, Doctor. I keep hearing suchpraise of you from everybody that goes to New York. We all get veryjealous!"

"Well, well, Doctor! Is that true!" said Dr. Stern.

A crew of others, less brisk about Heskett Foundation politics yetactually more famous in the banquet world in general, made as thoughthey were delighted to have the Planishes introduced to them. There wasMaude Jewkins, M.D., who said, humorously but pretty often, that womenwere better doctors than men because they weren't so poetic. There wasMrs. Natalia Hochberg, of New York, who was now trying to settle a hordeof violently unwilling sweatshop workers on the wholesome farm land.

There was Mr. H. Sanderson Sanderson-Smith, born in New England but agraduate of Columbia and therefore refined, and now resident in thehobohemian hinterland of California; book-reviewer and editor of LittleMagazines and founder of leagues for nudism, Thomism, cricket and theblack mass. He had red whiskers and pale eyes and a merry smile, and hehad once been taken for a son of Bernard Shaw. He kept on saying that hedid not believe in Democracy, but he said it with such gentleness thatyou thought he didn't mean a word of it--that's what you thought. Heremarked to the Planishes, "I dare say I am the only person in thisrapturous assembly who is at once a Nietzschean and a cabalist." Theyweren't sure what that meant, and they didn't like him very much.

All this happened at tea--the Heskett Foundation and Miss BernardineNimrock sprang to tea and raisin cakes as readily as a policeman springsfor pretzels.

"Didn't I tell you so?" whispered Peony. "Some day we'll be meetingJohn D. Rockefeller and Bishop Manning and the Prince of Wales!"

Then they saw President T. Austin Bull of Kinnikinick, standing alone,like a solitary birch tree on the Iowa prairie. "My, how we've missedyou and Mrs. Bull!" caroled Dr. Planish, and the President yelled, "Andhow we've missed you dear people!"

But the Planishes met their one real treasure in Professor George Riot.

They had heard about Professor Riot, so young and yet so brilliant andso deep. At only thirty-one, he was Professor of the Philosophy ofEducation in Wisteria College for Women, and author of Don't BeAfreud. He had had a little trouble, which made the Planishes only themore sympathetic with him; the sensational newspapers said that in alecture he had asserted that, by Federal law, no girl ought to beallowed to remain a virgin after twenty-six. For two years now the poorfellow had had to go all over the country explaining (at $150 perdenial) that he hadn't meant that at all, but merely something thatsounded the same.

He looked like an English Guardsman, on the tall thin side.

The Planishes and he instantly drew toward each other, since they wereso much younger than the other uplifters: Dr. Planish, thirty-seven,Riot, thirty-one, and Peony but twenty-seven. She whispered to her twomen, "Let's shake this bunch of old dodoes and sneak out and have acocktail."

"Splendid!" said Professor Riot.

At cocktails, Dr. Planish anxiously watched Peony watch Professor Riot.At last she turned to her husband and nodded, and he went into his act:

"Dr. Riot, my girl and I don't hardly know a soul here, except PresidentBull, and I hope we three can play around together. Without handingourselves too much, I feel maybe we three have a slightly moreman-of-the-world attitude toward education than antiques like Bull andKitto--but not cynical, you understand, Doctor!"

"I know just how you mean, Doctor," said Dr. Riot.

"Perhaps more sophisticated, Doctor."

"Yes, I think that might be the word--more urbane and realistic,Doctor."

"That's what I mean, Doctor."

"You boys have another drink," said Peony.

The three musketeers, after an evening in the Heskett Auditorium devotedto enduring it through addresses on Religion in Education by ReverendKitto and Education in Religion by Reverend Stern, hastened to thePlanishes' suite, and they parted at 3 A.M.

They were calling one another George and Gid and Peony by then. ThePlanishes did not merely consider Riot useful now; they really likedhim, which in the philanthropic realm was extraordinary.

Dr. Planish had explained that he would be willing to become managingsecretary of the Heskett Foundation. There were wonderful things hewanted to do for the country schools, and after his experience on RuralAdult Education----

"Right-oh! I'll put it over," said George Riot. "You and I could workout some plans together. Besides, I don't see why Kitto and Stern shouldgo on hogging the whole three million. But have you got acquainted withHamilton Frisby?"

"With who?"

"Little sawed-off lawyer--an uh'er--he says, 'I, uh, I feel that, uh, weshould, uh----'"

"I think I ran into him. What is he?"

"The real works behind the Foundation. He's trustee for the wholeHeskett estate--the heirs are all imbeciles or painters or both; theylive in Italy or the Berkshires and leave everything to Frisby."

"F-R-I-S-B-Y." Peony was writing it down. "He's in the bag already,George. Hey! Put more soda in."

* * * * *

Next noon, the Planishes had lunch with President Bull, and Dr. Planishwas full of ideas about What Could Be Done. That afternoon, he readbefore the Conference a paper that proved you can't have spirituality ina school without sewerage. Late that afternoon, the Planishes had teawith Dr. Christian Stern, and cocktails with Mr. Hamilton Frisby, wholiked the Doctor's ideas about golf. Before this, Dr. Planish had saidlavishly to the Reverend Dr. Kitto, "I know how busy you must be,Doctor, with this Conference as well as your tremendous regular clericalduties, so how about our having breakfast together, tomorrow?"

That evening, the Planishes were the dinner hosts to Mrs. Hochberg, Mr.Sanderson-Smith, Dr. and Mrs. Stern, Professor Riot, Mr. HamiltonFrisby--and Miss Bernardine Nimrock, whom Peony encouraged to talk herheart out.

She didn't seem to have much to talk out.

The others left at ten, busily but courteously, as great humanitariansand the whole tribe of Celebrities usually do, and the Planishes andGeorge were left to themselves.

"That Sanderson-Smooch is a cross between a cobra and a pussy cat,"yelled Riot.

"Mrs. Hochberg keeps on being so rich, Bull tells me, because she nevergives anything to her own charities," shouted Dr. Planish.

"That poor Nimrock woman had on the damnedest hat I ever saw!" screamedPeony.

"Oh, by the way, speaking of that, and I do hope I won't be infringingon your good nature," said George, "but will you go shopping with metomorrow afternoon, Peony, and help me buy some pajamas for my wife?Gracious, she certainly would've come along if she'd known I was goingto meet you folks instead of a lot of windbags like Chris Stern."

Sure she would.

They had another drink, and said they were having such a good time.They had still another drink, and became cultural.

"The trouble with a lot of these muffs like Stern and Kitto and yourpoker-faced President Bull is that they haven't any sense of theartistic," said Professor Riot.

"That's so. Like music," mused Dr. Planish. "You bet. I certainly amfond of music. I wish I had time to hear some now and then."

"So do I. I certainly do like to hear Beethoven. And Rimsky-Korsakoff,"cried Professor Riot.

"You bet! And Rosa Bonheur," said Dr. Planish.

"I don't think she was a composer. Wasn't she a shark about radio orradium or something?" worried Peony.

"Oh, that's so, of course she was." Dr. Planish laughed heartily. "Justfor the moment I got her balled up with that French woman composer.You know, George."

"Of course I do, Gid. Know her name's well as I do my own, but just forthe moment it slips my tongue. Claudette? No, that's not right. Butanyway---- Don't you play the piano, Peony?"

Dr. Planish said, weeping, "George, do you know that, for my sake,Peony gave up a career which would have made her the greatest womanpianist?... Sweetie pie, how long is it since you've touched the piano?"

"What of it?" explained Peony.

"You see? Gave it all up for our sake--no, for sake of cause of----What's our cause, George?"

"Idolism--i--idealism."

"No it ain't! It's cause popular education and honesty politics,strickly honest!"

"Same thing. Hurray f'r idealism! This dumb country--lot of farmers,pot-wallopers. Where'd it be if wasn't for us, Gid?"

"Hurray for us!" said Dr. Planish.

"Oh, boys," wailed Peony, "I think I'm getting a little tight!"

They both kissed her tenderly.

* * * * *

The Executive Board of the Heskett Foundation met at 10:30 next morning.They decided to buy a new carpet for the auditorium, to appoint acommittee to elect a chairman to authorize the secretary to draw up aresolution to inform Professor John Dewey that they agreed with him inprinciple, to publish a symposium on spreading democracy by saluting theflag in all schools, and to elect Dr. Gideon Planish as managingsecretary of the Foundation, at $3,900 a year.

Professor Riot went to see if he would accept.

"Gid, I'm sorry as hell I couldn't jack 'em up higher than thirty-ninehundred, but that's all the tightwads would stand for. And you gettingforty-two hundred already! Still, I do think this slow-poke institutionmight lead the way to nobler and much better publicized organizations.How about it, Gid?"

Dr. Planish said bravely, "Yes, it may be a step into a wider and moreuseful field. I'll take it, George. By the way, I hope they'repensioning off Bernardine Nimrock."

"Yes--eleven hundred a year."

"Oh, fine! I certainly would hate to think I was doing that poor old henout of a job. A fellow's got to be chivalrous, George, no matter what."

Peony fondly protested, "Now I won't hear a word about either of youboys ever being anything but chivalrous!"

"That's sweet of you, baby," admired Professor Riot. "You're a realHypatia--if that was her name. So I'll tell 'em the thirty-nine hundredbucks is okay, Gid?"

"Yes, you may tell them so. I think I may honestly consider myselfnon-commercial," said Dr. Planish.

He had already decided that since he never actually got more thantwenty-eight hundred out of Joslin, he would take the new job even atthree thousand. He continued:

"But they must understand what a sacrifice I'm making."

"I've already explained that to them. You bet I have!" said ProfessorRiot.

"The first quality an organization executive has to have is willingnessto sacrifice."

"That's so," sighed Professor Riot. "I wish the public who bellyacheover their privilege of giving a little to philanthropy out of theirgreat treasury would appreciate that fact."

The telephone rang.

Dr. Planish answered it. He stuttered, "I g-guess you better let hercome up." He turned to his guerrilla forces with a terrified "It'sBernardine Nimrock!"

Peony seized Riot's arm and melodramatically muttered, "Let's skip inthe bedroom! Giddy can get rid of her quicker without us!"

Three minutes later, Miss Nimrock crept into the living-room, a dustymoth of a woman, fluttering, and Dr. Planish backed away from her. Thiswas not going to be fun. He felt that it was very unjust of Peony andhis old friend George Riot and the Reverends Kitto and Stern to put thisupon him. Her mouth was working queerly. Was she crazy? Sometimes frailwomen picked up things like that Bourbon bottle and killed powerful men.

"Dr. Planish, I've just heard that the Foundation plans to fire me,after ten years' service, and give you my job, and you don't needit--you don't need it--you're a man and you've been a college professorand you could always get some kind of job. But I'm supporting my mother,and Dr. Kitto promised I should have the job always, and if I never haveaccomplished much as managing secretary, and I know I haven't, it'sbecause I've had to submit everything to Dr. Kitto for his okay, and I'dnever get it--I'd wait and wait and telephone and never get it. It'llkill me and kill my mother if you just amuse yourself by coming in andtaking this job away from me--I've got to have it--oh, you're not ahypocrite like Dr. Kitto, or cruel like Mr. Frisby, are you? You'll stopand think about this, won't you? You'll try and see if there isn'tsomething else you can find to do, won't you? I've never been a beggarlike this before. I thought I was a decent independent woman and Iworked so hard. You are a man of honor, aren't you? You won't kill us,just to get ahead?"

He had backed clear to the windows; he stood with his hands behind him,twitching at the net curtains. He had to say something.

"Well, this is all news to me--practically. I've just heard rumors.Certainly the last thing in the world I'd want to do would be to injureyou two ladies. Yes, I'll look into this----"

Miss Nimrock was looking at him with sunny, adoring eyes. She seemedalmost young and pretty. This was what he could do for women, the poorthings! He went on, "Certainly look into this right away, and see if wecan't----"

Then Peony walked in.

She charged on Miss Nimrock like St. Catherine, or Mrs. Calvin routing awitch, and this time it was Miss Nimrock who backed up, as Peonychanted, "Oh, I didn't know you were here. Isn't this dandy! I did wanta chance to congratulate you on getting that lovelyeleven-hundred-a-year pension, so you can have that and still get asecond job if you want to, any job you want, say like teaching, my,you'll be making so much money you won't know what to do with it, andpersonally I should think you'd be glad to get away from Kitto, the olestuffed shirt----"

She had Miss Nimrock through the door into the corridor, she closed thedoor while the adversary was trying to speak, and she cried to Dr.Planish and the now cautiously emergent George Riot:

"My, I do think women are the worst sports! Imagine her trying to welshlike that! I did hate to be so mean to her, poor thing, but I thought itwould be kindest to just be brutal, really, and get it over. PoorGideon, I was so sorry for you, and for you, too, George, and I guessthat calls for a drink. Let's make it a quickie, because I got to go outshopping with George and get some pajamas for his little wife, I swear,I'm so jealous of that girl of yours, I could bust, George, and mepromising I wouldn't do one ounce of shopping all the time I was inChicago, and save and scrimp and economize and--there you are, boys."

Where, glowed Dr. Planish, was there another wife like that?

Chapter 16

They were dressing for the great annual Heskett Foundation dinner, finalensemble of the Conference, at which his appointment as managingsecretary would be announced.

"You always look so distinguished in your tuxedo, Giddy," she said.

"Oh, not so much. Well, go on. You haven't told me anything yet aboutshopping with George."

"I think most men do look better, dressed for dinner, but especially aman with a beard. That's where the English are so smart, dressing fordinner. My, that must be a grand city, London--and neither of us everseen it yet! England's a so much more civilized country--as the Englishthemselves so often tell us. Will we go and live in London some time,when we're rich, sweetheart?"

"Go on. Tell me. What've you been up to?"

"Gideon! I did promise not to throw money around this time, didn't I!"

"It was a voluntary promise. I never asked you to make it."

"I know you didn't. So don't you see?"

"See what?"

"Well, after we found George his pajamas--my gracious, now that's aslip, isn't it, you better page Dr. Freud, I guess--and anyway, after wefound the pajamas for his wife--and George and that giggling hyena of asaleswoman did make me kind of sore, even though they were just joking,his putting his arm around me like that and pretending to show her hiswife's bust measurements with me for model. I told George I had a goodmind to slap his ears off. But anyway, I certainly did pick her out somelovely pajamas, my, I'd like to have 'em myself, all silk, in peachcolor with green piping and----

"But anyway, as I was saying, George insisted we might as well look overthe department store while we had the chance, and we went up and down onthe escalators, gee, that was fun, and the things I wanted to buy,heavens and earth, you have no idea how strong-minded I was--a whitebearskin rug that would be so delicious on my toes on a winter morning,and a portrait of President Andy Jackson--Daddy says we're related tohim somehow, way far back--and an electric drink-mixer--it would reallybe economical, it would save so much time, but I was firm, and oh,Gid-e-on, a real Finnish hand-carved wooden salad bowl!

"They'd all be so useful, but I was adamant, absolutely adamant. Maybeit just shows us that pride goeth before the most God-awful fall,because George and I stopped at the antique jewelry counter and oh,honeybun, you'll probably murder me, but it did look cheap, and sodarling, oh, the loveliest thing I ever saw, and it didn't seemexpensive and---- Let's get it over. Look at it."

She had sneaked out from the dressing-table drawer a ring with asparkling oval center.

"God! Not diamonds?" he grunted.

"No, don't you see? It's steel points, antique. But it was expensive,I'm afraid."

"How much?"

"Eighty-nine dollars."

He winced. But he was quickly on another track.

"I'm glad George Riot didn't give it to you."

"The funny thing is, he offered to."

"Oh, he did, did he!"

"Prob'ly not seriously. Not on a professor's salary!"

"So he offers you rings! He pretends to be buying pajamas, and feels youup! Damn him, I'll show him!"

"Why, Gideon Planish! Do you mean to say you're jealous?"

"Huh?"

"Are you?"

"M-maybe, a little."

"I'm tickled to death! Seems like you haven't been jealous for a longtime, lover. But you don't think I fell for him, do you?... Do you?"

"No, I guess you and I are about as loyal as any couple living. That'sone thing where we aren't phony humanitarians."

"Why, Gideon Plan-ish! What do you mean? To dare and say a thing likethat, when we're giving up such a lovely job as editor and dean and all,and just sacrificing and sacrificing and sacrificing, and not evenbuying the white-bear rug or the salad bowl or anything. What a thing tosay about yourself just when you're starting this wonderful new path ofservice!"

"I know. We really are beginning to dedicate ourselves to mankind. Idon't know what made me say that. And you're sure you still love me?"

"Shall I show you?"

"No, no--this is the only clean dress-shirt I got along. But do you loveme better than George Riot?"

"Manny darling, you aren't going to get a grouch on George, I mean andshow it, are you?"

"No, no, course not. He's helping me to get planted in theorganizational field more than anybody else, isn't he? Oh, no, no, no,no, sweetheart, you mustn't misunderstand me about old George. Theydon't make 'em any better than old George."

"So now, you see, everything's fine, isn't it, hero! You don't suppose Icould afford an orchid tonight, do you? Or do you feel like giving meone?"

* * * * *

The dinner guests clapped profusely when Dr. Kitto announced theappointment of Dr. Planish as managing secretary.

Dr. Planish lubricatingly told them of his practically rural birth andrearing.

Miss Bernardine Nimrock was not present.

They gave her a rising vote of thanks.

That night, Dr. Planish turned and turned in bed.

"What is it, faun? I know something's bothering you. It isn't my newring, is it?"

"Good Lord, no!" (That is what Peony sensibly expected him to say.) "Ijust can't get that Nimrock woman's face out of my mind--thisafternoon--so scared, and all blubbered up with crying."

"Silly! Dear silly! Progress has to go on, doesn't it? We know asstudents of biology that certain lower forms of life are bound tosuffer. Indeed, if they didn't suffer and get themselves eliminated,they would block all true progress, wouldn't they? But do you know whatI'm proudest of you for? For being so sensitive to the feelings ofothers. I suppose that's what has made you a humanitarian and a sort ofprophet instead of just an ole college professor. So proud!"

"Well----" said Dr. Planish.

* * * * *

They had the Chinese Chippendale cabinet, the Chinese rug, and theporcelain clock crated and sent on to Chicago in early August. They leftbehind them the leather pouf. "It looks kind of hick to me now. Goodnessgracious! How one's taste does get improved by traveling!" said Peony.

They drove by automobile from Des Moines to Chicago, with an overnightstop at Davenport, three hundred miles in the brilliant heat; and Dr.Planish said, over and over, that it was the most enjoyable trip he hadever made, and that little Carrie was proving to be a True Gipsy, likeher parents.

Now that they were practically started for New York and London, and shewas therefore no longer bound to debts and worry, Peony was a foamycataract of ideas dashing around and over any vulgar rocks of fact. Herideas all entailed the Doctor's doing a lot of work and magicking a lotof important people, but she looked sidewise at him, at the wheel, withsuch wide admiration that he had to accept them. (He was still doingmost of their driving at this time; it would not be for five more yearsthat she alone would be trusted with the car.)

He was to be a senator, after all, but from Chicago or New York, wherehe wouldn't have to pretend about country road-taxes. After that, he wasto consolidate a string of small colleges, be president of the lot ofthem, run them like chain-stores, and give them such sprightlyadvertising--and profits--as no university in history (since the U. ofAl-Azhar, Cairo, f. 970, colors: green) has ever enjoyed.

He was to combine the foreign missions of all Protestant churches, andtake personal charge of them. (She would simply love traveling with himthrough India, and seeing palm trees and natives.) And as the start ofall these glories, he was to get rid of Dr. Kitto and Mr. HamiltonFrisby and control all the funds of the Heskett Foundation, and sherather thought she would like to have one room of their house in Parisall in scarlet and black.

As Peony chattered, as she read the map and navigated, as she slippeddown from the car to take Carrie to a "rest room," Dr. Planish loved hereach moment with a more wistful amazement at being with his ownparticular girl, who would always be there, and give him a purpose forliving and laboring. He marveled at her swift evolution. She was sosmart, in her black and mustard suit, her black cloche hat. How had shedone it? He was almost forty, and he had seen the world, had spent anentire week in New York, but it seemed to him that his country chick wasas old and worldly-wise as he himself, that she knew everything therewas to know--except possibly the exact time of day, the amount of herbank balance, and how to spell Cincinnati--and that there was nothingthat a trudger like himself, learned, rock-steady and fanatically honestthough he was, could better do than to follow her divine intuitions ineverything.

* * * * *

Peony was the best of traveling companions, interested equally in ameadow lark or a special-job Cadillac, uncomplaining of cold or heat orhunger. Only once did she worry him.

The first day, the car had run too easily, and at each restaurant theyhad said, "Oh, we'll find a better place farther on." Toward three, theywere passing a converted village store-building with a shakyhome-painted sign announcing EATS. At this suggestive word, Carriehowled.

They stopped.

The interior was gaunt and long and skinny, with three round tables, agas stove, a lunch counter behind which were shelves of cigarettes andhorrible candy bars, and a sign "Not respble for hats coats."

While Peony and Carrie were in the washroom, the lone waitress, afrightened-looking woman in a red sweater and lilac slacks, dropped onthe wet surface of the table in front of Dr. Planish a hand-written menupresenting "Ham and eggs, Steak, Hamdburger sandwich, Hot Dog sandwich,cofee, coke."

"Uh--what kind of steak you got?"

"We're just out of steak."

"Let's, uh, let's have three orders of ham and eggs."

She went to a mysterious back door and yelled. As she came back, shelooked at him wearily, and suddenly he knew all about her; he was onewith her in the devastating struggle to keep on living. He greeted heras a fellow human being with a cheerful, "Business not so hot just now,I guess."

"Mister, there ain't any business. God, I don't know what my old man andme are going to do. I hear where there's a big stock-market boom. Iguess that's where all the money's going then, stock-market. Yours's thefirst order that's come in here today."

"That's a shame. I certainly hope you and your husband catch on soon."

Peony reappeared, and he looked at her in a dazzle of admiration. Thisreleased and Chicago-bound Peony was a new woman to him. She was sosolid on her two feet, yet her fresh cheeks and reckless eyes were asadorably young as when she had first sat in front of him, a babystudent.

"What do we draw?" she said amiably, as she tucked Carrie into a chair.

"Hamneggs."

"That's fine."

But that was the last cheerful thing she said at EATS. She pointed outthat they had had to ask for water three times, that the table was damp,that there were no napkins in sight and no sugar, that cigarette buttscovered the floor, and that the eggs were sour, the ham was salty.

"A woman that serves the public as badly as this ought to be arrestedfor slow murder," muttered Peony.

"Oh, the poor thing's hard-up and untrained."

"You're sorry for her?"

"Yes, I am!"

"I'm not, one bit. The slut!"

Their daughter Carrie spoke: "Mama, what's a slut?"

"You shut up now, sweetest honey-pie, and eat your nice ham."

"You said it wasn't nice ham."

"Now don't interrupt, little mocking bird. Mama and Papa are discussingphilosophy."

"Why?" said Carrie.

Dr. Planish went on, "After all, that's going to be our job now, toencourage rural rehabilitation for just such poor victims of environmentas this woman. We got to educate them."

"Wh----" Carrie had started, but she found an enchanting fly.

"Oh, pooh!" said Peony. "You can't educate animals like that. I'mterribly glad you're dedicating yourself to uplifting the soggy masses,big one, but don't wear yourself out getting sentimental about them.They're hopeless. You devote yourself a little to your wife."

"Don't I?"

"Course you do! Me just cwoss. But just the same, don't waste your timetrying to help a lot of unemployables. You can't get around it: peoplewith good taste don't decorate restaurants with fly-specks. Yes, myHari-Carrie, Papa and Mama are going to get started now, and off for thepretty Chicago we go, all of the jingle bells gay in the snow."

"Why?" objected Carrie.

* * * * *

Their overnight halting-place in Davenport was the first large hotel inwhich Carrie had ever slept. She was not at all frightened by the crowdin the lobby, nor by the near-marble pillars. When the clerk leanedacross the desk and chirped at her, "And is this little lady stayingwith us, too?" she looked at him and gravely nodded.

After dinner, Carrie was put to bed in a tiny single room, and Peonyurged, "Will my darling be awful scared if Papa and Mama slip off to theearly movie, and get back by nine?"

"No," said Carrie.

"This sweet, old-fashioned, maply bedroom--doesn't my babykins thinkit's the sweetest little room she ever saw?"

"No," said Carrie.

"What, my pretty?"

"I'm sorry, Mama, but I don't."

"And pray why not?"

"I think the wallpaper is silly--all those flowers like pink worms."

Peony looked at her husband adoringly. "Will you listen to that now,will you? For six years old, isn't she the grown-uppedest thing you eversaw!"

"N-yes--oh, yes," said Dr. Planish.

* * * * *

For three days Peony shopped through Chicago for a flat, and in theevenings she cried against Gideon's shoulder. Doubtfully they leased anapartment in an oldish building on the South Side, decent enough butdepressingly inferior to their green and silver cottage in Kinnikinick,their canary-yellow flat in Des Moines. She shuddered, "I wonder if wereally are going ahead so fast? I never realized how hard it is to makea dent in a place like Chicago."

Their flat was all in brown, a clean but sullen brown; all long andtiresome lines, all tightness and a smell of respectable resignation;and it looked across the street to the brownstone front of a housewearily resigned to dullness.

"We won't stay in this dump long," vowed Peony. "You'll shake a biggersalary out of Hamilton Frisby--looks like he's the one that guards theFoundation cash. Pretty soon we'll have a modernistic apartment, righton the lake."

He felt guilty.

Within two days, Peony was caroling that the Chinese rug, the cabinet,the airy French clock "brightened up the flat something wonderful." But,naturally, she had to buy a few other things--"gay and civilized junkthat you can live with," she called them: a chromium and black-glassportable bar, a pale birch radio cabinet, a sage-green Chinese lampimitating jade, and a Gauguin print.

By laying out only $362.75 for these adornments, Peony concealed thein-soaked brownness of the place phenomenally. The only slip was thatthey were again two hundred dollars in debt.

"Why?" asked Dr. Planish, but Peony kissed him.

He was busy now at the Heskett Foundation offices, finding out what MissBernardine Nimrock had done, and hemming, and telling the stenographersto go right on doing it--only more so.

Chapter 17

It must not be thought that Dr. Planish did nothing at all as managingsecretary of the Heskett Foundation. He took part in conferences, almostweekly conferences, promoted by colleges, libraries, municipal forums,state educational associations, and he unflinchingly told theseconferences that rural education was a fine idea. He sat on committees,and if the sitting was not actual and physical, at least he had his nameon the rosters of committees, scores of them. He benevolently allowedstudents to use the pedagogical library which Miss Nimrock hadcollected, and he supervised the publication of three pamphlets preparedby university instructors who had concluded, after examining all thefigures issued by the state governments, that teachers could be betterpaid and better heated. This was called Research.

He was fond of these pamphlets, because whenever his accounts looked alittle confused, he could always put down "printing and promotion" as anitem of expense.

The publication of the Foundation that he really pushed was that morepopular and chatty volume New Light in the Red Schoolhouse, publishedtwo years before (cloth-bound, illus. & map, $1.65, discount inquants.). By the happiest of coincidences, it had been written by Mr.Hamilton Frisby, trustee of the Heskett estate, and contained his signedportrait as frontispiece. The use of this book enabled village-bornphilanthropists to benefit their native states and get proper credit forgenerosity (and perhaps show up their old boyhood friends who had stayedhome). If they purchased it in lots of one hundred, their names, asdonors, would be stamped on the cover in purest gold, and the books sentto any list they desired, along with a beautiful form letter, with theHeskett Rural School Foundation heading and signed by Dr. Planish--oranyway, by Dr. Planish's secretary--or anyway, signed--stating that Mr.M (or N) was a fine gentleman, nationally known for his large heart,great wealth and intellect, and now weren't they sorry they'd laughed athim when he was a boy!

This official letter was Dr. Planish's addition to the soulless routinewhich Miss Nimrock had used in selling New Light in the RedSchoolhouse, and it doubled the output of this spiritual item in sixmonths.

It was indeed chiefly as a literary man that Dr. Planish markedlyimproved upon Miss Nimrock. He gave no larger financial grants forschool-garden contests, but he increased fourfold the number of lettersof advice sent out monthly to rural educators: advice on whetherblackboards should be greenboards or blueboards, advice on readingpoetry, advice on the established code for school janitors. He satdictating oracles all day long, stopping only to steal his informationfrom the publications of Columbia University, the Carnegie Foundationand the Association for Adult Education.

He was spectacular in giving interviews, in what he called "theapplication of modern high-pressure publicity technique to the ancientcauses of learning and righteousness." Weekly he sent out to the pressHuman Interest Stories about six students in Wyoming, average age 11.7,banding to study atonal harmony, or an Oxford graduate, frequentlysober, teaching in the mountains, or Lafayette Heskett's one-manknitting show, or Mr. Hamilton Frisby breeding Hereford cattle, or Mrs.Hamilton Frisby purchasing the pearls of the Grand Duchess Tilly, orMaster Hamilton Frisby, Jr., inventing a glider.

As a literary man, Dr. Planish also composed the Heskett Foundation'sfirst aggressive series of fund-soliciting letters. Mr. Frisby insistedthat the Foundation had enough funds so that it was not worth the bother"to circularize a lot of fourflushers that you couldn't pry a sawbuckloose from with dynamite," but Dr. Planish saw it more professionally,with the eye of vision and of the Future.

The Biblical virtue of philanthropy was in this era turning intosomething far nobler than the impulsive handing out of a quarter. It wasno longer emotion and friendliness, but Social Engineering, PlannedGiving, with a purpose and a technique; it was Big Business, as big andbusy as General Motors, but with God for executive vice-president. Dr.Planish saw that today the Good Samaritan wouldn't do anything so sillyand unsanitary as to pick up a man who had fallen among hit-run drivers.According to every rule of First Aid, the silly suburbanite might havekilled the poor fellow by moving him. Today, the Samaritan wouldtelephone to the nearest hospital and say, "Take care of him, and when Icome again, I shall increase my subscription to your nationwide chain ofhospitals, now headed by that great Organization Executive, Dr. GideonPlanish."

Thus dreamed the Doctor, tender heart and powerful brain running strongand true, as he took his daily nap among the steel filing cabinets inhis office.

All this colonization of hospitals was as yet merely in his propheticvision. Not for some time yet would Organized Philanthropy rank eighthamong the major industries of the United States. But already Dr. Planishcould foresee a wedding of generosity and efficiency which would makethe Crusades look like a bonus march, and perceive that it was going tobe valuable for a scholar with a wife and child to be stationed close tothis waxing flood of gold.

He saw himself dedicated now to the new life of service; in labors moreabundant, in conferences above measure, on committees more frequent, injourneyings often, in long-distance telephoning often, in hunger andthirst at unpalatable public dinners, in cold audiences and nakedness ofmeaning--and he was not afraid, and gloried of the things that concernedhis infirmities.

* * * * *

Despite Frisby's doubting, Dr. Planish prepared a new letter ofsolicitation for the H.R.S.F.

HESKETT RURAL SCHOOL FOUNDATION

11872 Royal George Avenue

CHICAGO

Chairman:
CHRISTIAN STERN, D.D., Ph.D.

President:
JAMES SEVERANCE KITTO, S.T.D.

Vice-Presidents and Directors:
HAMILTON FRISBY, B.A.
GEORGE L. RIOT, Ph.D.
ALWIN WILCOX, M.A., M.D.
J. AUSTIN BULL, M.A., D.D.
JESSE VEITH, PH.D.
NATALIA HOCHBERG, B.A., L.H.D.
H. SANDERSON SANDERSON-SMITH
CONSTANTINE KELLY
HENRY CASLON KEVERN, A.B.
J. COSLETT DOWNS, Ph.D.

Managing Secretary:
GIDEON PLANISH, B.A., M.A., Ph.D.



J. T. Niminy, Esq.,
3756 Wynadotte Ave.,
Marquette, Ind.



Dear Friend of Education:

This letter isn't for you. We know from our huge files that you are sound on the subject of rural education; you realize that unless our country schools are just as well staffed and supplied as the snootiest city private school, there is no hope for our beloved America in its race against world anarchy.

But you have a friend who believes just as you and I do, but doesn't know about the HESKETT RURAL SCHOOL FOUNDATION. He doesn't realize that if he will take a mere $10.00 a year from his cigar money, he can make that sum do $1000 worth of imperative national good--and make him a proud Contributing Member of the H.R.S.F.

He'll get all our publications free, with the privilege of attending our Conferences and hearing the biggest men of the nation explain the solution of all rural problems. And you, dear Defender of Education, will be doing the greatest good to the country by telephoning to that Unknown Friend of Ours and giving him our address and greetings.

We can't locate your friend--YOU CAN! While you're reading this, why not lift the receiver and call his number and tell him--RIGHT THIS MINUTE!--we want to send him, FREE, the four-color booklet "OUR SECRET SHAME."

Cordially yours,

Gideon Planish, Ph.D.

Managing Secretary.

This letter was sent not only to all members of the Foundation, but toall persons who had promisingly inquired about its work, and later sentto a general list. Dr. Kitto thought it a rather shocking letter, andMr. Frisby thought it funny. But, in the technical term, it "pulled."With the passion for exactitude and flapping charts which is part of theNew Scientific Philanthropy, Dr. Planish calculated that it cost tencents to send out the letter, including stationery, postage,mimeographing, filling in, the booklet, overhead, and purchasing listsof persons known to have been philanthropic--which were rather coarselyknown as "sucker lists," and which were sold commercially, likefly-paper. As the professional saviors put it, "If one per cent of theprospects on the sucker list kick through, the cost of the campaign iscovered."

To the gratification of the Doctor's love for beautiful letters, 1.37%of his prospects did "kick through," and showed their devotion toeducation by taking out Foundation memberships.

Even Mr. Frisby was impressed. Dr. Planish had been truly ordained as apriest of Scientific Philanthropy.

And as for the pamphlet Our Secret Shame which was sent out toprospects--that was Bernardine Nimrock's old tract, Statistics onSalaries and Attendance in District Schools, with a new cover on it.

Chapter 18

It was not the success of his circular so much as his genius inforeseeing the stock-market crash of October, 1929, that brought Dr.Planish to the acute personal attention of Mr. Hamilton Frisby.

All that summer and early fall, America had been speculating on asoaring market. Kitchen girls had made five thousand dollars, managingeditors of newspapers had made a million--all on paper, which meant thatthey left their suppositious profits to double, triple, increase ahundredfold.

But the Planishes, the gamblers with life, for once were not gambling.It was Peony's doing. She had pinned the Doctor in a corner and given anorder: "You're not to buy one share of stock, on margin or any otherway. We're more broke than ever. If we invested, we'd have to borrowsome more money, and we mustn't do that. Never. It's a matter ofprinciple---- Besides, there's nobody we can borrow from. Dad turned medown!"

This was a new Peony, much firmer than any he had known. She was alittle frightened by the stretching, paw-curling indifference of thegreat cat, Chicago. And they had not met any of the magnificos with whomshe had expected to dine and dance. They knew only a couple of dentists,a couple of liberal pastors, an insurance broker, an instructor fromNorthwestern, some minor philanthropists and a graduate student in theUniversity of Chicago. Peony was in a constant frenzy of being calm andeconomical, and she announced to the Doctor, though pleasantly, that shewasn't interested in one thing except the price of onions and the factthat Carrie, in public-school kindergarten, had an Italian "boy friend,"aged seven, who gave her green lollipops.

The Doctor dared not deceive her and make investments secretly, thoughhis obedience was grievous to him, because he was certain, after lookingglassily at the stock-market pages of the papers every day, that hecould easily make a million. Indeed one day he made, on two sheets ofquite inexpensive yellow scratch-paper, $7,880 clear, thoughhypothetical. He was keeping up his brief lecture tours, but Peony madehim turn over every check, and she banked it, with no more extravagancesthan a weekly bottle of vodka.

Now in that day and among the people he knew, you had either to investfrantically, throwing in the laundry money and Aunty Emma's $100 legacy,or be willful and prophesy disaster. If you did the latter, it wasbelieved that you lacked faith in the Pilgrim Fathers, and were either adrug-user or a dog-poisoner. But Dr. Planish was trained to dazzleaudiences with words that sounded bold, no matter what they meant, andhe brazened out his unpatriotic shame.

The Reverend James Severance Kitto, S.T.D., said to him, "Doctor, as youknow, I entirely disapprove of gambling, but the present Wave ofProsperity shouldn't be called gambling; it's more a rising tide ofdemocracy, and I rather think anybody who doesn't take advantage of itis failing to show his trust in American Institutions. I'm two hundredthousand ahead of the game--at least on paper--and I can give you astraight tip on a wallboard stock that will double in the next month."

"I'm sorry, Doctor, but I think the market is going to crash," said Dr.Planish.

Dr. Kitto looked at him as at one who had slapped the baby.

Mr. Hamilton Frisby said, "Planish, I've got a tip on a radio stock foryou. Quadruple in a week."

"I'm sorry, Mr. Frisby, but there's something phony about this bullmarket."

"Oh, you think so, do you! Well, let me tell you that I'm two millionbucks ahead right now--on paper, but I could cash in tomorrow. And I'm adirector of two banks, and supposed to be able to find my way down StateStreet without a Seeing-Eye Dog!"

* * * * *

Early in November, when all the paper that those profits had been onblew up the chimney, blazing, both Dr. Kitto and Mr. Frisby telephonedto him, in the tones of men just out of the hospital, and timidly askedhow he had known the disaster was coming. For weeks afterward, he foundhimself everywhere revered as a wizard in finance, the one art thattranscended theology and music, as really meaning something. Hisacquaintances begged, "Give us the lowdown, Doctor. When the next bigbull market comes, say couple months from now, I don't want to make thesame mistakes I must've made this last time."

The world got progressively more suicidal, and many supporters ofnational organizations went bankrupt. But the Heskett Fund could stillsupport Dr. Planish's good works, and he was out of debt, and feltsuperior as an Angora cat.

In December he was invited by Hamilton Frisby to go down to ashooting-box in Louisiana.

His fellow guests were Frisby's old intimates, Dr. Alwyn Wilcox, thesurgeon, and Jesse Veith, the investment counselor, who had sobrilliantly guided his clients through the boom and the crash that hehimself had not gone bankrupt. Frisby had taken two drawing-rooms on thesouthern train for them. Dr. Planish happily noted that he wasapparently not expected to spend any money, and he liked this touch ofhigh life.

