paper, and give it
at the S. A. R. E. B.?" suggested Rountree.

"Well, if it would help you in making up the program--Tell you: the way
I look at it is this: First place, we ought to insist that folks call
us 'realtors' and not 'real-estate men.' Sounds more like a reg'lar
profession. Second place--What is it distinguishes a profession from a
mere trade, business, or occupation? What is it? Why, it's the public
service and the skill, the trained skill, and the knowledge and, uh,
all that, whereas a fellow that merely goes out for the jack, he never
considers the-public service and trained skill and so on. Now as a
professional--"

"Rather! That's perfectly bully! Perfectly corking! Now you write it in
a paper," said Rountree, as he rapidly and firmly moved away.

II

However accustomed to the literary labors of advertisements and
correspondence, Babbitt was dismayed on the evening when he sat down to
prepare a paper which would take a whole ten minutes to read.

He laid out a new fifteen-cent school exercise-book on his wife's
collapsible sewing-table, set up for the event in the living-room. The
household had been bullied into silence; Verona and Ted requested to
disappear, and Tinka threatened with "If I hear one sound out of you--if
you holler for a glass of water one single solitary time--You better
not, that's all!" Mrs. Babbitt sat over by the piano, making a nightgown
and gazing with respect while Babbitt wrote in the exercise-book, to the
rhythmical wiggling and squeaking of the sewing-table.

When he rose, damp and jumpy, and his throat dusty from cigarettes,
she marveled, "I don't see how you can just sit down and make up things
right out of your own head!"

"Oh, it's the training in constructive imagination that a fellow gets in
modern business life."

He had written seven pages, whereof the first page set forth:

{illustration omitted: consists of several doodles and "(1) a profession
(2) Not just a trade crossed out (3) Skill & vision (3) Shd be called
"realtor" & not just real est man"}

The other six pages were rather like the first.

For a week he went about looking important. Every morning, as he
dressed, he thought aloud: "Jever stop to consider, Myra, that before
a town can have buildings or prosperity or any of those things, some
realtor has got to sell 'em the land? All civilization starts with him.
Jever realize that?" At the Athletic Club he led unwilling men aside to
inquire,