Weekly Meredy.com E-book - Elmer Gantry - Part Two

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CHAPTER XV


1


It  was  not  her  eloquence  but  her  healing  of  the  sick which raised Sharon to such eminence that she promised to become the most renowned
evangelist  in America. People were tired of eloquence; and the whole evangelist business was limited, since even the most ardent were not likely
to be saved more than three or four times. But they could be healed constantly, and of the same disease.

Healing  was  later  to  become  the chief feature of many evangelists, but in 1910 it was advertised chiefly by Christian Scientists and the New
Thoughters.  Sharon came to it by accident. She had regularly offered prayers for the sick, but only absent-mindedly. When Elmer and she had been
together  for  a  year, during her meetings in Schenectady a man led up his deaf wife and begged Sharon to heal her. It amused Sharon to send out
for some oil (it happened to be shotgun oil, but she properly consecrated it) to anoint the woman's ears, and to pray lustily for healing.

The woman screamed, "Glory to God, I've got my hearing back!"

There  was  a sensation in the tabernacle, and everybody itched with desire to be relieved of whatever ailed him. Elmer led the healed deaf woman
aside  and  asked her name for the newspapers. It is true that she could not hear him, but he wrote out his questions, she wrote the answers, and
he got an excellent story for the papers and an idea for their holy work.

Why, he put it to Sharon, shouldn't she make healing a regular feature?

"I don't know that I have any gift for it," considered Sharon.

"Sure you have! Aren't you psychic? You bet. Go to it. We might pull off some healing services. I bet the collections would bust all records, and
we'll have a distinct understanding with the local committees that we get all over a certain amount, besides the collection the last day."

"Well,  we  might  try  one. Of course, the Lord may have blessed me with special gifts that way, and to him be all the credit, oh, let's stop in
here and have an ice cream soda, I LOVE banana splits, I hope nobody sees me, I feel like dancing tonight, anyway we'll talk over the possibility
of healing, I'm going to take a hot bath the minute we get home with losh bath salts--losh and losh and losh."

The success was immense.

She  alienated  many  evangelical  pastors  by divine healing, but she won all the readers of books about will-power, and her daily miracles were
reported in the newspapers. And, or so it was reported, some of the patients remained cured.

She  murmured  to  Elmer, "You know, maybe there really is something to this healing, and I get an enormous thrill out of it--telling the lame to
chuck their crutches. That man last night, that cripple--he did feel lots better."

They  decorated the altar now with crutches and walking-sticks, all given by grateful patients--except such as Elmer had been compelled to buy to
make the exhibit inspiring from the start.

Money  gamboled  in.  One  grateful patient gave Sharon five thousand dollars. And Elmer and Sharon had their only quarrel, except for occasional
spats of temperament. With the increase in profits, he demanded a rise of salary, and she insisted that her charities took all she had.

"Yuh,  I've  heard a lot about 'em," said he: "the Old Ladies' Home and the Orphanage and the hoosegow for retired preachers. I suppose you carry
'em along with you on the road!"

"Do you mean to insinuate, my good friend, that I--"

They talked in a thoroughly spirited and domestic manner, and afterward she raised his salary to five thousand and kissed him.

With  the  money  so  easily  come  by, Sharon burst out in hectic plans. She was going to buy a ten-thousand-acre farm for a Christian Socialist
colony and a university, and she went so far as to get a three months' option on two hundred acres. She was going to have a great national paper,
with  crime news, scandal, and athletics omitted, and a daily Bible lesson on the front page. She was going to organize a new crusade--an army of
ten million which would march through heathen countries and convert the entire world to Christianity in this generation.

She did, at last, actually carry out one plan, and create a headquarters for her summer meetings.

At  Clontar,  a  resort on the New Jersey coast, she bought the pier on which Benno Hackenschmidt used to give grand opera. Though the investment
was  so  large  that  even for the initial payment it took almost every penny she had saved, she calculated that she would make money because she
would be the absolute owner and not have to share contributions with local churches. And, remaining in one spot, she would build up more prestige
than by moving from place to place and having to advertise her virtues anew in every town.

In a gay frenzy she planned that if she was successful, she would keep the Clontar pier for summer and build an all-winter tabernacle in New York
or  Chicago.  She saw herself another Mary Baker Eddy, an Annie Besant, a Katherine Tingley. . . . Elmer Gantry was shocked when she hinted that,
who knows? the next Messiah might be a woman, and that woman might now be on earth, just realizing her divinity.

The pier was an immense structure, built of cheap knotty pine, painted a hectic red with gold stripes. It was pleasant, however, on hot evenings.
Round  it  ran  a  promenade  out over the water, where once lovers had strolled between acts of the opera, and giving on the promenade were many
barnlike doors.

Sharon  christened  it "The Waters of Jordan Tabernacle," added more and redder paint, more golden gold, and erected an enormous revolving cross,
lighted at night with yellow and ruby electric bulbs.

The whole gospel crew went to Clontar early in June to make ready for the great opening on the evening of the first of July.

They  had to enlist volunteer ushers and personal workers, and Sharon and Adelbert Shoop had notions about a huge robed choir, with three or four
paid soloists.

Elmer  had  less  zeal  than usual in helping her, because an unfortunate thing had gone and happened to Elmer. He saw that he really ought to be
more  friendly with Lily Anderson, the pianist. While he remained true to Sharon, he had cumulatively been feeling that it was sheer carelessness
to let the pretty and anemic and virginal Lily be wasted. He had been driven to notice her through indignation at Art Nichols, the cornetist, for
having the same idea.

Elmer  was  fascinated  by her unawakenedness. While he continued to be devoted to Sharon, over her shoulder he was always looking at Lily's pale
sweetness, and his lips were moist.


2


They sat on the beach by moonlight, Sharon and Elmer, the night before the opening service.

