work
at least, so intelligent. You can't hate them properly, and yet their
standardized minds are the enemy.

"Then this boosting--Sneakingly I have a notion that Zenith is a better
place to live in than Manchester or Glasgow or Lyons or Berlin or
Turin--"

"It is not, and I have lift in most of them," murmured Dr. Yavitch.

"Well, matter of taste. Personally, I prefer a city with a future so
unknown that it excites my imagination. But what I particularly want--"

"You," said Dr. Yavitch, "are a middle-road liberal, and you haven't
the slightest idea what you want. I, being a revolutionist, know exactly
what I want--and what I want now is a drink."

VI

At that moment in Zenith, Jake Offutt, the politician, and Henry T.
Thompson were in conference. Offutt suggested, "The thing to do is to
get your fool son-in-law, Babbitt, to put it over. He's one of these
patriotic guys. When he grabs a piece of property for the gang, he makes
it look like we were dyin' of love for the dear peepul, and I do love to
buy respectability--reasonable. Wonder how long we can keep it up, Hank?
We're safe as long as the good little boys like George Babbitt and all
the nice respectable labor-leaders think you and me are rugged patriots.
There's swell pickings for an honest politician here, Hank: a whole city
working to provide cigars and fried chicken and dry martinis for us,
and rallying to our banner with indignation, oh, fierce indignation,
whenever some squealer like this fellow Seneca Doane comes along!
Honest, Hank, a smart codger like me ought to be ashamed of himself if
he didn't milk cattle like them, when they come around mooing for it!
But the Traction gang can't get away with grand larceny like it used
to. I wonder when--Hank, I wish we could fix some way to run this fellow
Seneca Doane out of town. It's him or us!"

At that moment in Zenith, three hundred and forty or fifty thousand
Ordinary People were asleep, a vast unpenetrated shadow. In the slum
beyond the railroad tracks, a young man who for six months had sought
work turned on the gas and killed himself and his wife.

At that moment Lloyd Mallam, the poet, owner of the Hafiz Book Shop,
was finishing a rondeau to show how diverting was life amid the feuds of
medieval Florence, but how dull it was in so obvious a place as Zenith.

And at that moment George F. Babbitt turned ponderously in bed--the
last turn, signifying that he'd had enough of this worried business