The Athletic membership construction is 9 tales excessive, yellow brick with glassy roof-garden above and portico of big limestone columns under. The foyer, with its thick pillars of porous Caen stone, its pointed vaulting, and a brown glazed-tile flooring like well-baked bread-crust, is a mixture of cathedral-crypt and rathskeller. The participants rush into the foyer as if they have been procuring and hadn’t a lot time for it. hence did Babbitt input, and to the crowd status by way of the cigar-counter he whooped, “How’s the men? How’s the men? good, good, effective day! ” Jovially they whooped back—Vergil Gunch, the coal-dealer, Sidney Finkelstein, the ladies’-ready-to-wear client for Parcher & Stein’s department-store, and Professor Joseph ok. Pumphrey, proprietor of the Riteway company university and teacher in Public conversing, company English, situation Writing, and advertisement legislation. notwithstanding Babbitt widespread this savant, and favored Sidney Finkelstein as “a powerful clever patron and an excellent liberal spender,” it used to be to Vergil Gunch that he became with enthusiasm. Mr. Gunch used to be president of the Boosters’ membership, a weekly lunch-club, neighborhood bankruptcy of a countrywide association which promoted sound enterprise and friendliness between common Fellows. He was once additionally no much less an legit than Esteemed best Knight within the Benevolent and protecting Order of Elks, and it used to be rumored that on the subsequent election he will be a candidate for Exalted Ruler. He used to be a jolly guy, given to oratory and to chumminess with the humanities. He referred to as at the well-known actors and vaudeville artists once they got here to city, gave them cigars, addressed them by way of their first names, and—sometimes—succeeded in bringing them to the Boosters’ lunches to offer the men a loose leisure. He was once a wide guy with hair en brosse,23 and he knew the newest jokes, yet he performed poker with reference to the chest. It was once at his celebration that Babbitt had sucked within the virus of to-day’s restlessness. Gunch shouted, “How’s the outdated Bolsheviki? How do you're feeling, the morning after the evening sooner than? ” “Oh, boy! a few head! That was once a typical celebration you threw, Verg! desire you haven’t forgotten I took that final adorable little jack-pot! ” Babbitt bellowed. (He used to be 3 toes from Gunch. ) “That’s okay now! What I’ll hand you subsequent time, Georgie! Say, juh detect within the paper the way in which the hot York meeting stood as much as the Reds? ” “You wager I did. That used to be nice, eh? great day to-day. ” “Yes, it’s one potent tremendous spring day, yet nights nonetheless chilly. ” “Yeh, you’re correct they're! needed to have coupla blankets final evening, out at the sleeping-porch. Say, Sid,” Babbitt grew to become to Finkelstein, the customer, “got whatever wanta ask you approximately. I went out and acquired me an electrical cigar-lighter for the auto, this midday, and—” “Good slump! ” acknowledged Finkelstein, whereas even the discovered Professor Pumphrey, a bulbous guy with a pepper-and-salt cutaway and a pipe-organ voice, commented, “That makes a dandy accent. Cigar-lighter supplies tone to the dashboard. ” “Yep, ultimately made up our minds I’d purchase me one. received the easiest out there, the clerk acknowledged it used to be.