All  of  Clontar, with its mile of comfortable summer villas and gingerbread hotels, was excited over the tabernacle, and the Chamber of Commerce
had  announced,  "We  commend  to  the  whole Jersey coast this high-class spiritual feature, the latest addition to the manifold attractions and
points of interest at the snappiest of all summer colonies."

A choir of two hundred had been coaxed in, and some of them had been persuaded to buy their own robes and mortar boards.

Near  the  sand  dune against which Sharon and Elmer lolled was the tabernacle, over which the electric cross turned solemnly, throwing its glare
now on the rushing surf, now across the bleak sand.

"And  it's  mine!"  Sharon trembled. "I've made it! Four thousand seats, and I guess it's the only Christian tabernacle built out over the water!
Elmer,  it  almost scares me! So much responsibility! Thousands of poor troubled souls turning to me for help, and if I fail them, if I'm weak or
tired or greedy, I'll be murdering their very souls. I almost wish I were back safe in Virginia!"

Her  enchanted  voice  wove  itself with the menace of the breakers, feeble against the crash of broken waters, passionate in the lull, while the
great cross turned its unceasing light.

"And I'm ambitious. Elmer. I know it. I want the world. But I realize what an awful danger that is. But I never had anybody to train me. I'm just
nobody.  I  haven't  any family, any education. I've had to do everything for myself, except what Cecil and you and another man or two have done,
and maybe you-all came too late. When I was a kid, there was no one to tell me what a sense of honor was. But--Oh. I've done things! Little Katie
Jonas  of  Railroad  Avenue--little  Katie with her red flannel skirt and torn stockings, fighting the whole Killarney Street gang and giving Pup
Monahan one in the nose, by Jiminy! And not five cents a year, even for candy. And now it's mine, that tabernacle there--look at it!--that cross,
that  choir you hear practising! Why, I'm the Sharon Falconer you read about! And tomorrow I become--oh, people reaching for me--me healing 'em--
No! It frightens me! It can't last. MAKE IT LAST FOR ME, ELMER! Don't let them take it away from me!"

She  was  sobbing,  her  head  on  his lap, while he comforted her clumsily. He was slightly bored. She was heavy, and though he did like her, he
wished she wouldn't go on telling that Katie-Jonas-Utica story.

She rose to her knees, her arms out to him, her voice hysteric against the background of the surf:

"I  can't  do  it! But you--I'm a woman. I'm weak. I wonder if I oughtn't to stop thinking I'm such a marvel, if I oughtn't to let you run things
and just stand back and help you? Ought I?"

He was overwhelmed by her good sense, but he cleared his throat and spoke judiciously:

"Well, now I'll tell you. Personally I'd never've brought it up, but since you speak of it yourself--I don't admit for a minute that I've got any
more executive ability or oratory than you have--probably not half as much. And after all, you did start the show; I came in late. But same time,
while a woman can put things over just as good as a man, or better, for a WHILE, she's a woman, and she isn't built to carry on things like a man
would, see how I mean?"

"Would it be better for the Kingdom if I forgot my ambition and followed you?"

"Well,  I  don't say it'd be better. You've certainly done fine, honey. I haven't got any criticisms. But same time, I do think we ought to think
it over."

She had remained still, a kneeling silver statue. Now she dropped her head against his knees, crying:

"I can't give it up! I can't! Must I?"

He  was  conscious  that  people  were strolling near. He growled, "Say, for goodness' sake, Shara, don't HOLLER and carry on like that! Somebody
might HEAR!"

She sprang up. "Oh, you fool! You fool!"

She  fled  from  him, along the sands, through the rays of the revolving cross, into the shadow. He angrily rubbed his back against the sand dune
and grumbled:

"Damn  these  women!  All  alike,  even Shary; always getting temperamental on you about nothing at all! Still, I did kind of go off half cocked,
considering she was just beginning to get the idea of letting me boss the show. Oh, hell, I'll jolly her out of it!"

He took off his shoes, shook the sand out of them, and rubbed the sole of one stocking foot slowly, agreeably, for he was conceiving a thought.

If Sharon was going to pull stuff like that on him, he ought to teach her a lesson.

Choir practise was over. Why not go back to the house and see what Lily Anderson was doing?

THERE was a nice kid, and she admired him--she'd never dare bawl him out.


3


He tiptoed to Lily's virgin door and tapped lightly.

"Yes?"

He  dared not speak--Sharon's door, in the bulky old house they had taken in Clontar, was almost opposite. He tapped again, and when Lily came to
the door, in a kimono, he whispered, "Shhh! Everybody asleep. May I come in just a second? Something important to ask you."

Lily was wondering, but obviously she felt a pallid excitement as he followed her into her room, with its violet-broidered doilies.

"Lily,  I've  been  worrying.  Do  you  think Adelbert ought to have the choir start with 'A Mighty Fortress Is Our God' tomorrow, or something a
little snappier--get the crowd and then shoot in something impressive."

"Honest, Mr. Gantry, I don't believe they could change the program now."

"Oh, well, it doesn't matter. Sit down and tell me how the choir practise went tonight. Bet it went swell, with you pounding the box!"

"Oh, now," as she perched lightly on the edge of the bed, "You're just teasing me, Mr. Gantry!"

He sat beside her, chuckling bravely, "And I can't even get you to call me Elmer!"

"Oh, I wouldn't dare, Mr. Gantry! Miss Falconer would call me down."

"You  just  let me know if ANYBODY ever dares try to call YOU down, Lily! Why--I don't know whether Sharon appreciates it or not, but the way you
spiel the music gives as much power to our meetings as her sermons or anything else."

"Oh, no, you're just flattering me, Mr Gantry! Oh, say, I have a trade-last for you."

"Well,  I--oh,  let's  see--oh,  I remember, that Episcopalopian preacher--the big handsome one--he said you ought to be on the stage, you had so
much talent."

