Arrowsmith by Sinclair Lewis (learn to read books txt) 📕

edge, distinctly did not. Both ladies turned on Pickerbaugh and denounced him, and when they had been removed he was the center of a thousand chuckles, in decided danger of never going to Congress.

At two o’clock, when the rain had slackened, when the after-lunch crowd had come in and the story of the anti ladies was running strong, the fireman retired behind the Clean Up and Prevent Fires exhibit for his hourly smoke. He was a very sleepy and unhappy little fireman; he was thinking about the pleasant firehouse and the unending games of pinochle. He dropped the match, unextinguished on the back porch of the model Clean House. The Clean House had been so handsomely oiled that it was like kindling soaked in kerosene. It flared up, and instantly the huge and gloomy Tabernacle was hysterical with flames. The crowd rushed toward the exits.

Naturally, most of the original exits of the Tabernacle had been blocked by booths. There was a shrieking panic, and children were being trampled.

Almus Pickerbaugh was neither a coward nor slothful. Suddenly, coming from nowhere, he was marching through the Tabernacle at the head of his eight daughters, singing “Dixie,” his head up, his eyes terrible, his arms wide in pleading. The crowd weakly halted. With the voice of a clipper captain he unsnarled them and ushered them safely out, then charged back into the spouting flames.

The rain-soaked building had not caught. The fireman, with Martin and the head of the Eugenic Family, was beating the flames. Nothing was destroyed save the Clean House, and the crowd which had fled in agony came back in wonder. Their hero was Pickerbaugh.

Within two hours the Nautilus papers vomited specials which explained that not merely had Pickerbaugh organized the greatest lesson in health ever seen, but he had also, by his courage and his power to command, saved hundreds of people from being crushed, which latter was probably the only completely accurate thing that has been said about Dr. Almus Pickerbaugh in ten thousand columns of newspaper publicity.

Whether to see the Fair, Pickerbaugh, the delightful ravages of a disaster, or another fight between the anti ladies, half the city struggled into the Tabernacle that evening, and when Pickerbaugh took the platform for his closing lecture he was greeted with frenzy. Next day, when he galloped into the last week of his campaign, he was overlord of all the district.

II

His opponent was a snuffy little lawyer whose strength lay in his training. He had been state senator, lieutenant governor, county judge. But the Democratic slogan, “Pickerbaugh the Pickup Candidate,” was drowned in the admiration for the hero of the health fair. He dashed about in motors, proclaiming, “I am not running because I want office, but because I want the chance to take to the whole nation my ideals of health.” Everywhere was plastered:

For Congress

Pickerbaugh

The two-fisted fighting poet doc

Just elect him for a term

And all through the nation he’ll swat the germ.

Enormous meetings were held. Pickerbaugh was ample and vague about his Policies. Yes, he was opposed to our entering the European War, but he assured them, he certainly did assure them, that he was for using every power of our Government to end this terrible calamity. Yes, he was for high tariff, but it must be so adjusted that the farmers in his district could buy everything cheaply. Yes, he was for high wages for each and every workman, but he stood like a rock, like a boulder, like a moraine, for protecting the prosperity of all manufacturers, merchants, and real-estate owners.

While this larger campaign thundered, there was proceeding in Nautilus a smaller and much defter campaign, to reelect as mayor one Mr. Pugh, Pickerbaugh’s loving chief. Mr. Pugh sat nicely at desks, and he was pleasant and promissory to everybody who came to see him; clergymen, gamblers, G.A.R. veterans, circus advance-agents, policemen, and ladies of reasonable virtue⁠—everybody except perhaps socialist agitators, against whom he staunchly protected the embattled city. In his speeches Pickerbaugh commended Pugh for “that firm integrity and ready sympathy with which His Honor had backed up every movement for the public weal,” and when Pickerbaugh (quite honestly) begged, “Mr. Mayor, if I go to Congress you must appoint Arrowsmith in my place; he knows nothing about politics but he’s incorruptible,” then Pugh gave his promise, and amity abode in that land⁠ ⁠… Nobody said anything at all about Mr. F. X. Jordan.

F. X. Jordan was a contractor with a generous interest in politics. Pickerbaugh called him a grafter, and the last time Pugh had been elected⁠—it had been on a Reform Platform, though since that time the reform had been coaxed to behave itself and be practical⁠—both Pugh and Pickerbaugh had denounced Jordan as a “malign force.” But so kindly was Mayor Pugh that in the present election he said nothing that could hurt Mr. Jordan’s feelings, and in return what could Mr. Jordan do but speak forgivingly about Mr. Pugh to the people in blind-pigs and houses of ill fame?

On the evening of the election, Martin and Leora were among the company awaiting the returns at the Pickerbaughs’. They were confident. Martin had never been roused by politics, but he was stirred now by Pickerbaugh’s twitchy pretense of indifference, by the telephoned report from the newspaper office, “Here’s Willow Grove township⁠—Pickerbaugh leading, two to one!” by the crowds which went past the house howling, “Pickerbaugh, Pickerbaugh, Pickerbaugh!”

At eleven the victory was certain, and Martin, his bowels weak with unconfidence, realized that he was now Director of Public Health, with responsibility for seventy thousand lives.

He looked wistfully toward Leora and in her still smile found assurance.

Orchid had been airy and distant with Martin all evening, and dismayingly chatty and affectionate with Leora. Now she drew him into the back parlor and “So I’m going off to Washington⁠—and you don’t care a bit!” she said, her eyes blurred and languorous and undefended. He held her, muttering, “You darling child, I can’t let you go!” As he walked home