s reported the lecture so fully that Vergil Gunch said
to Babbitt, "You're getting to be one of the classiest spellbinders in
town. Seems 's if I couldn't pick up a paper without reading about your
well-known eloquence. All this guff ought to bring a lot of business
into your office. Good work! Keep it up!"

"Go on, quit your kidding," said Babbitt feebly, but at this tribute
from Gunch, himself a man of no mean oratorical fame, he expanded with
delight and wondered how, before his vacation, he could have questioned
the joys of being a solid citizen.

CHAPTER XV

HIS march to greatness was not without disastrous stumbling.

Fame did not bring the social advancement which the Babbitts deserved.
They were not asked to join the Tonawanda Country Club nor invited to
the dances at the Union. Himself, Babbitt fretted, he didn't "care a fat
hoot for all these highrollers, but the wife would kind of like to be
Among Those Present." He nervously awaited his university class-dinner
and an evening of furious intimacy with such social leaders as Charles
McKelvey the millionaire contractor, Max Kruger the banker, Irving Tate
the tool-manufacturer, and Adelbert Dobson the fashionable interior
decorator. Theoretically he was their friend, as he had been in college,
and when he encountered them they still called him "Georgie," but he
didn't seem to encounter them often, and they never invited him to
dinner (with champagne and a butler) at their houses on Royal Ridge.

All the week before the class-dinner he thought of them. "No reason why
we shouldn't become real chummy now!"

II

Like all true American diversions and spiritual outpourings, the
dinner of the men of the Class of 1896 was thoroughly organized. The
dinner-committee hammered like a sales-corporation. Once a week they
sent out reminders:

TICKLER NO. 3

Old man, are you going to be with us at the livest Friendship Feed the
alumni of the good old U have ever known? The alumnae of '08 turned out
60% strong. Are we boys going to be beaten by a bunch of skirts? Come
on, fellows, let's work up some real genuine enthusiasm and all boost
together for the snappiest dinner yet! Elegant eats, short ginger-talks,
and memories shared together of the brightest, gladdest days of life.

The dinner was held in a private room at the Union Club. The club was
a dingy building, three pretentious old dwellings knocked together, and
the entrance-hall resembled a potato cell