but a priceless
time-saver. By freeing him from halting the car to light a match, it
would in a month or two easily save ten minutes.

As he drove on he glanced at it. "Pretty nice. Always wanted one," he
said wistfully. "The one thing a smoker needs, too."

Then he remembered that he had given up smoking.

"Darn it!" he mourned. "Oh well, I suppose I'll hit a cigar once in a
while. And--Be a great convenience for other folks. Might make just
the difference in getting chummy with some fellow that would put over
a sale. And--Certainly looks nice there. Certainly is a mighty clever
little jigger. Gives the last touch of refinement and class. I--By
golly, I guess I can afford it if I want to! Not going to be the only
member of this family that never has a single doggone luxury!"

Thus, laden with treasure, after three and a half blocks of romantic
adventure, he drove up to the club.

III

The Zenith Athletic Club is not athletic and it isn't exactly a club,
but it is Zenith in perfection. It has an active and smoke-misted
billiard room, it is represented by baseball and football teams, and in
the pool and the gymnasium a tenth of the members sporadically try to
reduce. But most of its three thousand members use it as a cafe in which
to lunch, play cards, tell stories, meet customers, and entertain out-of
town uncles at dinner. It is the largest club in the city, and its chief
hatred is the conservative Union Club, which all sound members of the
Athletic call "a rotten, snobbish, dull, expensive old hole--not one
Good Mixer in the place--you couldn't hire me to join." Statistics show
that no member of the Athletic has ever refused election to the Union,
and of those who are elected, sixty-seven per cent. resign from the
Athletic and are thereafter heard to say, in the drowsy sanctity of the
Union lounge, "The Athletic would be a pretty good hotel, if it were
more exclusive."

The Athletic Club building is nine stories high, yellow brick with
glassy roof-garden above and portico of huge limestone columns below.
The lobby, with its thick pillars of porous Caen stone, its pointed
vaulting, and a brown glazed-tile floor like well-baked bread-crust, is
a combination of cathedral-crypt and rathskellar. The members rush into
the lobby as though they were shopping and hadn't much time for it. Thus
did Babbitt enter, and to the group standing by the cigar-counter he
whooped, "How's the boys? How's the boys? Well, well, fi