hat it is to find God, to find peace, to behold
the snares that the devil spreads out for our feet. Oh, I'm so glad to
see the mysterious purposes of God in having Paul harm me and stop
my wickedness--and Paul's getting his, good and plenty, for the cruel
things he did to me, and I hope he DIES in prison!"

Babbitt was up, hat in hand, growling, "Well, if that's what you call
being at peace, for heaven's sake just warn me before you go to war,
will you?"

III

Vast is the power of cities to reclaim the wanderer. More than mountains
or the shore-devouring sea, a city retains its character, imperturbable,
cynical, holding behind apparent changes its essential purpose. Though
Babbitt had deserted his family and dwelt with Joe Paradise in the
wilderness, though he had become a liberal, though he had been quite
sure, on the night before he reached Zenith, that neither he nor the
city would be the same again, ten days after his return he could not
believe that he had ever been away. Nor was it at all evident to his
acquaintances that there was a new George F. Babbitt, save that he was
more irritable under the incessant chaffing at the Athletic Club, and
once, when Vergil Gunch observed that Seneca Doane ought to be hanged,
Babbitt snorted, "Oh, rats, he's not so bad."

At home he grunted "Eh?" across the newspaper to his commentatory wife,
and was delighted by Tinka's new red tam o'shanter, and announced, "No
class to that corrugated iron garage. Have to build me a nice frame
one."

Verona and Kenneth Escott appeared really to be engaged. In
his newspaper Escott had conducted a pure-food crusade against
commission-houses. As a result he had been given an excellent job in a
commission-house, and he was making a salary on which he could marry,
and denouncing irresponsible reporters who wrote stories criticizing
commission-houses without knowing what they were talking about.

This September Ted had entered the State University as a freshman in the
College of Arts and Sciences. The university was at Mohalis only fifteen
miles from Zenith, and Ted often came down for the week-end. Babbitt was
worried. Ted was "going in for" everything but books. He had tried to
"make" the football team as a light half-back, he was looking forward
to the basket-ball season, he was on the committee for the Freshman
Hop, and (as a Zenithite, an aristocrat among the yokels) he was being
"rushed" by two fraternities. But of his studies Babbitt