In one of the drawing-rooms, they opened up on him as soon as the trainhad started and they had poured out the first of the illicit drinks.

"Planish, now there's just us girls here and we've all taken our hairdown, tell us: what inside dope did you have on the stock market?" saidFrisby, with the awful geniality of a detective being chummy with amurder suspect.

The other men bent toward the Doctor like two older and tougherdetectives.

"I didn't really know anything special. I just figured it out, as amathematician would."

"You a mathematician, Doc?" said Jesse Veith.

"It's one of the branches I specialized in--sort of," beamed Dr.Planish.

"Tell me how much the cotangent of the ellipse of the cube root of sevenis."

"Oh, shut up!" Frisby remarked to Veith. Dr. Wilcox did not look muchamused.

Then Dr. Planish knew where he was, realized what memory it was that hehad been trying to tag. "I certainly have been here before!" heshuddered. These three rich men were the bulky, silent, sardonicfootball players who used to terrify him in freshman year at college,squatting around him with this same placid and beefy intention of takinghim to pieces to find out why he was so earnest and funny.

Frisby was purring on, "What did Marduc tell you?"

"Marduc?" Dr. Planish was puzzled.

"You mean to pretend you don't know him?"

"I don't believe I do."

"Colonel Charles B. Marduc, the big New York advertising man andpublisher--Marduc & Syco?"

"Oh, yes. I think he's sent us a sizable contribution. But I've nevermet him. What would he know?"

"That man's a buddy of all the billionaires, and somebody has told methat you saw him when he was in Chicago, a couple months ago."

"No, I didn't. Never met him."

Veith snorted at Frisby, "I told you so. This Planish guy hasn't got anymore of the lowdown than----"

"Than an investment counselor!" suggested Dr. Wilcox.

"Oh, shut up. Let's play a little bridge," said Veith.

Mr. Frisby brought out the cards, very silently.

For all of that horrible week-end, during which they did three hours ofcard-playing and drinking to one hour of hunting, Dr. Planish felt thathe was endured only because they had to have a fourth at bridge. When hepumped up something neat to say, they ignored it. Over against theirpretentious laced boots and plaid Mackinaws, in his old gray suit andkhaki shirt he felt over-refined and over-fussy.

During every hour of this rich-man's vacation, he longed to take themoney and power away from this gang of bullies, and give it to Peony.

On the train back to Chicago, Frisby led Dr. Planish aside, looking asthough he must have met him before some place.

"Doc, you seem to me a very confused person," said Frisby.

"How's that?"

"Maybe I ought to tell you the facts of life about the HeskettFoundation, and most other philanthropic foundations--not all of them,but a good share. You're supposed to be a professional organizator----"

"A what?"

"Fellow that makes his living by running an uplift organization; aprofessional at begging for money to use in publicizing the statementthat when the world becomes civilized, two plus two will equal four. Anorganizator. He's the fellow that starts a society first, and then looksaround for a purpose for the society afterward. And the rich suckersthat give him the money, either to soften their own consciences or toclimb socially by associating with Vanderbilts on committees, or to showoff, or once in a while even because they think that a social clubchartered to befriend Liberia may really help the Liberians--thesecome-ons I always call the philanthrobbers.

"But Old Man Heskett was no philanthrobber, and neither were quite a fewof the other moguls that set up Foundations. Here's their idea: With theincrease in taxes, especially this damn income tax and supertax, a mancan't afford to have too much income. And yet he wants to keep controlof the big corporations in which he owns a majority of stock. So heplaces a big block of it in a Philanthropic Institution, in a trustfund--he doesn't get the interest, but he doesn't have to pay anypyramiding taxes, and he or his agents--that's me, for theHesketts--hold the voting proxies on the donated stock, and control thecorporation as much as before.

"They don't care what the Foundation income is spent for, as long astheir name gets whitened--and how many coats of whitewash it does take,sometimes! A man that slashed a billion acres of timber buys thereputation for loving the trees and birdies. And Heskett was a prettytypical case. He made his dough by bankrupting small businesses throughlowering competitive prices, and he got so rich that he had to turnphilanthropic--that's a lot showier sign of great wealth than anynonsense like buying yachts or titles. Then he had a second reason forprotecting his financial controls. His children and his nieces and hisnephews are idiots--all of 'em. One sculps and one married a Communistand one lives on an island called Lesbos. Heskett hated 'em all, and heput his boodle into two trust funds, of which the Heskett Foundation isone, and made me trustee of both, because I am, somewhat to my ownsurprise, comparatively honest.

"Now I advise you, as a simple-hearted organizator, to blow in as muchof the Foundation income as you want to. Even with this stock-marketcrash, there's twice as much as you've been spending. Go ahead--doanything that will advertise the grand old pioneer name of Heskett. Onlydon't forget that I still audit the books."

Dr. Planish felt shy but desperate. "Then how about raising my ownsalary? I could use it."

"Certainly not. It's much more likely to get lowered, if this depressiongets bad enough. You have some reputation--not much, but you have beendean of a hayloft college, and a lecturer--but how would it adorn thesacred Family Name to pay you more than rock-bottom wages? You talkabout economics, Planish. Be realistic!"

Dr. Planish sat and hated him.

* * * * *

Peony cried, as he came in, "Did you have a lovely time, Gidjums?"

"Oh, yes, sure--you know--hunting. And bridge."

"Do you think I'd like Dr. Wilcox and Mr. Veith?"

"I'm sure you wouldn't! Listen, Peony, let's not make any special effortto work up a circle of friends here in Chicago. I have a hunch we'll beable to hit New York before too long."

"Swell!" said Peony.

Dr. Planish was sitting in his office on the Friday before Christmas,filing his nails and thinking that it would be nice to write abook--maybe about the use of radio in schools--and hating HamiltonFrisby.

His secretary brought in the card of the Midwestern representative of anew schoolbook factory, one Mrs. Eaglestopper, a shiny woman. She said,in coloratura, "Dr. Planish, you mentioned our series of school readersonce, at a teachers' convention."

"I'm afraid they're not very good."

"Oh, now, you!" She looked coy. "That's because you haven't examinedthem closely enough. I want you to take a real good look at them, and atour new series of geographies--they're written by such a fine universityscholar who's also a champion swimmer! I'm going to send you all ofthem."

"I'm afraid I'm pretty busy----"

"Why, Dr. Planish!" She was prettily shocked. "We wouldn't dream ofasking you to bother with them, we know what demands there are on yourtime, without compensating you. Here's a--nice Christmas present!"

He peeped into the envelope she had handed to him. He lost his presenceof organizational mind. "Are you trying to bribe me?" he snorted.

She rose. "My dear man, I most certainly am not! We just want you toappraise the books, and we know there's no scholar in America whose timeis worth more. If you do like them--you're the judge--then you mightcare to mention them in your Foundation literature and your lectures.Otherwise, distinctly not--distinctly! Good-bye and merry Christmas,and give my love to your wife. I hear she's the sweetest and smartestwoman in Chicago. Let me know anything I can do."

Out of the envelope he fished two hundred-dollar certificates. Theylooked as different from dull-green five-dollar notes as blessed lightfrom dubious darkness. The fat ciphers did go on and on so cheerfullyafter the digits. He took them home, to discuss with Peony thelegitimacy of accepting them.

"Anything you can put over on that bullfrog Frisby is proper," she said;and, "This just about fixes up my Christmas problem. Now I can get yousomething that I've been longing all week to give you--a cedarblanket-chest, bound with the loveliest ornamental brasswork that youever laid an eye on, going for a hundred dollars--just giving it away.It would just make this hallway, don't you think so? Or am I being ateeny mite extravagant?"

"Anything you do is always all right with me," he said.

Carrie trotted in. Peony knelt beside her and gurgled, "Oh, baby,Mammy's going to get the loveliest new cedar chest!"

"Why?" said Carrie.

Chapter 19

In any national organization, the persons whose names are listed downthe lefthand side of the stationery, the persons who are supposed tolove the organization and guarantee it and work daily for it--these oldfriends are sometimes labeled the Directors, sometimes the Trustees, theSponsors, the Advisory Board, the State Chairmen, the HonoraryVice-Chairmen, the National Committee, the General Committee or theCentral Committee.

In the T.A.F.A.R.P., these apostles were called the Trustees, and inJanuary, 1930, Dr. Planish was elected a trustee of thatassociation--the True American Federation to Attack Racial Prejudice.With the suspiciousness of one who has now lost his philanthropicinnocence, he skimmed over the names of his fellow trustees and eventhat of the treasurer--the president of an insurance company--knowingthat they would all be the familiar bunch of Signers, and he lookedsharply at the name of the executive secretary (or, technically, theWorks). He approved. The Works was Professor Goetz Buchwald, of thepsychology department of Erasmus College, on leave of absence--a leavethat had now lasted for seven years.

Buchwald really was an honest and earnest man. He had read all thebooks, and he hated the oppressors of the Chinese, the Negroes, theSlovenes, as much as he hated the oppressors of the Jews. He spokevigorously, but he was equally vigorous with scissors and typewriter. Henudged the press about hundreds of small incidents of tyranny orprejudice. A good man and a good organization, felt Dr. Planish. Therewere only two things wrong about it: Buchwald would keep on callinghimself Professor, letting his staff and the newspapers call himProfessor, being introduced at public meetings as Professor, though hehad stopped professoring years ago.

No, felt Dr. Planish. In a democratic world like this, where we rebelagainst all such artificial distinctions as titles, a man ought simplyto be called Doctor.

The other flaw in the True Americans was that they had never yet beenable to convince anybody who was not already convinced. But that, arguedDr. Planish, with the greatest fairness, was scarcely their fault, sinceit was also true of ninety-seven per cent of all nationalorganizations--practically all of them except his own. And maybe itoverlapped the work of a few dozen other bodies, but then, insisted Dr.Planish--but then!

He respected the officers of the True Americans: Natalia Hochberg, thegeneral secretary; Bishop Albertus Pindyck, of the Catholic or moreacrobatic wing of the Episcopal Church; Dr. Christian Stern; MonsignorNicodemus Lowell Fish, Ph.D., known as "the apostle to the Yankees"; andRabbi Emile Lichtenselig. When he was invited to attend the annualconference of the T.A.F.A.R.P. in New York, in April, he was delighted.He felt that here he would be stimulated, and meet the better minds.

Besides, Peony wanted to see the Empire State Building.

She did, and she smelled the ocean and the roast chestnuts. She moaned,"Oh, lover, it looks--it looks like New York!"

* * * * *

There is a particular flavor to Celebrities, to people who have theirnames in the papers and who expect to be recognized on the street. Mostof them will, within a year or two, slide back into the pit of anonymitywhence they scrambled, and that will either make them human again or, intheir resentment, destroy them utterly, for a Celebrity who has lostcelebrity is the emptiest of God's curios. But a few of them will remainnotorious till the hour when respectful ears reach for theirunintelligible dying words, and the majority of these regulars willcease entirely to be human beings. They will be overly cordial orpreposterously peeved; they will be irritable when reporters bother themat the train-gates and hysterical when no reporters show up at all; theywill shake the hand, chirp the good morning, willingly give theautograph, leeringly pose the picture, and say a few nice words aboutsoy beans or the football team.

There are also adhesive persons who are unlikely to become Celebritiesthemselves, but who relish the stir and smell and incessantly clatteringnoise of the rotogravure Olympus, just as merchants may enjoy beingvolunteer firemen, or elderly ladies like watching dog fights.

Of all Celebrity fans none was livelier than Peony Planish, and when thedelegates to the convocation of the True American Federation to AttackRacial Prejudice met in the elegant lobby of Terpsichore Hall, in NewYork City, she could enjoy her mania at its highest. On view were BishopPindyck, Msgr. Fish, Dr. Christian Stern, Professor Buchwald, UnitedStates Senator Felix Bultitude, General Gong, who was not only a generalbut an army general, not a real-estate or newspaper general, CaptainHeth Gishorn, the distinguished explorer, Dr. Procopus, who was sofamous a psychiatrist that the Freudians took time out to hate him,Judge Vandewart, Henry Caslon Kevern, rated at twenty million, and agenuine but social-minded actress--Ramona Tundra, the movie star. Notonly that, but there was a title of nobility, the first that Peony orDr. Planish had ever tasted, the Principessa Ca' D'Oro, a real princessthough she just happened to have been born a Miss Togg of Arkansas.

She wrote social columns.

But, nobler than nobility, bluer of jaw than the principessa was blue ofblood, was Colonel Charles B. Marduc, deity among advertising agents,owner of a dozen magazines, major on the Western Front in World War Iand now colonel in the National Guard; a man of fifty, sleek as agreyhound but burly as a mastiff, with a planned graying mustacheagainst a cherry face.

Dr. Planish quivered, "That's Marduc, the fellow Ham Frisby admires somuch," and Peony answered, "And could I go for him! I'm going to wriggleover and talk to him."

But Colonel Marduc, after shaking only the whitest and plumpest of theassembled hands, slipped away, and the Planishes forgot him, for comingtoward them, hands out, was their friend Professor George Riot.

"One drink and one drink and one drink makes sixteen drinks, hurray,"said Professor Riot, a little later.

* * * * *

Dr. Planish wanted to know how these authentic Top Men talked, that hemight do likewise.

He was sorry to find (he reported to Peony and George Riot) that theydidn't seem to talk much about saving mankind. Chiefly, they all said,with slightly different vocabularies, that they had lost their shirts inthe crash.

But Dr. Planish did see that only in New York could you adequately keepa national philanthropic organization. Where else could you count ongenerals and principessas and stars and Marducs and bishops of everybrand from Roman Catholic through Methodist to Pentecostal Abyssinian?

He devoted himself to the Reverend Dr. Christian Stern; he even attendedservices at the reverend's Universalist Byzantine basilica--the firsttime he had gone to church, except twice at Dr. Kitto's, in a year. Hegot himself and Peony invited to the parsonage for tea, and told Dr.Stern that it was a shame the Heskett Foundation was not situate in NewYork, in proximity to Dr. Stern's spiritual guidance, to give piouspublicity to him instead of to those selfish and violent men, Kitto andFrisby.

Dr. Stern agreed with an enthusiasm that was good to see in such a busyman of affairs. His imagination trembled. Yes! If they had theFoundation here, he'd be willing, as chairman of its executive board, tohave an office in its quarters, and to combine its work with his otheractivities, to the greater glory of God and the little red schoolhouse.Yes! If Dr. Planish would circulate around and find other Heskettdirectors of like mind, he would be glad to talk to them at the annualconference in Chicago, next summer.

So Dr. Planish informed Peony that she could get ready to move, that theHeskett Foundation would be established in one of the taller and moregaudy midtown skyscrapers in New York, that he would undoubtedly begetting a salary of ten thousand a year, and that the way he saw it inhis new position, if she and George Riot didn't quit horsing aroundGreenwich Village joints and drinking rotgut, he'd--he'd getuninhibited.

To all of this the Doctor's wife murmured, "That's just lovely, Pan."

She was so absorbed in New York that it seemed to her but natural thatthey should be moving here. She spent hours at the windows of FifthAvenue jewelers and perfumers and furriers, which, trying to deny thattheir better customers were now ruined, were brilliant as they never hadbeen, with jet and crystal and gold and cocky little signs in French.

But this time she had not gone shopping-mad. She had not bought onedress, one footstool for their flat--one steel-point ring. No, she hadmerely found a basement lingerie shop conducted by the most beautifulHungarian countess, who had had misfortunes and had smuggled her silksand laces through without paying duty. They were so cheap that they didnot constitute shopping but really an investment, and----

Anyway, Dr. Planish paid for them perfectly easily by merely omittingthe next few installments on the radio and on most of their otherpossessions.

With a thoroughness that one was surprised to find in her young andsmiling head, Peony examined New York like a housewife buying melons.She saw the Episcopal cathedral, the Catholic cathedral, the Rockefelleruptown cathedral, a burlesque show, a Chinese restaurant, a Roumanianrestaurant, a Hindoo restaurant, an Oletime Sunny South restaurant, onegallery of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and George Jean Nathan. Itwas her one purpose now to conquer New York and make it recognize herand her husband and her baby.

If she could make this spiritual triumph, she said, she would for alltime be willing to put up with a maximum spending-reservoir of fortythousand dollars a year.

* * * * *

In the quality of the entertainment given to the T.A.F.A.R.P. delegatesas much as in the solemnity of their discussion panels, the more shininglife was demonstrated. The final public dinner, at the Waldorf-Astoria,had a much larger percentage of tail-coats and of necklaces rising andfalling on the tide of plump powdered bosoms than the Planishes had everseen in Chicago, and the chief speaker was no clergyman nor professor,but Colonel Charles B. Marduc himself.

The Planishes and George Riot, way over at Table D 17, could only lookfrom afar upon his glory. Standing up there at the speakers' table onthe dais, his graying brown mustache a handsome streak across his beefycheeks, the Colonel looked like God arising from His throne and twirlingHis eyeglasses.

He began, "Friends and Honored Chairman and Your Right Reverence, Icannot speak to you as a profound scholar, like my friend ProfessorBuchwald, but only as a blunt soldier and merchant."

Off among the second-string Celebrities, among the Intellectuals whoselecture fee was not over two hundred dollars, Peony whispered to GeorgeRiot, "I'll bet he's just as darn profound a scholar as anybody in theroom, at that. All those ads his agency gets out about glands andrefrigerators."

Dr. Planish inquired, "How big is his agency?"

Dr. Riot said reverently, "Well, Marduc & Syco is one of the Big Four.The Colonel is supposed to have something like five million tuckedaway."

Dr. Planish sighed, "He looks like a fellow it would be nice to know!"

"Hush, you boys! I want to hear what the Colonel said to Pershing,"commanded Peony.

* * * * *

Besides the dinner, the delegates received, in the most luxurious andManhattan manner, a reception at the apartment of Dr. Procopus, on ParkAvenue, and Peony knew finally that New York is not so much a city as astate of bliss.

They never did understand the role of Dr. Procopus. He was called apsychiatrist; he was supposed to teach women how to endure richhusbands; but beyond this, he seemed to be the midwife for everyintellectual movement in town. He was always introducing authors toradio executives, and politicians to managing editors, and Austrianbankers to American bankers, and pretty wives to doctors who knewsomebody who knew the address of an abortionist. His apartment hadtwelve rooms, each as large as the Planishes' cottage in Kinnikinick,and all of them splashed with the signed photographs of opera singers.

It was here that Peony conceived an innocent passion for Captain HethGishorn, the explorer. He was English and trim and monocled and he hadbeen in Celebes, which impressed Peony, though she never could rememberwhether that was an island or a state of matrimony. He kissed her handand brought her a pink cocktail.

"You boys never will have the savoir-faire of that monkey," said Peonyto George Riot.

"Nonsense! He's a powder-puff!" protested George. "If you fall foranybody, you fall for either Gid or me."

"Yes, and you can go farther than that, Peony--you can fall for justhalf that number!" raged Dr. Planish. He glared, then remembered thatGeorge was his only friend in this staggering world of twelve-roomapartments and explorers and colonels who were millionaires.

He longed to be sitting with his classmate Hatch Hewitt in a beersaloon.... Peony, Hatch, George Riot, his daughter Carrie--had heanybody else in the world to rest with?... He was dimly glad thatPeony and George would probably never go farther than a finger-tip offlirtation.

* * * * *

Behind all this intellectual shimmer, Dr. Planish was busy musteringdirectors of the Heskett Foundation to support him in the plan to movethe Foundation to New York. He got promises of backing from George Riot,Mrs. Hochberg, and a newly elected director, a fine, manly New Yorkclergyman named Dr. Elmer Gantry.

Dr. Gantry was perhaps the best known of Manhattan radio pastors. It wassaid that he had studied at Harvard and in Germany, but there was afolksy quality about his regular daily broadcast, "Love Is the MorningStar," that won him a million far-flung auditors, particularly shut-ins,and had brought him no less a sponsor than Phosphorated Chewing Gum. Hehad an audience, too, in his church, but the experts noted that therewas something about Dr. Gantry that exactly suited the radio.

But even with this encouragement from the more powerful directors, Dr.Planish kept from tackling Hamilton Frisby about the hegira till May,two weeks after his return to Chicago. Before the scene, he studied allthe possible interpretations of his role: the tender and sensitive, themanly and courageous, the aloof and slightly amused, then decided uponthe brusque man of business. In that mood he played to Frisby:

"Been making a lot of investigation and looking into things prettysharply. We mustn't be prejudiced or sentimental. Much though I likeChicago, for the sake of usefulness it's about time to move theFoundation headquarters to the Atlantic Seaboard. Like the proverbialhoming pigeon!"

Frisby looked at him a long time. "Yes, I've been hearing from ChrisStern. So Chris and you think you can take this racket away from me!Planish, you're fired!"

"W--w----"

"Illegal? Of course it's illegal. But the directors eventually do what Itell 'em. You won't be re-elected at the annual meeting. So you havefrom now till summer to find a new job--if any, Planish, if any."

* * * * *

He stormed at the Reverend Dr. James Severance Kitto. He said that ifDr. Kitto took orders from that poker-faced hijacker, Mr. Frisby, thenhe was a slave and a hypocrite.

Dr. Kitto said it was a shame, it was indeed a--a--in fact, a shame.

And that was all that Dr. Kitto did say, there in his handsome pastoralstudy with its portraits of Alexander Campbell and Calvin and CottonMather.

His parsonage was a bulging, brick-fronted, semi-detached dwelling on arespectable old residence street in Evanston. Dr. Planish looked at itas he went back down the street. He stared at the window of Dr. Kitto'sstudy. The curtain was up a few inches, and he could see Dr. Kittothoughtfully scratch his chin, yawn, pick up the fresh evening paper,open it, and with untroubled placidity begin to read the day's pleasanttoll of murders, traffic deaths, divorces and starvation. Dr. Kitto didnot even raise his eyes in reflection.

Dr. Planish stood looking up, and he knew then how dead men feel.

Chapter 20

The two of them sat down to dinner with Peony--the compulsory self thattold him he must speak up and get it over, let her know that he wasdischarged, and the physical self that was so tired and timid it couldscarcely lift this burden of confession. Peony and the half-handed maidhad prepared a particularly elegant salad of avocado and hard-boiled eggand cherries and a few other trifles that must have been Peony's ownidea, and the ridiculous salad became to him, brooding upon it, a tendersymbol of her, like a glove still bearing the warmth and heart line ofher hand.

When he spoke he dodged up a dozen alleys. He told her that he had goneout to Evanston, and that Dr. Kitto certainly wore a toupee. While shewas giggling, "Let's throw him out of the Foundation," he was sharplycalculating that he had no notion whatever about a new job, that he mustbe about $850 in debt, with some $375 in assets (he felt in his pocketand concluded that maybe he could add another dollar), and that hisfather-in-law had been pretty nasty about that last touch.

He said that the lawns in Evanston were full of daffodils, and she said:that reminded her, they really must get busy and decide now where theywould go for summer vacation--Northern Michigan, Vermont, Battle Lake inMinnesota?--and couldn't he take a couple of months off instead ofone?--it was a shame the way those old dodoes Kitto and Frisby bossedhim--couldn't he get rid of them?

The serenity in her voice relieved his hesitation.

He ended his confession with, "I guess I ought to be boiled in oil forendangering you and the baby this way."

Just then Peony could have played the perfect American wife, could havebeen sorry for herself and asked what good he was, if he couldn't takebetter care of her than that. For a moment she sat with the volubilityof her smile checked. Then she laughed.

"It's a joke on me. Oh, toy-man, it's all my fault, being soextravagant. Otherwise we could tell Frisby to go to hell and start offfor New York without worrying. Come slap baby's fingers for being such abad baby." He kissed her, in a rush of returning faith, and she cried,"Listen, darling, I want you to write George Riot. He'll dig upsomething temporary for you. And maybe this is the time when I ought totell you there's nothing between George and me."

"M?"

"You looked in New York like you thought there was something. But I loveyou too much. My vice is more along the line of wanting to get ahead andbe Somebody. And we will. You watch us. This is just another break inthe market--prosperity is just around the corner for us--with bells on!We'll hit New York so hard!"

"Wouldn't it maybe be better to ask Austy Bull for some kind of atemporary college appointment while I try to make connections in NewYork?"

"No, no! I couldn't stand even a month in Kinnikinick. Nobody there thatcould even stand up to the top people, like Colonel Marduc and SenatorBultitude. I despise Kinnikinick. The people are so provincial. Whateveryou can say about your bad little wife, you can't say she's provincial,now can you!"

Apparently he couldn't.

"I'll tell you what. I'll make up for the financial hole I got you into.We'll store the furniture, and I'll go back and live on Mr. Whipple K.Jackson, Esquire, till you get a really swell position with a high-classsalary."

"I'd worry so about----"

"Don't you worry about my worrying! I know when I got a good thing. Say,I'll bet if you'd been a preacher, you could have prayed circles aroundJim Kitto and Chris Stern--you'd have had God tuned in on you all thetime. And do good--why, say, I'll bet you've already done ruraleducation more good than William Jennings Bryan put together!"

* * * * *

It was mid-August, and the movers were lugging their furniture down tothe storage company van. Dr. Planish's eyes and throat bothered him ashe stood with his arm about Peony, watching the bumpy departure toprison of their treasures: the adored new cedar chest, the gold andscarlet Chinese Chippendale cabinet, the Chinese rug that they hadbought at Mabel Grove--they had been so young then!--the faded littleporcelain clock, the jade lamp, the friendly birch cabinet of the radio,to whose music they had sometimes danced, they two alone, aftermidnight, triumphant in new success.

And the black and silvery portable bar.

"Oh, do be careful of that!" quaked Peony to the movers. He could feelher breast heaving under his fingertips. He thought that for the firsttime she was afraid. Men who had had desks and office titles a year agowere huddled on street corners now, selling apples. In what hot slums orstripped and mortgaged homes were their wives and babies panting, hewondered.

"I do hate to see that bar go into hock. We had some good times here,and---- No, sir!" Peony stoutly interrupted herself. "When we get readyto unveil that ole bar again, in New York, it'll be Bishop Pindyck andSenator Bultitude that'll be lapping up my martinis, and not just theseChicago profs and docs!"

For their last night in the flat, they had only their suitcases, acot-bed borrowed from the janitor for Carrie, and for themselves, amattress on the floor. The flat seemed by dusk not only empty butmenacingly large, as though nobody could ever fill its spaces again, andthey felt that they would never furnish out any dwelling again, neversit softly and eat true meals and talk with friends. They were cityOkies.

They fled to a cafeteria for a late supper and then, with Carrie, agedseven now, to a movie, to see the lovely Joan Crawford. They threewalked through the gasping summer streets--a respectable family, in somesense a holy family, trudging and round and stuffed with food,permanent-looking as the brownstone porticoes. But Dr. Planish stared ata brick mansion turned boarding-house. Its curtains were torn andfilthy, and on the hot stoop was a man who might once have been aprofessor, a doctor; a bent man with a beard much like his own, buthacked and dirty. Dr. Planish shuddered.

As they marched, Carrie babbled, "Why are you going to New York,Papa--why?"

"Hush, pimpernel," remarked Peony. "Papa has to go there on business."

"Why?"

"I said, on business."

"I wish he'd come home to Faribault with us. I hate the city," ponderedCarrie, and Peony said:

"Why?"

"It's got too many street cars and too many people."

"Don't you like people, babykins?"

"No, I don't think I like 'em. They talk so much. I like dandelions andsailboats better."

* * * * *

With Carrie luxuriously asleep in the borrowed cot, Dr. Planish andPeony sat low on the edge of their mattress, in the abandoned flat,which was lit with one unshaded bulb. He blurted something that had beenforming in his mind all through the motion picture:

"I guess we're supposed to be good Christians, aren't we?"

"Sure-you-bet. Good Episcopolopians, anyway."

"Then I wonder if we couldn't turn to our religion for comfort. Theclergy insist that people do still turn to it. Let's--uh--let's thinkabout the Lord."

"Okay."

"He's, uh---- Hell, I wish we'd kept a Bible. We still got a Bible,haven't we?"

"Sure you-bet. I saw it when I was packing the books and blankets."

"There's something in the Bible about--now what the devil is it----"

"Honestly, hero, I don't think you ought to say 'what the devil' whenyou're talking about religion and God."

Dr. Planish looked at her with admiration for her good taste, andfretted, "Maybe you're right. Anyway, this stuff--this verse, I mean--inthe Bible, I mean--it was in Proverbs--something about 'all was vanityand there was no profit anywhere'."

"No, it's from Ecclesiastes. And I bet I can quote it."

"Really?" He looked with new admiration at this remarkable young woman.

"You bet your life I can. I was a Sunday-school teacher in Faribault,and I was a corker, too, before I went to college and ran into all thatirreverence, and all the menaces to a girl's morals. Lessee. I almostgot it. Something like this:

"'I was great and I increased more than anybody that came before me inJerusalem, and also my wisdom did increase--no, remained with me. Andwhatever mine eyes desired I did not keep from them, nor my heart fromany joy, and I looked upon all the works that my hands had done andbehold, all was vanity and--and vexation of spirit and there was noprofit under the sun.'

"Gee whiz, that doesn't sound so good for my side," Peony reflected."Looks like God was telling us, 'What's all this business about going toNew York? Go on back to Kinnikinick and stay there--blackmail the Prexyand make him give you back a job.' Oh, no, He wouldn't tell us that,would He, lover? He wouldn't, would He? Not stay! Tell me Hewouldn't!"

"Of course He wouldn't. You're His own best lamb."

"Well, I do think He might be a little more careful about His lamb andher husband always being so broke all the time. I just can't understandit."

"Yes, yes, sweetie, there may be something to that, but you must be moreserious if we're going to try out religion properly, and God knows, weneed religion or something!"

She whispered.

"Now, Peony, that's absolutely shocking!"

"Okay, I'll be a serious little God's little lamb. Why don't you trypraying?"

"How?"

"Christians do pray, don't they?"

"Well, of course, Peony, in church and so on, but I mean to say----"

"Why not take a shot at it?"

"Very well, if you want me to. After all, I suppose I am a truebeliever--everybody must be that devotes himself to the service ofmankind, as I do, and so--so----"

He looked upward, longing to feel the veritable presence of God, toexperience a merciful omnipotence that would protect his beloved wifeand his surprising daughter and his own fading ambition to possess powerand glory.

But he could see nothing and feel nothing above him save the one spottyelectric bulb.

"O Lord, our God----"

The words were empty to him and without destination. He blurted, "Ican't do it. I don't believe that God, if there is one, is listening tome. And I don't believe Kitto or Chris Stern really thinks God islistening when they spout, so glib and intimate. I believe they'd bescared to death if He actually spoke up and answered. Oh, baby, no wayout. You and I just got to depend on each other, against everything."

"Well, that's enough, isn't it? We're lucky!" she said blithely.

* * * * *

He was on the train to New York, and for the first time in his life hewas sitting up in a day-coach all night. Dinner would have cost a dollaror more on the diner, so he had been picking at two chocolatealmond-bars for hours now, and he was pleased to find a couple oftin-foil-covered crumbs in his pocket.

His seat-mate, a shifty-looking man, hinted, "How 'bout gettin' up agame of poker?"

"No--no thanks--don't play."

"What's your racket, Brother? Schoolteaching or book agent?"

"Book agent."

"How 'bout me for a prospect?"

"No--no," drearily. "I'm off duty just now."

Mr. Planish, Mr. Gideon Planish, a jobless vagrant, had no desire tosell books, to communicate ideas about rural education, or to abuse thepublic for their lack of freedom, generosity in contributing tophilanthropy, and the far-flung greatest common denominator in theimplementing of ideological blue-prints for crises among the grassroots.

He wanted to be let alone, he wanted to sleep, and he wanted tocontemplate blowing in an entire quarter for coffee and eggs atbreakfast in New York tomorrow morning.

Chapter 21

He found the Reverend Dr. Christian Stern of New York amiable but jumpy.

"Too bad the power that that vile man Frisby has in the HeskettFoundation. I wish you'd been a little more cautious in jumping the gunon him, but still, I know how he is. Now about another organizationalconnection. Of course with the Depression on, things couldn't possiblybe worse. I know what sterling ideals and executive competence you have,Dr. Planish. And oratory. But our best benefactors have been hit. Alljumping out of windows. Really touching. But I'll see what I can do."

* * * * *

Captain Heth Gishorn, the distinguished young explorer, was by birth anEnglishman but, like most of the English, he did not look very English.He was smooth and solid and square, with a thick white skin which neverlooked tanned, and he carried a monocle but used his spectacles.

His voice was caressing and unpleasant. He was given to double-breastedblue jackets, which looked pressed even when they were wrinkled. And fora man of action, who was presumably always leading caravans somewherewith camels, he was surprisingly business-like, being the president,executive secretary, and sole beneficiary of the Association to PromoteEskimo Culture, Inc., New York City.

"Dr. Stern tells me that you are experienced in organizationalactivities," Captain Gishorn said civilly, in his office.

"Oh, yes--yes." Dr. Planish put his fingertips together and tried tolook even more efficient than he was hungry. "Getting out circularletters, both appeals for funds and morale-boosting; teaching the staffto be cagy on the phone about whether the director is in or not, and todistinguish, among callers, between mere cranks who just want to askquestions, and real sympathizers that might come across with some money;scholarly research on all subjects--there's always college instructorswith big families that are willing to work cheap and grub out the factsat the library, and write acceptable articles for the director to sign,or executive secretary, as the case may be; addressing assemblies,especially of women, both in the drawing-room and in hotel ballroommeetings; getting actors and pianists to make free appearances at largerallies, and coaching the ushers to pass the pledge blanks at the rightsignal; making the speakers, if politicians, pipe down at the propertime; getting concessions and a fair price from hotel banquetmanagers--I needn't tell you that if you charge the guests five dollarsfor a philanthropic dinner, you don't know your business if you actuallypay the hotel one cent more than a dollar sixty-five, including dinner,tips, hall and light, and that a really skilled man ought to get it forone thirty-five, including after-dinner peppermints; going to lunch withbankers and listening to whatever they have to say about a new bullmarket; attending committee meetings and moving a vote of thanks andkeeping all speeches about the call to immediate action down to threeminutes; keeping lists of prospects right up to date as regards bothchanged addresses, present financial standing, and susceptibility toemotional appeal; how to address important people on the telephone;wangling publicity in the newspapers and on the radio; making allorganization literature and interviews a nice mixture of optimism andwarnings about the menace to the American Way of Life----

"Yes, I think I may honestly say I know the whole routine of scientificphilanthropy, educational propaganda, the skilled encouragement of thevirtue of generosity, and the publicizing of all noble causes--such asyour promotion of culture and, I have no doubt, music among the Eskimos.Yes."

Captain Gishorn shook his head. "Then, my dear fellow, I'm afraid you'renot the man I'm looking for."

"Oh?" said Dr. Planish, and thought about fried chicken, golden drippingfried chicken, with giblets and candied sweet potatoes and cornfritters.

"You're evidently a real leader in intellectual advancement, but in thisEskimo racket, I do most of the oratory and committees myself. All Ineed is a good man to answer important telephone calls and lunch withthe lesser donors and keep the circularization going. And I can pay onlythirty-five dollars a week."

"Make it forty. I'm broke."

"Sold!" said Captain Gishorn, who was very clever about languages, andcould speak American just as well as he could Persian or Swahili.

Dr. Planish went out to telegraph Peony that he had a job, that he lovedher and Carrie, and that he hoped to send for them before Christmas.

He did not tell her about his present salary, and he tried not toremember that he was now getting only forty a week, as againstseventy-five at the Heskett Foundation plus tokens of gratitude fromschool-supply firms. (He doubted if he could count on Eskimos to do muchwith tokens of gratitude, no matter how he cultured them.)

He found, before October, that Captain Gishorn had not done by him asone likes to be done in philanthropic circles. Actually, Dr. Planish hadto use all of the professional accomplishments that he had outlined, forthe Captain went off to explore Hollywood and Santa Barbara, and formonths he showed no interest in Eskimo Promotion except to receive theweekly financial report and to draw out all moneys above office expensesand salaries.

Oh, he was thoroughly gentlemanly about it; in his letters he nevercomplained of anything--just encouraged the Doctor to send out moreletters of solicitation and hold more small meetings of evangelizationand get more money out of all persons who could be encouraged to"recognize, with head and heart, the plight of our Brothers to the Northin being as yet entirely divorced from the stream of internationalcomity."

Dr. Planish sometimes thought this was rather hard on the Scandinavianmissionaries in Greenland; he sometimes felt that he himself could dowith less comity and more cash.

He was not very comfortable, that autumn and winter of 1930--histriumphal invasion of New York. He lived in a dollar-a-day hotel room inthe theatrical district, a room with an iron bed, two straight chairs, aGideon Bible, a cockroach splash on the wall, and the bathroom sevendoors down the hall.

His Eskimo Promotion office was not much more entertaining. It consistedof an inner room with one shredded oak desk for himself and one handsomegreen steel one for Captain Gishorn, letter files, prospect files,abandoned overshoes and, on a shelf, a specially bound andextra-illustrated seven-volume set of The Mistresses of French Monarchsand English Dukes. There was also a windowless outer room, with thedesk of the half-pretty, half-young lady stenographer, MissCantlebury--who was also the switchboard operator and receptionclerk--with four chairs for improbable visitors, Miss Cantlebury'sumbrella, and an extra-illustrated and specially bound nine-volume setof The Chronicles of the Arctic and Sub-Arctic Expeditions ofExplorers, Fur Dealers, and Missionaries of All Creeds, from theEarliest Times to A.D. 1799.

Dr. Planish always felt that to read this tract would be of the greatesthelp in understanding Eskimos and teaching them to build Diesel engines,but he never seemed to have time to look into it.

The office was in a forgotten building down on Fourth Avenue, red brickand six stories, with an elevator that shook and protested as it swayedupward. It was handy to a saloon that through Prohibition kept onserving the best free lunch in Manhattan. On the same floor with theEskimo office were the establishments of a chiropractor, an agent forrubber accessories, a publisher of New Testaments so efficient that heput up a good show even against the Bible Trust, an all-nightstenographer who knew things about people, and the head offices, whichwere also the only offices, of the Swastika-Rhodesian Gold and SapphireMines, whose floor space and general moral purposes strikingly resembledthose of the Association to Promote Eskimo Culture, Inc.

