used to keep. Say, I'll bet he don't know there is such a thing as
a Tux--as a dinner-jacket. If he was to come in here now, he'd think we
were a bunch of--of--Why, gosh, I swear, he wouldn't know what to think!
Yes, sir, they're jealous!"

Chum Frink agreed, "That's so. But what I mind is their lack of culture
and appreciation of the Beautiful--if you'll excuse me for being
highbrow. Now, I like to give a high-class lecture, and read some of my
best poetry--not the newspaper stuff but the magazine things. But say,
when I get out in the tall grass, there's nothing will take but a lot of
cheesy old stories and slang and junk that if any of us were to indulge
in it here, he'd get the gate so fast it would make his head swim."

Vergil Gunch summed it up: "Fact is, we're mighty lucky to be living
among a bunch of city-folks, that recognize artistic things and
business-punch equally. We'd feel pretty glum if we got stuck in some
Main Street burg and tried to wise up the old codgers to the kind of
life we're used to here. But, by golly, there's this you got to say for
'em: Every small American town is trying to get population and modern
ideals. And darn if a lot of 'em don't put it across! Somebody starts
panning a rube crossroads, telling how he was there in 1900 and it
consisted of one muddy street, count 'em, one, and nine hundred human
clams. Well, you go back there in 1920, and you find pavements and a
swell little hotel and a first-class ladies' ready-to-wear shop-real
perfection, in fact! You don't want to just look at what these small
towns are, you want to look at what they're aiming to become, and they
all got an ambition that in the long run is going to make 'em the finest
spots on earth--they all want to be just like Zenith!"

III

However intimate they might be with T. Cholmondeley Frink as a neighbor,
as a borrower of lawn-mowers and monkey-wrenches, they knew that he was
also a Famous Poet and a distinguished advertising-agent; that behind
his easiness were sultry literary mysteries which they could not
penetrate. But to-night, in the gin-evolved confidence, he admitted them
to the arcanum:

"I've got a literary problem that's worrying me to death. I'm doing a
series of ads for the Zeeco Car and I want to make each of 'em a real
little gem--reg'lar stylistic stuff. I'm all for this theory that
perfection is the stunt, or nothing at all, and these are as tough
things as I ever tackled. You might think it