analiticheskoe_chtenie

sleep at all, at all? I been trying to get into this darned little hammock ever since eight bells!"

'"Now, gentlemen, standing up here before you, I feel a good deal like Pat, and maybe after I've spieled along for a while, I may feel so darn small. that I'll be able to crawl into a Pullman hammock with no trouble at all, at ._all!

'"Gentlemen, it strikes me that each year at this annual occasion when friend and foe get together and Jay down the battle-ax and Jet the waves of good-fellowship waft them up the flowery slopes of amity, it behooves us,

standing together eye to	eye and shoulder to shoulder
as fellow-citizens of the	best city in the world, to consider

where we are both as regards ourselves and the common weal. '"Itis true that even with our 361,000, or practically 362,000, population, there are, by the last census,_ almost a score of larger cities in the United States. But, gentlemen, if by -the next ,census we do not stand at least tenth, then I'll be the first to request any knocker to remove my shirt and to eat the same, with the compliments of G. F. Babbitt, Esquire! It may be true that New York, Chicago, and Philadelphia will continue to keep ahead of us in size. But aside from these three cities, which are notoriously so overgrown that no decent white man, nobody who loves his wife and kiddies and God's good out-o' -doors and likes to shake the hand of his neighbor in greeting, would

want	to live in them -		and let me tell you right here arid
now,	I wouldn't trade		a high-class Zenith acreage_ -devel-
opment		for. the whole	length	and breadth of	Broadway
or State		Street! - aside from		these three, it's	evident to

any one with a head for facts that Zenith is the finest examp-· le of American life and prosperity to be found anywhere.

'"I dn't mean to say we're perfect. We've got a lot to do in the way of extending the paving of motor boulevards, for, believe me, it's the fellow with four to ten thousand a year, say, and an automobile and a nice little family in a bungalow on the edge of town, that makes the wheels of progress go round! ·- ,

"That's the type of fellow that's ruling America today: in fact, it's the ideal type to which the entire world must tend; if there's to be a decent, well-balanced, Christian, go .ahead future for this little old planet! Once in a while 1 just naturally sit back and size up this Solid American Citizen, with a whale of a lot of satisfaction. ·

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'"Our Ideal Citizen - I picture him first and foremost

as being busier than a bird-dog,	not	wasting	a lot of good
time in day-dreaming or going	to sassiety teas or kicking
about things that are none of	his	business,	but putting

the zip into some store or profession or art. At night he lights up a good cigar, and climbs into _the little old bus, and maybe cusses the carburetor, and shoots out home. He mows the lawn, or sneaks in some practice putting, and then he's ready for dinner. After dinner he tells the kiddies a story, or takes the family to the movies, or plays a few fists of bridge, or reads the evening paper, and a chapter or two of some good lively Western novel if he has a taste for literature, and maybe the folks next-door drop in and they sit and visit about their friends and the topics of the day. Then. he goes happily to bed, his conscience clear, having contributed his mite to the prosperity of the city and to his own bank-account.

"'In politics and religion this Sane Citizen is the canniest man on earth; and in the arts he invariably has a natural taste which. makes him pick out the best, every time. In no country in the world will you find so many reproductions of the Old Masters and of well-known paintings on parlor walls as in these United States. No country has anything like our number of photographs, with not only

dance records and comic but also		the best operas, such
as Verdi, rendered by	the world's	highest-paid	singers.
'"In other countries,	art and literature are left		to a lot

of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti, but in America the successful writer or picture- . painter is indistinguishable from any other decent business man; and I, for one, am only too glad that the man who has the rare skill to season his message with interesting reading matter and who shows both purpose and pep in handling his literary wares has a chance to drag down his fifty thousand bucks a year, to mingle with the biggest executives on terms of perfect equality, and to show as big a house and as swell a· car as any Captain of Industry! But, mind you, it's the appreciation of the Regular Guy who I have been depicting which has made this possible,\ and you got to hand as much credit to him as to the authors themselves.

'"Finally, but most important, our Standardized Citizen, even if he is a bachelor, is a lover of the Little Ones, a supporter of the hearthstone which is the basic foundation

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of our civilization, first, last, and all the time, and the thing that most distinguishes us from the decayed nations of Europe.

"'I have never yet toured Europeand as a matter of fact, I don't know that I care to such an awful lot, as long as there's our own mighty cities and mountains to be seen -but, the way I figure it out, there must be a good many of our own sort of folks abroad. Indeed, one of the most enthusiastic Rotarians I ever met boosted the tenets of one-hundred-per-cent pep in a burr that smacked o' bonny Scutlond and all ye bonny braes o' Bobby Burns. But same time, one thing that distinguishes us from our good brothers, the hustlers over there, is that they are willing to take a lot off the snobs and journalists and politicians, while the modern American business man knows how to talk right up for himself, knows how to make it good and plenty clear that he intends to run the works. He doesn't have to call in some highbrow hired-man when it's necessary for him to answer the crooked critics of the sane and efficient life. He's not dumb, like the oldfashioned merchant. He's got a vocabulary and apunch.