When he first took the job, Dr. Planish was fretted by his lack ofknowledge about the Eskimos. All he had ever been told was that theylived in the North, in snow houses, and ate blubber. He planned to spendall his evenings in the public library, reading about snow houses andblubber.

At the end of the Doctor's second day in the office, which he haddevoted to reading the letter files and making notes about prospects,especially rich widowers, Captain Gishorn rose from dictating letters toMiss Cantlebury, and piped, "Carry on, old chap. I'm off to cocktails atold Mrs. Piggott's."

He went off, very decorative with walking stick, white carnation, spatsand black Homburg hat.

Dr. Planish looked at Miss Cantlebury and sighed. She seemed faded butcompanionable.

"Doctor, do you mind if I sit down and smoke a cigarette, now the BigNoise has gone?" she said.

"Why, no. I'll share one with you."

She sat at the Captain's desk, read one or two of his love letters, andmurmured, "Look, Doctor. Let me know what I can do to get you started inthis racket. From long experience, I'd say you were probably a good guy.Anything I can tip you off on?"

(He wondered whether once, as a young Rhetoric coach in a good line ofbusiness, he would have ruled out sentences ending in or on an "offon.")

"Yes, there is, Miss Cantlebury. Of course I know organizational work ingeneral, but I don't happen to have worked much with Eskimos. What arethe best books on the subject?"

"What would you want to read books for, in this joint?"

"Naturally, Captain Gishorn doesn't need to, but then he's studied theNorthern peoples first hand----"

"Listen, Doctor, there isn't any Santa Claus, and you're getting a bigboy now. Excuse me for getting tough, but I hate to see anybody takenfor a ride unless he's one of the contributors. Fact is, ever since hisboyhood in England, the only time Cap Gishorn ever spent in any countrynorth of Bangor, Maine, was one day in Nova Scotia and one in Icelandand two days in Norway, on a Midnight Sun cruise in 1926. I guess he hasdone some real exploring in Persia and Africa--I dunno. But all he's gotto tell the world about Eskimos is a great advertising slogan, 'If allthe Americas are to stand together--that means All!' Get it? The Eskimosare our little cousins to the North, so we got to win 'em over tosupporting all our own moral principles and civilized customs--whichmeans Amos 'n' Andy and Tom Thumb golf courses and Sweetheart Soap andflying two hundred miles an hour to places that the Eskimos got too muchnative sense to want to see."

"What do we actually do to help the Eskimos?"

"Do? Honest, Doc, the Seven Dwarfs are dead. Well, we send six hundredbucks a year to the First Day Antinomian Church Mission in Greenland,and they furnish all the photos and reading matter that we send out.They even sent us a full display kit--a kayak and a native harpoon and awhale vertebra and the cutest little stuffed baby seal you ever saw. Itlooks just like my nephew Irving. You'd be surprised the way the cynicsand tightwads loosen up for enlightening the Eskies when they notice thepleading glass eyes in that baby seal. I damn near gave a quarter to itmyself once!

"So we hand the Antinomians the six hundred--what they do with it Idunno--play rummy in the long Arctic nights, I guess. And that's all wedo do--except, of course, the real purpose of any organization: pay yoursalary and mine and pay the rent, so you and I won't have to spend thesnowy days in the Grand Central waiting-room. What's left over, saysixty-two per cent, goes to Captain Heth Gishorn for his carnation andhis girls and his Napoleon brandy.

"You got to hand it to the Captain. He's the only organization ownerthat doesn't even pretend to do any good, except with the suckers. Mostgangs do at least give the poor children one turkey a year, or show upone labor spy that the newspapers have already shown up, or give ahundred-dollar scholarship to one poor college student, or send out onehouse-broken lecturer. Not Cap Gishorn!

"There's just one other angle you got to know, so you'll quit worryingabout doing any reading, Doc. That's John Littlefish. He's our prizeexhibit. He's the native Eskimo that we civilized. I don't know whatJohn Littlefish's name is--I don't think John does either. And I don'tknow whether he's a real Eskimo or maybe a Cree Indian. Somemissionaries brought him down here from the North twenty years ago, whenhe was about five, and then they went broke and scrammed. Anyway, helooks like an Eskimo--I guess--and these grunts that he makes when youtickle him, I guess they sound like Eskimo, and so you have him sit onthe platform when you're making a big drive, and the Captain has taughthim an eighty-five-word speech about how he loves malted milk. The restof the time, he plays professional billiards in a joint on Avenue A."

* * * * *

Thus guided, the Doctor found compensations which made him rather fondof the Eskimo Culture office. As Miss Cantlebury kept the books, he wasable to have his salary adjusted to sixty dollars a week withoutbothering Captain Gishorn about it. He took a small new flat, far up inthe Bronx, and sent for Peony and Carrie before Christmas. But theystill left their furniture in Chicago.

One blessing of his Eskimo experiences was that among the contributorshe met William T. Knife, one of the most strident laymen in thatsomewhat eccentric and quivering and fundamentalist sect, the AntinomianChurch. Mr. Knife was referred to in the denominational press as "thehumble millionaire who has applied the principles of St. Paul to hisprivate life and to the soft-drink business." He was also advertised as"a self-educated man who speaks with the eloquence of Cicero or DwightMoody, and who writes with the power and beauty of Mary Baker Eddy orMark Twain."

This was probably true, for Mr. Knife always had the Christian humilityand business sense to hire the best press agents available as his ghostwriters. He gave to oratory and to prose poetry the same zeal that hegave to the spread of temperance and of Okey-Dokey, which was next tothe largest-selling soft drink in the country in 1930, according tostatistics compiled, by the Enterprise Bureau of Industrial Comparisons,from 11,749 drug stores, 780 pool parlors, 61 church suppers, and 1,126speakeasies.

Under the personal direction of the Lord God Almighty, Mr. Knife had, asa youth, weathered a cyclone of doubting. As he often told the Y.M.C.A.,he had sometimes been tempted then to think that if you were travelingand missed church for just one Sunday, God would not necessarily condemnyou to eternal roasting. But God pulled him up sharp, with a bad fit ofrheumatics, and he got down on his knees--to extreme discomfort--in thewaiting-room of the Highhack depot of the D.&R.G., and confessed what anatheist he had been. He had never missed a Sunday since.

By the same divine personal chaperonage, he had come through the1929-1930 panic a richer man than ever, for millions found it cheaper tobuy Okey-Dokey than soul-deadening whisky. And Okey-Dokey had justenough caffein in it to be profitably habit-forming without doing anyprovable harm.

Mr. Knife was, in 1930, one of the brightest contemporaries of theSpanish Inquisition.

The liberal churches were turning into lecture halls, but in 1930--aswould later be true in 1940, and probably in 1960--the solidFundamentalists, who knew that God created the world in six days and hasspent His time since then in intensely disliking it, still held the truefaith unshaken. No matter how red the Neon lights glow on Main Street,they cannot rival the horrid hellfire in the chapel of the Antinomians,or the True New Reformed Tabernacle of the Penitent Saints of theAssembly of God, or in most of the brick and gray stone Baptist andMethodist churches that resemble railroad depots of 1890, and he thatknows not that encouraging fact has never been west or south ofBlawenburg. Halfway on in the twentieth century, one-quarter of Americaknows all about splitting the atom, but the other three-quarters havenot yet heard the news about Darwin.

For several years now, Mr. William T. Knife had left his six powerfulsons to conduct his business while he skipped about the country, tellinggiant meetings that (1) he was self-educated, but a lot smarter thanmost Harvard graduates, (2) the superintendents always opened theworkday at his several factories with prayer, (3) union labor was nogood, simply no good at all, and (4) there wouldn't be all thisbellyaching about shorter hours and longer wages if the workers could becoaxed to read the Bible--the one book that was inerrantly true fromkiver to kiver--instead of selfishly thinking about temporal things likerent and the groceries.

The time had come, felt Mr. Knife, when the surprising miracle of hisown life should be graven in permanent form. When he met Dr. GideonPlanish at an Eskimo Culture rally held by the Antinomians, he inquiredwhether the good Doctor was a believing Fundamentalist who had familyprayers night and morning. When he discovered that that was just thesort of pious fellow the Doctor was, he offered five thousand dollars tohave his first-person autobiography reverently ghosted.

Dr. Planish accepted, and moved his family to a boarding-house in Mt.Vernon, New York, to be near Mr. Knife and his sacred labors. He kissedMiss Cantlebury--for the first time--and resigned in a letter to CaptainGishorn, who was then gallantly exploring the tennis courts at theArizona-Biltmore Hotel.

* * * * *

Mr. Knife was against all the vain luxuries of wine-bibbers andcocktail-bibbers. He said, "Why, I could buy and sell most of theseunchristian cusses that show off their yacht boats and polo hosses, butMrs. Knife and I believe in the Scriptural injunction to cleave to plainliving and high-class thinking, so we are content with this hermit'shut. Oh, there's room here to exercise the sacred writ of hospitality,but for ourselves, we ask only a corner and a crumb. Yes, we ask butlittle. However! It's only sensible to have that little of the best."

The hermit's hut was a twenty-room Colonial manor house originally builtas the rural residence of a motion-picture producer. It had a two-acrerose garden, and an eight-car garage--filled. Dr. Planish and Mr. Knifeworked in the putative hermit's library, a forty-foot room adorned withsixteen feet from the library of the late Duke of Deephaven.

Before they started, Mr. Knife always said--always--"Doc, will you havea cigar? In principle, I'm entirely against smoking--it is unchristianand unnecessary--it makes me sick to see a gang of little punks puffingat coffin nails--I know for a fact that all labor agitators smokecigarettes. But my doctor, a Christian man, advises me to take anoccasional cigar for the sake of my throat, and I thought it would behealthiest to smoke Porcos y Toledos. I don't know anything about suchthings, but I understand they are a good brand---- By God, they ought tobe! I pay six bits apiece for 'em, and show me one of these snobbishhigh-society heels over in Bronxville that pays half that much!"

Mr. Knife walked up and down, scratching his lumpy nose and spitting inany of the series of six cuspidors, each with a sparkling quotation fromDr. Frank Buchman painted on it, as he outlined the personal anecdotesand the theories of theology, metaphysics and soft-drink promotion onwhich Dr. Planish took notes for the book. His proud humility enabledhim to be surprisingly frank.

"I'm like Oliver Cromwell. I want the portrait-painter, as I often tellthe boys at evangelical tent rallies and the girls at Ladies Onlymeetings, to put in the warts as well as the unusual jaw and eyes.

"Yes, sir, this autobiography that I am writing is to be an humbleoffering to God, who will not be deceived, so put down all the errorsand lusts I have committed--and have I committed some lusts in my time,oh boy, I'll say I have!--put 'em in along with the souls I've saved andthe pile of dough I've made and the Antinomian chapels I've built--glorybe to God, who has been my faithful partner in business, through theinterposition of the Holy Ghost, and His be the praise and the profits!"

He shook out of the bag quite a few exemplary facts and tales.... Hisnine servants all had to take a Bible test and a Wassermann test beforehe hired them, and they had to attend family prayers.... He had onceconverted a labor-union organizer who up to that date had gone aboutlike a raging left-wing lion seeing what innocent open-shop employers hecould devour, and the fellow was now in the evangelical business inOregon, with a nice little Christian wife and his home almost paidfor.... Mr. Knife would furnish Okey-Dokey absolutely free, to bedrunk at communion services, provided the church gave him a receipt, tobe reproduced for his advertising in the religious press.... As aboy, he had first seen the value of religion in business when he hadtattled on a friend who had stolen some candy, and the shopkeeper hadrewarded him.... When he had been persecuted by an alleged healthofficial on the silly grounds that Okey-Dokey was a drug, the LordHimself had stepped in, and enabled Mr. Knife to put the official awayby means of that most righteous statute, the Mann Act.

* * * * *

Dr. Planish didn't really care for Mr. Knife, but he was valuable inenabling the Doctor to Make Contacts (as it is called in the upliftbusiness). At the hermit's hut, the Doctor met one of the most earnestforces for co-operative good-doing that he was ever to know, in theperson of the Honorable Ernest Wheyfish, an ex-congressman known in thetrade as "The Deacon."

Honorable Wheyfish had realized, too late in life, that he should havebeen a clergyman instead of a politician, though indeed he had once beenan undertaker, which had a nice ecclesiastical flavor. Moved by thispious perception, Mr. Wheyfish had renounced the glories ofCongress--just as soon as he was defeated for re-election--and gone intothe organizational world on the religious side. He was now president andworking secretary of the National Christian Excelsior Crusade, whosepurpose was to get the worker, the backbone of American industry, backinto the church, instead of wasting his time and money on unions andCommunist meetings.

Mr. Knife was a conspicuous giver to Honorable Wheyfish's crusade. Theyagreed ardently about the needs of labor, and said frequently that theywere the best friends that the workers had, if they only knew it.

Dr. Planish noted that both of them, like Christian Stern, wereundersized, meager, sandy men, but with energy like hurdle-racers, andpreposterous bass voices, like thunder out of a graham cracker. He waswondering whether he himself was of the right type to save Humanity whenhe was comforted by a pilgrimage to the hermit's hut of two quitedifferent sorts of organizators: Constantine Kelly and H. SandersonSanderson-Smith, whom he had seen in Chicago.

Mr. Kelly looked like a bartender, perhaps because for several years hehad been a bartender. He was now assistant and press agent to Mr.Wheyfish in the National Christian Excelsior Crusade.

Mr. Sanderson-Smith was a different kettle of goldfish altogether. Hewas a fine silky Bostonian--though some said Ontario, and others, SouthFrampus Center. When Dr. Planish had met him in Chicago, he had had athin red beard, but he now showed up with his intellectual chin bare andwith handsome red Spanish sideburns beside his ears. He was forming aless churchly and more political league than the National ExcelsiorCrusade, namely, the Citizens' Conference on Constitutional Crises inthe Commonwealth, which was to have headquarters in Washington, D. C.,and of which none other than United States Senator Felix Bultitude wasto be chairman.

But its purpose was the same as that of the Crusade: to coax the workersout of this nonsense of thinking about more wages all the time. Mr.Knife and numerous other Christian industrialists contributed to bothsocieties, as a form of spiritual and financial fire insurance.

* * * * *

There was really only one intolerable evil about working for Mr. WilliamT. Knife: he talked so much about the evils of alcohol that Dr. Planishalways got thirsty, and when he reached his boarding-house at night, hedemanded so many highballs that it looked as if this life of diligentpiety might land him in the sanitarium. And Peony, herself no especialenemy of wetness and cheering, always joined him.

They were at Pete's Café in Manhattan, on a Saturday evening, drinkingaway the week's cosmic dust, when they saw Hatch Hewitt, that lean talldevil who had stirred young Gid Planish's fancy and depressed hisambition all through Adelbert College.

He wasn't quite so lean now; he was, at forty, a little bald, and hisface was worn. He looked at Dr. Planish in passing their table, did notrecognize him and stalked on to the bar. He was expertly disposing of astraight rye when the Doctor poked his shoulder and murmured, "Hatch!Gid Planish!"

Hatch sat with them, and stared at Peony.

"Can you stand for the ole friend's wife?" she giggled.

Hatch solemnly nodded, turned to Dr. Planish, and solemnly said, "Nicewoman."

Dr. Planish inquired, "I suppose you're a magazine editor by now, or aWashington correspondent, or a Sunday editor. You always had the mosttalent in our class."

"I always agreed with you about the talent, but New York doesn't. No,I'm just a plain reporter on the Herald-Times. Mostly do labor andpolitics. And how about you? I haven't heard a word since we graduated."

"You haven't?" Peony was indignant. "The Doctor has merelyrevolutionized rural education in the Middlewest and inauguratededucation in Greenland and been dean of a college and refused thepresidency of several other colleges, that's all!"

Hatch marveled, "My God, she believes in you, Gid! I didn't know therewere any women left like that. Where did you find her? Have they got anyleft?"

"God broke the mold after he turned her out!" Dr. Planish looked atPeony as though, to his own surprise, he really believed it. Hatchsighed, and suddenly the Doctor knew that Hatch was possessed by a wifewho was strident and opinionated.

The Doctor furnished a somewhat less laudatory sketch of his owntriumphs, though he did not feel it necessary to inform Hatch that hehad been discharged from the Heskett Foundation and that hisassociations with Captain Gishorn and Mr. William T. Knife differed fromhijacking liquor trucks chiefly in being less useful. He sounded sodoubtful of himself that Hatch cried to Peony, unsneeringly, "Seems asif your husband has learned not to take careering and butting into otherpeople's affairs too seriously."

"But I want him to take them seriously!" flared Peony. "If you only knewwhat Colonel Charles B. Marduc said to him!"

As Colonel Marduc had never said anything to him beyond, "Ah, you comefrom Chicago--great city," she could not do much with it, and she had tosit back glorying in a wife's ancient privilege of disapproving of herhusband's pre-conversion friends.

"Well, it's been swell running into you," said Hatch. "We must see eachother again soon."

As this was New York, they did not see each other again for four years.

* * * * *

Speaking of crusades, Hatch had reported that the newest educationalracket in town was a company called "The Modernistic EducationalBureau," which sold a new encyclopedia that---- No, the Bureau didn'tsell anything. It just promoted culture.

It had set up the customary organization, with a publicity-loving boardof directors, including the trusty Dr. Christian Stern, Professor GeorgeRiot and the learned Dr. Elmer Gantry. These directors were, it ispleasant to announce, laden with no duties aside from letting theirnames shine forth as guarantors, for which they each received fiftydollars.

George Riot nominated as suitable members of the Bureau all personswhose names were on Charity-Education Sucker List XM27E. The Bureauwrote to each of these prospects that he had been named by thedistinguished professor and, as an almost inevitable consequence,elected as a "senior Governing Member of the M.E.B., annual dues $15.00,5% discount for cash within one month, for which you will receive ahandsome membership diploma suitable for framing, our own educationalmagazine, frequent and illuminating letters on official stationery and,as fast as each volume is issued, receive, Absolutely Free, the titanicnew-from-cover-to-cover MODERNISTIC ENCYCLOPEDIA OF WORLD KNOWLEDGE, theFIRST cyclopedia to be prepared, by a staff of World Experts, on the NEWSCIENTIFIC PRINCIPLES OF PHILOLOGY, BIOLOGY, PEDAGOGY, AGRONOMICS ANDMONEY-MAKING, and the most magnificently illustrated Book of Referencein the entire history of publishing."

The preparation of this encyclopedia was not really so difficult as thecustomer might have supposed. A small company of intellectual commandos,in a shaky old building on 23rd Street, in a loft once candidly devotedto the manufacture of gents' pants, went through the several oldercyclopedias, lifted and combined and abbreviated the contents, andextensively illustrated this stew with photographs bought in job-lots ofone hundred.

The staff also farmed out many of the articles, which involved Dr.Gideon Planish, and a number of college instructors of small prosperity.(After all, new college buildings are expensive, and you can't lavisheverything on the faculty.)

When he had heard from Hatch of this cultural adventure, Dr. Planishsent for the Bureau's "literature," happily noted George Riot'sprominence, had George recommend him to the "financial secretary" of theBureau, who was also the sole owner of it and a fine fellow who had beengraduated from one of the best grade schools in Jersey City, andobtained from him a little piecework. It was not well paid, but itpadded out the Planish income without interfering with the Knifememoirs--and besides, Peony actually wrote all the articles that theDoctor signed.

So they were prosperous again. They brought on their furniture fromChicago, the Chippendale cabinet and the rug and the shiny bar, and inMt. Vernon they rented a "Cape Cod bungalow" not quite so comfortable asthe house they had had in Kinnikinick at the beginning of theirexpedition to conquer power.

Carrie liked it and went wild in gardens, but Peony complained that outhere in the suburbs, they were meeting as few notorious people("interesting people" she called them) as back in Kinnikinick, and shefervently influenced the Doctor when Mr. H. Sanderson Sanderson-Smithinvited him to join the CCCCC in Washington, D. C.

Peony yelled, "Oh, do it! Washington! We'll meet senators and generalsand the President, and maybe it'll lead to your finally going intopolitics---- Saaaay! When did our plan to make you a senator get lost inthe shuffle?"

Dr. Planish fretted that he didn't really like the purposes ofSanderson-Smith's gang, the "Citizens' Conference." Though it had on itsboard members of Congress and newspaper-owners and eloquent corporationlawyers and a lady author and an officer of the D.A.R., it was, almostfrankly, an anti-labor-union lobby. He worried, "I know there arecrooked labor leaders, but on the whole, I've always upheld the Rightsof the Common Man, of the farmer and factory-worker----"

"Now don't give me that Number 28 Lecture!" said his wife, with tartnessunusual to her. "Who knows but what you can do more good by getting thisCitizens' Conference outfit to be kinder to the lil brothers than youcan by staying out? Besides! I don't see any union organizer sweatingover where we get a new radio and shoes for Carrie!"

"Well----" said Dr. Planish.

Chapter 22

The Citizens' Conference on Constitutional Crises in the Commonwealthwas known in Washington as the "Cizkon."

It had none of the fuzziness of purpose that had bothered Dr. GideonPlanish, the new Assistant General Manager of the Cizkon, at the HeskettFoundation. Its offices filled two floors of an official-looking old redbrick building. During the depression of the early 1930's, it was richerin funds than ever, because it was then that the large industrialistsand merchants most feared revolution, and they were skillfully coachedby Mr. Sanderson-Smith and Dr. Planish to believe that the Cizkon wasinsurance against their losing control of the country.

Any seedling notions about liberalizing the Cizkon that the good Doctormight have cultivated were frozen quickly in that icy competence.

On the surface, the Cizkon was so idealistic that it dripped, and thiswas the department to which Dr. Planish was particularly assigned. Inlectures and pamphlets and newspaper stories which it manufactured oraffectionately influenced, it shouted the best battle cries: "Thetraditional American right to work unhampered by labor racketeers," and"The menace to fundamental American institutions, by foreign atheism andJewish international socialism," and "The Founding Fathers' ideals ofFree Enterprise, an Economy of Abundance, and Free Competition uncheckedby sumptuary laws, so that the Poorest Citizen may have his chance inthe race for fame and fortune against the wealthiest corporation or themost aristocratic and highly educated individual," and "The Cross andthe Stars and Stripes--or the Assassin's Dagger and the Crossed Hammerand Sickle--WHICH?"

And, in those days, "Mussolini makes the trains run on time."

All that Dr. Planish had to do was to take the slogans he had believedin and turn them inside out. He was still in the Ideals and PublicImprovement business, even if he had gone over to a competing firm, andhis salary was now a comfortable $4,500 a year. They had a thin tallhouse in Georgetown and they entertained senators--perhaps twice--and heand Peony and Carrie were happy--anyway, Peony was happy--anyway, Peonysaid she was happy.

The Cizkon's chief operative, Mr. H. Sanderson Sanderson-Smith, was anesthete. He had written a pamphlet on surrealism, he had been atheosophist, a nudist, a spiritualist, a Bahaist and a Douglas Planner;and he was enviously rumored to be a secret drunkard on benedictinespiced with pepper and maple sugar. But he was an excellentOrganizational Engineer--his own phrase.

If the sort of beefy, Hamilton-Frisby, football-squad, Skull-and-Bones,Meadowbrook-Club millionaires who always intimidated Dr. Planish alsodespised Sanderson-Smith, in revenge he knew how to make them tremblewith his inside news about Jewish, Communist, andScandinavian-Irish-farmer-labor conspiracies against them, and radicalsnow known to be manufacturing sub-machine guns in a cellar near St.Sebastian, North Dakota. He panicked them into giving him funds withwhich, as he caressingly put it, he would "put Bibles instead oftommy-guns into the horny hands of these sons of--well--of toil!"

The Cizkon issued a magazine called Flag or Lag? illustrated withpictures of strikers beating policemen, of Lenin and Stalin attending anorthodox synagogue, and of George Washington crossing the Delaware, witha caption hinting that if he did so today, it would be to spend aweek-end with the du Ponts.

In fact the Cizkon magazine assaulted the Communists with all theaccuracy and tender tolerance with which the Communists assaulted theiropponents. It was well padded with the advertisements of banks,insurance companies and utility companies. The theory was that itcirculated among the Common Workers, persuading them to leap out oftheir red cells and exchange their unions for the Union League. And atleast it did reach the desks of all the fine old gentlemen inMassachusetts who owned textile mills.

The Cizkon also published, in pamphlet form, addresses which wouldcertainly have been delivered on the floor of the House if any othercongressmen could have been persuaded to stay and listen. Theseaddresses stated that the author had had a good mother and a pretty fairfather, and that all labor leaders were terrible.

Less directly, the Cizkon influenced many published writings. Itencouraged local school boards to throw out text-books that alleged thatAbraham Lincoln was an agnostic. It arranged with factory-owners towelcome journalists who wanted to do little pieces about the glories ofmodern machinery and the miracles of distribution. And it warnededitors, by letters ostensibly from indignant subscribers, that Liberalswere essentially more dangerous than Communists--which was probablytrue.

It assisted right-thinking professors to get lecture-engagements, and itgot out clip-sheets with refrigerated editorials protesting thatPresident Harding had been a great man, after all, that H. G. Wells hadbut rarely written anything about Bishop James Cannon, Jr., of theSouthern Methodist Church, and that honest workers do not watch theclock.

But the Cizkon was not merely literary. In an emergency it would sendexpert lobbyists to State Legislatures, to choke the vile hydra ofcompulsory washrooms in factories. Once, Dr. Gideon Planish thusjourneyed out West, to appear before a legislative committee as aneconomics expert and a disinterested tax-payer.

Beyond all other virtues of the Cizkon was its personal duty ofcollecting just as many contributions from the jittery captains ofindustry as it could cajole or frighten out of them. It annually got outa financial report which showed the gratified contributors "just whereevery red cent of your generous donations has gone," with lovelyfigures, down to the second decimal, about Office Expense, Salaries,Traveling Expenses, Postage, Publication and dozens of others. Still,Mr. Sanderson-Smith did live in the former residence of an ambassador,and did send three very charming and handsome young men through college.

He gracefully entertained here, and sometimes he invited the Planishes.So Peony met poets and actors and rather astonishing old men whotickled. She was in the pool of provincial hobohemia up to her neck, andso soaked with Celebrity that occasionally she wanted to go back toKinnikinick for a rest.

But within the hour she would assure her husband that she didn't meanit; that she was as happy here as a Lark, as a Grig, as the day is long.She began to spend just a little too much for evening dresses, and shedeveloped a way of confiding to newcomers in Washington, "I happened tobe sitting next to a man who knows the Secretary of the Navy intimately,and he told me, but don't repeat it now----"

She admired the smoothness of Sanderson-Smith, even though she did referto him privately as "Sneaky Sandy." She repeated often a dinner quip ofSanderson-Smith which soared right up to the heights of Oscar Wilde:"Last night Sandy told me--I made him repeat it--'I didn't mind it whenoi polloi claimed that a live hog was better than a dead lion. That'sarguable,' he said. 'But now,' he said, 'they're bellowing that a livehog is better than a live lion!' Now isn't that brilliant!"

Dr. Planish sighed, "Sometimes it seems to me that Sandy sacrifices trueliberalism to a mere mot."

"Oh, stuff!" said Peony.

She still admired the Doctor as the fount of learning, but she was doingvery well on her own.

She had learned that congressmen and even bureau chiefs were not hard toget for dinner. You just offered them free food and the best of illicitliquor. She became chummy with several congressmen's wives who, oncook's night off, had to scramble their own family dinners; who tookPeony into their confidences and swapped servant stories, while theirhusbands fed her hunger for magnificence by grunting, even apropos ofthe President himself, "I saw Herb yesterday, and he told me we'recoming out of the depression at last, yessir, that's just what he said."

She loved it. But the Doctor was ever more dubious as he toiled atlabor-baiting; and as for Carrie, preposterous child, she keptwhimpering that she wanted to see the suburban children with whom shehad played in Mt. Vernon.

Their high triumph was in becoming charmingly acquainted with that greatfinancial authority, Senator Felix Bultitude, who, as chairman of theboard of the Cizkon, was something besides ornamental. He was even morecelebrated for his honesty than for his intelligence--in fact, he wasn'treally so highly thought of for intelligence--and when potentialcontributors to the Cizkon saw his name fronting on the board, theyexulted, "Don't tell me that the CCCCC isn't on the level, with a manlike Bultitude running it. You don't think he's the kind of grafterwho'd stoop to padding his expense account ten dollars on his hotelbill, when he's out lecturing for them, do you--a man of his standing?"(Mr. Bultitude was always referred to as "a man of his standing," nomatter what he stood on.)

They were right, too. The Senator never received a cent from the Cizkon.He merely let it interest a few prominent men outside his own State inhis harmless, necessary campaign fund.

Senator Bultitude was always referred to by chairmen as "that greatLiberal." He loved to dwell on the History of Labor, even though he didmix up Heywood Broun and Big Bill Haywood. As a young man, while he wasstudying law, he had worked as a farmhand for one entire vacation, so hecould properly call himself "a real dirt farmer," and Sanderson-Smithregularly used him to put honey in the hair of farm blocs.

But when Sanderson-Smith wanted someone to come right out and tell clubsmokers that, in the opinion of the Cizkon, all workers, even the goodor non-union workers, were dangerous to the peace of the state unlessthey were controlled by the Right People, then he used as prophet notSenator Bultitude but the Reverend Mr. Ezekiel Bittery, a formerFundamentalist preacher who really had been a farmhand. Mr. Bitterysaid, in Scriptural rhythms, "I've toiled with the toilers, I'vepreached to their stoniness, I know 'em--and they're all skunks!"

Mr. Bittery was trying to enlist a private army called "The GospelGentlemen" from among former Ku Kluxers, but he had too many rivals forthe position of American Duce, and he was still glad to doSanderson-Smith a sixty-one-minute exposure of the Jews and Radicals for$65.00 cash--in advance--and a year later he would be throwing in twominutes of denouncing Eleanor Roosevelt.

* * * * *

The bad luck of the Planishes seemed over. The Doctor had been in thenew job only a year when Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected President,and during the experimentation of the New Deal, so alarming to theBetter People, who liked to have the objects of their charity gratefuland transient, the Cizkon became important as a safeguard against loosespending and the horrid heresy of maintaining that Democracy alsoincluded people who did not live in your block.

Now, Sanderson-Smith was able to hurl gas bombs not just at anonymousCommunists but even at the highly visible Administration itself. He wasfull of wit about the new Government bureaus and their names: SEC, PWA,FHRA. He said, "Our own little group, the CCCCC, has more C's in it thanthe CCC's but much less seize!"

"Isn't that just brilliant!" said Peony Planish.

One of the mysteries is the origin of dirty stories and politicalanecdotes. A tale will be repeated ten million times over ten years, andyet the original author, honest fellow, will be unknown, unhonored. Butof the thousand anecdotes about Franklin D. Roosevelt and his family andaides, at least a dozen of the more popular were created by the patientartistry of H. Sanderson Sanderson-Smith, including the one about thepsychiatrist being sent to God when He had the delusion that he wasRoosevelt.

When Mrs. Roosevelt was friendly with coal miners, it wasSanderson-Smith who explained to the ecstatic mine-owners--and the evenmore ecstatic Young Communists, who were now beginning to exceed innuisance value the young disciples of Proust and Joyce--that it had allbeen done by collusion with Moscow. He sowed the rumor that Miss FrancesPerkins, the Secretary of Labor, was really Rebecca Prjzbska fromCrakow, and originated the jest, attributed to several popularcolumnists, that "The Trouble with the New Dealers is that they're allsmall-town boys named Ray: Ray Moley, Ray Tugwell, Ray Frankfurter--andRay Roosevelt."

It was one of the duties of Dr. Planish to see that these witticismswere spread properly. Mr. Sanderson-Smith was not always pleasant whenhe failed to do so.

* * * * *

When the New Deal started on wages and hours legislation, the Cizkoncame out for the very factory improvements that it had abhorred.

All industries were threatened with having to recognize one union oranother, and Sanderson-Smith hired an expert who had been a unionorganizer himself to go from factory to factory of the Cizkon's highercontributors and explain how to form reasonable company unions whichwould be nicer all round than the A.F. of L. or the C.I.O. This expertwould also demonstrate how much cheaper it was to put in cafeterias andclean washrooms and free medical service than to have the workers thinktheir bosses did not love them. He even went so far in a Southern Stateas to persuade an employer to hire one per cent of Negro labor, whichclearly proved something or other, said Sanderson-Smith in an address"The New Liberalism vs the New Deal."

Years later, in the 1940's, even after America had entered World War II,Dr. Planish was interested to see that, though H. SandersonSanderson-Smith himself was in prison on the astounding charge that hewas a Nazi agent, other bodies were carrying on the ameliorative work ofthe Cizkon, with the slogans "The American Way of Life" and "The SacredRight to Work" and "The Founding Fathers who laid down the principle ofFree Competition" still frequently meaning that employers did not caremuch for union wage scales.

* * * * *

Through all the Planishes' prosperity and social magnitude inWashington, the Doctor had spiritual trouble.

Whenever his former colleagues, Chris Stern and Dr. Kitto and NataliaHochberg and Professor Buchwald and George Riot, all of them Reformersat whom the Cizkon had heaved a paragraph or two, came to Washington,the Doctor felt uncomfortably that they felt uncomfortably that he wasno longer a Liberal. He tried to explain to them that, really, he wasmore of a Liberal than ever; he and Sanderson-Smith were all forConstructive and Enlightened Labor Leadership, and they opposed only themisleaders who made a living out of Labor. They seemed highlyunconvinced by him or by the fervors of Sanderson-Smith, for whom theyadopted Peony's name of "Sneaky Sandy."

Dr. Planish tried to be jovial about it: "All right--all right! You getme as good a job with some liberal outfit in New York, and I'll leaveSneaky Sandy flat!"

He had, he felt proudly, "called their bluff." But he was stilldisquieted, and he tried to explain it all to Peony, when she came infrom a cocktail party to celebrate the anniversary of the repeal ofProhibition.

"Now get this, Peony. To be realistic, I must admit that the firstpurpose of any uplift organization must be to support the executives whogive their time and good hard work to it--like a doctor or a preacher.But I do feel that if I make my living out of a movement to strengthenthe public morale, then it ought--well, it ought to try and do somestrengthening, don't you see?"

"See what?" said Peony.

He went on, thinking aloud. "And I'm afraid Chris Stern is right. TheCizkon isn't really liberal. Chris is probably just as much of afourflusher as Sneaky Sandy--just as crazy to get power andpublicity--only he's a careerist on the right side, and Sandy is on thewrong side."

Peony sniffed, "So what? He's a Liberal, but he's practical."

"When was he ever liberal?"

"What's the diff? We get our salary, don't we? And do you mean to tellme that you don't believe in the American system of justice, as laiddown by George Washington?"

"Now what----"

"Every man that's accused has a right to be represented in court by alawyer, hasn't he? Well, Sneaky is the lawyer for the capitalists, andthey need a smart one, don't they?"

"That's an interesting point of view. Very interesting. But there'sanother aspect of the matter. In the long run, I think that an executivedoes better if he's known as a Liberal. By 1940, I'll wager there'll bemore money--or rather, I mean a more dignified social position--in beingassociated with anti-Fascism than with Fascism. Besides, I'm an oldtimeFighting Liberal, and a man with his battles behind me, I mean mybattles behind me, he simply can't turn his back on the People, don'tyou see?... No, no, it isn't fly-by-night advocates of individualismlike Sneaky Sandy that come out on top eventually; it's proponents ofcommunal discipline, like Colonel Charles B. Marduc, the greatestpromoter of widespread prosperity----"

"Want a drink?" said Peony.

"Of course I want a drink!" said Dr. Planish.

Chapter 23

In the anteroom of Senator Bultitude's office, Dr. Planish fell totalking with a meager and gentle man of fifty-odd, with a thin flaxenmustache, baggy gray clothes, a bright blue tie, and a bright blueshirt--the uniform of a man who wanted to be different. His name wasCarlyle Vesper. Something he said caused the Doctor to invite him tolunch at the Crayon Club.

The Doctor was fond of the Crayon, which was full of ex-congressmenturned lobbyists or Government clerks. The polite waiters called him"Doctor," and believed that he was a bureau chief at least.

It appeared that Mr. Vesper had an idea for a virtuous organization, andwhat was much more remarkable, he seemed to have the money, in thebacking of Mrs. John James Piggott, intransigent old widow of the SilverMine and International Railroad, and of Miss Ramona Tundra, who hadstarted as a child star in the motion pictures and was ending as a childadult who patronized faith-healers. Without this cash behind it, Dr.Planish was too well trained an organizator to have been interested inthe mere idea, though he did admit that it was possibly the noblestreligious inspiration since St. Paul.

Carlyle Vesper was as simple as Cardinal Newman. During years as acommonplace bookkeeper he had dreamed of a Christian church in which thedirector would not be a pope or an archbishop or a stated secretary orany kind of paid minister, but Jesus Christ himself.

"I think we ought to believe that Jesus is perfectly capable of doingthis without some Doctor of Sacred Theology helping him out," saidVesper, with the smile of a shy boy or a madman. "I think most churchesstarted off all right, but then they had to support a lot of men whocalled themselves priests or ministers, and then these fellows wanted toput on fancy dress, and that cost money, and pretty soon they wanted tohave churches that their voices would sound big in, and then the peopledidn't have a fellowship between Christ and men any longer, but justanother salvation shop. I'd like our church to end all that."

Dr. Planish knew enough history to recall how many other Carlyle Vespershad started churches to end all churches. But the sweet simpleton hadmanaged to interest Mrs. Piggott and Miss Tundra----

Vesper flowed on, "I guess what I want is just a gayer and more moderngroup of Quakers, without the old Pennsylvania and Ohio Quaker familiesacting a little like hereditary priests themselves. My organization, ifit ever gets going right--and it will be a failure unless it destroysitself and quits, the minute it succeeds, like any good teacher!--itwill do nothing but suggest to every man and woman and child that Godreally did make him a priest, as they understood so well among the earlyChristians, and that he can pray by himself or in company with othersjust as he is moved. I want to call it the Every Man a PriestFraternity.

"Oh, yes, I've thought about this for twenty years, and I can keepbooks, but I'm not much of an executive. I can't bear bossing people! Ifwe only had a man like you! Could I persuade you to take aninterest--say, be our chief shepherd?"

"Uh--uh--how much would you plan to pay?"

"I hadn't thought about it. We have ten thousand dollars in the treasurynow. Would half of that be enough for a year's salary?"

