The Prodigal Parents

The Prodigal Parents

Sinclair Lewis

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Last updated Wednesday, December 17, 2014 at 14:18.

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Last updated Sunday, March 27, 2016 at 11:57

The Prodigal Parents, by Sinclair Lewis

Table of Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

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Last updated Sunday, March 27, 2016 at 11:57

The Prodigal Parents, by Sinclair Lewis

Chapter 1

In the darkness of the country road after midnight the car was speeding, but the three young men jammed together in the one seat did not worry. They were exhilarated by the violence of the speeches they had heard at the strikers’ mass meeting in the factory town of Cathay. When the car skidded slightly on a turn and the left-hand wheels crunched on the gravelled shoulder, the driver yelped, ‘Hey, whoa-up!’ But she did not whoa-up.

They were not drunk, except with high spirits. They had had a few bottles of beer, but what intoxicated them was the drama of thick-necked, bright-eyed strike leaders denouncing the tyranny of the bosses, the press, the taxpayers and all other oppressors. Two of the young men were juniors in Truxon College, and as they considered themselves to have been frequently and ludicrously misjudged by their own bosses, their parents and professors, they would (they told themselves) have stayed on in Cathay, joined the picket line, brave with bricks and pick handles, and probably have been gloriously killed, had it not been for a critically important fraternity dance at Truxon next evening.

As a substitute for thus entering the martyrs’ profession, they now howled a song which stated that Labour was a Mighty Giant which was going to smash all its foemen immediately.

The third young man did not sing with them. He was a radical agitator; his name was Eugene Silga; he was slim and taut, with skin the colour of a cigar; and he had had quite enough singing in Cathay County Jail, a month ago. When the students stopped for breath, he protested, in the easy voice of a professional speaker, ‘You seem to think it’s going to be a cinch to overthrow the exploiting capitalist class — your own class, remember, you cursed sons of aristocrats. It’s not! It’ll take a lot more than singing to make Wall Street apologize to the Proletariat and go crawl in a hole.’