Sinclair Lewis

“ Una’s cheeks burned delightfully. She was back in Panama again—in Panama, where for endless hours on dark porches young men tease young women and tell them that they are beautiful.... Mr. Schwirtz was direct and “jolly,” like Panama people; but he was so much more active and forceful than Henry Carson; so much more hearty than Charlie Martindale; so distinguished by that knowledge of New York streets and cafés and local heroes which, to Una, the recent convert to New York, seemed the one great science. ”

“ Nice, bright woman like you sticking in an office! Office is no place for a woman. Takes a man to stand the racket. Home’s the place for a woman, except maybe some hatchet-faced old battle-ax like the cashier at our shop. Shame to spoil a nice home with her. Why, she tried to hold up my vacation money, because she said I’d overdrawn—”
“Oh, but Mr. Schwirtz, what can a poor girl do, if you high and mighty men don’t want to marry her?” ”

“ You just forget about all those guys in the abyss. Tell you a person on the job’s got enough to do looking out for himself.”
“Well—” said Una.
Suddenly she lay back, her hands behind her head, her fingers outstretched among the long, cool grasses. A hum of insects surrounded her. The grasses towering above her eyes were a forest. She turned her head to watch a lady-bug industriously ascend one side of a blade of grass, and with equal enterprise immediately descend the other side. ”

“ Honest now, ain’t that the truth?”
“Oh yes, that way—”
“All these here critics telling what low-brows us American business men are! Just between you and I, I bet I knock down more good, big, round, iron men every week than nine-tenths of these high-brow fiddlers—yes, and college professors and authors, too!”
“Yes, but you shouldn’t make money your standard,” said Una, in company with the invisible chorus of Mamie Magen and Walter Babson.
“Well, then, what are you going to make a standard?” asked Mr. Schwirtz, triumphantly.
“Well—” said Una.
“Understan’ me; I’m a high-brow myself some ways. ”

“ Schwirtz cheerfully took out a cigar, smelled it, bit it, luxuriously removed the band, requested permission to smoke, lighted the cigar without waiting for an answer to that request, sighed happily, and dived again:
“Not that I’m knocking the high-brows, y’ understand. This dress-suit music is all right for them that likes it. But what I object to is their trying to stuff it down my throat! I let’em alone, and if I want to be a poor old low-brow and like reg’lar music, I don’t see where they get off to be telling me I got to go to concerts. ”

“ But most of these socialists are just a lazy bunch of bums that try and see how much trouble they can stir up. They think that just because they’re too lazy to find an opening, that they got the right to take the money away from the fellas that hustle around and make good. Trouble with all these socialist guys is that they don’t stop to realize that you can’t change human nature. ”

“ He had as positive information regarding aeroplanes as he had regarding socialism. It seemed that a man who was tremendously on the inside of aviation—who was, in fact, going to use whole tons of aeroplane varnish on aeroplane bodies, next month or next season—had given Mr. Schwirtz secret advices that within five years, by 1913, aeroplanes would be crossing the Atlantic daily, and conveying passengers and mail on regular routes between New York and Chicago.... ”

“ Una said, delightedly.... She had laughed very much at Mr. Schwirtz’s humor. She slid down in her chair and felt more expansively peaceful than she ever had been in the stress of Walter Babson.
“Straight, now, little sister. Own up. Don’t you get more fun out of hearing Raymond Hitchcock sing than you do out of a bunch of fiddles and flutes fighting out a piece by Vaugner like they was Kilkenny cats? ’Fess up, now; don’t you get more downright amusement?” ”

“ C. and I had never been to New England till this summer, but we’d toured every other part of the country, and we’ve done Europe thoroughly and put in a month doing Florida, and now,’ he says, ‘I think we can say we’ve seen every point of interest that’s worth an American’s time.’ They’re good American people like that, well-traveled and nice folks. But books—Lord! they can’t talk about books no more than a Jersey City bartender. ”

“ The book was The People of the Abyss, by Jack London, which Mamie Magen had given to Una as an introduction to a knowledge of social conditions. Una had planned to absorb it; to learn how the shockingly poor live. Now she read the first four pages to Mr. Schwirtz. After each page he said that he was interested. At the end of the fourth page, when Una stopped for breath, he commented: “Fine writer, that fella London. And they say he’s quite a fella; been a sailor and a miner and all kinds of things ”

“ They’re all right for a bunch of young boys that like a cute nose and a good figger better than they do sense— Well, you notice I remembered you, all right, when you went and forgot poor old Eddie Schwirtz. Yessir, by golly! teetotally plumb forgot me. I guess I won’t get over that slam for a while.”
“Now that isn’t fair, Mr. Schwirtz; you know it isn’t—it’s almost dark here on the porch, even with the lamps. I couldn’t really see you. ”

“ Schwirtz, in a sophisticated way, “I don’t agree with these crazy enthusiasts that believe aeroplanes will be used in war. Too easy to shoot’em down.” His information was so sound that he had bought a hundred shares of stock in his customer’s company. ”

“ Starr, Miss Vincent, and the pleasant couple from Gloversville all went away, and Una and Mr. Schwirtz became the elder generation, the seniors, of the boarders. They rather looked down upon the new boarders who came in—tenderfeet, people who didn’t know about Bald Knob or the Glade or Hawkins’s Pond, people who weren’t half so witty or comfy as the giants of those golden, olden days when Mr. ”

“ Yes, sir!”
“I’m glad,” said Una. “I do like improving books.”
“You’ve said it, little sister.... Say, gee! you don’t know what a luxury it is for me to talk about books and literature with an educated, cultured girl like you. Now take the rest of these people here at the farm—nice folks, you understand, mighty well-traveled, broad-gauged, intelligent folks, and all that. There’s a Mr. and Mrs. Cannon; he’s some kind of an executive in the Chicago stock-yards—nice, fat, responsible job. And he was saying to me, ’Mr. Schwirtz,’ he says, ‘Mrs. ”

“ And, besides, I did recognize you—I just couldn’t think of your name for the moment.”
“Yuh, that listens fine, but poor old Eddie’s heart is clean busted just the same—me thinking of you and your nice complexion and goldie hair and the cute way you talked at our lunch—whenever Hunt shut up and gave you a chance—honest, I haven’t forgot yet the way you took off old man—what was it?—the old stiff that ran the commercial college, what was his name?”
“Mr. Whiteside?” Una was enormously pleased and interested. Far off and dim were Miss Magen and the distressing Mrs. Lawrence; and the office of Mr. ”

“ But he’s a socialist. Tell you, I ain’t got much time for these socialists. Course I’m kind of a socialist myself lots-a ways, but these here fellas that go around making folks discontented—! Agitators—! ”