ll-placard
to "This is the Lord's Busy Day." Chum Frink came in, then William W.
Eathorne.

Mr. Eathorne was the seventy-year-old president of the First State Bank
of Zenith. He still wore the delicate patches of side-whiskers which had
been the uniform of bankers in 1870. If Babbitt was envious of the
Smart Set of the McKelveys, before William Washington Eathorne he was
reverent. Mr. Eathorne had nothing to do with the Smart Set. He was
above it. He was the great-grandson of one of the five men who founded
Zenith, in 1792, and he was of the third generation of bankers. He could
examine credits, make loans, promote or injure a man's business. In his
presence Babbitt breathed quickly and felt young.

The Reverend Dr. Drew bounced into the room and flowered into speech:

"I've asked you gentlemen to stay so I can put a proposition before you.
The Sunday School needs bucking up. It's the fourth largest in Zenith,
but there's no reason why we should take anybody's dust. We ought to be
first. I want to request you, if you will, to form a committee of
advice and publicity for the Sunday School; look it over and make any
suggestions for its betterment, and then, perhaps, see that the press
gives us some attention--give the public some really helpful and
constructive news instead of all these murders and divorces."

"Excellent," said the banker.

Babbitt and Frink were enchanted to join him.

III

If you had asked Babbitt what his religion was, he would have answered
in sonorous Boosters'-Club rhetoric, "My religion is to serve my fellow
men, to honor my brother as myself, and to do my bit to make life
happier for one and all." If you had pressed him for more detail, he
would have announced, "I'm a member of the Presbyterian Church, and
naturally, I accept its doctrines." If you had been so brutal as to
go on, he would have protested, "There's no use discussing and arguing
about religion; it just stirs up bad feeling."

Actually, the content of his theology was that there was a supreme being
who had tried to make us perfect, but presumably had failed; that if
one was a Good Man he would go to a place called Heaven (Babbitt
unconsciously pictured it as rather like an excellent hotel with a
private garden), but if one was a Bad Man, that is, if he murdered
or committed burglary or used cocaine or had mistresses or sold
non-existent real estate, he would be punished. Babbitt was uncertain,
however, about what he called