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It Can't Happen Here
by Sinclair Lewis
Chapter 2
As he took his wife home and drove up Pleasant Hill to Tasbrough’s, Doremus Jessup meditated1 upon the epidemic2 patriotism4 of General Edgeways. But he broke it off to let himself be absorbed in the hills, as it had been his habit for the fifty-three years, out of his sixty years of life, that he had spent in Fort Beulah, Vermont.
Legally a city, Fort Beulah was a comfortable village of old red brick, old granite5 workshops, and houses of white clapboards or gray shingles6, with a few smug little modern bungalows7, yellow or seal brown. There was but little manufacturing: a small woolen8 mill, a sash-and-door factory, a pump works. The granite which was its chief produce came from quarries9 four miles away; in Fort Beulah itself were only the offices . . . all the money . . . the meager10 shacks11 of most of the quarry12 workers. It was a town of perhaps ten thousand souls, inhabiting about twenty thousand bodies — the proportion of soul-possession may be too high.
There was but one (comparative) skyscraper13 in town: the six-story Tasbrough Building, with the offices of the Tasbrough & Scarlett Granite Quarries; the offices of Doremus’s son-inlaw, Fowler Greenhill, M.D., and his partner, old Dr. Olmsted, of Lawyer Mungo Kitterick, of Harry15 Kindermann, agent for maple16 syrup17 and dairying supplies, and of thirty or forty other village samurai.
It was a downy town, a drowsy18 town, a town of security and tradition, which still believed in Thanksgiving, Fourth of July, Memorial Day, and to which May Day was not an occasion for labor19 parades but for distributing small baskets of flowers.
It was a May night — late in May of 1936 — with a three-quarter moon. Doremus’s house was a mile from the business-center of Fort Beulah, on Pleasant Hill, which was a spur thrust like a reaching hand out from the dark rearing mass of Mount Terror. Upland meadows, moon-glistening, he could see, among the wildernesses21 of spruce and maple and poplar on the ridges22 far above him; and below, as his car climbed, was Ethan Creek23 flowing through the meadows. Deep woods — rearing mountain bulwarks24 — the air like spring-water — serene25 clapboarded houses that remembered the War of 1812 and the boyhoods of those errant Vermonters, Stephen A. Douglas, the “Little Giant,” and Hiram Powers and Thaddeus Stevens and Brigham Young and President Chester Alan Arthur.
“No — Powers and Arthur — they were weak sisters,” pondered Doremus. “But Douglas and Thad Stevens and Brigham, the old stallion — I wonder if we’re breeding up any paladins like those stout26, grouchy27 old devils?— if we’re producing ’em anywhere in New England?— anywhere in America?— anywhere in the world? They had guts28. Independence. Did what they wanted to and thought what they liked, and everybody could go to hell. The youngsters today — Oh, the aviators29 have plenty of nerve. The physicists30, these twenty-five-year-old Ph. D.‘s that violate the inviolable atom, they’re pioneers. But most of the wishy-washy young people today — Going seventy miles an hour but not going anywhere — not enough imagination to WANT to go anywhere! Getting their music by turning a dial. Getting their phrases from the comic strips instead of from Shakespeare and the Bible and Veblen and Old Bill Sumner. Pap-fed flabs! Like this smug pup Malcolm Tasbrough, hanging around Sissy! Aah!
“Wouldn’t it be hell if that stuffed shirt, Edgeways, and that political Mae West, Gimmitch, were right, and we need all these military monkeyshines and maybe a fool war (to conquer some sticky-hot country we don’t want on a bet!) to put some starch31 and git into these marionettes we call our children? Aah!
“But rats — These hills! Castle walls. And this air. They can keep their Cotswolds and Harz Mountains and Rockies! D. Jessup — topographical patriot3. And I AM a —”
“Dormouse, would you mind driving on the right-hand side of the road — on curves, anyway?” said his wife peaceably.
An upland hollow and mist beneath the moon — a veil of mist over apple blossoms and the heavy bloom of an ancient lilac bush beside the ruin of a farmhouse32 burned these sixty years and more.