"Oh, go on, you're kidding me, Mr. Gantry!"

"No, honest he did. Now, what's mine? Though I'd rather have YOU say something nice about me!"

"Oh, now you're fishing!"

"Sure I am--with such a lovely fish as you!"

"Oh,  it's  terrible the way you talk." Laughter--silvery peals--several peals. "But I mean, this grant opera soloist that's down for our opening
says you look so strong that she's scared of you."

"Oh,  she  is,  is  she! Are you? . . . Huh? . . . Are you? . . . Tell me!" Somehow her hand was inside his, and he squeezed it, while she looked
away and blushed and at last breathed, "Yes, kind of."

He almost embraced her, but--oh, it was a mistake to rush things, and he went on in his professional tone:

"But  to  go  back  to  Sharon  and  our  labors:  it's  all right to be modest, but you ought to realize how enormously your playing adds to the
spirituality of the meetings."

"I'm  so glad you think so, but, honest, to compare me to Miss Falconer for bringing souls to Christ--why she's just the most wonderful person in
the world."

"That's right. You bet she is."

"Only I wish she felt like you do. I don't really think she cares so much for my playing."

"Well,  she  ought  to! I'm not criticizing, you understand; she certainly is one of the greatest evangelists living; but just between you and I,
she  has  one fault--she doesn't appreciate any of us--she thinks it's her that does the whole darn thing! As I say, I admire her, but, by golly,
it does make me sore sometimes to never have her appreciate your music--I mean the way it ought to be appreciated--see how I mean?"

"Oh, that is so nice of you, but I don't deserve--"

"But I'VE always appreciated it, don't you think, Lily?"

"Oh, yes, indeed you have, and it's been such an encouragement--"

"Oh,  well,  say,  I'm  just tickled to death to have you say that, Lily." A firmer pressure on her frail hand. "Do you LIKE to have me like your
music?"

"Oh, yes."

"But do you like to have me like YOU?"

"Oh, yes. Of course, we're all working together--oh, like sister and brother--"

"Lily! Don't you think we might ever be, uh, don't you think we could be just a little closer than sister and brother?"

"Oh, you're just being mean! How could you ever like poor little me when you belong to Sharon?"

"What  do you mean? Me belong to Sharon? Say! I admire her tremendously, but I'm absolutely free, you can bet your life on that, and just because
I've always been kinda shy of you--you have such a kinda flower-like beauty, you might say, that no man, no, not the coarsest, would ever dare to
ruffle it--and because I've stood back, sorta feeling like I was protecting you, maybe you think I haven't appreciated all your qualities!"

She swallowed.

"Oh,  Lily, all I ask for is the chance now and then, whenever you're down in the mouth--and all of us must feel like that, unless we think we're
the  whole cheese and absolutely OWN the gospel game!--whenever you feel that way, lemme have the privilege of telling you how greatly ONE fellow
appreciates the loveliness that you scatter along the road!"

"Do you really feel that way? Maybe I can play the piano, but personally I'm nothing . . . nothing."

"It  isn't  true, it isn't TRUE, dearest! Lily! It's so like your modesty to not appreciate what sunshine you bring into the hearts of all of us,
dear, and how we cherish--"

The door shot open. In the doorway stood Sharon Falconer in a black-and-gold dressing-gown.

"Both  of you," said Sharon, "are discharged. Fired. Now! Don't ever let me see your faces again. You can stay tonight, but see to it that you're
out of the house before breakfast."

"Oh,  Miss  Falconer--"  Lily  wailed, thrusting away Elmer's hand. But Sharon was gone, with a bang of the door. They rushed into the hall, they
heard the key in her lock, and she ignored their rapping.

Lily glared at Elmer. He heard her key also, and he stood alone in the hall.


4


Not till one in the morning, sitting in flabby dejection, did he have his story shaped and water-tight.

It  was  an  heroic spectacle, that of the Reverend Elmer Gantry climbing from the second-story balcony through Sharon's window, tiptoeing across
the room, plumping on his knees by her bed, and giving her a large plashy kiss.

"I  am  not  asleep," she observed, in tones level as a steel rail, while she drew the comforter about her neck. "In fact I'm awake for the first
time in two years, my young friend. You can get out of here. I won't tell you all I've been thinking, but among other things you're an ungrateful
dog that bit the hand that took you out of the slimy gutter, you're a liar, an ignoramus, a four-flusher, and a rotten preacher."

"By God, I'll show--"

But she giggled, and his plan of action came back to him.

He sat firmly on the edge of the bed, and calmly he remarked:

"Sharon,  you're  a  good  deal of a damn fool. You think I'm going to deny flirting with Lily. I won't take the trouble to deny it! If you don't
appreciate  yourself,  if you don't see that a man that's ever associated with you simply couldn't be interested in any other woman, then there's
nothing I can say. Why, my God, Shara, you know what you are! I could no more be untrue to you than I could to my religion! As a matter of fact--
Want to know what I was saying to Lily, to Miss Anderson?"

"I do not!"

"Well,  you're going to! As I came up the hall, her door was open, and she asked me to come in--she had something to ask me. Well, seems the poor
young  woman  was  wondering  if  her  music  was  really up to your greatness--that's what she herself called it--especially now that the Jordan
Tabernacle will give you so much more power. She spoke of you as the greatest spiritual force in the world, and she was wondering whether she was
worthy--"

"Um.  She did, eh? Well, she isn't! And she can stay fired. And you, my fine young liar, if you ever so much as look at another wench again, I'll
fire you for keeps. . . . Oh, Elmer, how could you, beloved? When I've given you everything! Oh, lie, lie, go on lying! Tell me a good strong lie
that I'll believe! And then kiss me!"