"I'm afraid I couldn't even think of it for less than six thousand ayear. That's about what I'm getting now, and of course I have toconsider my poor wife and child."

"Oh, I'm sure that as this world's goods go, six thousand would be verylittle for a man of your experience and your love for sufferinghumanity. Shall we agree on that and get to work, Brother Gideon?"

"Wow!" said Dr. Planish, to himself, but aloud he bumbled, "I'll thinkit over. Let's meet here tomorrow noon."

* * * * *

He telephoned to New York, to Chris Stern, who answered Yes, thispreposterous outsider, Vesper, did seem to have coaxed a lot of moneyout of that tough old heathen, Mrs. Piggott.

The Doctor dared not hint to Peony, that evening, of his interest in theabsurd charlatan.

Next morning, Sanderson-Smith called him in, and Sanderson-Smith had hadan unpleasant dinner the evening before. He said, not so silkily asusual, "Planish, I want to talk to you about your next lecture touramong the colleges. I want you to quit all this pussyfooting and heavyLiberalism. Come right out and tell these simpletons of undergraduatesthat they can choose between bucking the unions and being enslaved bythem. Understand?"

"I'll think it over," said Dr. Planish, not very belligerently.

At the luncheon table, Vesper smiled, handed over a lovely check forfive hundred dollars, and said, "It's your first month's check, BrotherGideon--Gideon, the Sword of the Lord! Now will you come with us?"

"By God, I'll do it! Oh, sorry for cursing."

"I don't think we need worry too much about the ancient Jewishinjunction against cursing and swearing. Don't you suppose God will takethe spirit of the oath rather than the actual wording? I don't guess Heis much deceived."

To himself, already beginning to resent the new employer as all thatmorning he had been resenting the old one, Dr. Planish groaned, "He'sgetting saintly on me! A careerist in holiness! I'll never be happy tillI've got an organization where I'm sole boss--unless it's one run by afellow like Colonel Marduc, who has real brains and power--andcash!--and not a lot of sappy sentimentality like Vesper or psychopathicmalice like Sneaky Sandy-- Oh dear!"

But aloud he was beginning, "Now the first thing we want to do is to getthe names of the top men, like Bishop Pindyck--no, that's so, nopreachers for once, thank God. Well, how about William T. Knife--a trueChristian pioneer?"

* * * * *

It was hard to tell Peony that from now on his salary would beguaranteed only by St. Francis of Assisi. He remembered how game she hadbeen in Chicago, when he had admitted that Hamilton Frisby had kickedhim out, but he put off his confession till after they had come homefrom the movies that evening.

They were having a companionable drink at the scoured table in the darkWashington kitchen when he told her. Even as he spoke, the notion ofanybody being a priest without being paid for it seemed as fantastic tohim as riding the tail of a rocket.

Peony listened with horrified silence; then: "Have you gone completelybugs? To give up a settled job with Sandy, a racket that ought to begood for at least five more years, for this crazy religious maniac? Asyou know, I'm a true Christian and a church member, but---- Six thousanda year? You'll never get six hundred! It'll blow up in a month! You'vegot to get out of this insane picnic, right away. You've got to! TellVesper to go roll his holy hoop!"

"I'm afraid I can't. I've already spent half of the five hundred he paidme--we were two months behind on the rent--and this afternoon I finallytold Sanderson-Smith that he was a high-class scab. I'm through there,I'm afraid."

"You're afraid!"

She shrieked it; she dashed out of the kitchen, and upstairs. Hefollowed, and heard the key turning in the door of their bedroom. Hehadn't even known that there was a key.

"Poor impetuous baby!" He smiled to himself. He knocked with playfullightness--no answer; then with marital firmness--no answer. He triedthe knob.

After twelve years of married life, she had for the first time lockedhim out of their room.

He cried, in panic, "Peony! Sweetheart! Let me in! Let me explain!" Tohimself: "She's right. And suppose she divorced me? What could I do? Icouldn't sleep alone nights!"

Peony was not answering, even with a sound of tip-toeing feet, as hecalled her name again and tried again to knock gaily, to show that hedidn't really mind this little loving trick she was playing on him.Making his step as heavy and dignified and rebuking as he could, hethumped downstairs, and stood at the foot, waiting for her to rush outand call him back. She didn't. But she must--she had to! He went onwaiting. He could not hear her at all.

"I've had enough of this nonsense. She's acting like a spoiled child.I'm just not going to pay any attention to her," he stated.

He went firmly into the small green-and-chintz living-room, and tried todo a cross-word puzzle--a form of escape still fashionable then. Itwould not come out. He threw the newspaper at the signed photograph ofPresident T. Austin Bull, and sneaked softly to the foot of the stairs.He stood there in sick worry. Upstairs, he could hear her heavilysobbing. He dared not affront her, and he crept back to the living-room,to glare at the newspaper.

Where the devil was he supposed to sleep tonight? In Carrie's child-bed,maybe! And it was bedtime right now.

He pounded to the stairs, and yelled up, "Hey! Where do you think I'mgoing to sleep?"

After a noticeable pause, a mournful voice dribbled down, "In hell, Ihope."

"Is that a nice way to answer me when I ask a civil question?" he putit. Yet it encouraged him to find that she was no longer so young andbroken. He marched upstairs and tapped, commandingly. "Sweetheart! Letme in. Unlock the door."

She sobbed, "It's unlocked."

* * * * *

Mechanically patting her bare shoulder, he bumbled, "There, there,there! My own baby! Still such a little baby! And yet so wise. Oh,lambie, I'll never again make any organizational or occupationalaffiliation [he meant, take a job] without your advice."

"Oh, no, you mustn't, lover. You know it's only because I love you andhave your best interests at heart. Of course you're stuck with the newmission now, but I just know you won't find this Carlyle Vesper fellowas smart as Sneaky Sandy."

Lying awake in darkness beside her, filled with the dark smell of herhair, he realized that he was her slave and told himself that he wasvery happy about it.

Chapter 24

The Every Man a Priest Fraternity office, on 43rd Street in New York,was so much like the office of the Association to Promote Eskimo Culturethat Dr. Planish was confused. The lone employee, a plump secretarynamed Miss Kremitz, so much resembled Miss Cantlebury of the Eskimooffice that he felt like sitting down and finishing the letter that hehad derisively left undone when he deserted to William T. Knife.

But when he went through the files, he found that this shop was notablydifferent from that of Captain Gishorn, who was as methodical about theaffairs of the Devil as Carlyle Vesper was slipshod about the service ofthe Lord. Here were unanswered letters--one, actually, a query from thewealthy chain-store man, Albert Jalenak, about the Fraternity's aims.

"Gosh all gracious!" winced the professional, "and Jalenak the veryfinest type of conscience-drugging philanthrobber! Why, he might havecome through with five hundred! What kind of a way to promote the Lordis that--not answer feeler letters by return mail! Shocking!"

He found that Vesper hadn't even "elected," as organizations playfullycall it, an impressive front of general officers and honorary directors.He fretted, "How right Peony was! All Vesper really has here is hisidea, which isn't new, and the support of Mrs. Piggott and RamonaTundra, which isn't ironclad. I've got to go see those old girls andfind out where we are."

He telephoned, inviting himself to meet them at tea at the old Piggottresidence on lower Madison Avenue, not many squares from the J. P.Morgan blockhouse which still defends the last pioneer white settlers.

He arrived at Mrs. Piggott's without Vesper--and without Vesper'sknowledge.

He felt at home in that ancient hallway, with a teak throne and a marblePsyche holding a gas-lighted torch. He felt that he natively belonged tothis house with its resounding memory of past grandeur and of the epochwhen a man's goodness could be exactly measured by the number of hismillions. Nor was he embarrassed by the craggy old woman and the slimfaded actress who awaited him on a worn satin couch behind a tea-tablewith a Georgian hot-water kettle resembling Mont-St.-Michel.

On the wall, in a shadow-box, was Mrs. Piggott's portrait by Sargent.

He accepted tea--yes, thanks, he would have just a wee drop of rum init; he didn't ordinarily indulge, but it was raw today. Yes, it would befine if everybody could feel Carlyle Vesper's high exaltation.

He mentioned his professorship, his deanhood, his installation of rusticeducation and Eskimos. Gently laughing at himself, he recalled saying,at the White House, "Mr. President, I trust you remember that somepeople didn't make their wealth by brigandage but by being exceptionallystrong." (Maybe he really had said something like that, but maybe thePresident had not heard him properly, as there were fifteen hundredother people at that reception.) He touched on the characters andprivate ambitions of the Secretary of State, the presidents of Yale,Harvard and the University of Chicago, without feeling called upon toexplain that his conversations with all of them had been limited to "Howdo."

All this presented modestly, with many little razor-blades of commentwhich showed that he understood the ladies' own great position. Theylistened with increasing trustfulness until his actor's instinct, soimportant to salesmen of philanthropy, told him that the time had cometo play Old Family Doctor.

He gravely pushed the tea-table away, took both of Mrs. Piggott's agedhands, and started building his great second-act speech:

"Dear Mrs. Piggott, and you, dear girl" (Miss Tundra was, he calculated,at least thirty-five), "both of you, I have shockingly bad news. Let'stake it in our stride and take it with a brave smile, and get it over.The Every Man Fraternity can't go on. It's finished."

"M?"

"It's a shame. I'd hoped, after my years of training, to find mylifework here. And I'd hoped that your two names would go down inhistory as the twin founders of a spiritual reform so powerful that itmight be called a new religion, like Mrs. Eddy or Madame Blavatsky orSt. Cecilia. But what do I discover when I get here and look over thebooks and files?

"Letters unanswered. Lists of names with the wrong addresses and even,believe it or not, the wrong titles--a high-class Methodist divine downas 'Mister' and not as 'Doctor'. Now perhaps I could correct all thisbut----

"We have at the moment only $9,044.37 in the treasury, and need I tellyou two, who have handled weightier business affairs than most mere menever thought of, that we couldn't even begin to spread this gospel ofsimplicity and unworldliness for less than thirty-five thousand dollarsfor a starter? So--but what a pity!--we'll have to let the whole thinggo."

In the look that Mrs. Piggott and Miss Tundra exchanged his expert eyeappraised a further twenty thousand. He hit again, quickly.

"And not only that, but a more spiritual matter. Carlyle Vesper is aseer and a saint--the most forgiving man I've ever encountered.Yet--well, I suppose he's one of these impractical souls that have to bemanaged. You would think that with his training in accountancy andoffice technique, he'd at least answer letters from poor, groping,soul-hungry seekers----"

He had not much farther to go before Mrs. Piggott nodded to Miss Tundra,who interrupted him, "Yes, we can see that, Doctor. It's like aheaven-sent cinema artist trying to produce and distribute. I think Imay speak for Lady Piggott, as I always call her, when I say that we'realready agreed you ought to be the boss--Director General would be alovely title--and you can let Mr. Vesper go on dreaming his dear,lovely, lonely lotus dreams apart from all the hurly-burly, and isn't itfortunate that he's a widower without children--I'm sure he'll beperfectly happy on thirty-five dollars a week, instead of the fifty thatwe have been temporarily allowing him."

Dr. Planish breathed hard; then he besought the two religion-founders,"But I'm not worthy to go to that noble spirit and tell him----"

"I'm worthy! I'm good at that!" announced Mrs. Piggott. "You let me tellhim. I'll get him right down here. Poor Doctor, I know how hard it is onyou!" He was suspicious, but he decided that she meant it. "Don't goback to the office this afternoon, and when you go in tomorrow, you'llfind everything all okay and sublimated, or do I mean substantiated?"

* * * * *

He felt that for once he could afford the most delicate luxury heknew--having "the works" at the Gyro Building Barber Shop.

As he rode uptown by taxicab, he was only briefly bothered aboutVesper's downfall. "After all, any other executive would have thrown himright out on his ear, and not even allowed him to stay on as a flunky.Besides! I hope I'm a just and humanitarian man, and for myself I don'twant anything, but when people get in the way of Peony's rights, Godhelp 'em!"

The Gyro Building was only the fourth highest in Manhattan, onlyseventy-nine stories, but it had more aluminum, more black glass, andmore murals by Communist artists than any other building in the world,including Moscow.

The young Gid Planish, back in Adelbert College, had frequented the shopof an aged German barber, which smelled of bay rum and cigar-smoke andpeace. The barber was one of the few people in town who took Gidseriously; he consulted Gid tolerantly about his preference in hairstyles and his opinion of free silver. The place had been a refuge, ahealing, and ever since then a barber shop had meant escape.

But his tastes in size and glossiness and gadgetry had grown.

The Gyro shop was on the forty-seventh floor, and he rode up in anelevator lined with marquetry depicting the chase of Diana. At the shopentrance, the manager, who tried to resemble Adolphe Menjou, said "Goodafternoon, Doctor."

"Why, they know who I am!" rejoiced Dr. Planish.

It was quite a barber shop. While America might not as yet havedeveloped a Sibelius, it could substitute for the shabby hairdressers'dens of Europe the combined genius of Edison, Frank Lloyd Wright,Steinmetz and Delilah.

There were forty barber chairs, upholstered in yellow leather, andtwenty manicure tables, and ten bootblacks in Roumanian uniform, withthe manager in his Easter-morning costume, and a cashier who had oncebeen in a Follies chorus. The shrine was as filled with Beauty as it waswith Service. The walls were of black marble with green veins, thewashbowls of dark green porcelain, and the cupboard-doors werebrass-bound mirrors. The composition floor was patterned in zodiacsymbols of yellow and black, and the silvered ceiling was paneled, withinverted onyx bowls for the indirect lighting.

Here was the very sign and heart of the Metropolis which now, for thefirst time, Dr. Planish had conquered, and started to loot.

He did not encourage the barber's conversation, but sat in an ecstasy ofsilence, thinking how he could most dramatically tell Peony, waiting forhim in their cheap hotel, the news that he now ranked with Chris Sternor Captain Gishorn.

He did have "the works": a manicure by a red-head who squeezed his soapyfingers; a hair-trim, a beard-trim, a shave, a face-massage, an oilshampoo, a shine, an electrical treatment with horrible little rubbertits, and a final Assyrian smearing with lilac ointment and violetlotion.

Yet after a time his dreams were so disturbed by the babble of hisnext-chair neighbor that virtue passed out of them, and he began tomutter to himself, through the scented foam, "Barber--barbarous;manicure--manicdepressive; electric massage--electric chair."

The neighbor was evidently an Important Man. He was having a quantity ofexpensive things done all at once: not only reveling in a massage andshine and manicure, but receiving telegrams from a Western Union boy andgiving messages for a page to transmit by telephone. He was talkingabout the Spanish Republicans (he didn't care for them), the races atHialeah, his new girl, who was in a floor show, and real-estate pricesin La Jolla. He had, he informed the listening world, a yacht that would"sleep eight and eat twenty," and he had once lost thirty-five hundreddollars at roulette.

This magnificence so submerged the Doctor that suddenly he was no longera conquering Hun of humanitarianism, but just Doc Planish, a Kinnikinickprof.

He went through the rest of his orgy as voluptuously as he could;powdered and pink and brushed and polished, he tipped spaciously, boughta large cigar, and went through the delicious nuisance of breaking thecellophane wrapper.

But as he tried to parade into their sordid side-street-hotel parlorlike a Hialeah plunger, he gave way, ran to Peony, muttered, "I went andsaw the Piggott woman and we got her for all the money we need, and I'mVesper's boss now," then whimpered like a small boy. And his fat andpretty wife sobbed joyfully with him.

But young Carrie said, "The assistant manager of this hotel has a petcoon that eats Brussels sprouts."

* * * * *

An hour after this, a self-educated ex-bookkeeper named Vesper, who halfan hour ago had been told by a high-spirited old lady what anunsystematic fool he was, walked quietly into his furnished room, in anold house that smelled of generations of death.

It was a small bedroom and, aside from a table, a chair, a bed, abureau, a sink and a pile of books, mostly lives of the saints, therewas not much in it but an old photograph of a lovely girl, a bundle ofletters and a full bottle of strong sleeping tablets.

Vesper sat for some time on the bed, staring at the wall where two evilblotches made the design of a gallows. He rose, looked at the photographof the girl, took the bundle of her letters, and read them all. Hecarefully retied them. He hesitated for a while. Then he drew a halfglass of water at the sink, and one by one he dropped the fifty sleepingtablets into it.

"It will be bitter," he said, aloud but without perceptible emotion.

He lay on the bed, the drugged glass at hand on the straight chair.

His head, on the pillow, was turned toward the girl's photograph. Helooked at it for a long time.

"All right, Mary," he said aloud.

He rose hastily, threw the contents of the charged glass into the sink,and fell again upon the bed. He was sobbing, not as Peony had sobbed,but dryly and painfully and alone.

"I wish now I'd drunk it. It's the anti-climax that's so clownishlyhorrible," he choked. "But this too, O Lord, shall pass away. Grant mestrength even to be ridiculous, for Thy sake. Amen."

All that evening, all that night, unfed but empty of hunger, he slept inspasms. In the morning he went to the Every Man a Priest Fraternityoffice and told Dr. Planish--after that worthy had got through hisrecitative of booming and manly and cordial lies--that he was ready totake orders. Perhaps he was one who could not work without orders. Tohimself he said that he had hoped it would be God who would give theorders, but perhaps Brother Planish could hear them better and interpretthem for him.... Not in our time, O Lord.

Within a week he was trotting out on office errands. Dr. Planish was notoften impatient with his absent-minded pokiness--not very impatient--notvery often.

From that time on, Carlyle Vesper was errand boy or typist or emergencyaccountant in one tender-hearted organization after another until hedied.... Once, at Christmas, he got a ten-dollar bonus.

Chapter 25

Dr. Gideon Planish was a man not slothful, not tardy, but forever goingabout his master's business--Peony being his master.

The office routine at the Every Man a Priest Fraternity was almost tooeasy for him. As automatically as a spider spits out thread, he wrotethe suitable "literature," and it was sent to the old Eskimo Culturelist of prospects, explaining that in this Desperate Crisis, unless theyran, not walked, to their desks and instantly made out checks to theEvery Man Fraternity, it was doubtful if Christianity would last tillmid-August.

He did not fret over the returns, for Mrs. Piggott and Miss Tundra weregenerous--so far. To his expert and cynical eye it was certain not onlythat some day these ladies would go gunning for something newer andsexier, for Communism or Anti-Communism or Glands or Vitamins orSurrealism, but that in his next incarnation as a messiah, he would haveto take a drop from his present salary of six thousand to forty-five orsix hundred.

But as he said merrily to his wife, "It's a swell racket while itlasts--and of course, baby, I don't mean 'racket' in any invidioussense--in fact, I'm fully conscious of my privilege in being able topour new wine into a church that has become stultified by formalism andby the very grandeur of its imposing----"

"There's a swell movie at the Tetrarch-Plaza," said Peony.

* * * * *

He showed his industry and social value by writing and sending out freeto interested friends a pamphlet on the need of introducing modernscience and economic distribution into religion. The only time CarlyleVesper made any trouble was when, after reading Dr. Planish'smasterpiece, "More Horse-Power in the Chancel," he complained, "But,Brother, it seems to me that instead of breaking away from the churchmachine, you're trying to turn the professional preachers into salesengineers. Of course I'm not a man of much book education----"

"No, Carlyle; if you will pardon me, you're not!" Dr. Planish was asgenial as a hangman. "Can't you see that just now, with an upset world,it isn't the time to start these revolutionary experiments that willdisturb people's sense of confidence and alienate a lot of the best andmost responsive top men? No, no. You really must trust the widerjudgment and sharper sense of spiritual technique that I have acquiredover so many years."

"I see. Well, excuse me, Brother. You told me to take some copy to theprinter."

Vesper's peasant habit of calling him "Brother" was Dr. Planish's onlymosquito on this outing.

* * * * *

Every national organization is afflicted by crank letters and fanaticcallers, but nowhere had they been such pests as at the Every Man aPriest Fraternity.

Nine-page mimeographed documents with shaky additions in pen, promisingthe solution of international enmity by using wooden money, or by havingthe world controlled by a board composed of the Pope, Josef Stalin andthe author of the suggestion, who would work cheap. Pathetic lettersfrom old ladies about ancestral first editions of Robert J. Ingersoll,which they were now forced to part with. Brusque letters frombusinessmen beginning, "What do you guys think you're up to?" Vastytelegrams from young preachers who would be very appreciative of tenthousand dollars, to be sent by return wire, with which they could go toEdinburgh and study. Callers with information about the Occult InnerSecrets of Subconscious All-Power as Revealed to a Scotch Geologist andPoet in an Ancient and Hidden Monastery in Tibet. The unemployedmusician who came in and wept about his wife, and wouldn't quit weepingand go away for less than a dollar, cash.

At last Dr. Planish saw a way of making Vesper really earn histhirty-five a week. He turned all the crank letters and irritatingcallers over to Vesper, and he himself was left free to hold meetings inMiss Ramona Tundra's suite in the Ritz Towers, and to get betteracquainted with "Deacon" Wheyfish.

* * * * *

The Hon. Ernest Wheyfish, ex-congressman, author of Make Them Pay WhileThey Pray, was not a nice man, but he was an authority on Giving toPhilanthropies, and an inspired diagnostician of Prospects. Let him takean ordinary sucker list and he could, by innate genius, by an inner andspiritual nose, smell out the fact that this name was useless, but thatother marked a man who could be encouraged to double his annualcontribution.

He stood four-square on the principle that, far from harvesting only therich and middle-class, we ought to look on the glorious majority of thepoor as a philanthropic field yet unplowed, but so fertile that thepioneer fund-raiser could only lift up his eyes in thanksgiving.

He peeped into every new organization to promote religion--and therewere perhaps six new ones a week in New York City--because thesebush-leaguers might have some new ideas, and new philanthrobbers to tap.Sometimes it was even worth while combining with them, and laterdropping their original founders out of the window while keeping theirtypewriters, wastebaskets, pretty stenographers and lists of supporters.

Deacon Wheyfish had originally been proprietor of an organization calledthe National Christian Excelsior Crusade, which, even more piously thanthe Cizkon, promulgated the principle that if you can get your workersto attend prayer-meeting and to buy their own homes, on time, then youhave them where you want them. But he had now divided this sacredassembly into two bodies: The Family Prayer Crusade, managed byConstantine Kelly, that unreconstructed Brooklyn Irishman who said hewas a Baptist and in fact crossed himself every time he saw aRockefeller; and the mammoth Blessed to Give Brotherhood, of which theDeacon was president, executive secretary and, decidedly, the treasurer.

The Blessed to Give was the department store of philanthropicenterprises. It was interested in helping out fifty different charities.Often it worked through apparently rival associations, and it announced,"Whenever we see that somebody can do any given job better than we can,we do not hesitate to pass any contribution right on to them, with nocharge for routing or bookkeeping."

In his first week at the Every Man Fraternity, Dr. Planish received anunsolicited check for five dollars from the Blessed to Give, with anexplanation from Deacon Wheyfish that in return he wanted nothing but akind smile--and some names of interesting new contributors.

There were scurrilous and uncharitable enemies who charged that quite alittle of the money stuck to the Blessed to Give mail-chute in passingon, but the Deacon in answer published a budget showing that he, as theofficers, couldn't have kept more than $942.00 a year out ofcontributions of $200,000.

Deacon the Honorable Wheyfish looked as a grasshopper would look if ithad a rough complexion and wore a Biblical white tie and clocked bluesocks.

There were friends of the Deacon who said that he should have gone onand become one of the professional money-raisers who do not spoil theirpure art by fussing over where the money goes, but are engaged to put oncampaigns for a college, a church or a Christian mission to China.

The best of the money-raisers will not waste time on any objective undera hundred thousand dollars; they much prefer a million; and they get, astheir fee, an amount which equals anywhere from five per cent toninety-five per cent of the total blessed treasure. They represent suchnoble causes that they can command cabinet officers to preside atdinners, and permit bishops to introduce strip-teasers at spectaclesattracting 25,000 persons at five dollars each. They efficiently makeuse of the "boiler-room," in which caramel-voiced young women sit allday long, telephoning to hundreds of strangers, "This is Judge Wallaby'ssecretary, and His Honor would like you to buy four ten-dollar ticketsto the Fiduciaries' Fund Festival. If you'll have the check ready, I'llsend right over for it." (Judge Wallaby? Is he that demon of the trafficcourt? You buy the tickets.)

Deacon Wheyfish might actually have become one of these highermoney-raisers, even though most of them were Eastern university men withPhi Beta Kappa keys, who could placidly entertain their captives at theBrahmin Club; but he jeered that he'd rather run his own show, and nothave to kiss the feet of a lot of old male hags. He remained supreme inhis smaller world, revered even if he wasn't liked by his felloworganizators, and when he invited Dr. Planish to a lunch of executivesand publicity counsels, the Doctor was delighted to go.

* * * * *

There were only a dozen men and four women at the luncheon, a simplerepast of inedible food in a private room over an Italian restaurant,but those sixteen people had the strength of sixty in influencing thecourse of good works. Dr. Planish was there, and Chris Stern, ofcourse, and Professor Goetz Buchwald, Commander Orris Gall of theZero-Hour American National Committee for the Organization of GlobalCo-operation. Rabbi Lichtenselig, Professor Campion of the Children'sRe-education Program, and rather unexpectedly, since he was a gay andcharming man, the most intelligent in the room, Dr. Nahum Lloyd,graduate of Howard University and secretary of the Cultural League forthe Colored Races.

Dr. Planish approved much less of Dr. Lloyd than of the distinguishedDr. Elmer Gantry, who was torridly also present. Dr. Gantry was pastorof the Spiritual Home Methodist Tabernacle on Morningside Heights, buthe was better known as a radio pastor, with his weekly Torch Sermons andSwing Sermons and Blue Sermons and Vitamin Sermons, in which, with asplendid combination of modern slang and long hard words, he tried toshow the younger generation that God is in the automobile just as muchas He was in the oldtime hay-ride. Quite a number of lady societyreporters and several male editorial writers had noted that "There is nobetter living exponent of a streamlined gospel than Dr. Gantry." But hedid not appear at today's luncheon as a latter-day Henry Ward Beecher,but as the directive secretary of the Society for the Rehabilitation ofErring Young Women.

Deacon Wheyfish arose and spoke to them, earnestly:

"Our friend Dr. Gideon Planish, who has had such a rich and variedexperience in the nation's capital, but who tells me that he ispractically a stranger in New York, and whom we are glad to welcome toorganizational circles here, is, as you can see, a sterling character,but I'm afraid he's a bit of a naughty fellow, too, because, with thatsparkling wit of his, he refers to the gentry of our profession as'organizators'.

"But what I think he is getting at is that all of us ought to have amuch more hardboiled professional attitude, instead of the sentimentalapproach, and, say, he's dead-right--you bet he is. What we need todayis to perceive that raising money, raising lots of money, not for onesingle second stopping in raising all the money we possibly can and thengoing beyond that and doing the impossible in money-raising--this isnot, as some old-fashioned sentimentalists like to think, just a minordetail and bother in organizational work, but our first big duty, ourvery biggest one, first, last and all the time.

"We all talk too much about the supposed purposes of ourorganizations: how we feed so and so many children or help the victimsof T.B. That work is glorious, that is near divine, and yet I'm going toventure a statement so radical that it will probably land me right inMoscow with the other reds, for I want to tell you right here and nowthat our primary mission isn't to spend the money we collect, but totrain people, all the people, to give, to give generously, to keep ongiving not only to accomplish charitable ends, but to expand their ownmiserable, narrow peanut souls by the divine habit of giving.

"If they come to me and squeal and carry on and say that if they give asI want 'em to, it's going to cramp their family lives and keep theirchildren from having a lot of fool extras like music and endanger theirsavings accounts and so on and so forth, then I don't tell 'em I'msorry--not me, not one bit of it. No, sir! I say, 'That's fine, Brother!Now you're learning to give in Jesus's way--to give till it hurts--yes,and hurts your family as well as yourself. That's fine,' I say. You bet!

"And when a lot of cranks and critics and mean-souled little carpers andcussers come around and say, 'Deacon, where's your financialreport--where's your certified proof that you haven't wasted anymoney?'--why, then, I feel like saying to 'em, 'Damn it'--yessir, I getso mad I could curse--I feel like saying, 'Damn it, how do youcold-hearted and cold-faced carpers and critics know but what maybe thebest training to expand the soul of man is to dig down for money thatsomebody will waste!'... Not, you understand, that we ever do wasteone cent or even get any real salaries at the Blessed to GiveBrotherhood, and our books are audited by the great firm of French,Saffron and Gubbey, C.P.A.'s, you understand, and show that every pennycontributed to us, except for the items of overhead, postage, printingand rent, goes directly to some great body dealing with domestic orforeign relief, every last penny! You bet!

"As many of you know, philanthropy, in hard dollars and cents, alreadyranks eighth among the major industries of America. But it ought to rankfirst. What can a man purchase in the way of a motor car, a bathtub or aradio that will afford him such spiritual benefit, or for that mattersuch keen pride and pleasure and social prestige, as the knowledge thathe is permitting the better organization executives the means and theleisure to go around doing good, and the reputation of being the bestgiver in his whole neighborhood? We may have to hypnotize him a littleto make him realize that, but how satisfied he will be when he does! Youbet!

"The philanthropic industry has been steadily increasing, but notbecause of any improving generosity or imagination among the great bodyof givers--not on your life--the sluggards--bless 'em! It's only becausethey've been scientifically coaxed to give--scientifically, mind you.The raising of funds must be a separate calling, with an infallibletechnique. And yet some of you, my friends, tend to forget this, and goaround daydreaming about what good you'd do if you only had the cash,instead of tackling it the scientific way; first raising the cash, andthen seeing if there's some good you can do with it. You all know, orought to, that far beyond the fancy reasons that we spring in publicaddresses--like native virtue and friendliness and the responsibilitieswe're supposed to feel toward one another in a democracy--far beyondthese are the two real factors: improved methods of obtaining gifts onour part, like using the radio and movie stars; and then, when we getfolks into it, making them keep up the habit of giving.

"That's our job. Don't reason with folks--get them into the habit offilling out pledge cards just as regularly as they brush their teeth,and make 'em feel guilty as hell if they fail to do either one! You bet!

"You know that it's been determined that the habit of giving is on threestages. Highest of them is the passionate love of God--though I'm sorryto say that in the budget, the gifts from this class don't add up verybig--there's too few of 'em. Then there's the class that gives from akind of restless feeling that they ought to be useful. Lowest, but maybemost important of all to unprejudiced thinkers like ourselves, is theclass that is pushed by fear, vanity and self-interest: the fellows thatare afraid of revolution, the silly woman that gives us maybe one-tenthof what she spends on war-paint, maybe, so that she'll get praised asgenerous, and be invited on important committees.

"Now there we have the whole darn thing worked out, in perhaps the mostprofound psychological analysis since Freud invented birth-control, andyet what do we do? We go on circularizing and making personal appealsand getting our front, the top men, to telephone to all three of theseclasses of donors on exactly the same grounds, instead of laying ourplans to attack each one separate, and with a different appeal. That'swhy philanthropy is only the eighth industry, that's why so many dollarsgo to the automobile tycoons that properly belong in our coffers, andit's all our fault.

"But what really gets my goat is the highly undemocratic belief that themass of the people are so miserably shiftless and ornery that they don'teven want to join their betters in giving. I tell you, I come from thecommonest kind of common people, and I resent the imputation against themorale of this great class, and the unprofessional incompetence thatfails to see that here is not a negligible but the very most importantsource of fund-raising.

"It's the deepest and richest mine in the country, and yet it hasn'thardly been prospected. Don't the Scriptures say, 'As a man thinketh, sohe is'? Well, if you'll get your thinking right, and on a higherplane, you'll realize that there's almost a hundred and thirty millionpeople in this far-flung land, and that, at a mere dollar apiece, meansone--hundred--and--thirty--million gold simoleons, and I guess that'sworth the attention of even a highbrow like Dr. Planish or ProfessorBuchwald!

"Yes, sir, the fundamental principle of the art and profession ofincreasing the universal giving of money is that mighty few people dogive much unless they're asked to give. And it's up to us,particularly in these necessitous days when the war clouds seem to berolling up over Europe, to up and gird our loins and ask--anddemand--and insist--that those hundred and thirty millions come throughfor the titanic moral and patriotic plans that we have so competentlylaid out, but in which we are checked for the lack of just a few pitifulmillions of dollars. Now is the time! Don't forget that the menace ofwar, properly presented, will scare into giving even those people, richor poor, who have been the most obdurate to our pitiful appeals forhelp.

"Come on, gentlemen and ladies, get out from under that bushel and, onbehalf of the suffering and ignorant multitude, hit that line ofpotential lower-bracket contributors, and hit it hard! You bet yourlife!"

* * * * *

Dr. Planish was inspired by this Patrick Henry of philanthropy, andinspired further by attending a two-day Round Table Conference conductedby Commander Orris Gall, which presented a series of papers ongeopolitics, the certainty that Hitler would some day go to war, thecertainty that he wouldn't, and the use of graphs. It was like thecontents of a very earnest and well-bred magazine that was, during theincarceration of the editorial staff, being conducted by severalcandidates for the Ph.D. degree.

Out of all this Dr. Planish was beginning to weave a plan. He wouldmerge dozens of organizations--Wheyfish's, Kelly's, Gall's, Kitto's,Stern's--into one, and let these men in as vice-presidents, but he wouldbe the supreme head, though at first he might work under Colonel CharlesB. Marduc, the master as he was the publicizer of American speed andidealism. The time for his central powerhouse might not come for anotheryear or two, but now he was ready to meet and really talk to theColonel. His ambition was settled; his home was settled.

In Greenwich Village, on Charles Street, they had found an oldish housewhich pleased the Doctor by its cheapness, Peony by its talldrawing-room windows, Carrie by having a garden simply roaring withcats.

The gold and scarlet Chinese Chippendale cabinet, the blue Chinese rug,the jade Chinese lamp, the birch radio cabinet, and the portable barcould all rest now, happier than they had ever been, in the longdrawing-room with its marble fireplace. There were four master bedrooms,which gave young Carrie a room of her own, and gave Dr. Planish a study,into which he fondly dragged the old splintered desk he had used as acollege instructor.

They had a home now, and they were only a step or two from glory.

Chapter 26

Rich old Mrs. Piggott had become bored with Every Man being a priest,and for two years now Dr. Planish had been with the Blessed to GiveBrotherhood. His salary there had been reasonably adjusted at $4,800 ayear.

He didn't very much like his commander, Deacon Ernest Wheyfish, to whomPeony referred as "Soapy Ernie," but with him the Doctor had takenprofound graduate work in the professions of fund-raising andorganization-executivity. He had learned that, against all the theoriesof the Reverend Dr. Christian Stern, the bounteous blessings ofpublicity had no value in collecting the temple money unless they weresharply followed up by solicitation.

As Deacon Wheyfish often said, "Don't wait for the widow to bring in hermite. Get right after her at the wash-tub."

This was not so merrily metaphorical as it sounded. The Deaconspecialized on bequests from wealthy widows and, if he did not think thebequest was coming, in a dignified cat-burglar way he went right in tothe death-bed and demanded it.... Did Mrs. Jones go off to Heavenwithout leaving a lot to the Brotherhood in her will, would she not lookdown o'er the golden bar and realize that solely as a result of her owncarelessness there were evil and hunger in the world? And there was noexcuse for her. Honorable Wheyfish had regular printed Forms of Bequestprepared for her use.

He once took Dr. Planish along when he prayed with an aged and affluentwoman who, the Deacon calculated, was good for about one more week--justtime to make a codicil to her will.

Embarrassed, a little itchy, Dr. Planish stood back in a corner of thestifling rich room while Deacon Wheyfish happily banged right down onhis knees beside the bed, held the old woman's dry skeleton hand, andwhooped, "O Lord God, Thou knowest that our sister here has been a goodwoman. It is none of our business to inquire to what charities she hasbequeathed such a share of her earthly store as Thou, who didst say'Give all thou hast to the poor' would approve of, but Thou knowest thather saintly heart and searching mind will have picked out and appointedfor the dispensation of that gift some person or organization who willnot take anything for himself, and with the expert knowledge to disburseit where it will do the most good."

When he had finished the prayer, the old lady asked timidly, "Could youtell me what is the surest way of making sure that my bequests willreally accomplish what I want them to?"

"Well, I did have a date with an archbishop, but I am always at theservice of suffering humanity," granted the Deacon, briskly drawing achair up to the bed and taking out of his pocket Blessed to Give Folder#8A3--the engraved one.

Dr. Planish was just a little sick.

He reflected, "It's great technique, and I certainly don't look down onit, but I do wish I could be in some organization where the money rolledin just as fast but the aims were more refined."

* * * * *

Ernest Wheyfish was the first organizator to go right after the largecorporations, which, to save their corporate souls and keep down incometaxes, were now sending checks to philanthropies. As he himself gailysaid, "No one else put so much punch into selling the fat boys on theidea that we who tote the grievous load of raising funds should be takenjust as seriously in the financial line as any other merchant." So itcame to pass that a corporation which employed two chemists, threeindustrial engineers, a Burmese explorer, an interpreter, and a pressagent to reduce the cost of cable $00.0001 per yard, handed over largechecks to Deacon Wheyfish for distribution as he pleased--merely withthe prayer that this offering to the tribal priesthood might, by somepious magic, propitiate the dark diabolic powers of the New Deal and theCongress.

Wheyfish, a little later, was one of the first to note that when theGovernment permitted a fifteen per cent deduction from income taxes forcharities, this really didn't mean that the tax-payer could give awayfifteen per cent, but that he had to give it, and that Ernest Wheyfishwas practically the Government official put there to receive it. His new"literature," prepared by Dr. Planish, was starred and shining withreferences to "15%--be generous without its costing anything," andhinted that if you didn't do this, the Government would merely take itin taxes anyway, and waste it on a lot of worthless loafers, so that agift to Wheyfish was practically a social duty.

"Sometimes I wonder if I ought to write that stuff. It seems almostagainst true charitableness," Dr. Planish fretted to Peony.

"You're always so conscientious," she admired.

"I know what I could do--make Vesper write that junk for me."

"But would he? He's such a sanctimonious crank."

"He'll damn well do what I tell him to, after the loyalty I've shownhim--almost risking my own job, getting the Deacon to take him over fromthe Every Man at thirty a week. Oh, yes, I think Mr. Saintly J. Vesperis beginning to realize that in this world, one should be sanctifiedin purpose but practical in methods. Well, Mrs. Planish, and what wouldyou say to a bottle of Rhine wine?"

