-servant; he held the ends of Babbitt's trousers, that the
beautifully sponged garment might not be soiled, filled the bowl in the
private washroom, and waited with a towel.

To have a private washroom was luxurious. However enlivening a Pullman
smoking-compartment was by night, even to Babbitt it was depressing
in the morning, when it was jammed with fat men in woolen undershirts,
every hook filled with wrinkled cottony shirts, the leather seat piled
with dingy toilet-kits, and the air nauseating with the smell of soap
and toothpaste. Babbitt did not ordinarily think much of privacy, but
now he reveled in it, reveled in his valet, and purred with pleasure as
he gave the man a tip of a dollar and a half.

He rather hoped that he was being noticed as, in his newly pressed
clothes, with the adoring porter carrying his suit-case, he disembarked
at Monarch.

He was to share a room at the Hotel Sedgwick with W. A. Rogers, that
shrewd, rustic-looking Zenith dealer in farm-lands. Together they had
a noble breakfast, with waffles, and coffee not in exiguous cups but
in large pots. Babbitt grew expansive, and told Rogers about the art of
writing; he gave a bellboy a quarter to fetch a morning newspaper from
the lobby, and sent to Tinka a post-card: "Papa wishes you were here to
bat round with him."

V

The meetings of the convention were held in the ballroom of the Allen
House. In an anteroom was the office of the chairman of the executive
committee. He was the busiest man in the convention; he was so busy that
he got nothing done whatever. He sat at a marquetry table, in a room
littered with crumpled paper and, all day long, town-boosters and
lobbyists and orators who wished to lead debates came and whispered to
him, whereupon he looked vague, and said rapidly, "Yes, yes, that's a
fine idea; we'll do that," and instantly forgot all about it, lighted
a cigar and forgot that too, while the telephone rang mercilessly and
about him men kept beseeching, "Say, Mr. Chairman--say, Mr. Chairman!"
without penetrating his exhausted hearing.

In the exhibit-room were plans of the new suburbs of Sparta, pictures
of the new state capitol, at Galop de Vache, and large ears of corn with
the label, "Nature's Gold, from Shelby County, the Garden Spot of God's
Own Country."

The real convention consisted of men muttering in hotel bedrooms or in
groups amid the badge-spotted crowd in the hotel-lobby, but there was a
show of public meeti