Mr. Francis Tasbrough was the president, general manager, and chief owner of the Tasbrough & Scarlett Granite Quarries, at West Beulah, four miles from “the Fort.” He was rich, persuasive33, and he had constant labor troubles. He lived in a new Georgian brick house on Pleasant Hill, a little beyond Doremus Jessup’s, and in that house he maintained a private barroom luxurious34 as that of a motor company’s advertising35 manager at Grosse Point. It was no more the traditional New England than was the Catholic part of Boston; and Frank himself boasted that, though his family had for six generations lived in New England, he was no tight Yankee but in his Efficiency, his Salesmanship, the complete Pan–American Business Executive.
He was a tall man, Tasbrough, with a yellow mustache and a monotonously37 emphatic38 voice. He was fifty-four, six years younger than Doremus Jessup, and when he had been four, Doremus had protected him from the results of his singularly unpopular habit of hitting the other small boys over the head with things — all kinds of things — sticks and toy wagons39 and lunch boxes and dry cow flops40.
Assembled in his private barroom tonight, after the Rotarian Dinner, were Frank himself, Doremus Jessup, Medary Cole, the miller41, Superintendent42 of Schools Emil Staubmeyer, R. C. Crowley — Roscoe Conkling Crowley, the weightiest banker in Fort Beulah — and, rather surprisingly, Tasbrough’s pastor43, the Episcopal minister, the Rev44. Mr. Falck, his old hands as delicate as porcelain45, his wilderness20 of hair silk-soft and white, his unfleshly face betokening46 the Good Life. Mr. Falck came from a solid Knickerbocker family, and he had studied in Edinburgh and Oxford47 along with the General Theological Seminary of New York; and in all of the Beulah Valley there was, aside from Doremus, no one who more contentedly48 hid away in the shelter of the hills.
The barroom had been professionally interior-decorated by a young New York gentleman with the habit of standing49 with the back of his right hand against his hip36. It had a stainless-steel bar, framed illustrations from La Vie Parisienne, silvered metal tables, and chromium-plated aluminum50 chairs with scarlet14 leather cushions.
All of them except Tasbrough, Medary Cole (a social climber to whom the favors of Frank Tasbrough were as honey and fresh ripened51 figs), and “Professor” Emil Staubmeyer were uncomfortable in this parrot-cage elegance52, but none of them, including Mr. Falck, seemed to dislike Frank’s soda53 and excellent Scotch54 or the sardine55 sandwiches.
“And I wonder if Thad Stevens would of liked this, either?” considered Doremus. “He’d of snarled56. Old cornered catamount. But probably not at the whisky!”
“Doremus,” demanded Tasbrough, “why don’t you take a tumble to yourself? All these years you’ve had a lot of fun criticizing — always being agin the government — kidding everybody — posing as such a Liberal that you’ll stand for all these subversive57 elements. Time for you to quit playing tag with crazy ideas and come in and join the family. These are serious times — maybe twenty-eight million on relief, and beginning to get ugly — thinking they’ve got a vested right now to be supported.
“And the Jew Communists and Jew financiers plotting together to control the country. I can understand how, as a younger fellow, you could pump up a little sympathy for the unions and even for the Jews — though, as you know, I’ll never get over being sore at you for taking the side of the strikers when those thugs were trying to ruin my whole business — burn down my polishing and cutting shops — why, you were even friendly with that alien murderer Karl Pascal, who started the whole strike — maybe I didn’t enjoy firing HIM when it was all over!
“But anyway, these labor racketeers are getting together now, with Communist leaders, and determined58 to run the country — to tell men like ME how to run our business!— and just like General Edgeways said, they’ll refuse to serve their country if we should happen to get dragged into some war. Yessir, a mighty59 serious hour, and it’s time for you to cut the cackle and join the really responsible citizens.”
Said Doremus, “Hm. Yes, I agree it’s a serious time. With all the discontent there is in the country to wash him into office, Senator Windrip has got an excellent chance to be elected President, next November, and if he is, probably his gang of buzzards will get us into some war, just to grease their insane vanity and show the world that we’re the huskiest nation going. And then I, the Liberal, and you, the Plutocrat, the bogus Tory, will be led out and shot at 3 A.M. Serious? Huh!”