"Why, I think I would say, 'Thank you very much, Professor Planish, yousweet, saintly, and sanctified honeybee!'"

* * * * *

Wheyfish and Planish had the triumph of adding to their national boardof directors no less a derivative power than Major Harold Homeward, theson-in-law of Colonel Charles B. Marduc and legal husband of Marduc'sdaughter, who was known to all Intellectuals as "Talking Winifred."

Peony demanded of the Doctor, "I hear this Major Homeward that you'vegot hold of is a regular polo-hound. You got to buy him for me. You meetall these big-money boys, but what about me?"

"Dearie, some day you'll be really meeting Colonel Marduc himself, rightat his own home, maybe, if you'll be patient and give me time."

"Yes, that'd be wonderful, and I do believe you might pull it off."

"I'm not going to work for Soapy Ernie in that factory forever. I wantan organization of my own."

"That's the dope," said Mrs. Planish.

"Somehow," said Dr. Planish, "I have a hunch about Marduc."

* * * * *

Colonel Charles B. Marduc was a military man as well as an advertisingagent and an owner of magazines. He had been a fighting major in WorldWar I, then a colonel in the New York National Guard. In 1937, he wasfifty-five, and a fine, upstanding, silver-and-cherry buck, a biggishman, though with his ambitiousness you would have expected to find him ajittery terrier who went around barking "Notice me!"

He admired Napoleon and General Franco of Spain. Out of liquor, hetalked about being liberal; but in it, he talked about being a StrongMan.

He was the legitimate son of an Upper New York State lawyer who becamerichly interested in manufacturing carpets and became a judge; he wasgraduated from Harvard, with no small fame for wenching and forremembering dates in history; he was a reporter, and then the owner ofseveral small-town newspapers before he discovered the sociologicalprinciple, later worked out by professors in the Harvard School ofBusiness Administration, that Advertising is a valuable economic factorbecause it is the cheapest way of selling goods, particularly if thegoods are worthless. Thus it was really along the line of Social Servicethat his larger career began.

He was the president of Marduc, Syco & Sagg--formerly Marduc & Syco--whohad been pioneers, more like military strategists, really, in both radioadvertising and scientific research into retail markets--a Service givenstrictly free to customers. They had been the first to broadcast thesong of the English skylark--sponsors, the King David Matzos Makers; andthe first to let the radio world (far-flung) hear the cry of a just-bornbaby, in promotion of Vitaminized Vermont Flapjack Flour.

But the Colonel remained very Harvard through all of it, and at everyannual football game, his Assyrian eyebrows came down on the quakinghosts of Bowdoin.

He was a publisher as well as an advertising man, and the chief owner ofthe Zinc Trades Monitor, the Housewife's Monthly Budget, theInstallment Plan Dealers' Trade Tips, and of that popular journalLowdown, which presented the confessions of highly seduced youngwomen, as written by aged male hacks and illustrated with photographs ofthe most virtuous models in Manhattan.

He was also a vestryman of St. Cunegonde's Protestant Episcopal Church,and for years he had longed and plotted to become President of theUnited States.

Illicit strangers were always running about with rumors that he wantedto be President, so naturally he denied the rumors with irritation:"These fellows apparently know more about my purposes than I do myself!Very kind of 'em to volunteer to represent me! But seriously, I'vealready got more than I can do, trying to grease the wheels of commerce.I tend strictly to my own business."

He did, too, and also to the business of quite a number of other people.

He honestly felt that he had to become President, to save the countryfrom sliding down through New Deal Socialism into anarchy. Once, atlunch, he firmly told his brilliant daughter, Winifred Marduc Homeward,"Without any special pleasure in it, I can see that I have the best mindin the country." She, the dear loyal soul, agreed with him, and told thenews to ever so many people.

There was only one thing that kept him from springing into a flaming seaof publicity, of dinners and tours and photographs and interviews, andthus swimming to the Presidency and saving democracy for the commonpeople. That was the fact that he couldn't endure the touch of thecommon people. He felt that they were all fools and all noisy and allsmelly. It had kept him out of any race for the State Legislature, thenational Congress.

He had a large fame, but it was subterranean. Everyone in the world ofprinting and cafés knew of him and of his desire to sacrifice himself asPresident; everyone in the organizational world thought of him as younglovers think of Helen. All executive secretaries tried to get him to"write a little piece--just something off-hand that you can dictate toyour secretary in five minutes--for our monthly bulletin." They coaxedhim to preside at dinners and to stand at the microphone and say thatagriculture is fine and brushing the teeth is fine, but most inspiringof all is the money-raising campaign of the Amalgamated Pan-nationalInterdenominational Committee for Study of and Union between the Kremlinand the Methodist Board of Public Morals.

One invitation out of one hundred Colonel Marduc accepted--preferably adinner attended by the President's wife, by the University of Michiganfootball coach or by Professor Einstein. But he escaped the photographsand the eye-searing flashlights in the anteroom before the dinners, thehandshaking and the "I don't know whether you'll remember me but I metyou" afterward, by actually eating comfortably at home or at the club,not showing up at the dinner till nine-fifteen, and leaving always assoon as he had done his act.

Among the thousands of professional advertising men in America, only afew hundred were popularly known as literary, emotional and visionary;only six as positively scientific; and of this latter class, ColonelMarduc was the leader.

He made round-voiced speeches before church conventions, collegeassemblies and sociological conferences, proving that modern advertisingwas the cheapest way of selling goods, that it was a gallery of cooingprose and lifting pictures, and that it, single-handed, had providedwhat he called "Mr. Average American" with the silver-plated automaticelectric toaster, the recorded works of Friml and Johann Sebastian Bach,the juke-boxes, two-ton trucks, two-tone summer shoes, tooth-paste whicheliminated all dentists, radios which enabled the listener to hear thesame jazz from Schenectady and then from Siam, mouth-wash that wasequally useful for sweetening the breath, removing dandruff and as acocktail in Prohibition territory, and all the other miracles that hadmade Mr. Average American the happiest and prettiest human being thathad ever existed.

These facts Colonel Marduc proved with graphs, statistics and fury, andhe became so esteemed as a man of science that he received two Litt.D.degrees, one M.Sc., four LL.D.'s, one L.H.D., and decorations fromGermany, Italy and the D.A.R.

And yet his mistresses always said, sooner or later, that Colonel Marducwas not a man they cared to know.

These ladies were never Anglo-Saxon. The Colonel detested all Americanand English women, and his playmates were Italian, Greek,Russian-Jewish, French, or Chinese. They sharpened him up, and with themhe could laugh--for a few weeks. His regular system for getting rid ofthem, as precise and tested as one of his firm's marketing reports,always started with a sudden and justifiable quarrel, and rarely costhim much money.

His wife must still have been alive in 1937, but nobody could quiteremember. She was important only as having contributed to the dynastythe Colonel's daughter, Winifred, and she had been broken-hearted andsweetly mute for so long now that nobody noticed it any more.

But Winifred, Winifred Marduc Homeward, that was something else; thatwas a woman, the woman, the American woman careerist, and it is areasonable bet that in 1955 she will be dictator of the United Statesand China.

Winifred Homeward the Talking Woman.

She was an automatic, self-starting talker. Any throng of more than twopersons constituted a lecture audience for her, and at sight of them shemounted an imaginary platform, pushed aside an imaginary glass of icewater, and started a fervent address full of imaginary information aboutConditions and Situations that lasted till the audience had sneakedout--or a little longer.

She was something new in the history of women, and whether she stemmedfrom Queen Catherine, Florence Nightingale, Lucrezia Borgia, FrancesWillard, Victoria Woodhull, Nancy Astor, Carrie Nation or Aimée SempleMcPherson, the holy woman of Los Angeles, has not been determined.

Winifred was as handsome as a horse, a portly young presence with avoice that smothered you under a blanket of molasses and brimstone. Shewas just under thirty in 1937, but she had the wisdom of Astarte and thepunch of Joe Louis, and her eyelids were a little weary.

For a couple of years now she had emulated her father in having amistress, who in her case was her legal husband, Major Harold Homeward,who had got his title by being a first lieutenant in the paymaster corpsin World War I. He was a handsome, high-colored man, a dancing man but asurprisingly good accountant, with an eye for interesting writing, anduseful about the Marduc magazines. Even when he felt merely dutifulabout it, he made love warmly, and Winifred used to come back from theoffice happily to the little man in the home.

They had no children.

Her one humility was toward her father, and it may have been due more toher demands than to his own that he was so often considered, ineditorial offices and bars, as a possible President, who would lookhandsome at that starry and eagle-pinioned desk while Winifred merelyran the country.

She said, privately and publicly--though with her, the two statesweren't always to be distinguished--that her father had taught her howto think incisively and boldly, how to write simply and distinctively,and how, at all embarrassing moments of being caught mentally naked, toduck into the refuge of that fine old word "Honor." With the Colonelhimself, Honor was so developed that he wouldn't permit Marduc, Syco &Sagg to handle any patent medicine, liquor or contraceptiveadvertisements, but cared for them through a separate firm with whichhis name wasn't even connected.

When Winifred and the Colonel were together, she talked so much abouthis virtues that he had no chance to talk about them himself.

In all her dissertations occurred the face-saving phrases: "Oh, just asecond. There's one other thing I wanted to bring up. I do hope I'm nottalking too much tonight. Just let me speak of this, and then I'll shutup."

She wouldn't, though. Winifred Homeward the Talking Woman.

Besides being on the boards of twenty-seven different welfareorganizations, serving as a Republican Committeewoman, and speakingpublicly on an average of three times a week on all the Causes in whichshe believed--and they included every Cause that any activewomen's-college graduate possibly could believe in, during the years1930-1950--Winifred Marduc Homeward was the editor of that feminist andliberal weekly Attention!, of which her father was the actualowner--or donor--and her husband the titular publisher.

The complicated and slightly hysterical ideology of Attention! may beformulated as a belief that the offices of President, editor of the NewYork Herald-Times, head of a united University of Columbia andCalifornia, and the official dismisser of all distasteful conclusions ofthe Gallup Poll, should be combined and held by a person whosedescription resembled that of Winifred Homeward.

Attention! had once been quoted in a sermon by the woman pastor of aSpiritualist Church in Oakland, California.

One other person besides the pastor quoted it, and that was Winifred,often and earnestly. It lacked nothing but circulation and thepossibility of anyone's ever reading through an entire paragraph.

It was referred to--when it was referred to--as a feministpublication, but it is not certain that Mrs. Homeward was a "feminist,"it was not certain that she liked women very much. She was more likelyto be eloquent about males who praised her than about females whodidn't, and far more likely to be seen with them. And thoughAttention! had been published, and Colonel Marduc had been highlypublic, during the year 1936, when Franco's revolution began in Spainand Zinovieff and Kameneff had been shot in Russia, neither Winifred northe Colonel had taken a more belligerent stand on these matters than tosay, with affecting earnestness, "One must not come to hasty conclusionson affairs so complicated and so uncandidly reported."

That was the reigning family--Colonel Marduc and Winifred and theirillegitimate offspring, Major Homeward--to whose golden company thePlanishes had long aspired.

* * * * *

Major Homeward appeared at a meeting of the directors of the Blessed toGive Brotherhood, handsome, graceful, his mustache like a lithe new-bornthing, and his eye moist but lively. Ernest Wheyfish recognized him asroyalty, but it was Dr. Planish who thought of whispering, "Pretty dull.Let's sneak out and have a quick one." The Major's eyes rounded likethose of a cat beholding an injudicious robin; he seized the Doctor'sarm, and they crept out behind Wheyfish's nervous eloquence.

They drank till seven. Dr. Planish privily telephoned to Peony, andbrought a friendly Major home to dinner.

Now Peony was plump but biological. She had never stepped off MainStreet, but her eyes could seduce even a traffic policeman, and to theMajor she said, "This is so nice!" as competently as a woman press agentor an actress in her dressing-room. By ten o'clock the Major and theDoctor and Peony were such a trio of buddies that they telephoned,long-distance, to George Riot, and insisted on his flying down andjoining them. (He didn't.) Before the Major was got into a completestate of liquid happiness, however, Dr. Planish had planted the seed ofa Message:

"I know Colonel Marduc is a figurehead on a lot of organizations, but henever really has anything to do with 'em--lets 'em use his name andsends 'em a small check, but he never knows what they're up to. Well, ifhe really wants to be President of the United States----"

"He doesn't--he doesn't at all. I don't know how that rumor started,"stated the Colonel's very own son-in-law. "He feels that he's just aplain seismograph of public opinion. He has no political ambitions."

"Well then, Secretary of State or Ambassador to England."

"Maybe he might consider those."

"He doesn't realize how an uplift organization that he really workedclosely with could hook his name up with all these idealistic movementsthat get the votes. If he'd pay some attention, and maybe some cash, toa crack executive----"

"No, no, no! Thanks, Peony--that's plenty--whoa--that's better,"observed the Major. "No, I'm afraid the Colonel wouldn't be interestedin your Blessed to Give bunch. He thinks that having me there on theboard as his stooge is enough."

"That? Oh, that damn racket! Of course not. I mean a more generalidealistic association, more spiels about freedom and democracy. I'dlike to talk to him, some time."

The Doctor did not belabor his message further, and not till after manymore drinks did he probe the Major about the Colonel's mysteriousrelationship to Governor Thomas Blizzard.

(Peony was thinking how very pleasant and urbane and worth striving forthis was: a parley in which the titles of Colonel and Major and Governorand Senator and Doctor and Professor and Haig & Haig were thrown aboutlike beans.)

* * * * *

Tom Blizzard was one of the twenty men who, in 1937, had a chance to beDemocratic nominee for President in 1944, possibly even in 1940.

In his own Midwestern State, he had been Speaker of the House and fortwo terms Governor, and the credulous readers of newspaper columns stillbelieved that he spent nine-tenths of his time out in the little factorytown of Waskeegan, and one-tenth in New York and Washington. It wasactually the other way around. He kept up his millionaire manufacture offarm implements in Waskeegan, but most of the time he lived at hishumble twelve-room log cabin on Park Avenue, in New York, and he knewevery reporter, Communist editor, prize fighter, professor of economicsand night-club bartender in town.

He was a large untidy man with a rolling and affable walk, a fetchingyouthful smile, and a core of hard shrewdness.

It was commonly reported that Governor Blizzard and Colonel Marduc had apolitical understanding, but which was to support which was notexplained, nor, tonight, did Major Homeward explain it. Perhaps,concluded the Doctor, he didn't know.

The party moved into the kitchen, as all really intimate parties must.

That kitchen on Charles Street had become a very fine kitchen. Peony hadconcentrated on the once drab and wormy room and made it a splendor ofstenciled walls, cupboards with little red oilcloth frills andunbreakable plastic dishes of red and green. They sat about thegreen-topped kitchen table, drinking highballs, and it was the joy ofMajor Homeward, son of the smartest tailor in West Virginia, as it wasof the Midwestern Planishes, to express their communal affection in thetender strains of "Mandy, Mandy, sweet as the sugar cane," an Americanfolk-song from the Deep South via Tin-Pan Alley.

During this recital, Carrie Planish, returning from some unexplainedengagement, looked into the kitchen and sniffily withdrew.

Peony darted out after her, with "Come in and meet Major Homeward. Sucha fine man, and important socially."

"He looks to me like an old silly," murmured Carrie.

"Old? He's not as old as your father!"

"Well?"

"Carrie!"

"Honestly, Mother, I don't want to be disagreeable, but he seems like anold tent-show actor."

"He's one of the very cleverest and most influential men in the wholeworld of welfare-promotion!"

"Honestly, Mother, I'm sorry, but I don't think I like influentialpeople or welfare or promotion. I like sleeping better. Good night."

Peony stood bitterly in the hall. What had come over this newgeneration? She wasn't like that when she was sixteen! Why, she'd havebeen all eager and flattered if her mother had invited her in to helpimpress an important guest! But Carrie----

Insisting on leaving a good private school, where she met the daughtersof prominent people, for that horrible, big, overgrown public-school,all full of Micks and Jews and Wops! And so impertinent! When Peony hadsighed, "But, baby, after your father and I have scraped and saved tosend you to a fashionable school like Miss Clink's," up and answering sopertly, "Then you ought to be glad, Mother; you'll save money by mygoing to high school!" Trying to trap her own mother by saying thingslike that! And talking about biology and mechanical drawing and ErnestHemingway and James Farrell and a lot of nonsense like that! Andpretending to be so modest, and yet wearing those tight sweaters thatshowed everything----

Peony summed it all up, "I just can't make out these jazz babies. Youcan't get 'em to see the domestic point of view!" and she hastily rolledback into the kitchen and had a highball.

When, later, it seemed better for Dr. Planish to get the Major into ataxicab and accompany him safely as far as the Winifred Marduc Homewardresidence on East 68th Street, Peony went along, and they sang quite alittle more in the taxicab, and when the Major held her hand, she wasproud to have such interest taken in her by one of those rare men whoare liaison officers between rich society and the workingintelligentsia--that combination that makes New York so fascinating andso very, very different from Kinnikinick, Iowa.

* * * * *

One of the most important activities of any liberal educationalorganization is an activity called Research.

Say, Research into the monkeyshines of the ex-Reverend Ezekiel Bittery.

You read forty or fifty complete biographies of him in the newspapersand then, under the name of your secretary, you send for Mr. Bittery'sown pamphlets and read everything all over again. Then you craftily sendout spies, with funny hats and their coat-collars turned up, to listento his public speeches. So, by Research, you discover that BrotherBittery is a flannel-mouthed rabble-rouser who used to be charged notonly with stealing the contents of the church poor-box, but of takingthe box itself home to keep radishes in, and who at present, if he isn'ton the pay-roll of all the Fascists, is a bad collector.

A couple of years later, a Congressional committee will summon a lot ofwitnesses to Washington and, after a lot of bullying and undercoverwork, will discover that Mr. Bittery used to be a hell-fire preacher andis now a hell-fire Fascist.

Two years after that, the more leftwing newspapers will send out all thePh.D.'s among its reporters, and discover that Mr. Bittery used to favorlynching agnostics and now favors lynching socialists.

And during all this time, the Reverend Ezekiel himself will, as publiclyas possible, to as many persons as he can persuade to attend hismeetings, have admitted, insisted, bellowed, that he has always been aKu Kluxer and a Fascist, that he has always hated Jews, colleges andgood manners, and that the only thing he has ever disliked about Hitleris that he once tried to paint barns instead of leaving the barns theway God made them.

That is Research.

It was familiar to Dr. Planish, and he now tried to turn its fair lightupon a more hidden topic: the inner purposes of the Marduc-Blizzardjunta. That is to say, he went so far in investigation as to get hold ofHatch Hewitt, the reporter, for a drink, and asked him somequestions--an example of Research Method not uncommon amongorganizators.

"Yeah," said Hatch--a man whom Dr. Planish fuzzily remembered having metsome years ago. "Yeah, Tom Blizzard's hat is in the ring forPresident--any ring. In fact, if a bunch of kids on Eighth Avenue areplaying marbles, they better watch their chalk circle pretty carefully,because if they turn their backs on it for ten seconds, they'll find hishat right in the center. He's just as likely to have a love affair withthe Lake Erie Professional Hockey Club or the Aroostook Potato Growers'Association as with the St. John's Sodality for the Study of St. ThomasAquinas.

"He has the edge on Marduc, who'd like to do the same thing but he'safraid of getting his hat dusty.

"And Winifred Marduc Homeward--oh, it isn't that she's always giving herown version of the Sermon on the Mount, but that she always carries herown portable Mount right with her and sets it up even at a cocktailparty. She's the first lady Messiah, and I'm afraid she's going to getthe entire Messiah industry in wrong. After her third scream ofrighteousness whenever she attacks Hitler, Winifred almost makes metolerate Hitler, and I don't like that. Her only trouble is that sheread her Scriptures wrong. She thought they said 'If women learnanything, let them tell their husbands at home. It is a shame for womennot to speak in the church.'

"I can't prove it, but I suspect that both her father and GovernorBlizzard think that they're using her as a guide to the Presidency, butthat she's using them, and when she decides which is the horsiest darkhorse, she'll cut the other one's throat. Changed world, my boy. In theold days, you used to look for the femme only in love affairs; now,she's the hidden clue in political affairs.

"But what are you doing with these people, Gid? I thought you'd settleddown with honest bootleggers like Deacon Wheyfish. Don't tell me you'vegone over to the intellectual racket!"

Years of leadership and of oratory enabled Dr. Planish to throweverything into his annihilating retort:

"Honestly--you--make--me--tired!"

A week later, Dr. Planish was invited to accompany Major Homeward on apilgrimage to the office of Colonel Marduc. (No Generals were involvedas yet.)

The throne-room at Marduc, Syco & Sagg's was the masterpiece ofBobbysmith, who advertised himself as "the Gertrude Stein of InteriorDesigning." It was as plain and dignified as Rockefeller Center, but alittle smaller. The only picture was a portrait of the Colonel, in whichhe resembled a full-blooded camel on a turquoise desert, and it hungagainst apricot walls, with fluorescent cornice-lighting. The curtainswere ripples of champagne-colored silk, and the furniture was ofpolished white mahogany upholstered with coral leather. The ruddy marblefireplace was set in without a mantel, and by it was a case of books byProust, Spengler and Zane Grey. On the plaza of the desk was one callalily and a signed photograph of Lord Beaverbrook.

Colonel Marduc sat at the far end of the room and looked at you flatlyas you made entrance, so that you already felt awkward before you hadgot within twenty feet of him. He had the trick from Mussolini, who hadit from the Spanish Inquisition.

The conversation between the Colonel and Dr. Planish fell into thatatmosphere of an Oriental court which always clung about the Marducs,even in a stratospheric advertising agency. The Doctor salaamed and saidthat he was honored; he said that of course the Colonel would neverstoop to any political job, but if he desired to, he could be Presidentof the United States by ten tomorrow morning.

He said that he himself was the humblest creature under Allah'sbeneficent sun, that he loved his present (well-paid) job, and wasaboundingly loyal to Wheyfish Pasha, but if either Colonel Marduc orGod, preferably the former, decided to start a real organization, onethat would take the weak little ideology of Democracy by the hand andguide it tenderly, then he hoped he might be around to give advice. Hesaid that such an organization might, incidentally, get its founderknown around as the chief subsidizer of all Justice and Freedom.

And he said that now, as never before, was the time, with the war goingon between Japan and China and with Hitler smirking at Czechoslovakia.

"Not going to be any European war!" snarled the Colonel.

"But it's possible."

"If there were, America would never get into it. We'll be so wellprepared that we won't have to."

"But even in the matter of preparedness, we ought to have an associationthat would be the first big one that was keyed to war psychology,"argued the Doctor. "If we started out now, and had speakers andhand-outs every week interpreting the news, then we'd get to beconsidered the final authority, no matter which way the war-catjumped--win, lose, draw or stay out."

"Who do you think of as associated with us?"

"Well, your daughter, and Milo Samphire, the foreign correspondent----"

"Samphire? That fanatic? No! He's pro-English, and what's worse, he'seloquent, and what's still worse, he's honest. He wouldn't takemy--suggestions," the Colonel grumbled.

"Well, we could get Senator Bultitude, and Christian Stern, and WalterGilroy--he hasn't any ideas, but he has a kind of touching reverence for'em--and maybe you could coax Governor Blizzard to come in. I wouldn'texpect to decide which of the Big Names we'd get. My job is to know thetechnique of putting over an organization--for anything, or againstanything--provided it's on the right side, I mean."

"And which do you regard as the right side?"

"I think that in any controversy, your side would probably be the rightside, Colonel."

So he got the laugh that promised him spiritual victory and fivethousand a year in salary.

"Are you doing anything for dinner next Thursday--you and your wife?Drop up to my place--eight o'clock, black tie." The Colonel said itcasually enough, but to Dr. Planish it was the visitation of the Magi.

It happened that the Doctor had invited Hatch Hewitt and his wife fordinner the coming Thursday, but he wasted no time on anything so petty,particularly as Hatch had picked up a scraggly and unlaudatory wife.

He went home to inform Peony, "We're going to the Marducs' for dinner,"in the tone of modest awe in which other men, in other places, havesaid, "I'm to receive a knighthood in the next Honors List," or "I havejust made my first million dollars," or "I have at last devised a methodof proving the existence of God by pure logic."

Peony answered with a yell of joy.

Chapter 27

The apartment of Colonel Charles B. Marduc, on Fifth Avenue besideCentral Park, occupied one and a half floors of the building, and wasserved by its own elevator, with two shifts of elevator men especiallytrained not to mention the weather. It was famed throughout that wholeworld of Household Decoration and Country Life magazines, thatlittle glazed empire, as showing the best taste in the country in havingassembled the best examples of the worst Victorian furniture.

It displayed petunia-red satin sofas with frames of black walnut carvedwith grapes, rugs with hoydenish roses, a ruby and sapphire chandelierwith electric candles, white satin draperies with rose-silk lambrequins,and a delicate old music-box cabinet containing cigars. It was so filledwith reproductions of good needlepoint and good breeding that it wouldalmost have fooled the connoisseurs.

Peony wandered blissfully, enjoying the bland flavor of wealth, andwondering whether she was expected to laugh or be awed at statuettesunder glass and a tip-table painted with a Rhine castle seeminglyconstructed of taffy. The Doctor was too busy to notice, for besides theMarducs and the Homewards and Senator Felix Bultitude, here was thecelebrated Mrs. Tucket, who had made a social career by being rude toeverybody, and at last, here was Governor Thomas Blizzard himself,looking astonishingly like Governor Blizzard.

When you saw him, you knew that he was Somebody, though you were notsure whether he was a cultured ex-prizefighter or an athletic preacher.He had never been seen without his tie crooked. But he also was thefirst person to whom Dr. Planish had talked in days who smiled like ahuman being.

Though they came as strangers, the Planishes were immediately hoisted toeminence by the flattering screams of old friendship with which SenatorBultitude greeted them. He remembered that Dr. Planish must rememberthat once the Senator had been associated with H. SandersonSanderson-Smith in labor-scuttling, and he wanted all that brightlyforgotten, for the Senator now called the labor unions by their firstnames. Some of his best friends were labor unions.

Dr. Planish believed that throughout dinner he would impressively belecturing about organizations and their superiority to the Government atWashington. He sat down at table, he cleared his throat--and found thathe was one second too late. Winifred Homeward had already started.

It was not that Winifred talked more than these celebrated men mighthave, for no one can talk more than one hundred per cent. But she couldtalk down talkers. She could put into her dinner offensives an assuranceand a demand for attention that made forty minutes of her feel like theentire voyage of the Ark. She was so powerful that she could convinceanyone at all of the exact opposite of whatever she maintained,including the man from whom she had lifted her ideas in the first place.

The moment now was some eight months after the Hitler-Chamberlain pactof Munich. Winifred held forth about Hitler's nastiness so ferociouslythat she had the same effect upon all present that she had on HatchHewitt, and they became stubbornly certain that Hitler was a fine, fat,jolly, drinking fellow, who loved girls and sausages and beer andstories about pandas; as she talked on, they longed to sit with Hitlerin a couple of rocking chairs on the front porch at good oldBerchtesgaden, and talk about fishing. There might have been a dangerouscrop of Fascists grown that evening, except that presently, stillhurdling over all interruptions, Winifred stated violently that allAmerican young people were slatternly and impertinent, so that aconsiderable degree of trust in Young America was instantly restoredaround the table.

She also had a few pronouncements to make upon the movies, theimmorality of symphony music, the coal business and how to decorate atwenty-dollar-a-month flat. She had a remarkable number of opinions, andshe thought highly of all of them.

Colonel Marduc did not say seventy words during dinner, but Dr. Planishsaw that he was watching. After it, the Colonel muttered to him,"Planish, you seem to be a good listener. You'll have to be, if we dostart this new organization. Come see me tomorrow at three--sharp."

Dr. Planish was there at ten minutes to three.

"We'll have to take a few months formulating the thing," said ColonelMarduc. "You'll have to resign from the Blessed to Give comedy, anddevote all your attention to our show. Five thousand a year for a start?More later?"

"Okay," said Dr. Planish.

With these simple, brave words the new school of philosophy began.

* * * * *

There was a small commando squad of what were known in journalistic andwelfare circles as "Marduc's young men." They were employed by hisagency, but he frequently sent them off on detached duty all over thecountry, to raid or spy in every known political or ameliorativegathering. They numbered anywhere from four to ten at a time, and youcould tell them apart only by the fact that some of them were graduatesof Yale, some of Harvard or Princeton or Dartmouth or Williams, andsome, for pioneer work in rough country, of the State universities.

All of them smoked pipes but preferred cigarettes; on week-ends, all ofthem wore tweed jackets with gray flannel bags and no hat; but in theNew York office they appeared in modest and expensive gray or brownsuits, with shirts and ties and handkerchiefs all in matching gray.

Each of them allowed himself daily exactly twenty-sevencigarettes--carried in a quiet silver case--with two highballs, twococktails, three cups of coffee, one Bromo Seltzer, and fifteen minutesof sharp and detestable exercise. They averaged 1½ spirited minutes oflove per week, one rather unsatisfactory adultery per year, and onewife--always from a Good Family, usually a dark pretty girl whom youcould never quite remember. They averaged 1¾ children, and if it was nottrue that all of Marduc's young men had curly hair, still you thoughtthey had, and they all read the Atlantic Monthly and the New Masses.They voted high-church Republican or middle-creek Socialist, or both,and all evening long, even when they were playing bridge, they listenedto the radio and said how much they hated the radio.

They were all either born Congregationalists who had becomeEpiscopalians, Episcopalians who had become atheists, or ChristianScientists who didn't talk about it.

Of them all, none was more average than Sherry Belden.

He was Yale, class of 1928, both Phi Beta Kappa and Skull and Bones. Hehad been a college tennis champion and cheer-leader, and now, atthirty-two, he was still a college tennis champion and a cheer-leader.But he felt very radical because he was a close friend of a man whopraised Gandhi--usually for the wrong things.

Sherry had modest manners and a straight nose; he lived in PortWashington, in a brand-new, half-timbered Elizabethan cottage; he hadthe largest electric ice box in his block, the largest stock of strangeliquors, including Strega and arrack, and the largest library ofcommunist propaganda, erotica, technocracy and Sir Walter Scott.

It was Sherry Belden whom Colonel Marduc detached from his fine job asan account executive to assist Dr. Planish.

He said, "At least, Planish, Sherry will keep Winifred off your neck.She's very useful to any Cause if you just keep her gagged till you pushher out onto the stage, or if you keep some well-bred eunuch like Sherryfor her to talk to."

Dr. Planish found Sherry as shining and nimble and useful as a newbicycle.

* * * * *

The Doctor's farewell to his recent boss, the Hon. Mr. Ernest Wheyfish,was unexpected. He had pictured Soapy Ernest denouncing him as a traitorand sneak, but Ernest only caroled, "Going to be associated with Marduc,eh? I envy you. Now, Gid, you mustn't forget the happy times we've hadhere together, shoulder to shoulder to put over the principle ofChristian giving, just like a joyful old-time prayer meeting, and let'ssee if we can't go on working together. Fix me up a lunch with oldMarduc. God bless you, my boy. I never did find a fellow that I liked towork with better, and I hope your contributions will come rolling inlike salmon in spring."

* * * * *

There was, at first, no need of general contributions. Colonel Marducsupported the preliminary survey, as it was technically called, and ifhe did not seem displeased by mysterious newspaper items mentioning himas a possible President, he never demanded them.

For months Dr. Planish held conferences with the leading thinkers andhumanitarians and read their typed memos, which he called "highlysuggestive," even if each one did contradict all the others.

Sherry Belden took for him, at first, a three-room suite in a hotel,with a small but distinctive bar in a closet. Here he worked withSherry, Colonel Marduc, Winifred, Major Homeward, Natalia Hochberg,Senator Bultitude, Governor Blizzard, Bishop Pindyck, RabbiLichtenselig, Ramona Tundra the actress, and, naturally, the ReverendDr. Christian Stern.

But there were a number of new intimates; for example, the Rt. Rev.Msgr. Nicodemus Lowell Fish. The Monsignor was one of the few Yankeeswho had ever become a Catholic dignitary, and it was his pride to beknown as "the missionary to the intelligentsia." He called a Negrodoctor, a New Deal economist, and a sports columnist by their firstnames, and he went backstage at all play openings. It was obligatoryupon all atheist intellectuals to say that Msgr. Fish was a betterProtestant than they were.

He had personally converted seven reporters and a Baptist minister toRoman Catholicism, and it was reported that he was arguing with CharlesCoughlin.

Also, he would not have known a real "intellectual" if he had ever metone, and he believed that Hilaire Belloc was a profound historian.

And there was Professor Topelius, born on the Baltic, who had a plan tobring eternal peace by having Europe conducted as one federal state,governed by a committee of Americans--and Professor Topelius. There wasDr. Waldemar Kautz, a play producer from Vienna, who hated Americabecause he believed that the entire population ate lunch at drug-storecounters. The poor man was dying slowly of longing for his Stammtischand the waiter calling him "Herr Doktor" or, with any luck, "HerrBaron."

There was Judge Vandewart, who was a tower of strength as a receiver forbankrupt utility companies. He liked to be chairman at all publicdinners that had press tables.

Professor Campion, an almost new friend, was a surprising person to findin the Planish School of Economics, because Professor Campion actuallyknew something about economics, and was even licensed to teach it at areputable school: Cornell University.

But Campion was a Signer.

Any group of rebels, Communist, Royalist, Argentine, Danish, S.P.C.A.,Y.M.H.A., or O.G.P.U., who drew up a protest to be sent to the Congressor to a foreign ambassador, complaining because somebody was going to beshot at dawn, or wasn't going to be shot at all, could count onProfessor Campion to sign. He often signed nine protests between 1 A.M.and bedtime, and his chief reading matter, outside of the works ofPlato, was his breakfast-table pile of four-page telegrams frompropaganda organizations asking for his immediate shirt.

Then, there was Ed Unicorn, a crusader in search of a crusade.

Till a year ago, Ed had been a simple-hearted American reporter, rovingabout Europe and filing to his string of newspapers whatever his localinterpreter (for Ed knew no known language) told him was to be found inthe native press that day. He had not realized that he was a "foreigncorrespondent" and he had denied that he was a "journalist." In bars inBudapest, Belgrade and Oslo, he was frequently heard to say, "I'm aplain newspaperman."

But he had come home and had given a public lecture, a very successfulone, full of anecdotes about fooling the censors and the customsinspectors, rambling but diverting, for Ed was an extremely good fellow.The lone lecture had led to a lecture tour, and the tour to a magazinearticle, and the article to a book, and the book to broadcasting, andthe broadcasting to a wide public belief that Ed was the originaldiscoverer of geography and of a mysterious practice called ForeignAffairs. Ed was prosperous now; he knew the slickest girls in the StorkClub, and on the Linguaphone he had learned one hundred and fourteenwords of Spanish; but he had exhausted every single anecdote about hisadventures, and he was wistfully hoping that Colonel Marduc or Dr.Planish would hand him out a new set of gospels to broadcast about.

A very different foreign correspondent was Milo Samphire, and Dr.Planish found Samphire much less co-operative than Ed Unicorn.

Samphire had been stationed abroad for fifteen years; he was really ascholar, and he had manners and a manner. Even English journalists hadsometimes been willing to call him a journalist. When he wanted aninterview with a prime minister, he did not make inquiries of theAmerican consul, the American Express Company, the barman at the GrandRitz-Crillon-Superb-Schwartz, or the oldest son at Thos. Cook & Sons. Hejust telephoned to the prime minister.

He had been ousted from both Germany and Italy, and he had come home notto broadcast and be recognized at the Twenty-one Club, but, quitehonestly and fierily, to persuade America that it was in danger from theFascist fever. He was a fanatic, he had a single-track mind, he was ashandsome as a Confederate Spy in the movies, and to him, Mister Marducwas just another advertising man.

Yet the skilled and professionally forgiving Dr. Planish solicited hisadvice, in the hope of using him at public dinners.

A comfort to the Doctor, however, were the familiar philanthrobber teamof Henry Caslon Kevern and Walter Gilroy.

To the eye, they were opposites. Kevern was old and dry and refined andof a renowned family. Contrary to normal American eugenics, he had agreat-grandfather. He collected first editions of William Blake; and hisinvestment banking was so aloof, so disdainful of anything less than amillion dollars, that it seemed less like money-making than like afurther collection of rare editions.

Gilroy was a Westerner, youngish and burly and loud and very pleasant,an owner of oil wells. But these two were alike in feeling guilty athaving so much money. They did not do anything about it so obvious asraising the wages of their employees; that would have been a littlesordid, and lacking in any feeling of a mystic rite of expiation.

Another new friend was General Gong, U.S.A. (ret.), who had recentlybought a new world atlas (in two volumes) and a history of maneuvers inwhich he himself had participated but which he had entirely forgotten,and who was certain, poor man, that if America ever did get into war, hewould be recalled to command these inexperienced cubs of fifty andfifty-five.

The one man whom Colonel Marduc went to solicit, instead of sending theDoctor or Sherry Belden, was Leopold Altzeit, the international banker.

Altzeit finance was so vast and esoteric that, beside it, Henry Kevern'sseemed like pawnbroking. He was tiny and frail and inconceivably old; inhis private office, teak-paneled, there was only a desk, two chairs, aframed letter from Beethoven to Prince Lichnowsky, and an unquestionedRembrandt.

Marduc did not need to tell him what Hitler was doing to the Jews.Altzeit's chief operative in Germany had already risked his life tobecome one of Hitler's staff.

Altzeit listened, still and impenetrable, then rang, and to anexpressionless secretary, in a very little voice like a breeze among dryleaves in November, he whispered, "Lothar, will you please to bring me acheck for ten thousand dollars made out to Mr. Charles B. Marduc, thankyou."

It was Leopold Altzeit's third arrow that day at the Fascists. He didnot think much of this bow, with the curious Oriental name of Marduc.But he would always go on shooting; he always had.

Between conferences, the Planishes proudly became intimates of WinifredHomeward and her little boy, the Major. Winifred lost so many friends,talked them to death so quickly or just forgot them into oblivion, thatit was not hard for newcomers to step in and be friends--while itlasted.