5


Banners,  banners,  banners  lifting along the rafters, banners on the walls of the tabernacle, banners moving to the air that was sifted in from
the restless sea. Night of the opening of Waters of Jordan Tabernacle, night of the opening of Sharon's crusade to conquer the world.

The town of Clontar and all the resorts near by felt here was something they did not quite understand, something marvelous and by all means to be
witnessed;  and  from  up  and down the Jersey coast, by motor, by trolley, the religious had come. By the time the meeting began all of the four
thousand seats were filled, five hundred people were standing, and outside waited a throng hoping for miraculous entrance.

The  interior of the pier was barnlike; the thin wooden walls were shamelessly patched against the ravages of winter storms, but they were hectic
with  the flags of many nations, with immense posters, blood-red on white, proclaiming that in the mysterious blood of the Messiah was redemption
from  all  sorrow,  that in his love was refuge and safety. Sharon's pretentious white-and-gold pyramidal altar had been discarded. She was using
the stage, draped with black velvet, against which hung a huge crystal cross, and the seats for the choir of two hundred, behind a golden pulpit,
were draped with white.

A white wooden cross stood by the pulpit.

It  was  a hot night, but through the doors along the pier the cool breeze filtered in, and the sound of waters, the sound of wings, as the gulls
were startled from their roosts. Every one felt an exaltation in the place, a coming of marvels.

Before the meeting the gospel crew, back-stage, were excited as a theatrical company on a first night. They rushed with great rapidity nowhere in
particular,  and tripped over each other, and muttered, "Say--gee--gee--" To the last, Adelbert Shoop was giving needless instructions to the new
pianist,  who  had  been summoned by telegraph from Philadelphia, vice Lily Anderson. She professed immense piety, but Elmer noted that she was a
pretty fluffy thing with a warm eye.

The  choir  was arriving along with the first of the audience. They filtered down the aisle, chattering, feeling important. Naturally, as the end
of  the  pier gave on open water, there was no stage entrance at the back. There was only one door, through which members of opera casts had been
wont to go out to the small rear platform for fresh air between acts. The platform was not connected with the promenade.

It  was  to  this  door that Sharon led Elmer. Their dressing-rooms were next to each other. She knocked--he had been sitting with a Bible and an
evening  paper  in  his  lap,  reading  one  of them. He opened, to find her flaming with exultation, a joyous girl with a dressing gown over her
chemise. Seemingly she had forgotten her anger of the night.

She  cried,  "Come!  See  the  stars!" Defying the astonishment of the choir, who were filing into the chorus dressing-room to assume their white
robes, she led him to the door, out on the railed platform.

The black waves glittered with lights. There was spaciousness and a windy peace upon the waters.

"Look!  It's  so  big!  Not  like  the  cities where we've been shut up!" she exulted. "Stars, and the waves that come clear from Europe! Europe!
Castles  on  a  green  shore!  I've never been. And I'm going! And there'll be great crowds at the ship to meet me, asking for my power! Look!" A
shooting  star had left a scrawl of flame in the sky. "Elmer! It's an omen for the glory that begins tonight! Oh, dearest, my dearest, don't ever
hurt me again!"

His kiss promised it, his heart almost promised it.

She  was  all human while they stood fronting the sea, but half an hour later, when she came out in a robe of white satin and silver lace, with a
crimson cross on her breast, she was prophetess only, and her white forehead was high, her eyes were strange with dreaming.

Already  the  choir were chanting. They were starting with the Doxology, and it gave Elmer a feeling of doubt. Surely the Doxology was the end of
things,  not  the  beginning?  But  he  looked  impassive, the brooding priest, in frock coat and white bow tie, portly and funereal, as he moved
magnificently through the choir and held up his arms to command silence for his prayer.

He  told them of Sister Falconer and her message, of their plans and desires at Clontar, and asked for a minute of silent prayer for the power of
the  Holy  Ghost to descend upon the tabernacle. He stood back--his chair was up-stage, beside the choir--as Sharon floated forward, not human, a
goddess, tears thick in lovely eyes as she perceived the throng that had come to her.

"My  dear  ones,  it  is  not I who bring you anything, but you who in your faith bring me strength!" she said shakily. Then her voice was strong
again; she rose on the wave of drama.

"Just  now,  looking  across  the  sea  to the end of the world, I saw an omen for all of us--a fiery line written by the hand of God--a glorious
shooting  star.  Thus  he apprized us of his coming, and bade us be ready. Oh, are you ready, are you ready, will you be ready when the great day
comes--"

The congregation was stirred by her lyric earnestness.

But  outside  there  were  less devout souls. Two workmen had finished polishing the varnished wooden pillars as the audience began to come. They
slipped outside, on the promenade along the pier, and sat on the rail, enjoying the coolness, slightly diverted by hearing a sermon.

"Not  a  bad  spieler, that woman. Puts it all over this guy Reverend Golding up-town," said one of the workmen, lighting a cigarette, keeping it
concealed in his palm as he smoked.

The  other tiptoed across the promenade to peer through the door, and returned mumbling. "Yuh, and a swell looker. Same time though, tell you how
I feel about it: woman's all right in her place, but takes a real he-male to figure out this religion business."

"She's pretty good though, at that," yawned the first workman, snapping away his cigarette. "Say, let's beat it. How 'bout lil glass beer? We can
go along this platform and get out at the front, I guess."

"All right. You buying?"

The workmen moved away, dark figures between the sea and the doors that gave on the bright auditorium.

The  discarded cigarette nestled against the oily rags which the workmen had dropped on the promenade, beside the flimsy walls of the tabernacle.
A rag glowed round the edges, wormlike, then lit in circling flame.