"'With all modesty, I want to stand up here as a representative business man and gently whisper, "Here's our kind of folks! Here's the specifications of the Standardi.zed American Citizen! Here's the new generation of Americans: fellows with hair on their chests and smiles in their eyes and adding-machines in their offices. We're not doing any boasting, but we like ourselves first-rate, and if you don't like us, -look out -better get under cover before the cyclone hits town!"

'"So! In my clumsy way I have tried to sketch the · Real He-m[m, the fellow with Zip and Bang. And it's because Zenith has so large a proportion of such 111en that it's the most stable, the greatest of our cities. New York also has its thousands of Real Folks, but New York is cursed with unnumbered foreigners. So are Chicago and San Francisco. Oh, we have a golden roster of cities - Detroit and Cleveland with their renowneq factories, Cincinnati with its great machine-tool and soap products. Pittsburgh and Birri1ingham with their steel, Kansas City and Minneapolis and Omaha that open their bountiful gates on the bosom of the oceanlike wheatlands, and countless other magnificent sister-cities, for, by the last census,· there were no less than sixty-eight glorious American

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burgs with a population of over one hundred thousand! And all these cities stand together for power and purity, _ and against foreign ideas and communismAtlanta with Hartford, Rochester with Denver, Milwaukee with Indianapolis, Los Angeles with Scranton, Portland, .Maine with Portland, Oregon. A good live wire from Baltimore or Seattle or Duluth is the twin-brother of every like fellow booster from Buffalo or Akron, Fort WorJh or Oskaloosa! "'But it's here in Zenith, the home for manly men and womanly women and bright kids, that you find the largest proportion of these regular Guys, and that's what sets it in a class by itself; that's whyZenith will be recommended in history as having set the pace for a civilization that shall endure when the old time-killing ways are gone forever and the day of earnest efficient endeavor shall

have dawned all round the world!

"'Some time I hope folks will quit handing all the credit to a lot of moth-eaten, mildewed, out-of-date, old, European dumps, and give proper credit to the famous Zenith spirit, that clean fighting determination to win Success that has made the little old Zip City celebrated in every land and clime, wherever condensed milk and pasteboard cartons are known! Believe me, the world has fallen too long for these worn-out countries that aren't producing anything but bootblacks and scenery and booze, that haven't got one bathroom per hundred people, and that don't know a loose-leaf ledger from a slip-cover; and it's just about time for some Zenithite to gefhis back up and holler for a show-down!

'"I tell you, Zenith and her sister-cities are producing a new type of civilization. There are many resemblances between Zenith and these other burgs, and I'm darn glad of it! The extraordinary, growing, and sane standardization of stores, offices, streets, hotels, clothes, and newspapers throughout the United States shows how strong and en· during a type is ours."'

CAT IN THE RAIN

by Ernest Hemingway

There were only two Americans stopping at the hotel. They did not know any of the people they passed on the stairs on their way to and from their room. Their room was on the second floor facing the sea. It also faced

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the public garden and the war monument. There were big palms and green benches in the public garden. In the good weather there was always an artist with his easel. Artists liked the way the palms grew and the bright colors of the hotels facing the gardens and the sea. Italians came from a ·long way off to look up at the war monument. It

. was made of bronze and glistened in the rain. It was raining. The rain dripped from the palm trees. Water stood in pools on the gravel paths. The sea brOke in a long line in the rain and slipped back down the beach to come up and break again in a long line in the rain. The motor cars were gone from the square by the war monument. Across the square in the doorway of the cafe a waiter stood looking out at the empty square.

The American wife stood at the window looking out. Outside right under their window a cat was crouched under one of the dripping green tables. The cat was trying to make herself so compact that she would not be dripped on.

''I'm going down and get that kitty," the American wife said.

''I'll do it," her husband offered from the bed.

"No, I'll get it. The poor kitty out trying to keep dry under a table." ·

The husband went on reading, lying propped up with the two pillows at the foot of the bed.

"Don't get wet," he said.

The wife went downstairs and the hotel owner stood up and bowed to her as she passed the office. His desk was at the far end of the office. He was an old man and very tall.

"11 piove," the wife said. She liked the hotel-keeper. "Si, si, Signora, brutto tempo. It's very bad weather." He stood behind his desk in the far end of the dim room.

