Main Street (Barnes & Noble Classics Ser - Sinclair Lewis [154]
“I’m sure he is. He’s a servant of reality.”
“Come again? Um. Yes. All of that, whatever that is.... Say, child, you don’t care a whole lot for Gopher Prairie, if I’m not mistaken.”
“Nope.”
“There’s where you’re missing a big chance. There’s nothing to these cities. Believe me, I know! This is a good town, as they go. You’re lucky to be here. I wish I could stay on!”
“Very well, why don’t you?”
“Huh? Why—Lord—can’t get away fr—”
“You don’t have to stay. I do! So I want to change it. Do you know that men like you, prominent men, do quite a reasonable amount of harm by insisting that your native towns and native states are perfect? It’s you who encourage the denizens not to change. They quote you, and go on believing that they live in paradise, and—” She clenched her fist. “The incredible dullness of it!”
“Suppose you were right. Even so, don’t you think you waste a lot of thundering on one poor scared little town? Kind of mean!”
“I tell you it’s dull. Dull!”
“The folks don’t find it dull. These couples like the Haydocks have a high old time; dances and cards—”
“They don’t. They’re bored. Almost every one here is. Vacuous-ness and bad manners and spiteful gossip—that’s what I hate.”
“Those things—course they’re here. So are they in Boston! And every place else! Why, the faults you find in this town are simply human nature, and never will be changed.”
“Perhaps. But in a Boston all the good Carols (I’ll admit I have no faults) can find one another and play. But here—I’m alone, in a stale pool—except as it’s stirred by the great Mr. Bresnahan!”
“My Lord, to hear you tell it, a fellow’d think that all the denizens, as you impolitely call ’em, are so confoundedly unhappy that it’s a wonder they don’t all up and commit suicide. But they seem to struggle along somehow!”
“They don’t know what they miss. And anybody can endure anything. Look at men in mines and in prisons.”
He drew up on the south shore of Lake Minniemashie. He glanced across the reeds reflected on the water, the quiver of wavelets like crumpled tinfoil, the distant shores patched with dark woods, silvery oats and deep yellow wheat. He patted her hand. “Sis—Carol, you’re a darling girl, but you’re difficult. Know what I think?”
“Yes.”
“Humph. Maybe you do, but—My humble (not too humble!) opinion is that you like to be different. You like to think you’re peculiar. Why, if you knew how many tens of thousands of women, especially in New York, say just what you do, you’d lose all the fun of thinking you’re a lone genius and you’d be on the band-wagon whooping it up for Gopher Prairie and a good decent family life. There’s always about a million young women just out of college who want to teach their grandmothers how to suck eggs.”
“How proud you are of that homely rustic metaphor! You use it at ‘banquets’ and directors’ meetings, and boast of your climb from a humble homestead.”
“Huh! You may have my number. I’m not telling. But look here: You’re so prejudiced against Gopher Prairie that you overshoot the mark; you antagonize those who might be inclined to agree with you in some particulars but—Great guns, the town can’t be all wrong!”
“No, it isn’t. But it could be. Let me tell you a fable. Imagine a cavewoman complaining to her mate. She doesn’t like one single thing; she hates the damp cave, the rats running over her bare legs, the stiff skin garments, the eating of half-raw meat, her husband’s bushy face, the constant battles, and the worship of the spirits who will hoodoo her unless she gives the priests her best claw necklace. Her man protests, ‘But it can’t all be wrong!’ and he thinks he has reduced her to absurdity. Now you assume that a world which produces a Percy Bresnahan and a Velvet Motor Company must be civilized. It is? Aren