Main Street Sinclair Lewis (books to read romance TXT) đ
- Author: Sinclair Lewis
Book online «Main Street Sinclair Lewis (books to read romance TXT) đ». Author Sinclair Lewis
Kennicott had five hobbies: medicine, land-investment, Carol, motoring, and hunting. It is not certain in what order he preferred them. Solid though his enthusiasms were in the matter of medicineâ âhis admiration of this city surgeon, his condemnation of that for tricky ways of persuading country practitioners to bring in surgical patients, his indignation about fee-splitting, his pride in a new X-ray apparatusâ ânone of these beatified him as did motoring.
He nursed his two-year-old Buick even in winter, when it was stored in the stable-garage behind the house. He filled the grease-cups, varnished a fender, removed from beneath the back seat the debris of gloves, copper washers, crumpled maps, dust, and greasy rags. Winter noons he wandered out and stared owlishly at the car. He became excited over a fabulous âtrip we might take next summer.â He galloped to the station, brought home railway maps, and traced motor-routes from Gopher Prairie to Winnipeg or Des Moines or Grand Marais, thinking aloud and expecting her to be effusive about such academic questions as âNow I wonder if we could stop at Baraboo and break the jump from La Crosse to Chicago?â
To him motoring was a faith not to be questioned, a high-church cult, with electric sparks for candles, and piston-rings possessing the sanctity of altar-vessels. His liturgy was composed of intoned and metrical road-comments: âThey say thereâs a pretty good hike from Duluth to International Falls.â
Hunting was equally a devotion, full of metaphysical concepts veiled from Carol. All winter he read sporting-catalogues, and thought about remarkable past shots: âââMember that time when I got two ducks on a long chance, just at sunset?â At least once a month he drew his favorite repeating shotgun, his âpump gun,â from its wrapper of greased canton flannel; he oiled the trigger, and spent silent ecstatic moments aiming at the ceiling. Sunday mornings Carol heard him trudging up to the attic and there, an hour later, she found him turning over boots, wooden duck-decoys, lunch-boxes, or reflectively squinting at old shells, rubbing their brass caps with his sleeve and shaking his head as he thought about their uselessness.
He kept the loading-tools he had used as a boy: a capper for shotgun shells, a mold for lead bullets. When once, in a housewifely frenzy for getting rid of things, she raged, âWhy donât you give these away?â he solemnly defended them, âWell, you canât tell; they might come in handy some day.â
She flushed. She wondered if he was thinking of the child they would have when, as he put it, they were âsure they could afford one.â
Mysteriously aching, nebulously sad, she slipped away, half-convinced but only half-convinced that it was horrible and unnatural, this postponement of release of mother-affection, this sacrifice to her opinionation and to his cautious desire for prosperity.
âBut it would be worse if he were like Sam Clarkâ âinsisted on having children,â she considered; then, âIf Will were the Prince, wouldnât I demand his child?â
Kennicottâs land-deals were both financial advancement and favorite game. Driving through the country, he noticed which farms had good crops; he heard the news about the restless farmer who was âthinking about selling out here and pulling his freight for Alberta.â He asked the veterinarian about the value of different breeds of stock; he inquired of Lyman Cass whether or not Einar Gyseldson really had had a yield of forty bushels of wheat to the acre. He was always consulting Julius Flickerbaugh, who handled more real estate than law, and more law than justice. He studied township maps, and read notices of auctions.
Thus he was able to buy a quarter-section of land for one hundred and fifty dollars an acre, and to sell it in a year or two, after installing a cement floor in the barn and running water in the house, for one hundred and eighty or even two hundred.
He spoke of these details to Sam Clarkâ ââ ⊠rather often.
In all his games, cars and guns and land, he expected Carol to take an interest. But he did not give her the facts which might have created interest. He talked only of the obvious and tedious aspects; never of his aspirations in finance, nor of the mechanical principles of motors.
This month of romance she was eager to understand his hobbies. She shivered in the garage while he spent half an hour in deciding whether to put alcohol or patent non-freezing liquid into the radiator, or to drain out the water entirely. âOr no, then I wouldnât want to take her out if it turned warmâ âstill, of course, I could fill the radiator againâ âwouldnât take so awful longâ âjust take a few pails of waterâ âstill, if it turned cold on me again before I drained itâ âCourse thereâs some people that put in kerosene, but they say it rots the hose-connections andâ âWhere did I put that lug-wrench?â
It was at this point that she gave up being a motorist and retired to the house.
In their new intimacy he was more communicative about his practise; he informed her, with the invariable warning not to tell, that Mrs. Sunderquist had another baby coming, that the âhired girl at Howlandâs was in trouble.â But when she asked technical questions he did not know how to answer; when she inquired, âExactly what is the method of taking out the tonsils?â he yawned, âTonsilectomy? Why you justâ âIf thereâs pus, you operate. Just take âem out. Seen the newspaper? What the devil did Bea do with it?â
She did not try again.
IIIThey had gone to the âmovies.â The movies were almost as vital to Kennicott and the other solid citizens of Gopher Prairie as land-speculation and guns and automobiles.
The feature film portrayed a brave young Yankee who conquered a South American republic. He turned the natives from their barbarous habits of singing and laughing to the vigorous sanity, the Pep and Punch and Go, of the North; he taught them to work in factories, to wear Klassy Kollege Klothes, and to shout, âOh, you baby doll, watch me gather
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