“Rats! You’re exaggerating!” said R. C. Crowley.
Doremus went on: “If Bishop60 Prang, our Savonarola in a Cadillac 16, swings his radio audience and his League of Forgotten Men to Buzz Windrip, Buzz will win. People will think they’re electing him to create more economic security. Then watch the Terror! God knows there’s been enough indication that we CAN have tyranny in America — the fix of the Southern share-croppers, the working conditions of the miners and garment-makers, and our keeping Mooney in prison so many years. But wait till Windrip shows us how to say it with machine guns! Democracy — here and in Britain and France, it hasn’t been so universal a sniveling slavery as Naziism61 in Germany, such an imagination-hating, pharisaic materialism62 as Russia — even if it has produced industrialists63 like you, Frank, and bankers like you, R. C., and given you altogether too much power and money. On the whole, with scandalous exceptions, Democracy’s given the ordinary worker more dignity than he ever had. That may be menaced now by Windrip — all the Windrips. All right! Maybe we’ll have to fight paternal64 dictatorship with a little sound patricide65 — fight machine guns with machine guns. Wait till Buzz takes charge of us. A real Fascist66 dictatorship!”
“Nonsense! Nonsense!” snorted Tasbrough. “That couldn’t happen here in America, not possibly! We’re a country of freemen.”
“The answer to that,” suggested Doremus Jessup, “if Mr. Falck will forgive me, is ‘the hell it can’t!’ Why, there’s no country in the world that can get more hysterical67 — yes, or more obsequious68!— than America. Look how Huey Long became absolute monarch69 over Louisiana, and how the Right Honorable Mr. Senator Berzelius Windrip owns HIS State. Listen to Bishop Prang and Father Coughlin on the radio — divine oracles70, to millions. Remember how casually71 most Americans have accepted Tammany grafting72 and Chicago gangs and the crookedness73 of so many of President Harding’s appointees? Could Hitler’s bunch, or Windrip’s, be worse? Remember the Kuklux Klan? Remember our war hysteria, when we called sauerkraut ‘Liberty cabbage’ and somebody actually proposed calling German measles74 ‘Liberty measles’? And wartime censorship of honest papers? Bad as Russia! Remember our kissing the — well, the feet of Billy Sunday, the million-dollar evangelist, and of Aimée McPherson, who swam from the Pacific Ocean clear into the Arizona desert and got away with it? Remember Voliva and Mother Eddy75? . . . Remember our Red scares and our Catholic scares, when all well-informed people knew that the O.G.P.U. were hiding out in Oskaloosa, and the Republicans campaigning against Al Smith told the Carolina mountaineers that if Al won the Pope would illegitimatize their children? Remember Tom Heflin and Tom Dixon? Remember when the hick legislators in certain states, in obedience76 to William Jennings Bryan, who learned his biology from his pious77 old grandma, set up shop as scientific experts and made the whole world laugh itself sick by forbidding the teaching of evolution? . . . Remember the Kentucky night-riders? Remember how trainloads of people have gone to enjoy lynchings? Not happen here? Prohibition78 — shooting down people just because they MIGHT be transporting liquor — no, that couldn’t happen in AMERICA! Why, where in all history has there ever been a people so ripe for a dictatorship as ours! We’re ready to start on a Children’s Crusade — only of adults — right now, and the Right Reverend Abbots Windrip and Prang are all ready to lead it!”
“Well, what if they are?” protested R. C. Crowley. “It might not be so bad. I don’t like all these irresponsible attacks on us bankers all the time. Of course, Senator Windrip has to pretend publicly to bawl79 the banks out, but once he gets into power he’ll give the banks their proper influence in the administration and take our expert financial advice. Yes. Why are you so afraid of the word ‘Fascism,’ Doremus? Just a word — just a word! And might not be so bad, with all the lazy bums80 we got panhandling relief nowadays, and living on my income tax and yours — not so worse to have a real Strong Man, like Hitler or Mussolini — like Napoleon or Bismarck in the good old days — and have ’em really RUN the country and make it efficient and prosperous again. ‘Nother words, have a doctor who won’t take any back-chat, but really boss the patient and make him get well whether he likes it or not!”
