As he approached the office he walked faster and faster, muttering, "Guess
better hustle." All about him the city was hustling, for hustling's sake.
Men in motors were hustling to pass one another in the hustling traffic.
Men were hustling to catch trolleys, with another trolley a minute behind,
and to leap from the trolleys, to gallop across the sidewalk, to hurl
themselves into buildings, into hustling express elevators. Men in dairy
lunches were hustling to gulp down the food which cooks had hustled to
fry. Men in barber shops were snapping, "Jus' shave me once over. Gotta
hustle." Men were feverishly getting rid of visitors in offices adorned
with the signs, "This Is My Busy Day" and "The Lord Created the World in
Six Days—You Can Spiel All You Got to Say in Six Minutes." Men who
had made five thousand, year before last, and ten thousand last year, were
urging on nerve-yelping bodies and parched brains so that they might make
twenty thousand this year; and the men who had broken down immediately
after making their twenty thousand dollars were hustling to catch trains,
to hustle through the vacations which the hustling doctors had ordered.
Among them Babbitt hustled back to his office, to sit down with nothing
much to do except see that the staff looked as though they were hustling....
Babbitt -- Sinclair Lewis (1922)
