ne day!"

Jovially they whooped back--Vergil Gunch, the coal-dealer, Sidney
Finkelstein, the ladies'-ready-to-wear buyer for Parcher & Stein's
department-store, and Professor Joseph K. Pumphrey, owner of the Riteway
Business College and instructor in Public Speaking, Business English,
Scenario Writing, and Commercial Law. Though Babbitt admired this
savant, and appreciated Sidney Finkelstein as "a mighty smart buyer
and a good liberal spender," it was to Vergil Gunch that he turned with
enthusiasm. Mr. Gunch was president of the Boosters' Club, a weekly
lunch-club, local chapter of a national organization which promoted
sound business and friendliness among Regular Fellows. He was also no
less an official than Esteemed Leading Knight in the Benevolent and
Protective Order of Elks, and it was rumored that at the next election
he would be a candidate for Exalted Ruler. He was a jolly man, given to
oratory and to chumminess with the arts. He called on the famous
actors and vaudeville artists when they came to town, gave them cigars,
addressed them by their first names, and--sometimes--succeeded
in bringing them to the Boosters' lunches to give The Boys a Free
Entertainment. He was a large man with hair en brosse, and he knew the
latest jokes, but he played poker close to the chest. It was at his
party that Babbitt had sucked in the virus of to-day's restlessness.

Gunch shouted, "How's the old Bolsheviki? How do you feel, the morning
after the night before?"

"Oh, boy! Some head! That was a regular party you threw, Verg! Hope
you haven't forgotten I took that last cute little jack-pot!" Babbitt
bellowed. (He was three feet from Gunch.)

"That's all right now! What I'll hand you next time, Georgie! Say, juh
notice in the paper the way the New York Assembly stood up to the Reds?"

"You bet I did. That was fine, eh? Nice day to-day."

"Yes, it's one mighty fine spring day, but nights still cold."

"Yeh, you're right they are! Had to have coupla blankets last night,
out on the sleeping-porch. Say, Sid," Babbitt turned to Finkelstein, the
buyer, "got something wanta ask you about. I went out and bought me an
electric cigar-lighter for the car, this noon, and--"

"Good hunch!" said Finkelstein, while even the learned Professor
Pumphrey, a bulbous man with a pepper-and-salt cutaway and a pipe-organ
voice, commented, "That makes a dandy accessory. Cigar-lighter gives
tone to the dashboard."

"Yep, finally decided I'd buy