lling of the heart suitable to so grave a business as
giving a dinner, he slew the temptation to wear his plaited dress-shirt
for a fourth time, took out an entirely fresh one, tightened his black
bow, and rubbed his patent-leather pumps with a handkerchief. He glanced
with pleasure at his garnet and silver studs. He smoothed and patted
his ankles, transformed by silk socks from the sturdy shanks of George
Babbitt to the elegant limbs of what is called a Clubman. He stood
before the pier-glass, viewing his trim dinner-coat, his beautiful
triple-braided trousers; and murmured in lyric beatitude, "By golly,
I don't look so bad. I certainly don't look like Catawba. If the hicks
back home could see me in this rig, they'd have a fit!"

He moved majestically down to mix the cocktails. As he chipped ice, as
he squeezed oranges, as he collected vast stores of bottles, glasses,
and spoons at the sink in the pantry, he felt as authoritative as the
bartender at Healey Hanson's saloon. True, Mrs. Babbitt said he was
under foot, and Matilda and the maid hired for the evening brushed by
him, elbowed him, shrieked "Pleasopn door," as they tottered through
with trays, but in this high moment he ignored them.

Besides the new bottle of gin, his cellar consisted of one half-bottle
of Bourbon whisky, a quarter of a bottle of Italian vermouth, and
approximately one hundred drops of orange bitters. He did not possess
a cocktail-shaker. A shaker was proof of dissipation, the symbol of a
Drinker, and Babbitt disliked being known as a Drinker even more than
he liked a Drink. He mixed by pouring from an ancient gravy-boat into a
handleless pitcher; he poured with a noble dignity, holding his alembics
high beneath the powerful Mazda globe, his face hot, his shirt-front a
glaring white, the copper sink a scoured red-gold.

He tasted the sacred essence. "Now, by golly, if that isn't pretty
near one fine old cocktail! Kind of a Bronx, and yet like a Manhattan.
Ummmmmm! Hey, Myra, want a little nip before the folks come?"

Bustling into the dining-room, moving each glass a quarter of an
inch, rushing back with resolution implacable on her face her gray and
silver-lace party frock protected by a denim towel, Mrs. Babbitt glared
at him, and rebuked him, "Certainly not!"

"Well," in a loose, jocose manner, "I think the old man will!"

The cocktail filled him with a whirling exhilaration behind which he
was aware of devastating desires--to rush pla