beneath one roof, pouring out the honest wares that would be sold up the
Euphrates and across the veldt.  The whistles rolled out in greeting a chorus
cheerful as the April dawn; the song of labor in a city built--it seemed--for
giants. 

II 

There was nothing of the giant in the aspect of the man who was beginning to
awaken on the sleeping-porch of a Dutch Colonial house in that residential
district of Zenith known as Floral Heights. 

His name was George F.  Babbitt.  He was forty-six years old now, in April,
1920, and he made nothing in particular, neither butter nor shoes nor poetry,
but he was nimble in the calling of selling houses for more than people could
afford to pay. 

His large head was pink, his brown hair thin and dry.  His face was babyish in
slumber, despite his wrinkles and the red spectacle-dents on the slopes of his
nose.  He was not fat but he was exceedingly well fed; his cheeks were pads,
and the unroughened hand which lay helpless upon the khaki-colored blanket was