"Practically I've never done a single thing I've wanted to in my whole life. I don't know's I've accomplished anything except just get along . . . Well, maybe you'll carry things on further. I don't know. But I do get a kind of sneaking pleasure out of the fact that you knew what you wanted to do and did it. Well, those folks in there will try to bully you, and tame you down. Tell 'em to go to the devil! I'll back you. Take your factory ob, if you want. Don't be scared of the family. No, nor all of Zenith. Nor of yourself, the way I've been. Go ahead, old man! The world is yours!"
I have no high expectation regarding Babbitt's son. He gives as little promise as his father of capacity for finding delight in the things of the mind. The daughter may conceivably become an interesting individual, perhaps only an intense and difficult one.
Babbitt is not a representation of the highest American standards of morals and manners. But neither is The Rise of Silas Lapham nor Huckleberry Finn nor Henry James's The American. Neither is Vanity Fair a representation of the highest standards of morals and manners in England, nor is David Copperfield, nor Pride and Prejudice. It is not the business of the realistic novelist nor dramatist to confine his studies to those small and isolated spots in which the society of his contemporaries approaches perfection. To propose such an aim is absurd. A jury of award which accepted it would at once be obliged to exclude from its consideration
