When they couldn't get there they crowded into their borough towns,
into Eastlake, at every opportunity, attracted by the gaiety, the
lights, the stir, the contact with humanity. Before prohibition they
had drunk at the hotel bars, and driven home, with discordant laughter
and the urged clatter of hoofs, to the silence of star-lit fields. The
buggies had gone; High Street, on Saturday night, was filled with
automobiles; there was practically no drunkenness; but there was no
lessening in the restless seeking stream of men, the curiosity of the
women with folded hands and tightly folded lips.
They all wanted a mitigation of a life which, fundamentally, did not
fill them; they had an absorbing labor, love and home and children, the
church, yet they were unsatisfied. They were discontented with the
primary facts of existence, the serious phases, and wanted, above
everything, tinsel and laughter. If a girl passing on the street smiled
boldly at such youths they were fired with triumph and happiness; they
nudged each other violently and made brazen declarations which, faced
by the girls, escaped in disconcerted laughter. Their language--and
this, too, was a revolt--was like the sweepings of the cow barns.
Life, it occurred to Lee Randon, in this connection, was amazingly
muddled; and he wondered what would happen if the restraint, since it
was no better than sham, should be swept away, and men acknowledged
what they so largely were? A fresh standard, a new set of values, would
have to be established.
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