The wife liked him. She liked the deadly serious way he received any complaints. She liked his dignity..She liked the way he wanted to serve her. She liked the way he felt about being a hotel-keeper. She liked his old, heavy face and big hands. . ·

Liking him she opened the door and looked out. It was raining harder. A man in a rubber cape was crossing the ·empty square to the cafe. The cat would be around to the right. Perhaps she could go along under the eaves. As she stood in t)1e doorway an umbrella opened behind her. It

was the maid who loo~ed after their room. ·

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"You must not get wet," she smiled, speaking Italian. Of course, the hotel-keeper had sent her. ..

With .the maid holding the umbrella over her, she walked along the gravel path until she was under their window. The table was there, washed bright green in the rain, but the cat was gone. She was suddenly disappointed. The maid looked up at her. ·

"Ha perduto qualque cosa, Signora?" "There was a cat," said the American girl. "A cat?"

/ , "Si, il gatto."

"A cat?" the mai<i laughed. "A cat in the rain?" "Yes," she said, "under the table." Then, "Oh, I wanted

it so much. I wanted a kitty."

When she talked English the maid's face tightened. "Come, Signora," she said. "We must get back inside.

You will be wet."

"I suppose so," said the American girl.

They went back along the gravel path and passed in the door. The maid stayed outside to close· the umbrella. As the American girl passed the office, the padrone bowed from his desk. Something felt very small and tight inside the girl. The padrone made her feel very small and at the same time really important. She had a momentary feeling of being of supreme importance. She went on up the stairs. She opened the door of the room. George was on the bed, reading.

"Did you get the cat?" he asked, putting the book down. - "It was gone." ·

"Wonder where it went to," he said, resting his eyes

from	reading.	~
She sat down on the bed.
"I	wanted	it so much," she said. "I don't know why

I wanted it so much. I wanted that poor kitty. It isn't any fun to be a poor kitty out in the rain."

.· George was reading again.

She went over and sat in front of the mirrqr of the dressing table looking at herself with the hand glass. She studied her profile, first one side and then the other. Then she studied the back of her head and her neck.

"Don't you think it would be a good idea if I Jet my hair grow out?" she asked, looking.at her profile again.

George looked up and saw the back of her neck, clipped close like a boy's. -

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"I like it the way it is....

"I get so tired of it," she said. "I get so tired of looking like a boy."

George shifted his position in the bed. He hadn't looked away from her since she started to 'speak.

·"You look pretty darn nice," he said.

She laid the mirror down on the dresser and went over to the window and looked out. It was getting dark.

"I want to pull my hair back tight and smooth and

make a	big knot at the back that	I can feel," she said.
"I want	to have a kitty to sit on my lap and purr when
I stroke	her."	. .

"Yeah?" George said from the bed.

"And I want to eat at a table with my own silver and I want candles. And I want it to be spring and I want to brush my hair out in front of a_ mirror and I want a kitty and I want some new clothes."

"Oh, shut up and get something to read," _George said. He was reading again.

His wife was looking out of the window. It was quite dark now and still raining in the palm trees.

"Anyway, I want a cat," she said, "I want a cat. I want a cat now. If I can't have long hair or any fun, I can have a cat."

George was not listening. He was reading his book. His wife looked out of the window where the light had , come on in the square. •

Someone knocl<ed at the door.

"Avanti," George said. He looked up from his book. In the doorway stood the maid. She held a big tortoiseshell cat pressed tight against her and swung down

against her body.

"Excuse me," she said, "the padrone asked me to bring

this for the Signora."	·
THE GRASS FIRE
	by Erskine Caldwell

During the last week of April nobody with any sense at all woUld have gone out and deliberately set fire to a hay field. There had been no rainfall since the March thaw and the country was as dry as road dust in midsummer. The farmers who had. fields that needed burning over were

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waiting for a heavy shower of rain to come and soak the ground thoroughly before they dared begin the spring firing.

Carl Abbott had been in the habit of burning over his fields the last week of April for the past thirty years and he said that he was not going to start that late in his life letting his new crop hay be ruined by raspb'erry bushes and gray birch seedlings if he knew anything about it. The people in the town thought he was merely talking to himself again to make himself heard, and that he really had the good sense to keep fire away from dry grass until a hard rain had come. Carl was always talking about the way he stuck to his lifelong habits, and people never paid much attention to him any more, anyway.

It was late in the afternoon when Carl .got ready to fire the field on the north side of his farm. He carried two buckets of water with him, and a broom, and went up the side road to the north field.

When he reached the gate, he saw Jake Thorripson come driving down the backroad. Carl tried to get through the gate and behind the stonewall before J ake saw him, but he could not hide himself quickly enough because of the two buckets of water he was carrying, and his wooden leg.

"Hey there!" J ake cried, whipping up his horse. "What you doing in that hay field?"