Sharon  was  chanting: "What could be more beautiful than a tabernacle like this, set on the bosom of the rolling deep? Oh, think what the mighty
tides  have  meant  in Holy Writ! The face of the waters on which moved the spirit of Almighty God, when the earth was but a whirling and chaotic
darkness!  Jesus  baptized  in  the  sweet  waters  of  Jordan!  Jesus  walking the waves--so could we today if we had but his faith! O dear God,
strengthen thou our unbelief, give us faith like unto thine own!"

Elmer  sitting  back  listening,  was moved as in his first adoration for her. He had become so tired of her poetizing that he almost admitted to
himself  that  he  was  tired.  But tonight he felt her strangeness again, and in it he was humble. He saw her straight back, shimmering in white
satin,  he  saw  her  superb  arms  as she stretched them out to these thousands, and in hot secret pride he gloated that this beauty, beheld and
worshiped of so many, belonged to him alone.

Then he noted something else.

A third of the way back, coming through one of the doors opening on the promenade, was a curl of smoke. He startled; he almost rose; he feared to
rouse a panic; and sat with his brain a welter of terrified jelly till he heard the scream "Fire--fire!" and saw the whole audience and the choir
leaping up, screaming--screaming--screaming--while the flimsy door-jamb was alight and the flame rose fan-like toward the rafters.

Only  Sharon was in his mind--Sharon standing like an ivory column against the terror. He rushed toward her. He could hear her wailing, "Don't be
afraid! Go out slowly!" She turned toward the choir, as with wild white robes they charged down from their bank of seats. She clamored, "Don't be
afraid! We're in the temple of the Lord! He won't harm you! I believe! Have faith! I'll lead you safely through the flames!"

But they ignored her, streamed past her, thrusting her aside.

He seized her arm. "Come here, Shara! The door at the back! We'll jump over and swim ashore!"

She seemed not to hear him. She thrust his hand away and went on demanding, her voice furious with mad sincerity, "Who will trust the Lord God of
Hosts? Now we'll try our faith! Who will follow me?"

Since  two-thirds  of  the  auditorium  was  to  the shoreward side of the fire, and since the wide doors to the promenade were many, most of the
audience  were  getting  safely out, save for a child crushed, a woman fainting and trampled. But toward the stage the flames, driven by the sea-
wind,  were  beating up through the rafters. Most of the choir and the audience down front had escaped, but all who were now at the back were cut
off.

He grasped Sharon's arm again. In a voice abject with fear he shouted, "For God's sake, beat it! We can't wait!"

She  had  an  insane  strength; she thrust him away so sharply that he fell against a chair, bruising his knee. Furious with pain, senseless with
fear,  he raged, "You can go to hell!" and galloped off, pushing aside the last of the hysterical choir. He looked back and saw her, quite alone,
holding up the white wooden cross which had stood by the pulpit, marching steadily forward, a tall figure pale against the screen of flames.

All  of  the  choir  who had not got away remembered or guessed the small door at the back; so did Adelbert and Art Nichols; and all of them were
jamming toward it.

That  door  opened  inward--only it did not open, with the score of victims thrust against it. In howling panic, Elmer sprang among them, knocked
them aside, struck down a girl who stood in his way, yanked open the door, and got through it . . . the last, the only one, to get through it.

He never remembered leaping, but he found himself in the surf, desperately swimming toward shore, horribly cold, horribly bound by heavy clothes.
He humped out of his coat.

In the inside pocket was Lily Anderson's address, as she had given it to him before going that morning.

The  sea,  by night, though it was glaring now with flames from above, seemed infinite in its black sightlessness. The waves thrust him among the
piles;  their  mossy slime was like the feel of serpents to his frantic hands, and the barnacles cut his palms. But he struggled out from beneath
the pier, struggled toward shore, and as he swam and panted, more and more was the sea blood-red about him. In blood he swam, blood that was icy-
cold and tumultuous and roaring in his ears.

His  knees struck sand, and he crawled ashore, among a shrieking, torn, sea-soaked crowd. Many had leaped from the rail of the promenade and were
still  fighting  the  surf,  wailing, beaten. Their wet and corpselike heads were seen clearly in the glare; the pier was only a skeleton, a cage
round a boiling of flame, with dots of figures still dropping from the promenade.

Elmer ran out a little into the surf and dragged in a woman who had already safely touched bottom.

He had rescued at least thirty people who had already rescued themselves before the reporters got to him and he had to stop and explain the cause
of  the  fire, the cost of the tabernacle, the amount of insurance, the size of the audience, the number of souls revived by Miss Falconer during
all her campaigns, and the fact that he had been saving both Miss Falconer and Adelbert Shoop when they had been crushed by a falling rafter.

A hundred and eleven people died that night, including all of the gospel-crew save Elmer.

It  was  Elmer  himself  who at dawn found Sharon's body lying on a floor-beam. There were rags of white satin clinging to it, and in her charred
hand was still the charred cross.



CHAPTER XVI


1


Though  to the commonplace and unspeculative eye Mrs Evans Riddle was but a female blacksmith, yet Mrs. Riddle and her followers knew, in a bland
smirking way, that she was instituting an era in which sickness, poverty, and folly would be ended forever.

She  was  the  proprietor  of  the Victory Thought-power Headquarters, New York, and not even in Los Angeles was there a more important center of
predigested philosophy and pansy-painted ethics. She maintained a magazine filled with such starry thoughts as "All the world's a road whereon we
are  but  fellow  wayfarers."  She held morning and vesper services on Sunday at Euterpean Hall, on Eighty-seventh Street, and between moments of
Silent  Thought  she  boxed  with  the inexplicable. She taught, or farmed out, classes in Concentration, Prosperity, Love, Metaphysics, Oriental
Mysticism, and the Fourth Dimension.

She  instructed  small  Select  Circles how to keep one's husband, how to understand Sanskrit philosophy without understanding either Sanskrit or
philosophy,  and how to become slim without giving up pastry. She healed all the diseases in the medical dictionary, and some which were not; and
in  personal consultations, at ten dollars the half hour, she explained to unappetizing elderly ladies how they might rouse passion in a football
hero.