Peony was a competent listener, and Winifred permitted her to come oftento the red-brick Georgian chateau of the Homewards on East 68th Street,where Peony's position presently came to resemble that of a highly paidcompanion and maid--except that she did not get the pay. For a while,she was perhaps Winifred's only woman friend--Winifred complained thatmost women friends were selfish and jealous and were always interruptingher.

Peony was rapidly promoted, in this romantic chronicle of modern courtlife, from milkmaid to lady in waiting. She confided to the Doctor thatshe was at last enjoying to the full the social and intellectualadvantages of New York, and, without paying one cent (except for taxifare), she could always get a cup of tea (not very hot) at Winifred's.

Dr. Planish saw the great lady informally, too. Once, after a tenseconference on the wickedness of dictators, Winifred said gaily to him,"Oh, let's go out and have a sandwich at a cafeteria. I love cafeterias!So jolly!"

In that vast white-tiled room shrieking with light, they took theirtrays and edged along the counter, inspecting cakes with marble icing,cakes crumbed with sugar, ingenious cakes like sections of a tree.

"Isn't this amusing!" Winifred screamed, so that a policeman on thecorner outside nervously grasped his club. "I love an adventure! Anddon't you hate these people who come into a dump like this as thoughthey were slumming? The whole pleasure of it is to feel that you're notreally any better than the Common People."

Winifred set down her tray and looked at the tables about her. Shesighed, "I must say, though, it worries me to think of loafers andlower-bracketeers like these actually having a vote, and deciding majorissues. I keep trying to think of some way of combining absolutedemocracy--in which, of course, my father and I believe implicitly--withkeeping the decision in really important national affairs in the handsof experts--like ourselves. I think I'll make that my next editorial inAttention!."

* * * * *

Pretty much everything was decided about the new organization except itsname, and for what purpose it existed, if any.

Many suggested purposes were discussed in the months of conference. Whatwere the purposes and the topics discussed may be ascertained by takingthe following list of the words most frequently repeated during themeetings, and adding to them any nouns or verbs or flavoring that maysuit the taste:

 far-flung category founding father keynote global dynamic hail with enthusiasm vital decisive factor implant outstanding event indoctrinate immediate need activist brook no opposition suggestion grave responsibility solution white light of criticism resolution hot under the collar stimulus hit the nail squarely on the head firm belief get down to brass tacks turning-point get over the message that net result take with a grain of salt memorandum take it on the chin drive feet on the ground tentatively lacking in solidarity morale equal opportunity for all organizational resist the pressure policy put pressure on do the job outcome of the crisis challenge to quickly sum up commonwealth in the final analysis committee the sense of it is community what I want to say is conference the point I'm making is confidence I want to say a word for congress index of emotional state constitutional democratically organized contributor to implement the policy co-ordinate reaffirming the principle crisis keep away from political considerations the top men sponsor we surmise director another angle trustee not good enough discussion we agree in principle research basic principles broadcast to get your reaction union complexity of the modern world grass roots sickness in our civilization desire to serve along the lines of altruistic break the bottlenecks make sacrifices for influence public opinion willful minority refer the report back to rallying point left to the discretion of pressing problem putting our shoulders to immediate problem duly made and seconded face the problem venture to predict solve the problem bring up the point new set of problems remarkable progress blue prints for basic directive way of life definite objective ideology generosity in giving sense of security neither the time nor the place to raise courage to face it the issue I so move one thousand dollars ten thousand dollars

Winifred Homeward proposed that there should be a Federal policeforce--with her husband as chief. Governor Blizzard proposed that a jobbe found for his cousin, Al Jones, a fine young fellow. But, as thegodlike eye of Colonel Marduc perceived, eventually it was Dr. Planishwho settled on the purposes and title for their new organization.

The title was "Dynamos of Democratic Direction," though it was alwaysknown as the DDD. Winifred was to be the first president; Sherry Belden,treasurer; and the "directive secretary" was Gideon Planish, M.A., Ph.D.

The DDD was to have a chapter, called a "powerhouse," in every communityin America. Each of these was, under instruction from New York about thelatest Conditions and Situations, to organize a Discussion Group, aHealth Committee, a Gardening Unit, a History Class, an English Classfor the Foreign-born, an Investigation Group to report on localFascists, and a Committee to wangle free radio time. There was, ofcourse, to be a national magazine, but it never did get started. Thewhole scheme, in fact--to supplant the Federal and State and TownGovernments and the entire Christian Church by a new Soviet headed byColonel Marduc--was beyond criticism, even carping criticism. Dr.Planish summed it up in a private memo to the Colonel: "All ordinarycitizens, especially those west of Buffalo, need instruction anddirection in becoming thoroughly democratic from trained thinkers likeourselves. When we have given our democracy to the entire nation, thenAmerica will enforce it on the rest of the world. That is our basicidea."

The basic ideas behind this basic idea were that Dr. Planish was to havea secure hundred-dollar-a-week job, which would some day become atwo-hundred-a-week job, and Tom Blizzard and old Charley Marduc were toenjoy being known as great statesmen, and Charley's horsy-looking girl,Winifred, was to have an audience whenever she got hungry for one, andPeony and the United States of America were to enjoy one unendingChristmas morning.

* * * * *

In the haven of the Dynamos of Democratic Direction, Dr. Planish passedthree serene years, from late in 1938 until December 1941, while therest of the world was not so serene.

Chapter 28

December 5, 1941, was a good normal day in the career of Dr. GideonPlanish, Directive Secretary of the DDD--the Dynamos of DemocraticDirection.

He had returned late the evening before from a routine visit toWashington, where he had appeared as an expert on Eskimos before aCongressional committee.

He arose at eight o'clock, a pleasant, cherubic sight, with his grayshort beard jutting out over his cherry-and-blue striped pajama jacket.He was fifty years old now, and his life of clean habits and thought,plus two hours a week in Pete Garfunkle's Gymnasium, had made him sosturdy a figure that it was evident that we shall be able to count onhim for another twenty-five years of scholarship, philanthropy andpolitical influence; and that, if we have any luck at all, he will stillbe molding public opinion for us in 1965.

He looked fondly at his wife, who was still asleep, her smooth face thatof a plump and cheerful baby. He remembered that, for over a year now,they had not had so much as one word of quarreling, not even on thenight when she had drunk three mint juleps with their friend GeorgeRiot, now worthily enthroned as president of Bonnibel College for Women,Indiana.

He looked fondly about their bedroom, on Charles Street, in theGreenwich Village section of New York. Peony had recently redecorated itwith Swedish furniture. The refurnishing cost a little more than theyhad expected, but it was almost paid for, now, and they had, in solidcash, $172.37, to say nothing of seven shares of stock in the ArtaxerxesAntimony Mine.

He could not quite live on his salary, but he was sure that, in 1942, hewould be able to earn an extra $2,500 by lecturing.

The morning was chilly, but he took a shower with almost no shudders. Inthe past ten years, he had got as used to a daily bath as WinifredHomeward.

He hastily, for he was a man of affairs with an ignorant world awaitinghis guidance, put on the short athletic underwear, pale blue, which,Peony often declared, "made him look as oomphy as the Great God Pan,"and his newly tailored suit of pale-brown cheviot.

He bounced downstairs for breakfast of oatmeal and bacon and eggs andtoast and four cups of coffee, with his daughter Carrie, aged almosttwenty.

He supposed that he loved Carrie, and very much; he knew that he wasirritably puzzled by her and by "whatever it is that she thinks she's upto."

She was a pert and pretty figure, in sweater and tweed skirt, but shedid not seem to him richly and truly feminine, like her mother. Andthough her "Good morning, Daddy" was amiable enough, they didn't seem tohave any of their good old-time intimate talks, such as those (he wassure he remembered them) in which she had told him that he was ever somuch brainier than his bosses, Sanderson-Smith and Wheyfish. She nevermentioned Colonel Marduc except when she snapped, "Do we have to takemuch time in defining a vestigial nineteenth-century stuffed shirt?"

(All out of books!)

She was a Junior in Hunter College, and devoted to such unglamoroussubjects as physics, mechanical drawing and ethnology. She did not seemto be even normally soft toward any of the horde of boys who hung abouther and about the house. The Doctor was fairly sure that he would notlike to hear that she had been seduced, but he was just as uncomfortablein feeling that his own daughter was so superior to males like himselfand to the entire idea of seduction.

Some of her boys were Wolves and Hell-Raisers, some were skinny andspectacled and superior, but none of them seemed to do anything butlisten to the phonograph with Carrie, and talk with her about persons ofwhom the Doctor had never heard: Orson Welles, Bartok, Hindemith, GeorgGrosz, Erskine Caldwell, Shostakovich. Some of the boys got mildlytight, as a young man should, but some of them were actuallyteetotalers--and, more embarrassing, so was Carrie.

He fretted that he certainly didn't want her to get soused, but still,it was disagreeable to have her look that way at Peony and him when theyrejoiced in their evening cocktails and recalled the Good New Ones theyhad heard during the day. It was exasperating to have her, thoughordinarily a civil young woman, calmly state that they wereold-fashioned survivals of a Flaming Youth era that to her was asantiquated and ridiculous as the Dutch Tulip Craze or Mr. Gladstone.

He had given up trying to be helpful to her young men by giving themvaluable inside information regarding the International Situation of1941 and the secret plans of fallen France. All of them, skinny andintellectual or stout and bawdy, expected to go to war some day asfighting soldiers, with no fuss about it; they disliked Hitlerism, andtalked expertly about Spitfires and Stukas. Yet when he, the secretaryof the DDD, tried to inspire them with his best explanations of whatWinston Churchill was going to do year after next, they just didn't seemto listen, although paying audiences of the most expensively dressedwomen applauded him on an average of twice a week for bestowing exactlythis same revelation.

"Sometimes," the Directive Secretary sighed, "I wish I were a plaincollege teacher again, instead of a leader of democratic thought."

This morning, he read the war headlines to Carrie, who had read themherself half an hour before, until Peony appeared, adorable and soft ina lace-trimmed peachblow negligee, gurgling, "Everybody here? I can'tseem to get up mornings, any more. But, oh boy, did I dance with HalHomeward and Sherry Belden last night, while you were gadding off toWashington! What, no strawberries?"

* * * * *

He rode to within a block of his office by subway, wishing that he couldafford a limousine instead of having to be elbowed by these gum-chewingclerks. But he was restored to dignity as he walked up to the buildingof the Dynamos of Democratic Direction, which occupied all of a handsomeold brownstone house in the Thirties.

The Blessed to Give Brotherhood headquarters had been like a warehouse,heaped everywhere with piles of pamphlets; the Heskett Foundationgloomy, the Every Man Fraternity and the Gishorn hideout like minutecells in a steel beehive. But the DDD offices were as proud and gay asthat aristocratic scholar Dr. Planish himself.

Like a refined sultan entering his harem, he was greeted in the hall bythe receptionist, Mrs. Ethel Hennessee, a flat lady with harlequinspectacles. Her desk was at the foot of the stairs, and it was her jobto make inquiring visitors warmly unwelcome. The DDD did not want to seenew faces unless the faces were backed by checks or by charters for newlocal Powerhouses. Particularly it did not want to see the cranks whobrought in bulky schemes to save humanity by having the Government give$27.87½ to every person over forty-five at eleven o'clock each Thursdaymorning.

On this ground floor were the Lounge, and the Council Room and Library,once the drawing-room and the dining-room of the old house. In theLibrary were oil portraits of Colonel Marduc and Governor Blizzard, andalso several books.

The basement, aside from the furnace room, was given over to the womenemployees and women friends of the DDD. It had the odor of astenographers' school with a tea-room and a hairdresser's down the hall.It was cluttered--no man entered here to enforce domestic order--withfolding umbrellas, flowery gingham overalls, coffee machines, teapotsand lipsticks.

Indeed the whole building was feminized. There were two and a half menin the place against fifty women.

Besides the Doctor, they kept a man named Carlyle Vesper, a thin andshabby and frightened clerk who was supposed to be office manager--hecounted for half a man; Julius Magoon, the press agent, an enterprisingwolf who was there only half the time; Dr. Tetley, the pale doer ofResearch; and Fritz Hendel, the Investigator--his job was to wriggle hisway into secret seditious meetings, addressed by loud-mouthed Nazis onstreet corners in Yorkville and rarely attended by more than a dozenpolicemen, and come back with a report that he suspected the speakers ofa tinge of anti-Semitism. Tetley and he were about the place not morethan a quarter of the time. Average total male presence: two and a half.

Hovering about them, flattering them, listening to their jokes, fillingtheir water carafes, taking down their letters, mothering them butwistfully hoping to be fathered by them, were the cloud of women: Mrs.Hennessee, the receptionist; Bonnie Popick, Dr. Planish's fat andadoring private secretary, who resembled a tawny Peony; andundistinguishable young ladies named Flaude Stansbury, Sue Maple andAdelle Klein, who were permanently employed at typing, filing letters,folding DDD circulars and thrusting them into envelopes, running thetelephone switchboard and taking down numbers and handing onfalsifications for Mrs. Hennessee when she was out at lunch, worshippingthe Doctor, pitying Mr. Vesper, avoiding the fingers of Mr. Magoon, andgoing home to boast that they had seen Colonel Marduc or GovernorBlizzard or Mrs. Winifred Homeward face to face.

They were about Dr. Planish all day, like a flutter of pigeons, and theynever gave him reason to doubt that he was the wisest and pleasantestservant of humanity since Haroun-al-Rashid. And all evening, Peony andthe billowingly female cook were about him, too, and the only louseamong the pillows was Carrie.

Besides this permanent staff there were, addressing envelopes andinserting circulars, anywhere from six to sixty unpaid volunteer womenworkers--all prosperous women, for Dr. Planish just couldn't be botheredwith poor ones. They came here with a shaky planless desire to dosomething for the world, and they were put to work, not because theywere as good as girls hired by the week, but because if they worked herelong enough and felt themselves part of the crusade, from 37 to 54% ofthem (figures by Dr. Tetley of the DDD) could be counted on to comethrough with cash contributions. So everyone was nice and helpful tothem, very nice indeed.

* * * * *

As happily as a surgeon inspecting his hospital, Dr. Planish went up tothe third floor, where, in a vast loft, worked all the women except MissPopick and Mrs. Hennessee, where Magoon and Tetley and Hendel had theirsmall disordered desks, and where Carlyle Vesper ineffectually watchedthe workers from a den seven feet square.

The Doctor was full of abounding joy and kindness. "Good morning, goodmorning, my dears!" he shouted; and even to poor Vesper, who bored him,he threw a forgiving, "Splendid day for December, Carlyle."

Then he was free to go and sit in his fine Georgian office and be anExecutive, while Bonnie Popick (of whom Mrs. Hennessee was agonizinglyjealous) indicated that her day, her dawn, her golden sun hadstarted--and please, would Dr. Planish try and get off that letter tothe I.G.T.R.L.--he'd promised it yesterday--oh, she hated to bother himabout it!

His office was a square, ruddy room, with a solid mahogany desk, asilver-framed picture of Peony, solid mahogany chairs, a portlyfireplace, a case filled with autographed books about Conditions andSituations, and the Special File.

The whole building was banked with files of correspondence and ofcontributors' names, but the Special File contained only the names ofphilanthrobbers who might be good for a thousand a year or more, and allthe cards had annotations by the Doctor himself: "pers letter--flatteron stamp collectn," and "gilded crook, likes to be taken for gent," and"honest, intel, don't send any bunk."

Before he settled down to his correspondence, the Doctor went to hisprivate washroom for his regular morning session of quiet thinking.

He was glad that their office was so stately, but it was stimulating tosee through the tiny hexagons of the washroom's wire-glass windows thestrength and clashing angles of the new functional business buildingsacross the court: raw yellow brick walls, high-perched water tanks,roofs stepped back like ledges in an open-pit mine, fire-proof windowswith steel mullions. They were as harsh as factories, and as honest.

Dr. Planish felt that they represented modern power and speed, and fromthat thought it was easy to glide into a feeling that he had built them.He heard some unknown speaker, perhaps the suave Professor Campion,intoning:

"My high privilege to introduce Dr. Planish, than whom no man of hisgeneration has more influenced not only political philosophy but therebuilding of his native city, New York, from one of whose finest oldKnickerbocker families he comes. Whether in such gracious palaces asthat in which are housed the thousands of employees of the DDD, or inthe streamlined efficiency of what is now universally known as thePlanish or neo-Frank-Lloyd-Wright type of architecture----"

The Doctor happily finished his dream and returned to work and to theministrations of Bonnie Popick, an active lady of twenty-eight who soappreciated his humor that sometimes she laughed when he hadn't meant tobe funny. As he re-entered his office, she was brushing his hat andovercoat; then she adjusted the slanted glass ventilation-shield at thebottom of the farther window.

She snickered, "Our friend Mrs. Hennessee claims she's got a cold thismorning."

In office ritual this meant, "I love you much more than thatflat-chested old cat does, though I'd be ashamed to be jealous, as sheis--always pretending to feel ill, just to draw your attention. And Iknow that you're true to your stupid pigeon of a wife--men are suchfools--but all day I'm closer to you than your wife or anybodyelse--especially that damn Hennessee woman!"

He read the mail that she had opened and arranged in a pile on his desk.He loved reading mail; it made him feel important to be denounced in thesame batch as an English Tory, as a Russian Communist, as a Midwesternprovincial; to be asked his opinions; to be invited to address clubs andcolleges.

He dictated the answers as rapidly as a windmill. Only one letterbothered him: that from Mr. Johnson of Minneapolis, the unpaid localdirector of the DDD Powerhouse.

Mr. Johnson of Minneapolis was nobody and everybody. Sometimes Dr.Planish remembered him as a lawyer, sometimes as a newspaperman,sometimes as a farmer, sometimes as a small merchant, sometimes as alabor-union secretary, sometimes as a millionaire lumberman. He acceptedintellectual manna from the professional manna-handlers, but he couldnever be depended upon. At any moment he was likely to complain that themanna had too much soda in it.

Mr. Johnson of Minneapolis wrote now: "I don't like the way our localPowerhouse of the DDD is going. We are supposed to be still inexistence, and I notice in your bulletins that you say we are 'thrivingand doing a fine work in acquainting the Scandinavian citizens with theideals of Americanism.'

"I don't know. I haven't been able to get the committee together for amonth now, and all our English for Foreigners and history classes, etc.,etc., are just on paper, and anyway, I don't feel there is anything wecan tell the Swedes & Norwegians & Danes about Democracy.

"I first joined the DDD because I had an uncomfortable feeling that inthese days a fellow ought to do something more than just make a living.I'll admit I was a goat. I was impressed by all the titles and degreesthat you fellows on the National Board have. But now I'm wondering.

"I guess maybe it would be pretty bad to never talk about PublicAffairs, but I'm wondering if it isn't just as bad to make out that theyare a special mystery that only the DDD can understand.

"A lot of this inside information that you send us and that we'resupposed to hand on to the peasantry is pretty mildewed now. Theox-teams got across the Alleghenies with the news quite some time ago.You keep telling us that Zeke Bittery is a Fascist. Out here, we'veknown for twenty years that Zeke is nothing but a crackpot evangelistwho would undercut Judas by eight pieces of silver. Why don't you giveus something new? For instance. Are there any Fascists that contributeto the DDD so as to look patriotic?

"I'm bothered about all this chatter. Ever since Voltaire, andespecially since old Marx, there's been such a clamor of authoritativevoices. There's so many new branches of knowledge, from psychiatry toconchology, from wine vintages to aviation records, that any sensitiveman keeps feeling guilty about his ignorance, no matter how hard hereads, and so he turns for clarification to the fellows that set up asauthorities.

"Well, they better be good, or they're going to do a pretty terriblething to the Common Man (like me). They're going to make him getdisgusted with all authority, and turn to the comic strips or toanarchy."

Dr. Planish grunted to Bonnie Popick, "Regular crank. Mr. Johnson ofMinneapolis? Yes, I remember his name now. He's always kicking aboutsomething he doesn't understand. Take this answer."

He wrote to Mr. Johnson that it had been a rare privilege to peruse hisprofound analysis of the present Confusion of Tongues, and might heplease read his letter to the Board of Directors, and he was sure thatso bright a man as Mr. Johnson would soon have the MinneapolisPowerhouse hitting on all eight again.

He was, actually, somewhat more disturbed by the letter than headmitted.

His circular letters asserted the busy existence of ninety-sevenPowerhouses, as a reason for sending in larger and quicker donations.Actually, only sixteen of them were visibly operating, and if that factgot out, susceptible Generous Givers might think the DDD was a zombieorganization, and quit giving.

But he did not let the recollection worry him long. After all, could aman be a leader of public thought if he was going to be disturbed by allthe Mr. Johnsons of all the Minneapolises that, so many miles from theDirective Secretary of the Dynamos of Democratic Direction, were deep inprovincial darkness?

"I'd like to see some of these fellows try to do my job!" he said toBonnie Popick, and looked at her as always for applause.

In his mail there was one most gratifying letter, from the Reverend Dr.Elmer Gantry, chairman of the DDD Insignia Committee.

Though he was a particularly stately man of God, who could useseven-syllable words just as easily as he could say Hell, Dr. Gantry wasalso an efficient man of affairs. With the consent of ColonelMarduc--since it did advertise the DDD, and cost him nothing--Dr. Gantryand Dr. Planish were permitted to control the sale of DDD buttons as aprivate venture. In the past six months, Dr. Planish had made enough outof this philanthropic enterprise to pay Peony's lingerie and shoe bills,and Dr. Gantry to engage, as an aide in his pious work, a new secretarywho was an M.A. and very beautiful.

They had hired one of the most artistic button-designers to devise a DDDbadge which, worn on the lapel, somehow gave the beholder an impressionthat the wearer had been an officer in World War I.

* * * * *

To list the telephone calls which incessantly disturbed the Doctor'shigh literary mood would be merely to give a depressing view of humanselfishness. To consider how many persons wanted him to make speeches,without fee, how many rival dealers in oratory wanted to borrow from hisstock of ideas about Abraham Lincoln, would be merely painful. But theseannoyances he at last forgot in the pure ecstasy of composition.

Once a week he wrote a long Letter to the Editor, which he sent to oneof the New York newspapers and to a dozen strategically placed papersoutside the True Jerusalem. Often they were printed, too, and even theexpert Colonel Marduc admitted that they were good advertising.

Leaning back, scratching his beard, his eyes closed in ethereal bliss,he dictated to Bonnie:

The Editor.

Sir:

It was Thucydides who said to the Athenian people that, quote, In union there is not merely strength but a joy known ill to the striving hermit, unquote--no, wait, some bastard might know Greek, I think I better make up a name for whoever was supposed to have said that, make it--uh, let's see--make it Heresophos--H-E-R-E-S-O-P-H-O-S--I hope that sounds Greek. Put his name in, and then continue after the quote:

I have the honor of being a member of an organization called Dynamos of Democratic Direction, and in these days it has been a privilege to see how citizens of every shade of opinion have found inspiration in----

He went on until the bells of St. Timothy the Good struck twelve o'clock.

* * * * *

He reached the anteroom to the Gold Ballroom of the Grand Hosannah Hotelat 12:32, and was photographed with the officers of the RiverdaleLadies' Sociological Study Club; he lunched with the club till two;then, to that sea of upturned minks and Tecla pearls, he talked fortwenty-five minutes about "Politics Needs Your Help." He told them justwhat changes in the daily life of Paris had been made by the Germanoccupation, and if he did not tell them that he had never been in Paris,neither did he say that he had.

He met Winifred Homeward in the Baboon Bar of the Hosannah, and they hada quick one and went together to a committee meeting of the new Call toArms League, organized by Milo Samphire to advocate America's enteringthe war against the dictators.

Samphire and his organization happened to be entirely honest. Winifredand the Doctor were not very welcome there, but with smiles like the sunon an icy tree, they pretended to be, and rather nervously they madenotes for Colonel Marduc.

The Colonel had been fidgety about Milo Samphire's demand that theAmerican dislike for Fascism extend to war. Indeed, for a time, theColonel had nearly slipped into the Isolationist faction. Secretly, herather liked the way of Hitler and Mussolini in dealing briefly withanyone who opposed the Rule of the Strongest--the Colonel consideringhimself quite a good candidate for the Strongest in America. He had evenspoken a few non-committal words at a Defense First anti-war meeting, afew months ago.

But when he saw the newspaper editorials about the meeting, he publiclyexplained that he hadn't said what he meant and, most decidedly, hehadn't meant what he said. He called up Dr. Planish and told him thatfrom that moment on, the DDD would have nothing to do with theIsolationists.

The Doctor was relieved; but Milo Samphire did not seem to care whateither Colonel Marduc or Dr. Planish thought, and as America tramped onto war, the Doctor felt a little scared and lonely. He did so much wantto be a good man!

* * * * *

He rode the subway down to Pine Street, called on Walter Gilroy, lookedtearful, and got a check for four hundred dollars.

He went back to the DDD office, signed his mail, and endured a littlequiet torture with callers who were blessed with wealth but cursed withideas.

At six, he was in a studio of the Brontosaurus Broadcasting Company,introducing Senator Bultitude on the radio. The time was bought and paidfor by "a committee of Republican citizens." Oh, blessed age when Timecan be bought and sold instead of being grudgingly bestowed by God; whenthe very aged, if they be also very rich, can buy Time on and on througheternity.

In swap for the Doctor's spirited introduction, the Senator mentionedthe DDD--favorably.

At 6:20, the Doctor had another quick one, with the Senator, and at 6:40still another, with Peony, at home.

Peony put on a new frock while he became beautiful in tails and whitetie. They dined at a cafeteria, and Peony, in a crimson velvet eveningcape and red roses in her hair, carried a tray with scrambled eggs,coffee, a chocolate eclair, a mocha layer-cake and caramel ice cream.

At 8:15 they entered the Artists' Dressing Room of Village Green Hall,and embraced their friend George Riot, president of Bonnibel College forWomen. At 8:24, Dr. Planish and President Riot began, before another setof furs and pearls and boiled eggs, a debate on "Resolved: in case ofwar, women should bear arms."

Dr. Planish took the affirmative, and many of the furs present believedthat he was in earnest.

He spoke movingly of his wife and his learned daughter. Were thosewomen, whose intelligence and energy alone had enabled him to do hismodest work in Education for Democracy--were they mere toys to fondle inhis idle hours, mere bric-a-brac to be laid aside if war should evercome? Were they? Never! He hoped and believed that it would never benecessary for them to be fighters, not so long as he himself couldstrike a blow. But should the occasion ever arise, he would be the firstto applaud their putting on khaki and shouldering a gun.

President Riot said, at length, that Dr. Planish was a deep thinker, butall off on today's deep thought.

At 9:29, President Riot and the Planishes had a quick one at the FanfareFolly Bar, and at 9:41 they sat down at the speakers' table at thedinner, in the Belle Poule Restaurant, of the Movement to RestoreChristianity and Regular Church Attendance in Manhattan, just asWinifred Marduc Homeward arose and began defying the microphone.

Religion, said Winifred, would be restored only when True Democracy wasinstituted. Her father and she wished that there was some way of makingevery woman, man and child realize what Democracy was; that it opposedall pressure groups and held that the rights of man and woman, rich andpoor, were equal; that all honest labor, whether of the editor or thefurnace man, the poet or banker or harvest-hand, was equally noble.

She didn't exactly say it, but she implied that if the poets, bankersand/or harvest-hands did not listen constantly to her and to her father,then civilization would smash.

* * * * *

Outside the Belle Poule Restaurant, which is expensive, Winifred'swaiting chauffeur was talking with the doorman and a taxi-driver.

"What's this Democracy they're talking about? I don't mean the DemocratParty. It's some kind of theory," puzzled her chauffeur. "Me, I'd thinkDemocracy meant you don't figure how good a guy a fellow is by how muchmoney he's got or how much he shoots off his mouth. But if Windy Winnieis all for it, then it must mean something different."

The taxi-driver grumbled, "I guess it means rich guys ought to be politeto poor guys. And am I for it! Say, I wish you could hear the lip I haveto take off my customers. 'Driver, I want you to go slow.' 'Driver, didyou ever drive a cab before?' 'Driver, are you sure you know where theGrand Central is?' God! One after another."

"Troubles you got!" said Winifred's chauffeur. "You get rid of yourheadaches after a few blocks. You should drive private, where that hyenacan not only bawl hell out of you for what she thinks is the wrongturning, but remember all the dumb plays she thinks you made yesterdayand the day before, clear back to the Civil War. And does she bring 'emup? I'll say she does! And she's the one that's always yapping aboutthis Democracy on the radio--so I hear--I wouldn't listen to it, not ifyou was to pay me for it."

The doorman, a monument in blue and silver, returned from bowing in acouple who made a point of entering the Belle Poule as though it were asoup kitchen, and snorted, "This Democracy is all nonsense. If you guyscould work your way up to where you put on a uniform, like I do, insteadof a chauffeur's suit, you wouldn't worry. These rich slobs are allright. See the tip I just got? Democracy! Think I'm no better than mybrother Jake, that's still on a potato patch in Maine? And think Jake'sno better than some hobo that comes asking for a hand-out? No, sir! ThisDemocracy just can't work out."

Mrs. Homeward's chauffeur argued, "It's got to work, or we'll go bust,like Europe. Say! How the hell come we ever let porch-climbers like Mrs.Homeward and her dad--and their toadies, like you, Doorman--get controlof this country?"

"I bet you wouldn't be very popular with your boss if she knew what youthink of her!"

"I bet nobody wouldn't be very popular with their boss if he knew whatthey think!"

The chauffeur climbed into the Homeward car and went sulkily to sleep,just as Winifred Homeward was cascading, "It has always been my pridethat the humblest truck-driver is just as free and easy with me, yes,and with that inspired sociologist, my father, as he is with any of hisother pals!"

After the Movement dinner, the Planishes had the privilege of beingtaken, with the Marducs and the Homewards, to the flat of GovernorBlizzard.

The Doctor rode with Winifred. She pointed to her chauffeur's back, andwhispered--she thought she was whispering--"But look at my driver--thestupidest, stolidest man living. How can you persuade people like him tolisten to the Voice of Democracy? He never thinks of anything butdriving. I'm sure he's never even looked at me. He doesn't know whetherI'm dull or clever. I don't believe he even knows whether I'mbeautiful!"

In the other car, Peony patted the hands of Tom Blizzard, Charley Marducand Hal Homeward, in turn, and told them that they looked tired buthandsome after their gigantic labors, told them that she was so proud ofknowing them.

All three of them smiled like appeased tom-cats.

The Governor's bachelor living-room was forty feet long, with a bar ateach end and a fireplace on each side.

Dr. Planish interested them all by saying that either the Colonel or theGovernor would be a much better President than Mr. Roosevelt. Winifredtold them, but she had heard it confidentially and they must not repeatit, that a correspondent who had had a cocktail with a French diplomat,who had had a cup of tisane with Marshal Pétain, had said that Francewould rise up against Germany before the end of January, 1942.

So the Planishes were in bed by 2 A.M.

So Peony yawned, "What a wonderful evening."

Dr. Planish was awakened by her sighing, "Do you know what that dressWinifred had on tonight probably cost?"

"R?"

"Probably three hundred and fifty dollars. And me paying $39.95 top!"

The ghastly thought awakened him fully, and he fretted, "This New Yorkis an expensive town. I went in today to buy a necktie in a place onFifth Avenue--I'd planned to spread myself; maybe pay two and a half.The clerk shows me a nice little number for five dollars, and when Iasked for something cheaper, he shows a throwaway, at three dollars, andsneers at me. Jesus! I paid my three bucks, and sneaked out of therefeeling as if I'd been caught picking up a cigar butt. For a necktie!"

"I know. To think that you make--I suppose this year it'll be abouteight thousand, with salary and lectures and everything?"

"About."

"And yet we're poor people. Why is it? You're just as bright as ColonelMarduc, aren't you?"

"I'm not as much of a crook. I really do think it's worth while knockingout Hitler and Company for keeps, and I really do believe that peoplecan live more co-operatively. And yet I do nothing but promote thatdouble-crossing Marduc!"

"I won't have you say things like that! All the good you do, and thelovely ideas you put out about--well, about Democracy and so on. But tothink of your making half again as much as President Bull atKinnikinick, and yet we often have to eat at cafeterias!"

"Peony!"

"Uh-huh?"

"Do you sometimes think maybe you'd like to go back--go to some smallertown, or get into some good small religious organization, where wewouldn't have to train with millionaires like Marduc? I'll bet he paysnine dollars for a necktie!"

"No, no, never! Don't you ever let yourself get to thinking like that!That's how people degenerate--like in that play, White Cargo. Youwouldn't expect me to associate with a lot of farmers, would you, notafter all my years of struggle?"

"No, I guess not."

"There! You see?"

* * * * *

On Saturday morning, December 6, 1941, Dr. Planish flew with PresidentGeorge Riot out to Bonnibel College for Women. It might have been anextravagant journey, but the college paid his expenses, and he alsocharged them in full to Travel on his DDD account.

At one, there was a "banquet" at Bonnibel, with exactly the samecommitteewomen, flashlight photographs, handshakes, and ambitioushigh-school girl reporters, whose notion of interviewing him was to askhim how they could get New York newspaper jobs immediately, the samecold hot chicken and hot three-colored ice cream, that he hadencountered at seven dinners in the past nineteen days. The onlydifference was that the girls' heads were a brighter vista than thedress-coats and sagging evening frocks he had seen at the others.

At 3 P.M., in the ceremony of Winter Convocation, he received fromPresident Riot the honorary degree of Doctor of Letters. He now hadalmost as many stuffed heads and horns as Colonel Marduc: two LL.D.'s,three Litt.D.'s, one D.H., and even one real degree, a Ph.D. Thusinvested, he had in his veins a different and more royal blood--maybeType 5.

At 7:30 that evening, George Riot and he publicly repeated their debateof the evening before: "Resolved: in case of war, women should beararms." But George had suggested that they change sides; it would besafer for him to tell his girl students, the darlings, that they mightbear all the arms they wanted to.

That seemed a practical notion to Dr. Planish, since the newspapers hadnot reported their previous debate, so now he wailed:

"And so, as I say, of the equality of women and men, there is no longerany doubt, and no one, not a besotted fool, would any longer even in aspirit of mockery even so much as hint that it has not been a sovereignand healing blessing to have given, if indeed 'given' is the word, thevote to women, whether as a practical measure or as a symbol of thatadmitted equality, but still, nevertheless, gladly admitting all that,the question of whether their fine and delicate talents, so superior tomen's in many tasks and, I haven't the slightest doubt, at the veryleast counterbalancing the larger gross muscular power of the male that,perhaps, is more suitable for certain other labors, should, I say, justfor the interest of experimentation, be wasted in the more brutal tasksof actual soldiering--oh, my young friends, your great president, and, Iam honored to say, my close and long-honored friend, Dr. Riot, may wishto play with this idea, as perhaps befits that sinuous intellect of his,but as for myself, I am a practical man of affairs, not unversed inmilitary lore and training, and I tell you that for a woman, young orold, to be, even if she wished to, permitted to bear arms in the heatand toil of actual conflict, that, my young friends, and I implore youto put away all the vanities of sex antagonism, natural though these maybe in view of the long and arduous and indeed properly prideful and insome sense, no doubt, belligerent struggle that women have had inconquering blind antagonism, witless prejudice, and the immobility ofmere custom and habit and the cultural pattern of other civilizationsthat, though, to the unobservant, though possibly esthetic, eye, theymay have seemed of the richest texture yet actually, in construction,they served but ill those basic necessities of the advance of humanculture, among which the true and equal co-operation of men and women inall their relationships, whether of romance, war or the home is not theleast, and yet the very historic force and intensity of that antagonismmust, in the nature of the case, be a factor clouding the completelucidity and severe brevity with which it is, I need scarcely tell you,necessary to consider a problem so complicated and far-flung----"

He caught a train at Indianapolis at 10:50; he flew from Buffalo to NewYork; he was home for breakfast on Sunday--Sunday, December 7, 1941.

Chapter 29

Dr. and Mrs. Planish attended church every Sunday, except when Peonyslept late, which she did not do oftener than three Sundays a month.They usually favored the pastors who were patrons of the DDD, such asChris Stern, Rabbi Lichtenselig, Msgr. Fish and the Reverend Dr. ElmerGantry. This morning they sat under Dr. Gantry.

In his sermon, the Reverend said that Europe was at war because people,particularly in this section of New York, did not go to church moreregularly. He and God were displeased.

"Handsome buck, Elmer. Wasn't he born in New York?" Peony speculated.

"I don't know. I've heard that he comes from a fine old Massachusettsfamily and went for some time to Harvard, but Who's Who gives him asgraduating from a Western college. I believe that later he served insome of the most barren parts of Alaska, and refused a bishopric. Youcan see it in his bearing--fine upstanding type of manly leader."

"Was that his daughter in the front row--with the half-size hat?"

"No, I believe that's his new radio secretary. A wonderful new type ofintellectual woman the radio is breeding, don't you think?"

"I do not," said Peony.

He had to leave her for luncheon, which he took with the NationalDirectors, in the Council Room of the DDD Building. The food, brought infrom an apartment-hotel restaurant down the block, was generouslyprovided by Colonel Marduc, though the Colonel himself was in thecountry, and was represented by Sherry Belden and Winifred.

It was the regular quarterly meeting of the DDD directors. Present,besides the Doctor, Sherry, and Winifred, were Ed Unicorn, ProfessorTopelius, Chris Stern--who came late and would have to run away atthree, for Sunday, as he said laughingly, "was his busy day"--WalterGilroy, Henry Caslon Kevern, Judge Vandewart, Professor Campion, AlbertJalenak, president of the Spinning Wheel chain of stores for women,General Gong, Mrs. Natalia Hochberg, Otis Canary, the poet-orator, and anew friend, Mr. Johnson of Minneapolis.

They were gay and chatty during lunch, except for Mr. Johnson ofMinneapolis, who listened so much that they were suspicious, for in thatgroup, listening was only the price you had to pay for being the next tobe listened to. However, he was just a provincial, not a crowned NewYorker.

They were a bunch of laughing boys and girls together till the waitertook out the last choked ash-tray. By magic then, they turned fromfriends into a stiff legislature, filled with stage-fright andpomposity. That was but natural, for was not the whole beclouded countrywaiting for this small and precious council to decide the fate of thenext century?