Carl waited until J ake drove up to the gap in the wall. He put the buckets down and leaned against the broom handle.

"I'm standing here looking at you," Carl told him. "But I'm already tired of doing that, and so now I'm going in here and fire my hay field."

"Why! you damned old fool," Jake said, "don't you know that you'll burn up your whole farm if you do that now? Feel that windit'll carry flame down across that

. meadow and into that woodlot before you know which way to look. Nobody with any sense would fire a hay field until after a good heavy rain comes and soaks the ground."

"I didn't ask for the loan of any of your advice," Carl said.

"And I don't generally pass it around to every damn fool I meet, either," Jake said, "but I hate to have sit here and see a man burn up all he's got and ever will have. The town's not going to raise money to waste on supporting you. There's too many just like you living on the town already."

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"Guess I can live on the town if I've a mind to. Been paying taxes for thirty years and more."

"If it was left up to me," Jake said, "I'd dig a big hole in the ground and cover you up in it. And I'm man enough left to do it, too."

Carl stooped over and picked up the water buckets. "Didn't you hear about that grass fire over in the east part of town day before yesterday?" J ake asked. "A man over there set fire to his hay field and it got loose from

him and burned up his wife."

"That's nothing to concern me," Cart said. "Haven't got a wife, and never felt the need for one. It's people with wives who do all the fool things in the world, anyway."

"Guess you're right about that," J ake said. "I was about to let it slip my mind that your daddy had a wife."

Carl turned around with the water buckets and walked a dozen yards out into the field. The dead grass was almost waist high, and it crae-ked and waved in the wind like a chaff in a hay barn. Each time Carl took a step in the dead grass a puff of dust rose up behind him an~ blew away in the wind. Carl was beginning to believe that J ake was right after all. He had not realized how dry the country really was.

J ake drove his horse and buggy to the sided the road and crossed his legs. He sat back to wait and see hqw big a fool Carl Ab bott really was. .

"If you go and fire that hay field, you'd, better to take out some insurance on your stock and buildings. They won't be worth a dime otherwise; though I guess if I _was hard put to it, I could give you a dollar for the ashes, including yours. They'd make the finest kind of top dressing for my potato field this year."

"If you've got any business of your own, why don•t you go and attend to it?" Carl said. "Didn't invite you to stay here."

"By God, I pay just as many taxes for the upkeep of the town's roads as you do, Carl Abbott. Shall stand here until I get good and ready to go somewhere else."

Carl always said something or did something to make

J ake angry	whenever they got within sight or			hearing
distance of each other.		·.
J ake crossed his legs again and snapped			the leaves off
a birch seedling with his horse whip.
The· wind	was coming down from	the northeast, but
it shifted so	frequently that nobody	could	have	deter-

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mined its true direction. In the month of April there was no way of finding out which way the wind was blowing. J ake had said that in April the wind came in all directions, except straight up, and that if man were to dig a hole in the ground it would come that way, too.

Car! stooped over in the grass and struck a match on the seat of his pants. He held fhe flame close to a tuft of grass and weathered it with his hands.

The flame flared up so quickly and so suddenly that it jumped up through his arms and singed his whiskers before he could get out of the way. The wind was true in the east just then, and it was blowing at about thirty miles an hour. The flame died down almost as suddenly as it had flared up, and a column of white smoke coiled straight upward for a few feet before it was caught in the wind and carried down over the meadow. The fire was smoldering in the dead grass, and the white smoke showed that it was feeding on the crisp dry tufts that grew around the stems like powder puffs. A hay field could never be burned over completely if it were not for the small coils of grass that curled in tufts close to the ground. When the tufts blazed, the long waist-high stems caught and burned through. Then the tall grass fell over as if it were being mown with a scythe, and the fire would be under way, feeding itself far faster than any number qf men could l:Iave done ..

Jake Thompson watched the white smoke boil and curl in the air. He saw Carl walk over to one of the buckets and souse the broom in the w;ater, taking all the time he wished. Then he went ba'ck to the fire and stood looking

at it smolder	in the tufts.
A fairly new, well-sewn		house	broom and a	pail or
two of water	was the finest	kind	of fire-fighting	equip-

ment in a hay field. But farmers who burned over the hay

. fields rarely undertook such a task without having three or four men to help keep the fire under control. Six men who knew how to souse a broom in a bucket of water at the proper time, keeping it sufficiently wet so the broomstraw would not catch on fire, could burn over the largest hay field in the state. Water alone would not even begin to put out a grass fire; it was the smothering of the flame with the broad side of the broom that kept it from spreading. But nobody with any sense at all would have thought of firing a field that year until a rain had come and made the ground moist and dampened the grass tufts. Under

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