She had a staff, including a real Hindu swami--anyway, he was a real Hindu--but she was looking for a first assistant.


2


The Reverend Elmer Gantry had failed as an independent evangelist.

He  had  been  quite  as  noisy and threatening as the average evangelist; to reasonably large gatherings he had stated that the Judgment Day was
rather more than likely to occur before six A.M., and he had told all the chronic anecdotes of the dying drunkard. But there was something wrong.
He could not make it go.

Sharon  was with him, beckoning him, intolerably summoning him, intolerably rebuking him. Sometimes he worshiped her as the shadow of a dead god;
as  always he was humanly lonely for her and her tantrums and her electric wrath and her abounding laughter. In pulpits he felt like an impostor,
and in hotel bedrooms he ached for her voice.

Worst of all, he was expected everywhere to tell of her "brave death in the cause of the Lord." He was very sick about it.

Mrs. Evans Riddle invited him to join her.

Elmer  had no objection to the malted milk of New Thought. But after Sharon, Mrs. Riddle was too much. She shaved regularly, she smelled of cigar
smoke, yet she had a nickering fancy for warm masculine attentions.

Elmer  had  to  earn  a  living,  and  he had taken too much of the drug of oratory to be able to go back to the road as a traveling salesman. He
shrugged when he had interviewed Mrs. Riddle; he told her that she would be an inspiration to a young man like himself; he held her hand; he went
out  and  washed  his hand; and determined that since he was to dwell in the large brownstone house which was both her Thought-power Headquarters
and her home, he would keep his door locked.

The preparation for his labors was not too fatiguing. He read through six copies of Mrs. Riddle's magazine and, just as he had learned the trade-
terms  of evangelism, so he learned the technologies of New Thought; the Cosmic Law of Vibration; I Affirm the Living Thought. He labored through
a  chapter  of  "The Essence of Oriental Mysticism, Occultism, and Esotericism" and accomplished seven pages of the "Bhagavad-Gita"; and thus was
prepared to teach disciples how to win love and prosperity.

In  actual  practise he had much less of treading the Himalayan heights than of pleasing Mrs. Evans Riddle. Once she discovered that he had small
fancy  for  sitting  up  after  midnight  with  her,  she  was rather sharp about his bringing in new chelas--as, out of "Kim," she called paying
customers.

Occasionally  he took Sunday morning service for Mrs. Riddle at Euterpean Hall, when she was weary of curing rheumatism or when she was suffering
from  rheumatism; and always he had to be at Euterpean to give spiritual assistance. She liked to have her hairy arm stroked just before she went
out  to  preach and that was not too hard a task--usually he could recover while she was out on the platform. She turned over to him the Personal
Consultations with spinsters, and he found it comic to watch their sharp noses quivering, their dry mouths wabbling.

But his greatest interest was given to the Prosperity Classes. To one who had never made more than five thousand a year himself, it was inspiring
to  explain before dozens of pop-eyed and admiring morons how they could make ten thousand--fifty thousand--a million a year, and all this by the
Wonder Power of Suggestion, by Aggressive Personality, by the Divine Rhythm, in fact by merely releasing the Inner Self-shine.

It  was  fun,  it  was an orgy of imagination, for him who had never faced any Titan of Success of larger dimensions than the chairman of a local
evangelistic  committee  to  instruct  a  thirty-a-week  bookkeeper  how  to  stalk into Morgan's office, fix him with the penetrating eye of the
Initiate, and borrow a hundred thousand on the spot.

But  always  he  longed  for Sharon, with a sensation of emptiness real as the faintness of hunger and long tramping. He saw his days with her as
adventures,  foot-loose,  scented  with fresh air. He hated himself for having ever glanced over his shoulder, and he determined to be a celibate
all his life.

In  some  ways  he  preferred  New  Thought  to standard Protestantism. It was safer to play with. He had never been sure but that there might be
something  to the doctrines he had preached as an evangelist. Perhaps God really had dictated every word of the Bible. Perhaps there really was a
hell  of burning sulphur. Perhaps the Holy Ghost really was hovering around watching him and reporting. But he knew with serenity that all of his
New  Thoughts,  his theosophical utterances, were pure and uncontaminated bunk. No one could deny his theories because none of his theories meant
anything.  It  did  not  matter what he said, so long as he kept them listening; and he enjoyed the buoyancy of power as he bespelled his classes
with long, involved, fruity sentences rhapsodic as perfume advertisements.

How  agreeable  on  bright  winter afternoons in the gilt and velvet elegance of the lecture hall, to look at smart women, and moan, "And, oh, my
beloved,  can  you not see, do you not perceive, have not your earth-bound eyes ingathered, the supremacy of the raja's quality which each of us,
by that inner contemplation which is the all however cloaked by the seeming, can consummate and build loftily to higher aspiring spheres?"

Almost  any  Hindu word was useful. It seems that the Hindus have Hidden Powers which enable them to do whatever they want to, except possibly to
get  rid  of the Mohammedans, the plague, and the cobra. "Soul-breathing" was also a good thing to talk about whenever he had nothing to say; and
you could always keep an audience of satin-bosomed ladies through the last quarter-hour of lecturing by coming down hard on "Concentration."

But  with  all these agreeable features, he hated Mrs. Riddle, and he suspected that she was, as he put it, "holding out the coin on him." He was
to  have a percentage of the profits, besides his thin salary of twenty-five hundred a year. There never were any profits and when he hinted that
he would like to see her books--entirely out of admiration for the beauties of accountancy--she put him off.

So  he  took  reasonable  measures  of  reprisal.  He  moved  from  her  house;  he  began to take for himself the patients who came for Personal
Consultations,  and  to meet them in the parlor of his new boarding-house in Harlem. And when she was not present at his Euterpean Hall meetings,
he brought back to Victory Thought-power Headquarters only so much of the collection as, after prayer and meditation and figuring on an envelope,
seemed suitable.

