em in from the uncomfortable strangeness
of night. After each bark of laughter they cried, "Say, jever hear the
one about--" Babbitt was expansive and virile. When the train stopped
at an important station, the four men walked up and down the cement
platform, under the vast smoky train-shed roof, like a stormy sky, under
the elevated footways, beside crates of ducks and sides of beef, in the
mystery of an unknown city. They strolled abreast, old friends and well
content. At the long-drawn "Alllll aboarrrrrd"--like a mountain call at
dusk--they hastened back into the smoking-compartment, and till two of
the morning continued the droll tales, their eyes damp with cigar-smoke
and laughter. When they parted they shook hands, and chuckled, "Well,
sir, it's been a great session. Sorry to bust it up. Mighty glad to met
you."

Babbitt lay awake in the close hot tomb of his Pullman berth, shaking
with remembrance of the fat man's limerick about the lady who wished to
be wild. He raised the shade; he lay with a puffy arm tucked between his
head and the skimpy pillow, looking out on the sliding silhouettes of
trees, and village lamps like exclamation-points. He was very happy.

CHAPTER XI

I

THEY had four hours in New York between trains. The one thing Babbitt
wished to see was the Pennsylvania Hotel, which had been built since his
last visit. He stared up at it, muttering, "Twenty-two hundred rooms and
twenty-two hundred baths! That's got everything in the world beat. Lord,
their turnover must be--well, suppose price of rooms is four to eight
dollars a day, and I suppose maybe some ten and--four times twenty-two
hundred-say six times twenty-two hundred--well, anyway, with restaurants
and everything, say summers between eight and fifteen thousand a day.
Every day! I never thought I'd see a thing like that! Some town! Of
course the average fellow in Zenith has got more Individual Initiative
than the fourflushers here, but I got to hand it to New York. Yes, sir,
town, you're all right--some ways. Well, old Paulski, I guess we've
seen everything that's worth while. How'll we kill the rest of the time?
Movie?"

But Paul desired to see a liner. "Always wanted to go to Europe--and, by
thunder, I will, too, some day before I past out," he sighed.

From a rough wharf on the North River they stared at the stern of
the Aquitania and her stacks and wireless antenna lifted above the
dock-house which shut her in.

"By golly," B