“Yes!” said Emil Staubmeyer. “Didn’t Hitler save Germany from the Red Plague of Marxism? I got cousins there. I KNOW!”
“Hm,” said Doremus, as often Doremus did say it. “Cure the evils of Democracy by the evils of Fascism! Funny therapeutics. I’ve heard of their curing syphilis by giving the patient malaria81, but I’ve never heard of their curing malaria by giving the patient syphilis!”
“Think that’s nice language to use in the presence of the Reverend Falck?” raged Tasbrough.
Mr. Falck piped up, “I think it’s quite nice language, and an interesting suggestion, Brother Jessup!”
“Besides,” said Tasbrough, “this chewing the rag is all nonsense, anyway. As Crowley says, might be a good thing to have a strong man in the saddle, but — it just can’t happen here in America.”
And it seemed to Doremus that the softly moving lips of the Reverend Mr. Falck were framing, “The hell it can’t!”
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1
meditated
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| 深思，沉思，冥想( meditate的过去式和过去分词 )； 内心策划，考虑 | |
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epidemic
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| n.流行病；盛行；adj.流行性的，流传极广的 | |
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patriot
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| n.爱国者，爱国主义者 | |
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patriotism
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| n.爱国精神，爱国心，爱国主义 | |
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granite
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| adj.花岗岩，花岗石 | |
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shingles
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| n.带状疱疹；（布满海边的）小圆石( shingle的名词复数 )；屋顶板；木瓦（板）；墙面板 | |
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bungalows
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| n.平房( bungalow的名词复数 )；单层小屋，多于一层的小屋 | |
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woolen
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| adj.羊毛(制)的；毛纺的 | |
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quarries
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| n.（采）石场( quarry的名词复数 )；猎物（指鸟，兽等）；方形石；（格窗等的）方形玻璃v.从采石场采得( quarry的第三人称单数 )；从（书本等中）努力发掘（资料等）；在采石场采石 | |
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meager
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| adj.缺乏的，不足的，瘦的 | |
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shacks
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| n.窝棚，简陋的小屋( shack的名词复数 ) | |
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quarry
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| n.采石场；v.采石；费力地找 | |
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skyscraper
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| n.摩天大楼 | |
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scarlet
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| n.深红色，绯红色，红衣；adj.绯红色的 | |
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harry
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| vt.掠夺，蹂躏，使苦恼 | |
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maple
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| n.槭树，枫树，槭木 | |
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syrup
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| n.糖浆，糖水 | |
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drowsy
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| adj.昏昏欲睡的，令人发困的 | |
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labor
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| n.劳动，努力，工作，劳工；分娩；vi.劳动，努力，苦干；vt.详细分析；麻烦 | |
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wilderness
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| n.杳无人烟的一片陆地、水等，荒漠 | |
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wildernesses
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| 荒野( wilderness的名词复数 )； 沙漠； （政治家）在野； 不再当政（或掌权） | |
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ridges
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| n.脊( ridge的名词复数 )；山脊；脊状突起；大气层的)高压脊 | |
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creek
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| n.小溪，小河，小湾 | |
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bulwarks
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| n.堡垒( bulwark的名词复数 )；保障；支柱；舷墙 | |
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25
serene
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| adj. 安详的，宁静的，平静的 | |
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stout
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| adj.强壮的，粗大的，结实的，勇猛的，矮胖的 | |
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grouchy
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| adj.好抱怨的；愠怒的 | |
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guts
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| v.狼吞虎咽，贪婪地吃，飞碟游戏（比赛双方每组5人，相距15码，互相掷接飞碟）；毁坏（建筑物等）的内部( gut的第三人称单数 )；取出…的内脏n.勇气( gut的名词复数 )；内脏；消化道的下段；肠 | |
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29
aviators
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| 飞机驾驶员，飞行员( aviator的名词复数 ) | |
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physicists
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| 物理学家( physicist的名词复数 ) | |
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starch
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| n.淀粉；vt.给...上浆 | |
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farmhouse
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| n.农场住宅（尤指主要住房） | |
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persuasive
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| adj.有说服力的，能说得使人相信的 | |
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luxurious
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| adj.精美而昂贵的；豪华的 | |
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advertising
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| n.广告业；广告活动 a.广告的；广告业务的 | |
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36
hip
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| n.臀部，髋；屋脊 | |
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monotonously
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| adv.单调地，无变化地 | |