Dr. Planish said, with the quietness of a veteran legislator, "In myofficial capacity as directive secretary, I declare this regularquarterly meeting of the board of directors in session, and as temporarychairmen pro tem, I call for nominations for chairman of the meeting,and with your kind permission and in order to save time, for importantthough our discussions will be today, and who knows, just possiblyfraught with significance for future agenda not only of this but of allother enlightened organizations of the better class of Americans, yet Iam also fully bearing in mind the fact that all of us have innumerablecontacts, countless calls upon our time, and demands that we co-ordinateand develop the certainty that out of the chaos of our era, we seemslowly to be acquiring a nucleus, at least, and that a not merelydialectic and Utopian asseveration, and so, as I say, I will save timeby, however irregularly, nominating one who, though the next to theyoungest among you, for you are that, I guess, Winifred, but next toyou, I mean, the youngest, although I don't suppose there is really anygreat span of difference between his age and yours, Mr. Canary, and you,Mrs. Hochberg, gallantry as well as a true admiration of your rarequalities as well as that ever-charming appearance which, and I wouldadmit it to my dear wife just as readily as I would to you people, andso I would say that you certainly still look incomparably younger--anda lot handsomer!--than him, and I would say that if you and I had notfor so long worked faithfully shoulder to shoulder for every cause thatpromises enlightenment and the rebuke of sloth and selfishness and windytalking and wordy demagoguery wherever found, in high places or low, forso many years, and so, as I say, I nominate Sherry Belden."

(He meant that he nominated Sherry Belden.)

After throwing this bomb, he went on, "And just to be regular, unlessthere are any further nominations, may I call for a second to mynomination?"

Mrs. Homeward screamed, "Second mosh. Look, Gid, in consideration of thenews that the Japanese diplomatic representatives are to be at the StateDepartment today, and will, I think, end all this nonsense about Japanbeing a menace----"

"Just a minute, please, Winnie!" The Doctor reflected inwardly, "By God,a meeting is one place where I can make that woman shut up, and do alittle talking myself!"

He intoned, from the ritual by which a committee meeting is to bedistinguished from a country-store argument, "Sbeen moved n seckd Mr.Belden servz chairm meet all fave sigfy sayn aye contrarmine no ayeszavit Mr. Belden take chair."

Winifred shouted, "Oh, Sherry, before you start, before I forget it, Iwant to express an idea I have--I have some very important insideinformation about the Japanese delegation, who are sincerely seeking forpeace----"

Dr. Planish extinguished it.

"Just a minute, please, Winifred. There's one piece of formal businesswe ought to get through before we get down to work--just to keep therecords straight. This is Mr. Johnson, the director of the MinneapolisPowerhouse, a fine honest worker right after my own heart. He hasn'tfelt entirely satisfied with our progress, and so he has come on to NewYork to find out what we're actually doing to promote peace andDemocracy. I'm sure that after he has sat in with us today, he'llunderstand better that our labors are not merely fundamental but, uh,well--pragmatic. So I move you, Mr. Chairman--hey, Sherry, listen, willyou? I'm making a formal motion--I move you that Mr. Johnson ofMinneapolis be temporarily elected a full member of this executive boardfor today."

"Arar sex that motion?" muttered Mr. Belden.

"Seckmosh," said Professor Campion, a great authority on Rules of Order.

"Muvseck Mist Johnss templeckt memboard tday aw fave sigfy raise riteandmosh namus carry," ordered Mr. Belden. "Now, boys and gals, we got toget down to brass tacks and get busier'n a cat on a glass sidewalk.There's a hell of a lot of traffic on the trunk highway of internationalconflict; we got to jump the gun the second the green light shows, andjam the accelerator clear through the floor and drive likeBilly-be-damned on to some clear delineation of the basic spiritualaspects of that monumental coming American Century, when we shall becalled upon to fortify the global struggle."

All of Colonel Marduc's Bright Young Men, all of his private corps oftrouble-shooters, felt that they had to curse and be metaphorical andfolksy, just as they had to wear tweed jackets and gray bags, to showthat, for all their college training and managerial talent, they had notbecome stuffy. They never said "No" when "Hell no" would do just aswell, and of them all, none was more beautifully buttered over with theCommon Touch than Sherry Belden. He had been reading Kipling's "If"since the age of ten.

Sherry continued, "You will all be glad to know that Colonel Charles B.Marduc approves of what we have been trying to do, and he has beenpleased to make another generous contribution to our war chest of tenthousand dollars!"

Everybody applauded, except Mr. Johnson of Minneapolis, who said, "Whatfor?"

General Gong snorted, "Hush!"

Sherry went on, "The first thing on our agenda today is the report ofthe Committee for the Determination of a Definition of the Word'Democracy' for Propaganda, of which committee Otis Canary has been ourinvaluable chairman. Come on, Ote, let's hear your report."

In his time, Mr. Otis Canary had also been one of Marduc's Bright YoungMen; he also had worn the gray bags and the hearty slang, but now he wasa free-lance poet and essayist. His tall, clear, high face was still asopen and friendly as Sherry Belden's, but his manner had become morepontifical.

"Mr. Chairman, ladies and gentlemen," said Mr. Canary, making itperfectly clear to whom he was speaking, "before I communicate thisdefinition upon which we have agreed, I want to thank my colleagues onthe committee: Mrs. Homeward and----"

Winifred shrieked, "Oh, I didn't really do a thing. You see, I've beenso busy with some reports I have from friends long resident in Japan andwho really understand the Japanese aspirations, which are entirelypeaceful and conciliatory----"

"PLEASE!" said Mr. Canary. (That meant "shut up.") "Just a minute, Mrs.Homeward. As I say, I want to thank my friends and co-workers, Mrs.Homeward and--PLEASE, JUST A MIN-IT, MRS. HOMEWARD!--and ProfessorCampion and Mr. Jalenak and Mr. Gilroy for their unceasing labors onthis titanic task of accurately defining Democracy--a basic scientificdetermination that may in some degree be directional in all ideologicalactivities for the next hundred years to come. We have all been workingon it like demons, ten and twelve hours a day, meeting at five forcocktails and pounding right ahead, threshing this all out, tillmidnight or later. In its final form--and now at last we have it----"

"All right, let's!" said Mr. Johnson.

"In its final form, we have adopted this definition: 'Democracy is not aslavish and standardized mold in which all individuality and freeenterprise will be lost in a compulsory absolute equality of wealth andsocial accomplishments. It is a mountain vista rather than a flatprairie. It is a way of life rather than a way of legislation. It is areligious aspiration rather than a presumptuous assertion that finalwisdom inheres in man and not in the Divine, for it boldly asserts thatwhatever differences of race, creed and color the Almighty has beenpleased to create shall also be recognized by us.' So!" Mr. Canary gavean embarrassed but happy laugh. "There's your definition of Democracy."

"Where?" demanded Mr. Johnson.

Not exactly ignoring Mr. Johnson, but throwing at him a New Haven glare,Chairman Belden cried, "Jesus, Ote, that's the most magnificent piece oflyric prose, as well as the most tender and brave and profound job ofstraight thinking, that I've heard since the Gettysburg Address!Gentlemen and ladies, byes and gals, I want someone to put a motiontrying to express our profound gratitude to Mr. Canary and his wholecommittee for formulating this stirring definition, to Colonel Marducfor financing the dinners during the conferences, and to Dr. Planish forhis tireless checking and re-checking and re-re-checking of otherdefinitions. Who will put this motion? Mr.--uh--Johnson, is it?"

"It is." Mr. Johnson was standing up, solid and placid. "Look, Belden. Ihonestly don't want to throw a monkey-wrench into this juke-box, but Icame on East to find some group of people who weren't exhibitionists,who were really trying to organize all men of good will to back theGovernment and wake up the voters. I'd hoped to find a bunch at least assensible as the average high-school football team."

In the hall, the telephone was ringing, and the bored Dr. Planish wentout to answer it, as Mr. Johnson offensively blundered on:

"What do I find here? A bunch of congenital alumni and two veryarticulate women, all sitting around log-rolling, telling one anotherhow smart you are, except when you stop to thank your real boss, CharleyMarduc, or to have a well-bred laugh at us innocents out in the BibleBelt----"

A mutter of resentment was rising, but it was stilled as Dr. Planishlumbered in, stammering, "That was my wife telephoning--news--theJapanese have just bombed our ships in Hawaii, and we are in the war."

They all babbled at once that they must rush out and take charge of thecountry, and they grabbed at briefcases if not at muskets.

* * * * *

Dr. Planish felt confused as he telephoned the news to Colonel Marduc,on his farm in Dutchess County, but the Colonel sounded jubilant:

"We'll wipe out all those little yellow devils in three months, andmaybe I'll go back into the army and accept a major-generalship, andthen make Tom Blizzard President--I've decided to let him have it. Iwant you and Winifred and Belden to meet me in my office tonight, eightsharp, and we'll make plans. Hooray!"

The Doctor walked painfully home. He was loyal to Marduc, but during allthe years when he had been making a living out of shouting that he lovedAmerica, he really had loved his country, and it made him sick just nowto go on peddling that love for profit. He was willing to quit the DDDand enlist. He was even willing to keep silent.

Yet when he came into the house and found his daughter Carrie talkingwith a young Columbia graduate student, the Doctor snapped back into hislifelong habit of being a professional wisdom-dealer--fact-softener--brain-picker--information-retailer--lay-high-priest--unofficial censorof all officials--critic so skilled in judgment that he did not need toknow anything about anything in order to tell everybody everything abouteverything.

Carrie's young man was nervous of hands, widely spectacled, and probablyscared, but his eyes were steady.

The Doctor roared, "Well, fella, I can't tell you how I envy you thishour of opportunity. I wish I were young enough to shoulder a musket!"

Carrie purred, "Now isn't that funny! I was just telling Stan howimportant you and Colonel Marduc and Mrs. Homeward are. He ought tostudy you and your influence instead of ancient Rome."

It sounded all right, but Dr. Planish was suspicious. He couldn't,however, waste this audience.

"Yes, it's a great chance you have, my boy. Perhaps you and your valiantgeneration will correct the errors that so many of the leaders of mygeneration have committed. It's up to you young folks--with such aid asI can continue to give you--to win the war and win the peace."

The graduate student remarked, "I've got to be getting back uptown,"astounded the Doctor by kissing an unresistant Carrie, and walked out.Before the Doctor could get under way, it was Carrie who attacked:

"Daddy, listen. Please don't hand out any more slogans to myfriends--not even 'win the war, win the peace.' That was a beautifulwar-cry once, and it meant something to us, but all of us have had itthrown at us so many times in the last six months that it's just asound."

"My God, to think that I could have a daughter who can be frivolous at atime like this, when men are fighting!"

"I won't stand your saying that! We're not frivolous! Maybe we know allthe horrors, the creeping plague and the old churches smashed and thestarving babies and the cynicism of men like Goebbels, better than youdo, because our imaginations are younger. And we're going to dosomething. That boy who was just here--six months ago he was a pacifist,three months ago he was an isolationist, and tomorrow he'll enlist inthe Marine Corps, if they'll have him. He used to use slogans, like you.Now he wants to use a machine-gun."

"But we have to have slogans! This is an ideological war--the first warin history that's entirely between two different sets of ideas. We gotto have slogans--and trained leaders to coin them!"

"Didn't the French Revolutionists think they were fighting for a set ofideas, too, and didn't they have a slogan--Liberty, Equality,Fraternity? Maybe if they hadn't had so many perfectly swell songs andso many powerful orators and leaders, the Revolution would've had abetter run."

"I told you you were frivolous--you and all your friends--shamefullyfrivolous in this dark hour of need."

"Well, most of them are going to be frivolous in khaki, in a few weeks.They'll fight--like the Civil War. But to people that try to getpublicity for themselves out of telling the soldiers how noble they are,they'll just say, 'So what!' Can't you see that?"

"I see that my own daughter has become flippant to the point ofblasphemy!" said Dr. Planish, and walked out of the house.

But he could not, as he sat in the Lafayette Café, go on hating her. Shewas too serious, and for once, this man who made a profession ofpreaching seriousness was actually serious himself.

* * * * *

In his hotel, Mr. Johnson of Minneapolis was writing to his son, who hadbeen his junior partner but who was now a corporal in the United StatesArmy:

Dear Son:

Am writing from NY. Have seen Life w Father, very funny show, father in the play not unlike me, when you're not around to kid me out of it. Your mother phones from Mpls that she is well, she is also a funny woman, sometimes funnier than she thinks. Well, it has come, with Pearl Harbor, you were wiser than I, getting into the army so early, tomorrow Monday morning I shall go out and see if I can enlist in some branch of the service, it would be fun if we could be together, hope however you are more careful with yr rifle than sometimes you were with shotgun when we hunted duck together, well I guess I jumped you for that sufficiently at that time.

I had hoped country could stay out, but I was wrong, and now shall think only of war. Have the business in shape so that Dave can wind it up. When you & I get back from the war we can start a new one. This town is full of stuffed shirts, do you know what is funny, son, they all bellyache here because the English come over and tell them what they ought to do about the war, and so they, the Easterners, tell us Middlewesterners what we ought to do abt war. A gassy uplifter here named Planish--I guess he was born in the Great Valley himself, but he's conveniently gone and forgot it, and this old windbag said to me, "I'm so sorry I haven't got time to go out and awaken the Middlewest to the realities and emergency of the international situation!" Have you still got that young Polish doctor from Winona for a lieutenant? Tell him what Planish said, will you, and write me his comment.

If I get into the service too, do not worry about yr mother and sisters, son, if anything happens--there is plenty insurance in their names, have found that place where we got such fine seafood that time, had a good dinner but sure did miss you, eating alone.

Yr father.

Dr. Planish had walked little, the past few years, but on this restlessSunday of December 7th, he walked all the way up to Colonel Marduc'soffice. He was wretchedly wondering if he always did know what was goingto happen.

But he lost his indecision when he came into the buoyant presence ofColonel Marduc, who put a new rose in his buttonhole, lighted a giganticcigar, pounded his desk and roared:

"Here's our chance. Germany will come in, and war must inevitably make anew political set-up, and Tom Blizzard and I are ready to step in. ButI'm not so much interested in office during the war--that's onlytemporary. What I want is influence after it. All right, call itpower, if you want to!

"We must start right now identifying my name with post-war negotiations,and play it up so people will turn to me whether the war is lost or won.If we win, and I think we will, I have a new peace plan that nobody hashit on yet. We'd better get a lot of publicity on it, and get peoplereferring to it as 'The Marduc Plan'. Realize you're the firstperson--except Winifred--that's ever heard those words, 'The MarducPlan'? You won't be the last! And here it is:

After the war, in order to make the Germans keep the peace permanently,we neither slaughter the whole lot of 'em--as a lot of sound peopleadvocate, and there certainly is much to be said for that solution--nordo we let 'em into any new League of Nations, as the sentimentalistswant. No. We just take their imperial government away from 'em, andreduce 'em to the small separate kingdoms and duchies that they werebefore 1870--a lot of small weak states. Doesn't that sound good?Doesn't it? And who can tell--the plan might even get adopted--why, itmight even work!"

"But Colonel, mightn't those small states get to fighting one another,and just increase the chances of new wars?"

"Who the hell cares what they do? Besides, a little war now and then isgood for business. Yessir! The idea of the Marduc Plan, then, ought tobring me a prominent seat at the final peace conference, and lead rightto the post of Secretary of State... if not higher... but I'd besatisfied to let Tom Blizzard have the big job, if he'll get busy andmove fast. I'm certainly not going to wait around while he backs andfills. Don't tell anybody this, but maybe the Japs did me a big serviceat Pearl Harbor!"

By just vigorously not hearing the last sentence, Dr. Planish was ableto rouse to action, and forget the warnings of Carrie. "Fine! What doyou think I better do now? God, I hope nothing will happen to the DDD!"

"It won't, my boy. I'll protect you. No, just carry on with thePowerhouses. Send 'em all a mimeographed bulletin tomorrow and remind'em that we warned 'em about this Pearl Harbor danger months ago.Months!"

"But I don't think we did."

"Of course we didn't! What's that got to do with it? And begin to sendout hints about the Marduc Plan--don't tell 'em what it is yet. Writesome letters to the papers, under different names, demanding thatCongress send for me to tell 'em what we're fighting for. I don't thinkthey will, but they might have enough sense to. And phone Bultitude, ifyou can get him; tell him to start making hints about my Plan, or I'llexpose him. Try him tonight--he'll be plenty worried. So!"

"I'll get busy right away, Colonel," said Dr. Planish.

Chapter 30

Governor Blizzard's New York office, with its red carpet and weightymahogany desk and steel engraving of John Quincy Adams, suggested aState capitol.

He had summoned Dr. Planish, who found a changed man. For years, inactive State politics including biting and eye-gouging, Tom Blizzard hadhidden the fact that he had been graduated from a university, magna cumlaude. Of recent years, living in New York, he had played up thedegree, and joined the National Arts Club. Today, in January, with thewar five weeks old, Tom Blizzard had flopped back, and he was tryingagain to be the roughneck politician who loved silos, split infinitivesand votes.

"Doc, I'm going to get out of this town and go back to the United Statesof America. This is the time for it. I think maybe I'm the guy to put upagainst FDR at the next Democratic National Convention, and till then Iwant to just set in Waskeegan and get the garlic and Chanel smells offme.

"I don't really savvy this Venusberg, and among other things I don't getis your organizations. Pressure groups. One half of you, all this pastyear, trying to make us stay to hell out of the war and the other halftrying to get us in, and both sides forgetting we still have got apopular body called the Congress. What you're trying to do, all youuplifters and organizators, is to set up an Invisible Empire that'll behigher than the elected Government. You want to re-christen this country'The Organized States of America, Inc.'!

"Now you, Doc, you're fairly sane, personally. I don't believe youbelieve your own spiels about what crooks and weather-vanes andfoot-kissers we politicians are. You know damn well that politicians, attheir worst, can be checked and thrown out by the popular vote, whereasyou self-crucified Messiahs only have to keep on the right side of somephilanthrobber and you're in for keeps. You are only a little cuckoo;you take care to hold down your job and play Charley Marduc's records.

"But have you ever noticed that nearly every one of the semi-honestuplifters and crusade-leaders and rousers of the masses, including theCommunists and their brothers the evangelists, is anywhere from aneurotic with the hives up to a complete lunatic? Of course any man thatdeliberately sticks his neck out and goes into politics is a littlecrazy, but compared with all you self-appointed Galahads, Huey Long wasa man of modesty and remarkable horse-sense.

"Yep, I'm reverting to Main Street with some of the fastest reversionyou ever saw. Six weeks from now I'll have my feet up on the table withsome honest ballot-box-stuffer, and forget all you unfrocked preachersand crayonless professors and newspapermen that couldn't make the gradeand women that made it too fast.

"But I might be able to use the lowdown on the virtuous shenanigans thatMarduc and that bed-hopping daughter of his may pull from now on. Mybank will be sending you--at your home address--a check for one hundreddollars, every month, and I'd like you to keep me informed on whateverthat enlightened pair get away with."

Dr. Planish gasped, "You don't mean you want me to spy on ColonelMarduc?"

"Sure I do!"

"Oh! Oh, I see. Well----"

* * * * *

The publicizing of the Marduc Plan was interrupted by the most strategicidea Dr. Planish had had for a year. He saw a way in which, even duringthese troublous times, the DDD might be kept alive and useful no matterhow wartime finances might go.

He felt that the citizenry were in a surprising and rather shockingmood; they were listening to the President and the Army and to airplanemanufacturers, and not to the standard professional prophets, not evento those who were so inspired that they had been getting $1,250 for alecture. The invitations to Colonel Marduc to attend public dinners hadso diminished that he was accepting all of them.

The aureous life-blood of all organizations was, to Dr. Planish's publicrejoicing and private worry, flowing into war bonds and Red Crosssubscriptions, just when he had to pay the installments on Peony's newnear-diamond and semi-sapphire bracelet. He knew that the otherorganizations must be suffering from the same anemia. Why not saveexpenses by combining all of them--with Dr. Gideon Planish as theexecutive secretary of the lot?

The idea was simple and brilliant, he felt, and Colonel Marduc approvedit.

The word "co-operation" had long been one of the most valuable in theorganizational treasure-house, but nobody had ever done much about it,because each organization had its paid secretary, and that secretary didnot want to be co-operated out of his salary. But now, with the youngsecretaries being drafted and the old ones being starved, Dr. Planishfelt that he could move in on them as easily as Hitler had moved intoPoland--though, naturally, with an entirely different treatment of theoffice staffs.

He knew a good deal about the others. Using the names of Bonnie Popickand Flaude Stansbury and his other clerks, he had regularly sent for the"literature" of every new private circumlocution office as it wasblithely set up. Now, with Bonnie, he began to list all the nationalwelfare and educational organizations with headquarters in New YorkCity.

He stopped when he had listed two thousand of them, mostly with titlescontaining the words American, National, Committee, Institution, Guild,Forum, League or Council. Even Dr. Planish had not realized that therewere so many bands of light.

He arbitrarily picked out every hundredth league, called a taxicab,started out to co-operate the twenty he had chosen--and quit his crusadeat 4:37 that afternoon.

He had started with "The Get Together Alliance," which had one pink andgolden room in the Gyro Building, and proved to consist entirely in aMrs. Willoughby Eck, who was a tailored fifty but enthusiastic. It washer notion that the cure for every world evil was for everybody to keepon shaking hands with everybody else all the time, falling on themwhenever you could catch them off guard, in subways, at theaters, atbars and prayer-meeting. Mrs. Eck gushed, "The Rotarians have the rightidea--good fellowship--but why should the Rotarians have all the fun?Why don't us moral leaders also recognize each other's humanity by thetouch of hands? Let me give you my little leaflet, Reverend."

But the Doctor had fled, without even trying to co-operate with Mrs.Willoughby Eck.

By 4:37 P.M., the innocent Doctor had been shocked by the whole businessof organizationally. He had found that the National American EclecticInstitute for the Advancement of the Popular Principle in Education wasone large, gray old gentleman who had a small desk in a corner of apublic stenographer's clattering office; that its rival, the Society forthe Humanization of Higher Education, did have rooms and rooms andpamphlets and pamphlets, but was, all the while, just another league forattacking union labor; and that another rival, the Institute ofInvestigative Consideration of Education, was nothing at all but #3Telephone in a row of twelve telephones upon the desk of a backroomreal-estate dealer, which desk was equally the headquarters of the MountCelestial Cemetery Corp., the Fig Leaf Publishing Co., and the Leaguefor the Protection of Home and Marriage.

He had also found that an association of poets headed by a lady wholooked like Emily Dickinson, a drama league mothered by aninsurance-man's wife, and a share-croppers' defense society, were all ofthem strangely like Communist fronts.

Dr. Planish returned to his office, and left the world to darkness andto philanthrobbing. He was so sunk that for a moment he thought of goingback to work, of taking a school job so that some younger teacher mightbe released for enlistment.

But, he snorted, what percentage was there in being a professional Lightto the Toilers if you merely became a toiler? That would be as silly asfor a professional evangelist to go to somebody else's mission and getsaved, with not even a look-in on the collection-box.

No, he would go on with his co-operation, but he would perform it withsound, reliable organizators, the ones he already knew personally.

Next morning, at 11, he was in the anteroom of the Anti-Racial YouthCommittee for the Organization of Global Co-operation, waiting to seeits managing secretary, Professor Goetz Buchwald.

He had to wait, for the Professor was "in conference" with another warmfriend, Dr. Christian Stern. The waiting-room was comfortable enough; iteven had a touch of splendor, with red-leather armchairs, rare volumesin Bantu, Hindustani and Hebrew, and handsome blown-up photographs ofYouth Groups from sixteen different countries, all wearing shorts andhorn-rimmed spectacles and all looking exactly alike, except that theChinese and Palestinian groups looked more so.

Into this room militarily strode still another friend: Commander OrrisGall, executive director of the Zero-Hour American National Committee onAnti-Totalitarian Defense, which even since Pearl Harbor had gone righton in a surprised way telling the country that Adolf Hitler was no realfriend of America.

"Well, well, well, Dr. Planish, this is swell finding you here. Thiswill save me a trip to your office. I phoned you, but they said you'djust left," said the Commander. "I've got a perfectly revolutionaryidea. Like this. I needn't tell you how the sources of philanthropy arethreatening to dry up. So why don't a lot of us that have a commonideology join up and economize on expenses and efforts? Let'sco-operate!"

The Doctor glowed, "Why, that's what I was going to suggest to you! Isuppose you'll be going back into the Navy."

"No, not--exactly. The new people that are running it claim that becauseI belong to the old tradition, I haven't kept up to date. Imagine that!But I am going to take a key post with one of the most importantmanufacturers of naval equipment--in the public relations department.Right away."

"So that'll leave your ZANC without a director. I'll be glad to take itover----"

"That wasn't exactly my idea, Doctor. The fact is, my wife is going tocontinue my work--she's really a lot more capable than I am--a veryremarkable writer, too; you ought to see some of the fiction she dashesoff--and what I was thinking was that since your DDD has always merelycovered the same field as ours, like exposing scoundrels like ZekeBittery--and after all, it was I who first showed him up!--why, Marducand you might like to put the DDD under Mrs. Gall's supervision and youcould--well, you could go on to something else, don't you see?"

Dr. Planish was staring at this insolence when out of ProfessorBuchwald's office glided Dr. Christian Stern. He bubbled as he saw them:

"Well, well, boys, this is a coincidence! I was going to call on youboth this afternoon, but I guess this'll save me some taxi-fares, ha,ha! What I want to talk to you about is---- You know how busy I alwaysam, with my big institutional church, but somehow this crisis gives onesuperhuman energies, and I was thinking I might be able to combine yourDDD and ZANC with Professor Buchwald's ARYC, and serve, or shall I sayfunction, as executive secretary of the whole caboodle--and, practicallyspeaking, at no extra salary, say just thirty-five hundred beyond whatI'm getting now--and thus release you boys for war work. I regret to saythat Buchwald can't see it my way. If there's any co-operating, he wantsto do the operating and let us do the co! But you boys are more likepractical men of affairs, and so---- Let's co-operate!"

Chapter 31

Dr. Planish and the other directors of the DDD decided that, since theywere kept from co-operation by a little group of willful men, they mightas well help out the Government. When Washington announced to somemillions of newspaper readers that it wanted scrap iron, the Doctor'sbulletins hastily told several thousand members that the DDD wasthinking of letting the Government have some scrap iron.

When the Government got tired of H. Sanderson Sanderson-Smith's takingtoo much German money without registering as an agent, and sent him tothe Federal penitentiary, Dr. Planish rushed in to expose Mr.Sanderson-Smith; and who but he presided at the meeting where Dr. ElmerGantry came right out and denounced his former buddy, Ezekiel Bittery,as a deceiver, a turncoat, a Fascist, a Fifth Columnist, a renegade, asnake in the grass, a Ratzi and an anti-Semite. (This was less than afortnight after Mr. Bittery had joined Mr. Sanderson-Smith in his cell.)

With each of these courageous deeds, Dr. Planish felt justified insending out a few letters suggesting an increase of contributions to theDDD.

In a general sort of way, at this time Dr. Planish and the DDD alsoarranged a large public dinner, not because it had any value, notbecause anyone, except persons who like to be naked in public, couldfind it anything but agonizing, but because it was an American primitivetribal rite, astonishingly like the orgies of the Penitentes, exceptthat the Penitentes do not have a busy paid secretary. In New York it isalways possible to persuade from six hundred to fifteen hundred personsto put on evening clothes and pay from $3.50 to $7.50 each for a verybad dinner, at which very bad speakers, mostly throat-clearers, willarise and say nothing at all at preposterous length, with an "uh"between every adjective and noun. It is even possible to get thesespeakers, these non-private persons, not only to endure the horrors oforatorical vacuity, but also to put up with the torture of a receptionbefore or after the dinner, when they will shake hands with strangersand smilingly listen to them without once protesting, "Everything youare saying to me is complete foolishness."

It is not Broadway that is the Main Street of New York, but the long,thin, prandial Speakers' Table, and every familiar--too, toofamiliar--face along it knows intimately and detests furiously all theother inevitable and self-opening faces there.

And one of the largest and dreariest of these rain dances was whipped upby the DDD.

So the Doctor was able to make a good report when a former acquaintancenamed Hatch Hewitt jeeringly asked, in a bar, what he had been doingabout the war. This Hewitt was in uniform as a major of marines, andwhen Dr. Planish took the trouble to ask him where he was going, the manmerely growled "Abroad," and when, even more politely, the Doctor saidthat he felt like joining up, too, the Major observed, "----!"

Yet with all this effort driving the Doctor half-mad, Colonel Marducincessantly asked that his name and his Marduc Plan for Permanent Peacebe mentioned in more radio talks, more interviews, and in mid-spring, hewas suddenly demanding publicity also for his daughter, WinifredHomeward the Talking Woman.

* * * * *

Colonel Marduc was on the loose that evening. He felt lonely andmisunderstood; he felt his sixty years.

He had had words with his most recent mistress on the subject oftelephoning to her at 3 A.M. If he found that she was then asleep, hewas angry at her for neglecting him; if she was awake, he stated thatshe must have another lover with her; if she didn't answer at all, hecalled her at 6 A.M. to rebuke her for the sleep she had made him lose.His last attention to her had been a slap.

He scouted into his favorite stalking ground, the Vicugna Bar, wherePark Avenue met Prospect Park and stage celebrities went to stare at thesuave and beautiful visitors from Omaha. The Colonel walked up to thebar as if he owned it. He did.

Three drinks later, he felt healed enough to look around. One youngwoman, at a table with another girl, looked familiar: a slim redheadwith a face as pert as a pearl button against black cloth. The Colonel,with an indifferent bend of his finger, brought the manager of theVicugna on the run. "The redhead--what gives?" he grunted.

"I don't know, Colonel. I'll try and find out right away, Colonel,"panted the manager, a less collegiate Sherry Belden, but more useful.While the hero stood erect and drank, always too dignified to squat on astool at the bar, the manager scuttled through the café interviewingwaiters, and came back to groan, "I'm terribly sorry, Colonel, butnobody seems to know who she is."

"Have I got to do my own seductions, at my age? Imperial power,intellectual panders on the court payroll, and still beneath the erminethe emperor is naked, nicht wahr?"

"That's so, sir," said the manager, who had understood only the words"payroll," "naked" and "nicht wahr."

"Go to hell," said the Colonel.

The manager went.

The Colonel watched the redhead till her girl companion had gone off towhat, in the infinite delicacy of modern American saloons, is known as"the powder room," then moved on her like a traditional grand duke, likea mighty bull of Bashan. He sat down at her table without invitation,and she stared at him, breathless, frightened and already conquered.

"I seem to know you, young lady."

"Oh, yes, Colonel. I guess you must a seen me. I'm a stenographer at theDDD."

"M?"

"Up on the third floor. Under Mr. Vesper. I've seen you when you've comeinto the Doctor's office."

"Doctor? Doctor? Which Doctor?"

"Why, Dr. Planish!"

"Oh. Him!" A huge silence. "Yes, yes, a Christian gentleman and a finescholar. Undoubtedly. I'm sure that you girls enjoy working for him."

"He's awfully sweet and kind--you know, kind of jokey."

"I see. Jokey---- Look, dear, get rid of that piece of fluff that's withyou, and we'll go drink some champagne at the Syrinx Den. Here shecomes."

The redhead talked to her friend, aside. She came back to the Coloneland his bulbous stare as timidly as though it had been she who hadstarted all this. She was amazed when, in the taxicab, he did not kissher, but only patted her hand. At the Syrinx cabaret, where he didn'tactually order champagne but a couple of innocent-tasting drinks called"zombies," he respectfully asked her opinion of Dr. Planish's latestpamphlet, Defend Your Dollars--which she had liked very much but whichshe had not read. Not till she had chattered herself into lovingcompanionship did he ask her name.

"Flaude Stansbury. It's a kind of corny name, ain't it! My ma wasromantic."

"No worse a name than Marduc, precious."

"Maybe I ought to use my married name."

"Nonsense! You can't be married! You'reyoungenoughtobemygranddaughter!"(But inwardly he was congratulating himself, "That'll save trouble!")

"Oh, I am so married, Colonel!" (He had not asked her to call him"Charley," and he never did. Seduction was to Colonel Marduc no groundfor impertinence.)

"And who's the lucky boy, Flaude? I'll bet the dog is handsome."

"He isn't a boy. He's pretty old."

"Not as old as I am, I bet."

"He'd be twice as old as you are even if he was only half as old. Oh,I'm not kicking. Honestly I'm not! I hate these wives that whine andcomplain, don't you?"

"I certainly do!" said Colonel Marduc, with great sincerity.

"I thought it would be kind of different--he's such a student andidealist and all that junk, and he was so desperately in love withme--and God knows, I didn't want to always have to go on earning myliving, and he was so in love and---- No soap. The poor thing does tryso hard, but he's such a cold fish--and then he wants me to kneel downand pray with him! Figure that one!"

"Who is this egg?"

"He's my immediate boss--Mr. Carlyle Vesper."

"Vesper? Oh, that flunky at the DDD--excuse me, I mean clerk. But he's amillion years older than you are!"

"I'll say!"

"And he's some kind of a Holy Roller preacher, isn't he?"

"God knows what he is, except that---- Oh, Colonel!"

He kissed her, so openly and so ignoring of all the drinkers packed inaround them, that nobody paid any attention. And in the Colonel's kissthere was nothing of cold-fishness.

He took her to what she considered the most beautiful apartment she hadever seen, and he considered the most horrible burlesque in New York: ahotel suite choked with Spanish beams, escritoires in five kinds of woodand three kinds of carving, coffee tables shaped like drums, andarmchairs that were also radios and smoking-stands and magazine racks.There was a bathroom with flimsy nightgowns and cosmetics for women, andin the kitchen, along with sound Bourbon, were crême de rose andDantziger Goldwasser.

The young lady cried on his shoulder, but it was no cry of unhappiness.

* * * * *

He thought, as he met Flaude at the Vicugna for the third time, that thesquare-nosed man at the bar was shadowing him, but he forgot it in heryoung hand-clasp. Her husband, Flaude said, was out this evening,attending some dreary committee meeting.... The Colonel had seen toit that Carlyle Vesper should be attending a dreary committee meeting.

He wanted to see Flaude's home, particularly to look over her wardrobe,with a view to improvements.

As they entered that skimpy flat, a rear walk-up near the East River, heached for his poor little friend. The place had none of the lipstickflavor that he had expected; there wasn't so much as a tall gilt baskettied with a rosy ribbon. The living-room was hilly with old gray books,and between the two narrow and sooty windows, which faced the courtyard,was a prie-Dieu.

He growled, "What a dump! Come here and I'll give you something to makeup for it."

Over her shoulder, as he kissed her, he could see, slowly coming throughthe door of the bedroom, slow and silent and gray, a man who looked likea hill-billy preacher, a thin and sallow man, his mustache dribbling.

The man was Carlyle Vesper. He was carrying an old-fashioned razor, theblade clear and vicious even in that muggy light. His mouth was wide andtrembling.

In a Harlem den, the Colonel had once seen a man sliced up with a razor,but he was interested to notice that he was not afraid. With no especialhaste, he swung the girl round behind him. Then he laughed.

Solemnly, methodically, but with speed, a man who had been standingoutside on the fire-escape was sliding up the half-open window, fallinginto the room, seizing Vesper from behind. He was the squat man who hadbeen tailing the Colonel.

The Colonel gave Flaude three hundred dollars, which would more thantake her back home to Stansbury Center--her great-grandfather had beenthe founder of the village, her grandfather a loafer and her father adrunk. He helped Flaude pack her two bags.

The detective was explaining to Carlyle Vesper that they just wanted himto understand that unless he kept his mouth shut, he would be killed. "Ido mean killed--and I do mean you!" said the detective, cheerfully,and he bent Vesper's left middle finger back and back till the manscreamed, "Don't--oh, please don't! I'll keep still. Anyway, can't yousee I don't want to hurt her any more than I have?"

When they left him, the man was lying on his bed, sobbing.

The Colonel said, "Sniveling little bastard. By the way, flatfoot, howdo you get a man killed?"

"Search me. I just read about it in detective stories, same as you. I'mvery fond of a good detective story, though I don't know but what I likea Western better. How do you suppose these fellows think up all theseideas for stories?"

When they were seated in the back room of a saloon, the Colonel saidblandly, "Come across. Who put you on me, and how much do you want?"

"Oh, well, Colonel, no use bluffing you. I won't ask you more'n a couplehundred bucks, because it was only your daughter, Mrs. Homeward."

"Oh... Winifred... Sweet girl... Idealistic."

"That's a fact. But Jesus, how she talks! A check would be all right,Colonel. I don't think you'd stop payment on it."

"You mean, not twice I wouldn't."

"That's the idea!"

The two men of the world laughed together.

* * * * *

When someone--the voice was unfamiliar--telephoned to Dr. Planish thatMr. Carlyle Vesper would be unable to return to the office, and wouldthey please send Vesper's things to this address, the Doctor was prettyindignant.

In Vesper's desk, Bonnie Popick and the Doctor found a smallleather-bound copy of the Imitatio Christi.

The good Doctor protested gently, "Now isn't that just like a shiftlessbeggar like Carlyle to go and blow in his money on such an expensivepiece of junk! On his salary! Anyway, it was very inconsiderate of himto have married that Stansbury girl in the first place. If he'd asked myadvice, I'd've told him not to. I've always stood ready to give himanything--I mean, any advice--but do you think he appreciated that? Now,I suppose he and his wife will go batting all over the country, neverthinking for one second how inconvenient it is for me to have 'em walkout and leave me flat this way, with all I've got to do. As I've alwayssaid, ingratitude and disloyalty and lack of imagination are worsecrimes than--than--than----"

"Barratry," said Bonnie.

"What?" said Dr. Planish.

* * * * *

The Colonel had invited his daughter to come down to the office for adrink.

"I always do think you've got the nicest diggings here," she said.

"When the hell did an office become a 'diggings'?"

Her laughter tinkled lightly--anyway, she meant it to belightly-tinkling, as in the newspaper items about her. "Of course. Howsilly of me!"

"What makes you so Park Avenue today? Or are you being English? You musthave been bumming around with some new lover--maybe your husband!"

"Dear Father, what's all this rudeness a prelude to?"

"Why are you trying to get the goods on me?"

"Trying?"

"All right, getting 'em. Wouldn't it be cheaper to come and ask me aboutmy affairs? I can tell you much more than Operative Skink of the O'PookAgency."

"Hm?" She looked glazed and impenetrable.

