BABBITT
BY
SINCLAIR LEWIS
To EDITH WHARTON
BABBITT
CHAPTER I
THE towers of Zenith aspired above the morning mist; austere towers of steel
and cement and limestone, sturdy as cliffs and delicate as silver rods.
They were neither citadels nor churches, but frankly and beautifully
office-buildings.
The mist took pity on the fretted structures of earlier generations: the Post
Office with its shingle-tortured mansard, the red brick minarets of hulking
old houses, factories with stingy and sooted windows, wooden tenements colored
like mud. The city was full of such grotesqueries, but the clean towers were
thrusting them from the business center, and on the farther hills were shining
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