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38
emphatic
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| adj.强调的，着重的；无可置疑的，明显的 | |
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wagons
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| n.四轮的运货马车( wagon的名词复数 )；铁路货车；小手推车 | |
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40
flops
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| n.失败( flop的名词复数 )v.（指书、戏剧等）彻底失败( flop的第三人称单数 )；（因疲惫而）猛然坐下；（笨拙地、不由自主地或松弛地）移动或落下；砸锅 | |
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41
miller
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| n.磨坊主 | |
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42
superintendent
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| n.监督人，主管，总监；(英国)警务长 | |
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43
pastor
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| n.牧师，牧人 | |
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44
rev
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| v.发动机旋转，加快速度 | |
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45
porcelain
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| n.瓷；adj.瓷的，瓷制的 | |
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46
betokening
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| v.预示，表示( betoken的现在分词 ) | |
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47
Oxford
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| n.牛津（英国城市） | |
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48
contentedly
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| adv.心满意足地 | |
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49
standing
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| n.持续，地位；adj.永久的，不动的，直立的，不流动的 | |
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50
aluminum
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| n.(aluminium)铝 | |
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51
ripened
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| v.成熟，使熟( ripen的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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52
elegance
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| n.优雅；优美，雅致；精致，巧妙 | |
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53
soda
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| n.苏打水；汽水 | |
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54
scotch
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| n.伤口，刻痕；苏格兰威士忌酒；v.粉碎，消灭，阻止；adj.苏格兰(人)的 | |
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55
sardine
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| n.[C]沙丁鱼 | |
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56
snarled
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| v.（指狗）吠，嗥叫， （人）咆哮( snarl的过去式和过去分词 )；咆哮着说，厉声地说 | |
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57
subversive
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| adj.颠覆性的，破坏性的；n.破坏份子，危险份子 | |
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determined
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| adj.坚定的；有决心的 | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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60
bishop
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| n.主教，（国际象棋）象 | |
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61
Naziism
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| n.纳粹主义，德国国家社会主义 | |
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62
materialism
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| n.［哲］唯物主义，唯物论；物质至上 | |
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industrialists
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| n.工业家，实业家( industrialist的名词复数 ) | |
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64
paternal
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| adj.父亲的，像父亲的，父系的，父方的 | |
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patricide
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| n.杀父 | |
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66
fascist
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| adj.法西斯主义的；法西斯党的；n.法西斯主义者，法西斯分子 | |
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67
hysterical
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| adj.情绪异常激动的，歇斯底里般的 | |
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obsequious
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| adj.谄媚的，奉承的，顺从的 | |
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69
monarch
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| n.帝王，君主，最高统治者 | |
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70
oracles
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| 神示所( oracle的名词复数 )； 神谕； 圣贤； 哲人 | |
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71
casually
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| adv.漠不关心地，无动于衷地，不负责任地 | |
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72
grafting
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| 嫁接法，移植法 | |
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73
crookedness
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| [医]弯曲 | |
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74
measles
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|
| n.麻疹，风疹，包虫病，痧子 | |
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75
eddy
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|
| n.漩涡，涡流 | |
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76
obedience
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| n.服从，顺从 | |
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77
pious
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| adj.虔诚的；道貌岸然的 | |
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78
prohibition
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| n.禁止；禁令，禁律 | |
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79
bawl
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| v.大喊大叫，大声地喊，咆哮 | |
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80
bums
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| n. 游荡者，流浪汉，懒鬼，闹饮，屁股 adj. 没有价值的，不灵光的，不合理的 vt. 令人失望，乞讨 vi. 混日子，以乞讨为生 | |
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81
malaria
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| n.疟疾 | |
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