That did it.

Mrs.  Evans  Riddle  had  a  regrettable suspiciousness. She caused a marked twenty-dollar bill to be placed in the collection at vespers, a year
after  Elmer  had gone to work for the higher powers, and when he brought her the collection-money minus the twenty dollars, she observed loudly,
with her grinning swami looking heathenish and sultry across the room:

"Gantry, you're a thief! You're fired! You have a contract, but you can sue and be damned. Jackson!" A large negro houseman appeared. "Throw this
crook out, will you?"


3


He felt dazed and homeless and poor, but he started out with Prosperity Classes of his own.

He did very well at Prosperity, except that he couldn't make a living out of it.

He  spent  from  a  month  to  four  months  in each city. He hired the ballroom of the second-best hotel for lectures three evenings a week, and
advertised himself in the newspapers as though he were a cigarette or a brand of soap:


$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$  $  $  $  THE  WORLD  OWES  YOU A MILLION DOLLARS! $ $ WHY DON'T YOU COLLECT IT? $ $ $ $ What
brought  millions  to  Rockefeller,  Morgan, $ $ Carnegie? WILL POWER! It's within you. Learn $ $ to develop it. YOU CAN! The world-mastering $ $
secrets  of  the  Rosicrucians and Hindu Sages $ $ revealed in twelve lessons by the renowned $ $ Psychologist $ $ $ $ ELMER GANTRY, PH.D., D.D.,
PS.D.           $  $  $  $  Write  or  phone  for  FREE  personal  consultation  $  $  $  $  THE  BOWERS  HOTEL  $  $  MAIN  &  SYCAMORE  $  $  $
$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$


His  students  were  school-teachers  who wanted to own tearooms, clerks who wanted to be newspapermen, newspapermen who wanted to be real estate
dealers,  real  estate dealers who wanted to be bishops, and widows who wanted to earn money without loss of elegance. He lectured to them in the
most beautiful language, all out of Mrs. Riddle's magazine.

He  had a number of phrases--all stolen--and he made his disciples repeat them in chorus, in the manner of all religions. Among the more powerful
incantations were:


I can be whatever I will to be; I turn my opened eyes on my Self and possess whatever I desire.

I am God's child, God created all good things including wealth, and I will to inherit it.

I am resolute--I am utterly resolute--I fear no man, whether in offices or elsewhere.

Power is in me, encompassing you to my demands.

Hold fast, O Subconscious, the thought of Prosperity.

In  the  divine  book of achievements my name is written in Gold. I am thus of the world's nobility and now, this moment, I take possession of my
kingdom.

I am part of Universal Mind and thus I summon to me my rightful Universal Power.

Daily my Subconscious shall tell me to not be content and go on working for somebody else.


They were all of them ready for a million a year except their teacher, who was ready for bankruptcy.

He  got  pupils  enough,  but  the overhead was huge and his pupils were poor. He had to hire the ballroom, pay for advertising; he had to appear
gaudy,  with a suite in the hotel, fresh linen, and newly pressed morning coat. He sat in twenty-dollar-a-day red plush suites wondering where he
would get breakfast. He was so dismayed that he began to study himself.

He determined, with the resoluteness of terror, to be loyal to any loves or associates he might have hereafter, to say in his prayers and sermons
practically  nothing  except  what  he  believed. He yearned to go back to Mizpah Seminary, to get Dean Trosper's forgiveness, take a degree, and
return to the Baptist pulpit in however barren a village. But first he must earn enough money to pay for a year in the seminary.

He  had  been  in  correspondence  with  the  manager of the O'Hearn House in Zenith--a city of four hundred thousand in the state of Winnemac, a
hundred  miles from Mizpah. This was in 1913, before the Hotel Thornleigh was built and Gil O'Hearn, with his new yellow brick tavern, was trying
to take the fashionable business of Zenith away from the famous but decayed Grand Hotel. Intellectual ballroom lectures add to the smartness of a
hotel almost as much as a great cocktail-mixer, and Mr. O'Hearn had been moved by the prospectus of the learned and magnetic Dr Elmer Gantry.

Elmer could take the O'Hearn offer on a guarantee and be sure of a living, but he needed money for a week or two before the fees should come in.

From whom could he borrow?

Didn't he remember reading in a Mizpah alumni bulletin that Frank Shallard, who had served with him in the rustic church at Schoenheim, now had a
church near Zenith?

He  dug  out  the  bulletin  and discovered that Frank was in Eureka, an industrial town of forty thousand. Elmer had enough money to take him to
Eureka. All the way there he warmed up the affection with which a borrower recalls an old acquaintance who is generous and a bit soft.



CHAPTER XVII


1


Frank Shallard had graduated from Mizpah Theological Seminary and taken his first pulpit. And now that he was a minister, theoretically different
from all ordinary people, he was wondering whether there was any value to the ministry whatever.

Of  what  value were doggerel hymns raggedly sung? What value in sermons, when the congregation seemed not at all different from people who never
heard  sermons?  Were  all  ministers and all churches, Frank wondered, merely superstitious survivals, merely fire-insurance? Suppose there were
such  things  as  inspiring sermons. Suppose there could be such a curious office as minister, as Professional Good Man; such a thing as learning
Goodness  just  as one learned plumbing or dentistry. Even so, what training had he or his classmates, or his professors--whose D. D. degrees did
not protect them from indigestion and bad tempers--in this trade of Professional Goodness?

He  was  supposed to cure an affliction called vice. But he had never encountered vice; he didn't know just what were the interesting things that
people did when they were being vicious. How long would a drunkard listen to the counsel of one who had never been inside a saloon?