"He's now on my payroll. Just what is your game, my child? Are youtrying to get something on me so you can step on my face and climb upover me, as you've been doing to other people all your life, startingwith your classmates in Miss Mitch's School and continuing on up to yourhusband? Are you turning your fancy lightly to patricide?"

"Do you know that when you talk in that silly, self-dramatizing way,it's very hard for me to remember that you're my father--presumably? Ofcourse I've been checking up on your little excursions. I have toprotect you against yourself; I have to know just what exhibitions ofpuerility you've been up to, and decide whether to let your variousassociates know about them. My dear Father, if you had the slightestidea what I've gone through in my efforts to keep your old friends, evenyour own doctor, loyal to you----"

"You----"

"If you could hear the way they confide to me that they're just aboutfed up with your incessant drunkenness and whoring, and your badlyinformed talk-talk-talking about foreign affairs----"

"Me talk----"

"I've pled with them and I've begged them to remember that behind allyour senile capers----"

"Senile!"

"----you do have a generous heart, and a pretty good brain, at least forbusiness. Me climb? Me step on people's faces? Why, the only thing I'veever wanted from life was to go on being an adoring wife and daughter,stay home and sacrifice everything to help my husband and my father, andif I've ever stepped out and taken some poor, pitiful little interest inpublic affairs, it's only because I've been so sick at heart over theway you two men have made childish drunken spectacles of yourselves. Ijust couldn't endure sitting idle and helpless at home another hour.I've undoubtedly kept both of you out of jail, or out of the alcoholicward, by my hourly and incessant struggle, and as for you--I warn youthat from now on I'm going to take charge of your political career.Entire charge!"

On the Colonel's desk, the telephone that was connected only with hissecretary was ringing. It was Winifred who answered it. She gurgled,"Oh, yes. Send him right up."

She turned on the Colonel in a sunburst of sweetness. "It's a reporterfrom Events. He wants your opinion on the psychology of the Japs."

The young man came in, nodded tolerantly to Winifred, and said to theColonel, "The boss thinks your ideas about Japan ought to be valuable.He says you handled a lot of publicity for the Japanese Government a fewyears ago."

The Colonel sputtered, "Nonsense--nonsense! Just a few routinematters--some commercial promotion that happened to come into ouroffice--carelessness on the part of an underling--fired him the moment Iheard he'd accepted the vile stuff!"

Winifred Homeward, delicately gesturing with a cigarette, her brightvoice soaring, caught the reporter's attention:

"But you're perfectly right to come to him. Even if he is my father, Imust say there's no one who has more information about Japan and how tocrush it than the Colonel, whether as a soldier or an administrator.Here's the way he and I feel about it. What's the shortest way from NewYork or Detroit or Pittsburgh or Washington or St. Paul, or for thatmatter, from Toronto, to Tokio or Kobe or Yokohama or, what reallycounts, to Korea where, we have inside information, the natives areready to rise against their Japanese overlords----"

Colonel Marduc presently wandered out of the room, quite unnoticed, anddid not return until after this spirited interview with him was over.

* * * * *

Winifred said to Peony, "These men--even the talented ones, like myfather and your husband and mine--they do mean so well, but they have nosense of orderliness and human values, like us. I suppose we get it fromhousekeeping and from mothering them.

"We women have always controlled school-teaching in America, andconversation and manners, but now that so many of the men are away atwar, here's our chance to have a much higher sphere of influence. Whenthe time comes, I'm going to run for the city council in New York, and Idon't see why I shouldn't be governor. I'm going to start anorganization of my own, something like the DDD, but much more hooked upwith practical politics. When peace comes, there's no reason why womenshouldn't be in power, and dictate the terms. We're so much lessemotional.

"You could save my life, Peony. I want you to start business school,right away, and learn typing and shorthand, and be ready to boss thecorps of secretaries I'll have to have. I'll pay your tuition, and payyou twenty dollars a week while you're learning. How about it?"

"Swell!"

Peony had been bored. With shopping, movies, reproving Carrie, playingbridge with a gabby sister-in-law of Chris Stern, eating and aprodigious quantity of sleeping, she had put in twenty-four hours a day,but she had not met many of the powerful people whom the Doctor wasalways quoting. She had even been driven to taking courses in economicsand history at Columbia, sometimes showing up as often as every otherclass.

Now, business college was the liveliest party she had known in months.She was thirty-nine, but she found herself of the same age with all thegirls of twenty-two and the undrafted boys of eighteen in the school;with them, at the Palais de Hamburger, she gigglingly exchanged suchconversational delights as "What's cooking in your filing class? Say,did you see the expression on that old bag's face when I did know thesymbol for February? In the groove! That's cooking with gas!"

She was at home now; she had found that gay, urbane New York that shehad known must exist; and when George Riot slipped into town and on thetelephone muttered that she must meet him again at the dreary Hex Hotel,she refused, because she was going to a party to be given by the cleverMiss Teddy Klutz, aetat 24, the youngest and liveliest teacher at theirQwick-Shure Secretarial and Executive Commercial College, PositionsGuaranteed.

Late every afternoon Peony was at Winifred Homeward's office, mixingSazarac cocktails or confidentially helping the great woman in affairstoo delicate for the routine hands at Attention!; working on the grandlist of influential women all through America who were, know it or not,fated to be Winifred's future corps of Black Blouses.

Not Colonel Marduc nor the chirping Deacon Wheyfish and certainly notthe anxious Dr. Planish had ever had so much fun in the invisible empireof propaganda as Peony Planish.

Chapter 32

A disturbing letter had come in to Dr. Planish from Mr. Johnson ofMinneapolis, written from the Great Lakes Naval Training Center:

"I have been asked to be a sponsor, whatever that means, for a DinnerDedicated to the Plain People, to be held in your very fine GladiolaHotel and to be conducted by three novelists, a portrait-painter and analderman, at $3.50 a plate, which is a good plain price. There are a lotof other names on the list of sponsors, but what bothers me is that theyseem to have left out all the Plain People.

"Should I send some on? I can't come myself because I am now in theNavy, but I know quite a few of the Plain People in Minnesota--a dumbfarmer who happens to be my uncle, and a surgeon who likes duck-hunting,and my plumber, and a chemist who went to Yale, which I guess shouldmake him a Plain Person as that college was founded to promote plaindemocratic learning. Or do you think they might resent the imputationthat they are so Plain and so lowdown that they have to have dinnersgiven to them by liberal novelists to bring them up to a level whereMrs. Homeward can notice them?"

* * * * *

Suddenly, a little heavily, he liked Mr. Johnson of Minneapolis, andagreed with him against all the organizators and all the ethicalraptures of his transmogrified Peony.

The next letter in the afternoon mail was from President T. Austin Bullof Kinnikinick, inviting him to be the speaker at Presentation Day, inearly May.

"If you can possibly afford the time, stay on for a few days and get areal rest here in the quiet while the lilacs come out and the thin greenlines of young oats look so pretty against the black earth."

A young Gid Planish was reborn, and he exulted, "I'm going, and maybeI'm never coming back!"

* * * * *

No, said Peony, Good Lord, no; she couldn't possibly leave her shorthandto go out to any Middlewest, and besides, she didn't think the Bulls andthat Teckla Schaum, that Gid used to be so much in love with, cared somuch for her; and now that Peony's father and mother were dead and shehad lost track of all her dumb friends in that dumb Middlewest----Besides! She wasn't going to waste all these lovely new clothes that shewas (partly) paying for out of her new salary on a bunch of farmers, nother!

But she insisted on their having a Real Time, a typical happy evening inNew York, before he went West, and they had it, to the full splendor.

In order to be at home on time, he called on five contributors inthirty-eight minutes, riding up and down in express elevators, past atotal of 474 floors, with the shoulders of strangers unaffectionatelythrust into his jaw; he took a taxicab home and got stuck in crosstowntraffic; his wife and he dressed in expensive special evening garmentsthat were going to look pretty funny in the history-book pictures in1982; they took another taxi, endured another traffic jam in the streetsof the theatrical district, smelly with carbon monoxide and Italianfood; paid for the unpleasant ride the ransom for a small prince; edgedpast a doorman whose glance said "Tip!"; edged into a restaurant; wereinsulted and kept waiting by a member of the Fascist Party who waslearning dictatorship as a restaurant manager; waited for the pleasureof lending the Doctor's hat to a girl who just didn't like customers;squeezed in between a skinny table and the wall; looked unhungrilythrough the varieties of chicken on the menu; waited for the waiter;muttered their orders to the waiter, who was German-Swiss and didn'tlike customers or anybody else; ate radishes and celery and olives andbread and lumps of ice and the table bouquet till they didn't reallywant their chicken, and then ate chicken till they didn't want theirprofiterolles, and then ate the profiterolles; listened to the shrieksof three business women, all in tweeds and all drunk, at another table;waited for the waiter with the bill; waited for their change; added atip to an amount sufficient to ransom a pretty big prince; struggled outbetween tables; waited for the check-girl; paid her fifteen cents for aten-cent hat and got a vicious look from her because it wasn't aquarter; waited for the doorman to call another taxi; got a vicious lookfrom the doorman because they hadn't tipped him; tipped him; sat in ataxi one-tenth filled with cigarette butts and the corpses of papermatches during another jam in crosstown traffic; discovered that itwould have been six blocks shorter to have walked to the theater; liftedthemselves out of the taxi at the theater; got a vicious, dirty, andawfully discriminating look from the theater doorman who, while theDoctor was paying another ransom to the taxi-driver, looked over theirclothes and muttered "Yonkers"; produced the theater tickets for whichthe Doctor had paid the ransom for two princes and a king; crawled intothe theater behind a line of paralytics until they reached their seats,where Dr. Planish fell into such a coma of exhaustion that not till thesecond act did he sit up and discover that he had seen the play before.

And so they went home, to be kept awake by the radio across the way, andthe next morning he started for Kinnikinick, with enthusiasm.

* * * * *

The bluff by Lake Elizabeth had once been an hour and a half walk over asandy trail. Now, it was an eight-minute drive from the campus by a newblack-top road.

The Pridmore shack in which he had spent his first night with Peony hadbeen replaced by a log-and-stone chalet, where Teckla and her fatherlived all year round; and next door, with a common plane of springylawn, was the Virginia mansion of President Bull, where Dr. Planish wasstaying.

It was the morning of Presentation Day, and T. Austin Bull and he werealready in doctoral robes, very gloomy and priestly and proper. But acatastrophe threw down all this majesty.

The small cat of the youngest Bull granddaughter scrambled up a tree,and was too scared to come down. There was a domestic flurry. ThePresident, with his robe flapping, tried with a bamboo fishing-pole toguide the kitten out on a branch that hung low. The four grandchildrencapered round and round the tree, screaming; the President's twodaughters, and Teckla Schaum, from next door, stood watching,comfortable and amused, while Mrs. Bull leaned from one upstairs window,and the young colored maid from another, ironically cheering. Dr.Planish was excitedly giving advice to President Bull, who looked asmuch like a sleek, curly-headed leading man as ever, but an old actornow, old and kind and amused. The lake breeze was fresh, and waveletsran up among the bright dry weeds on shore.

Suddenly Dr. Planish was homesick for precisely the place where he was;suddenly it was unendurable to think of going back to the city that wasan hourly futility and a yearly defeat.

Teckla was shouting, "Here's a berry box! Put a piece of fish in it andtie it to the top of the pole and the kitten will crawl in to get thefish, and you'll have her!"

The children danced and clapped their hands as the box was raised to thekitten, who sniffed at it, scowled, and turned her head to the study ofarboriculture.

"Now this is really important!" proclaimed Dr. Planish.

"Extremely important. Let the Presentation Day wait!" agreed thePresident.

There loomed up a farmer neighbor, bearing a lofty ladder and bawling,"You boys got great minds but no sense. It's a good thing I never wentto college. Now let a real man get at that cat!"

"You're right," agreed the two doctors, as the farmer began to climb,the kitten to swear, and the children to sing, "At that cat--that fatcat--catch that cat!"

Then Teckla said to a young Gideon, "Now you're happy. It's the firsttime here that I've seen you relaxed. But I think your heart is still inour backwoods."

He looked uncomfortably at her, lonely for her even when he was actuallywith her. It seemed to him that Teckla, fifty-four and gray, was youngerand more content than Peony at less than forty.

And not till then did he remember to ask for the Dr. Edith Minton whohad been so admirably icy. He learned that she had been dead for sevenyears. Somewhere near by she lay in earth, alone.

* * * * *

He wanted to discard all of his careful Presentation Day speech. He hadseen the men students in uniform, he had seen the girl students on thecampus, smoking cigarettes, their legs bare with little rolled socks,and he felt that if this academic shrine was less decorous than in hisday, it was shockingly more sensible. The Flaming Youth nonsense hadbeen all pose; just the propriety of impropriety. It seemed to him thatthese young people now were too busy for posing--much posing.

He did not feel altogether safe in intoning to this audience, thissharp-eyed gang of intellectual pirates, that they ought to look intosomething new called Democracy.

In other colleges, he had had evidence that young people today wereirreverent toward sloganeering, but he had not comprehended it till hehad come home; and now, even this audience of over a thousand couldn'tkeep him contentedly bombasting for more than twenty minutes. Allthrough his oration he heard, like a ringing in the ears, his own doubt,"Maybe I ought to be asking these young people about freedom andcourage, not telling them."

He did not recover his front till, at evening at the President's house,he was surrounded by his old acquaintances, asking himrespectfully--pretty respectfully--about the private scandals andphobias of the Great Leaders: Governor Blizzard and Senator Bultitudeand Milo Samphire and, always, the dazzle-sounding, radiogenic WinifredMarduc Homeward.

"All noble souls, yet often I feel as if I wanted to give them all upand be back in this peaceful world of scholarship," he sighed.

"That's because you've been away a long time. You forget how many fakerswe put out, in our modest way," said old Eakins, professor emeritus.

Dr. Planish was not even sure that Eakins was impressed by his insidenews about what the British Army was planning in the way of futureaircraft. "Some of these old devils out here are horribly on. They doread, and they know Europe--which is more than I do!" he worried.

But the chairman of the Kinnikinick trustees, Mr. Pridmore, satadmiring.

Dr. Planish rejoiced, "There's a man I can bank on. I'd like to have himfor a neighbor again. And Teckla!"

He noted that since his time here, the Doctoring and Professoring of thefaculty members had thinned out. Even that stickler Austin Bullpreferred to be called just Mister. Dr. Planish was worried for a time.Was the whole country turning against its honorable titled leaders? Thenit seemed to him that for a while it might be pleasant to quit goingaround Doctoring, and be plain Mr. Planish.

And just once say to the Colonel, "Hey you, Marduc!"

* * * * *

When the learned crew was gone, and Teckla had unexpectedly kissed himand bolted away, Austin Bull patted his shoulder and said gravely:

"Gid, a year from now I shall retire. How would you like to be presidentof Kinnikinick? I think when you left here, I said some very ill-advisedthings to you and about you. I realize now that I was jealous. I'm allfor you as president, and I know some of the trustees are. It's apossibility at least. What do you say?"

"That's splendid of you. I'm very grateful. I'll--I'll have to thinkabout it."

"You won't need to decide till next fall."

"I'll think quick and hard--Mr. Bull!"

And he did have to think hard, for he was seeing, all at once, a kittenup a maple tree, the amused face of a bare-legged co-ed, thestorm-clouds of Colonel Marduc's countenance, the pipe-smoke inPresident Bull's little study, twenty-five thousand admiring people at arally in Madison Square Garden, and Peony's lips that could pout forkissing or square themselves in rage.

He stood on the porch and looked to the left, just a few rods away, andsaw the shack that had once stood there, saw the ghost of a girl who hadcome gaily to a young professor by night. She hadn't been renovated thenby the world of fame and philanthrobbing. She had been so sweet!

Now he was lonely. Oh, he would do something----

* * * * *

Once there was a man in a condemned cell and he got to thinking aboutall the places he'd like to see again, and he was a man who had alreadytraveled a lot and knew about such things, and he was thinking anddeciding between Capri and California, and he was picturing Point Lobosand Carmel, and he calculated that if he sold a few shares of stock, hecould afford to drive out there, but then he remembered that there wasgasoline rationing now, and, besides, he was going to be hanged at eighto'clock tomorrow morning.

* * * * *

He sat in his bedroom, thinking that if he became president ofKinnikinick, he would make less money than at the DDD; when he traveled,he would have only a lower berth, and not a Pullman compartment, whereyou had a private toilet, and could stand up when you undressed, as aman of years and dignity should, and where you could recover from thestrain of lecturing by lighting a cigar and making nice smoke rings. Andthere was difficulty in that he had now forgotten whatever he might oncehave known about literature, history and every other branch of learningin which it was not enough to roll out, "We are called upon to bear theheat and fatigue of the struggle," and you had to mix some dates andfigures with the oratory.

The president of a college was supposed to leave all these matters ofstudy to the dean, and attend to the higher branch of getting money outof the alumni. Still, even the president couldn't always avoid meetinginquisitive undergraduates.

Then he snapped back at himself. All right! All right! It was achallenge. He'd meet the challenge. He'd read a book again. He'd look uphis old text-books, and read them. He was only fifty. By the time he wasfifty-five, he could again be as well-read as any of theseundergraduates--almost.

Anyway, he had to. Wheyfish's titter and Sherry Belden's jitter andMarduc's totalitarianism and the swoop of express elevators filled withsharp and twitching elbows. Philanthrobbers, Organizators, midnightperpetual-motion discussions of Conditions and Situations, and WinifredHomeward the Talking Woman. Was that a life?

* * * * *

He walked through the village and saw the cottage where Peony and he hadstarted married life. It was no longer white and shining. It belongednow to a professor, but he had five children and a crippled wife; it wasas smeary and hopeless as something in factory slums.

Dr. Planish longed to paint it white again, but when he tried to coax ayoung Peony into the doorway, it remained mocking and empty.

He plodded to the campus and ventured into the office that he himselfhad once ruled, as dean. The present dean said, "Sorry I've got such alot of engagements, Mr. Planish. If you can wait, I'll be right withyou."

Mr. Planish could not wait for anyone, not in that room.

He returned to the lake, and lunched with Teckla, just they two, on theveranda by the blue water, by the silver birches.

"Gid darling, you trouble me. I know it's impertinent, but you alwaysseem a little tired. There isn't anything that I can do for you again,but there's no one that loves you better and more lastingly."

"I'm sure of it."

"Or who doesn't care even if you have become a stuffed shirt."

"Me?"

"Daddy and I long to have you take the presidency and come back and beour neighbor again."

"If I'm a stuffed shirt----"

"Well, aren't you?"

"Don't be disgusting! Certainly not! Well---- What if I am?"

"Oh, it doesn't matter to me. Not any more than your having done a fewmurders. I still love you--God knows why."

She looked at him invitingly, but he was thinking that, aside fromCarrie, he loved nobody at all save Peony, that he was devastatinglylonely for Peony this moment, and that Providence had used his loyaltyto her--the one lone virtue he had ever had--to destroy him.

His good-bye to Teckla was a kiss so brotherly that even he wasdisgusted.

The young man across the table, in the diner on the train to New York,was in uniform as a seaman in the Navy, but to Dr. Planish he had aclassroom air.

The Doctor hinted that it had been hot on the campus--oh, yes, he was acollege teacher himself.

The young man said cheerfully, "I got my Ph.D. in economics lastFebruary, and then I enlisted, to save my alleged Liberalism."

"Hm?"

"I had the job of making arrangements for outside lecturers at theuniversity, and all these propaganda associations tried to sell me onlecturers that, they claimed, had the patent on Justice, PoliticalIntegrity and Love for the Chinese, and I set up too muchsales-resistance. Then on the radio I heard a ballyhooer who callshimself Charles B. Marduc--and I bet I know what the B. stands for--andhe attacked Fascism so hysterically, and with such a suggestion that hewas the one lone anti-Hitler, that I almost found myself beginning to bepro-Fascist, anti-Semite, anti-Chinese, anti-feminist,anti-socialized-medicine, anti everything I had always believed in. So Ithought I better get into uniform and get away from everythingresembling organized virtue, and do it quick."

The Doctor protested, "Now, now, now! There may be some useless or evenmercenary national organizations, as you suggest, but surely themajority of them awaken the public to immediate needs which theGovernment, however benevolent, is too slow-moving to tackle."

"Maybe. I decided that the rule was that if an organization was set upto achieve one definite social end, it was virtuous, but if it wasstarted by one busybody who just wanted a career and a salary, it wasbad. But that's a simple-minded rule. Look at the Anti-Saloon League. Isuppose it did have a lot of good intentions as well as an awful lot ofmillions, and look at the way it made the ideal of temperance ridiculousfor another hundred years. In a republic like this, I'm scared of anyprivate organization that can spend thousands on propaganda--that canpersuade thousands of people to telegraph their congressman to do whatthe private organization demands. It's a little too much like a privatearmy--like the Brown Shirts."

"All very interesting," said Dr. Planish. "I'm sure the heads of thegreat organizations would be very much worried if they knew you haddecided not to okay them! Good night!"

But the fact that this young man was unknown to him made him, in hiscompartment, feel naked in a cold gale that blew from a million unknownicebergs.

He reflected, "Oh, I must go back to Kinnikinick. Maybe start all overagain."

If he did that, could he win again the love, the confidence, of his owndaughter?

No, she was gone from his tribe. However virtuous and lean-minded andstrong that Modern Young Woman was, in her way she was just as dependenton clash and clatter and conversation as Peony. She had heard the newcall: "Go East, young woman, and grow up with the steel and concrete andthe electric waves."

If he could have kept Teckla's sympathy instead of Peony's floridambition and Carrie's self-righteousness, might he not have been a maninstead of an executive secretary?

"No, no, don't misunderstand me," he said to his other self. "I don'tmean any more--oh--well--you know--love-making with her, but if I couldhave Teckla for a neighbor and friend again."

He would! He'd be bold and masculine and put his foot down and go hometo Kinnikinick.

* * * * *

When he came into the house on Charles Street, Peony cried, "It's sosweet to see you back! I did miss you, even if I have been so busy.How're all the hicks in Kinnikinick? Did they bore you to death? Nevermind--we'll have a Real Time, a real New York evening tonight."

He said nothing whatever about a college presidency, or about returningto Kinnikinick.

* * * * *

After he came back to New York, Dr. Planish made a lot of speeches, andthere was a quiet man who heard one of them, and this quiet man got tothinking.

He thought that the one thing that might break down American Democracywas the hysterical efficiency with which these pressure groups crusadedto seize all the benefits of that Democracy for themselves: the farmbloc, the women's bloc, the manufacturers' associations, the consumers'associations, the bar associations, the medical associations, theProtestant ministerial associations, the labor unions, the anti-laborunions, the Communist Party and the Patriotic Flag Associations. Drugstores combining to force legislation forbidding the sale of aspirin ontrains. Irish Catholics voting not as Americans but as Irish andCatholics, Swedish Lutherans voting as Swedish Lutherans, ArkansasBaptists voting as Neanderthals.

Catholics forbidding the Episcopalians to advocate birth-control, andMethodists forbidding the Unitarians to drink their ancestral rum, andpeople who really believe in Christianity overwhelmingly outvoted by allthese monopolies.

Gangs of Fascists damning the Jews--always the opening gambit in anymass insanity--until the Jews are forced to create their own alliances,and these become a new Sanhedrin that censors the Jews who won't submitto the new Mosaic Law.

The Friends of Russia, the Friends of Germany, the Friends of theBritish Empire, the Friends of the Slovenes and Croats, the Sons of theAmerican Revolution, and the Sons of Dog Fanciers.

Each of these private armies led by devout fanatics--not always onsalary--who believe that the way to ensure freedom for everybody is toshut up every one of their opponents in jail for life, and that this isa very fine, new solution.

God save poor America, this quiet man thought, from all the zealous andthe professionally idealistic, from eloquent women and generous sponsorsand administrative ex-preachers and natural-born Leaders and Napoleonicnewspaper executives and all the people who like to make long telephonecalls and write inspirational memoranda.

Chapter 33

Carrie cried, "I have my job! Draftsman in a Hartford airplane factory.I'm leaving this evening."

Peony fussed, "You'll never be able to stand it, away from New York."

"With all my young men in the service, I won't miss one thing in NewYork, except Stan MacGovern's Silly Milly cartoons, and the music onWQXR," said the modern young woman. There was a distinct period in hersentence before she added, "Oh, and you and Daddy, of course."

When Dr. Planish saw her off on the train, when it had slipped away inthe mammoth cave of the Grand Central, he felt that it had been yearsago that she had gone from him, and that he could not remember her faceexactly.

A week later, Peony said, "It seems so strange not to have her around,turning to me for advice and help every minute, and I know you feelawfully blue, breakfast all by yourself. And yet, in a way, I'mrelieved. Young people today have no discipline, like you and I werebrought up to. They think the world's created to serve and pleasethem! So they never can settle down to really serious work."

Peony herself was extremely settled down to serious work, for WinifredHomeward, her boss, was now doing a bi-weekly Interpretation of the WarNews on the radio. Peony and she read the newspapers daily. As there wasa lot of valuable news in the papers, so inevitably there was a lot ofvaluable news in Winifred's broadcasts, and after telling the far-flungwhat the far-flung had themselves already read in the papers severalhours before, Winifred revealed pantingly that the Japanese were nowgoing to invade India--or else they weren't--maybe they were going toinvade Siberia.

So Peony received thirty-five dollars every Friday, and spent fifty ofit every Saturday, and began to explain to Dr. Planish just what theJapanese and India and Siberia were.

The Doctor himself was also serious. With Sherry Belden and Otis Canary,he was preparing blue prints (that's what they called them) for a newMarduc organization to be entitled "The Citizens' Post-WarReconstruction Advisory Planning Unit, Inc.," and already he was sendingthings for Professor Campion to sign.

The Doctor suddenly had new burdens, for Sherry Belden came in, withoutwarning, in uniform, and he was decidedly impertinent before he went offto take a train:

"Good luck to the Unit, Planish. I suppose you'll pussy-foot just assuccessfully on freedom for India, and freedom for the Negroes inAmerica, as we did during the revolution in Spain. Good hedging,Brother. I'll write you from Iceland or Dakar."

Now was that nice? the Doctor asked himself.

He could have taken a month's vacation, two months, whatever he wanted,and apparently no one would have cared, but Peony was a busy andimportant person who could take only one week, and that in late August,and he nervously waited for her... and he still had not said one wordabout becoming president of Kinnikinick.

He told her on the Maine coast, on the sea-washed rocks, by moonlight.

"Gosh, this certainly is beautiful, Peony--the way the moonlight fallson that--the tide, I suppose you'd call it, I don't know much aboutoceans, all these waves and foam and so on coming back and forth, and soclear--you could almost read by this moonlight--don't you think it'sbeautiful, pet?"

"Yes, I love Nature. When you're on vacation, I mean. You're real happyhere, aren't you, Gid."

"Yes, it's so nice and quiet. I don't somehow seem to sleep so well inthe city. But I'm afraid it's been too quiet for you here. Hasn't it?"

"Well, God Almighty, figure it out for yourself! Whole tourist businessshot to pieces by this gas rationing, and me with a new wardrobe thatwould knock your eye out, and nobody to impress with it--not even hardlyany dancing, except with college-boy waiters! And the way I been workingon the war effort--if anybody ever deserved a swell vacation, I do. Andwe can't even go see if the other resorts are better. I think it's anoutrage you and I can't get more gas. If that isn't Governmentusurpation, I just don't know what Government usurpation is, that's whatI think about this Government usurpation!"

"But we got to save gasoline for the army."

"Oh, stuff! That's all very well for the common ordinary people thatwhere the hell have they got to go to if they did have any gas, butpeople like us, that have been sweating our souls out on behalf ofDemocracy and the common people, and that have got the qualifications toappreciate scenery and had ought to get around and look over the generalfeeling in various parts of the country and report on it, why, when wecan't get enough gas, it's an outrage! And they expect us to not get anyreal vacation and go back to our long winter's work in New York, sotiring----"

"Peony! Sweet! Darling! Shut up and listen! This winter in New York,maybe, but after that---- Austin Bull and the trustees of Kinnikinickseem to want me for his successor when he retires in the spring of1943."

"You're craaaaazy!" was his spouse's comment. Her further remarksoccupied something over ten minutes, but they may be summed up in thestatements that she did not think it would be agreeable to live in ahouse on Lake Elizabeth, that she did not wish to be refreshed byassociation with the young, and that she had not, in her experience,ever found one of the Kinnikinick male faculty members with whom it waspleasurable to dance. She did not mention Professor Planish as anexception.

He interrupted; he tried to sound like Colonel Marduc:

"Now wait--wait a minute! You've been doing all the talking. What youoverlook is that I do want to take this job, and I fully intend to. Youmight just as well get ready to come along."

"And you might just as well get ready to take a tumble to yourself! Foryears and years and years I've done nothing but toil and sacrifice andstay home twenty-four hours a day, devoting myself to your comfort andwelfare, but the day passed twenty years ago when women were nothing butslaves!"

"Why, Peony!"

"Oh, I know, you'd like to go on selfishly demanding that all my abilitybe devoted to you and your whims and comfort and your alleged importantposition in the world, but--you may not've heard about it!--there justhappens to be a certain Mrs. Winifred Homeward, who needs me in herve-ry im-port-ant undertakings, and I do not intend to bury myself inthat dusty hole of a tenement and sit back any longer and watch youshowing off and making speeches and making a monkey of yourself all daylong and every evening--to say nothing of your Teckla Schaum, the oldhag--oh, I suppose you two old playfuls had a lovely time tickling, whenI wasn't there to----"

"By God, I'll divorce you and marry Teckla and be president ofKinnikinick!"

"By God, you'll do nothing of the kind! A sanctimonious backwoods schoollike that--you think they'd stand for a divorced president--even if shewas the daughter of the chief grafter? No, no, my boy, you better getwise to yourself. I'd hoped I'd never have to tell you, but you mightjust as well know that neither Winnie Homeward nor the Colonel thinksyou're so hot, and they'd of muscled you out of the DDD long ago, if ithadn't been for me!"

So rigid he sat, so frozen in the moonlight, that she stopped, made asound of regret, and poured herself all over him:

"Oh, I didn't mean that! I was just trying to get your goat! All I meanis, the Marducs think I'm pretty good, too. Oh, my little big, forgiveyour bad Pansy! It makes me mad when you even think of admitting thatNew York has licked you, and want to sneak back, without ever stoppingto think and realize how wicked and horrible it is to expect me to livein a corncrib and not even be able to go to the Stork Club with HalHomeward--oh, no, no, my precious, you wouldn't do that to me, when I'vegiven my whole life to you!"

"Maybe you would find it kind of slow back there, but still----"

They went happily enough to bed; they said nothing more of Kinnikinick;and when they had returned to New York, he devoted himself to Gilroy,Kevern, Vandewart and all the other millionaires who, in the dread andmisty future, might provide inspiration if Colonel Marduc should unfrockhim.

* * * * *

Ex-Governor Thomas Blizzard, in September, back home in Waskeegan, wasnominated for United States Senator.

Dr. Planish gloated, "I certainly am glad I haven't slipped up onkeeping Tom informed about the organization racket here, all thesemonths. His chances to be President look better and better and----Peony! How'd you like to be wife of the Minister to Cuba or Sweden someday?"

"And how'd I like to be Minister to Cuba or Sweden!" she shrieked, andlaughed a great deal.

* * * * *

Two days later, toward the close of his office day, Dr. Planish had along-distance call from Kinnikinick:

"That you, Gideon? This is W. C. Pridmore. I've got some bad news.President Bull died suddenly this morning.... Yes, it was sort ofterrible. It was the first meeting of the student assembly, I was there,and he started to address the students, and then suddenly he stopped andlooked kind of shocked and he crumpled up on the floor and before Icould reach him, I and Dr. Evarts, he had already passed away.

"I'm speaking from the bank. The trustees, there's a quorum of 'em here,and they all send you their regards, they think very highly of you, andwe want to offer you the college presidency officially. How about it,son?"

Dr. Planish stammered, "I'll call you back tomorrow morning. Ten-thirty,at the bank? Fine. Oh, give Mrs. Bull my extreme regrets. Call youtomorrow. Oh, give my love to Teckla."

* * * * *

Dr. and Mrs. Planish actually had no engagement that evening. No one hadtelephoned to them; no one to whom they tried to telephone was at home.Naturally, that was pretty distressing to Peony, and she whimpered,"This is the coldest, most indifferent town. Nobody in New York caresabout anybody else. Sometimes I almost think you were right lastsummer--that we might've been happier in Kinnikinick. After all, I mustadmit that as the president's wife, I would have a secure position. Icould even tell Winifred to go to hell!"

The Doctor was certain now that there would be a God-given moment, sometime this evening, to tell her.

They took a Fifth Avenue bus to 34th Street and walked up the Avenue inthe autumn evening. The whole city was dimmed out. With the shop windowsdark, the traffic lights showing only as small red and green crosses,the avenue was like a country lane. But the softened light merely luredPeony's excellent imagination, which played tonight about furs anddiamonds. War-savings did not seem to stand high in her fancy. Shelooked into the shadowy shop-windows, at the veiled glimmer of glass andsilver and suave wood, and crowed, "You wait till I'm making as muchmoney as you are--you know how I hate to waste it, but what a shoppingbat I'm going to have, one of these days! Oh, I do love a city where youcan make money in the first place and have somewhere to spend it in thesecond!"

They dined with elegance in the Plaza Oak Room. Peony seemed to be in atender mood, whether because of the chicken casserole, or the fact thatCaesar, the headwaiter, remembered their name, or just out of fondnessfor her loving man; and the Doctor took the chance. He addressed her ascarefully as though she were an audience of willing philanthrobbers:

"Dear, listen to me now, and don't say anything till I've finished. Iknow what a wonderful, loyal heart you have. When I hear fellows likeHomeward or Gantry kick about what grafters or conceited gabblers theirwives are, I always think how very fortunate I've been, all these years,in having my own little steadfast Peony. Hey--hey--wait'll I finish! Iknow sometimes you get a little impatient with the slowness of life--allof us ambitious people do--but I know that in the long run, you're asfaithful as Ruth--you have the genius for love that so few peoplehave--you'd follow your husband wherever he had to go, even amid thealien corn, hunh?"

Though affected unfavorably by the mention of corn or other cropsindigenous to the Middlewest, Peony said Yes, she certainly was a Ruth.

"Then--listen now, and don't interrupt--poor old Austin Bull droppeddead this morning."

"Oh, I'm sorry!"

"Pridmore telephoned me--they want me to take the presidency right away.Remember that it would be a job for keeps, not dependent on Marduc, andwith a pension. We could get away every summer, and come to New York or,after the war, go to Paris. Don't be one of these stubborn women that,just because you said no before---- And I'll fix up something so thatyou'll have a job of your own, and be just as important as I am--maybeI'll get the college to start a radio. Sweetheart, this is important,and it's immediate. Can't I count on you?"

"Oh, Gideon, I don't want to be unreasonable. I know. I suppose I wouldbe sort of a queen in Kinnikinick--that would be a joke on all thepeople that highhatted me when I was just a squab there, and---- Do yousolemnly promise we'll go to Paris if---- My God, will you look who'shere!"

By himself, lordly in a leather armchair at one of the small tablesagainst the wall, was Thomas Blizzard, Senatorial Nominee Blizzard, whowas supposed to be at home in Waskeegan.

Peony dashed to him--Dr. Planish rolled across the room more slowly.

Blizzard rumbled, "Just a little strategic surprise visit. Flew on herefrom home to address the big rally at the Imperial Temple tonight--flyback tomorrow. You two come and sit on the platform with me. Be some bigguns from Washington there--the Chancellor General and the Secretary ofEducation and Arts. Doc, your reports have been fine, and you, youngwoman, I hear you're developing quite a knack of winning friends andinfluencing people. Maybe you'll be quite useful to the crass Blizzardmachine, some day. You're going to bring your husband and sit up on theplatform, like a crown princess, aren't you?"

"You bet your life I am--you bet we are!" said Peony.

* * * * *

They came through velvet curtains as tall as a political lie out on themammoth platform. Rising four full stories to the top balcony, so vastthat they ceased to be individual human beings and became a mass ofwhite dots on a dark sloping tarpaulin, were an audience of fifteenthousand.

"Look at 'em!" exulted Peony.

Her husband bleated, "You know, we have quite big crowds at KinnikinickCollege, too."

"Not a quarter this size, not even at a football game, and nothing likeso many photographers, and lookit the flashlights! Now you got to admitit's pretty nice to be up here with all these famous people, and allthose dubs down there staring and staring up and thinking what importantsomebodies we must be!"

"I don't take any interest in showing off to a crowd."

"Rats! You do so!"

"Anyway, not like I used to."

"Well, I do!"

Peony sat on the platform between her husband and the Chancellor Generalof the United States of America. To the husband she whispered, "Think,prob'ly just this morning the Chancellor was at a cabinet meeting,talking to the President and getting the lowdown on Russia and thesecond front and the Solomon Islands and everything--just like inhistory! And me sitting here right next to him, with ten trillion womenlooking up and envying me! And you expect me to go back and give teasfor all the old maids on the college faculty!"

"Oh, I know," sighed Dr. Planish, and after a long time, "I know."

Afterward, when the audience trailed up on the stage to get theChancellor's autograph, several of them asked Peony for hers, and one ofthem took her for the Chancellor's wife. She giggled about that, on thebus home; then she spoke with high seriousness:

"Honeybird, don't you worry if old Marduc lands in the alcoholic ward,and leaves you without a job. The way I'm beginning to stand with WinnieHomeward and Tom Blizzard, I can always support you, and you can stayhome and have a nice, long, quiet rest."

* * * * *

The distant urgent whistle of a ferry, laden with freight cars fromWinnemac and Iowa and the uplands of California, awoke him, and for aninstant his square face moved with smiling as in half-dreams he wascertain that some day he too would take a train, and in some stillvalley find honor and dignity.

But the whistle sounded again, so lost and lonely that Dr. Planish fellback into his habitual doubt of himself, and his face tightened withanxiety and compromise. He felt now, at fifty, that though he mightfollow the path of notoriety for another quarter century, he would neverrecover from his mountain-sickness.

"Are you awake? Will you get me a glass of water?" said his faithfulwife.

"Yes," said Dr. Planish.

"Do you know what? Some day we're going to have a penthouse on East EndAvenue!"

"Yes?" said Dr. Planish.

[End of Gideon Planish, by Sinclair Lewis]