He  was  supposed  to  bring peace to mankind. But what did he know of the forces which cause wars, personal or class or national; what of drugs,
passion, criminal desire; of capitalism, banking, labor, wages, taxes; international struggles for trade, munition trusts, ambitious soldiers?

He  was  supposed  to  comfort the sick. But what did he know of sickness? How could he tell when he ought to pray and when he ought to recommend
salts?

He  was  supposed  to explain to troubled mankind the purposes of God Almighty, to chat with him, and even advise him about his duties as regards
rainfall  and the church debt. But which God Almighty? Professor Bruno Zechlin had introduced Frank to a hundred gods besides the Jewish Jehovah,
or Yahveh, who had been but a poor and rather surly relation of such serene aristocrats as Zeus.

He  was  supposed  to  have  undergone a mystic change whereby it was possible to live without normal appetites. He was supposed to behold girls'
ankles  without  interest and, for light amusement, to be satisfied by reading church papers and shaking hands with deacons. But he found himself
most  uncomfortably  interested in the flicker of ankles, he longed for the theater, and no repentance could keep him from reading novels, though
his professors had exposed them as time-wasting and frivolous.

What had he learned?

Enough  Hebrew  and  Greek  to  be  able to crawl through the Bible by using lexicons--so that, like all his classmates once they were out of the
seminary,  he  always  read  it  in  English.  A  good many of the more condemnatory texts of the Bible--rather less than the average Holy Roller
carpenter-evangelist. The theory that India and Africa have woes because they are not Christianized, but that Christianized Bangor and Des Moines
have woes because the devil, a being obviously more potent than omnipotent God, sneaks around counteracting the work of Baptist preachers.

He  had  learned, in theory, the ways of raising money through church fairs; he had learned what he was to say on pastoral visits. He had learned
that  Roger Williams, Adoniram Judson, Luther, Calvin, Jonathan Edwards, and George Washington were the greatest men in history; that Lincoln was
given  to  fervent  prayer  at  all crises; and that Ingersoll had called his non-existent son to his death-bed and bidden him become an orthodox
Christian.  He  had  learned  that the Pope at Rome was plotting to come to America and get hold of the government, and was prevented only by the
denunciations  of the Baptist clergy with a little help from the Methodists and Presbyterians; that most crime was caused either by alcohol or by
people leaving the Baptist fold for Unitarianism; and that clergymen ought not to wear red ties.

He  had  learned how to assemble Jewist texts, Greek philosophy, and Middle-Western evangelistic anecdotes into a sermon. And he had learned that
poverty is blessed, but that bankers make the best deacons.

Otherwise, as he wretchedly examined his equipment, facing his career, Frank did not seem to have learned anything whatever.

From Elmer Gantry's relations to Lulu Bains, from Harry Zenz's almost frank hint that he was an atheist, Frank perceived that a preacher can be a
scoundrel  or  a  hypocrite  and  still  be  accepted  by his congregation. From the manners of Dean Trosper, who served his God with vinegar, he
perceived  that a man may be free of all the skilled sins, may follow every rule of the church, and still bring only fear to his flock. Listening
to  the  celebrated  divines  who  visited  the  seminary and showed off to the infant prophets, he perceived that a man could make scholarly and
violent sounds and yet not say anything which remained in the mind for six minutes.

He  concluded,  in  fact, that if there was any value in churches and a ministry, of which he was not very certain, in any case there could be no
value in himself as a minister.

Yet he had been ordained, he had taken a pulpit.

It  was  doubtful whether he could have endured the necessary lying had it not been for Dean Trosper's bullying and his father's confusing pleas.
Frank's father was easygoing enough, but he had been a Baptist clergyman for so many years that the church was sacred to him. To have had his son
deny  it would have broken him. He would have been shocked to be told that he was advising Frank to lie, but he explained that the answers to the
ordination examination were after all poetic symbols, sanctified by generations of loving usage; that they need not be taken literally.

So  Frank  Shallard,  pupil  of  Bruno  Zechlin,  said  nervously  to an examining cleric that, yes, he did believe that baptism by immersion was
appointed  by  God himself, as the only valid way of beginning a righteous life; that, yes, unrepentant sinners would go to a literal Hell; that,
yes,  these unrepentant sinners included all persons who did not go to evangelical churches if they had the chance; and that, yes, the Maker of a
universe  with  stars  a hundred thousand light-years apart was interested, furious, and very personal about it if a small boy played baseball on
Sunday afternoon.

Half an hour after the ordination and the somewhat comforting welcome by veterans of the ministry, he hated himself, and ached to flee, but again
the  traditional "not wanting to hurt his father" kept him from being honest. So he stayed in the church . . . and went on hurting his father for
years instead of for a day.


2


It  was a lonely and troubled young man, the Frank Shallard who for his first pastorate came to the Baptist Church at Catawba, a town of eighteen
hundred,  in  the  same state with Zenith and the Mizpah Seminary. The town liked him, and did not take him seriously. They said his sermons were
"real  poetic";  they  admired  him  for being able to sit with old Mrs. Randall, who had been an invalid for thirty years, a bore for sixty, and
never  ill  a day in her life. They admired him for trying to start a boys' club, though they did not go so far in their support as to contribute
anything.  They  all  called  him "Reverend," and told him that he was amazingly sound in doctrine for one so unfortunately well educated; and he
stayed on, in a vacuum.

Frank  felt  well  about  his  fifth  sermon in Catawba; felt that he was done with hesitations. He had decided to ignore controversial theology,
ignore all dogma, and concentrate on the leadership of Jesus. That was his topic, there in the chapel with its walls of glaring robin's-egg blue-
-the eager-eyed, curly-headed boy, his rather shrill voice the wail of a violin as he gave his picture of Jesus, the kindly friend, the unfailing
refuge, the gallant leader.

He was certain that he had done well; he was thinking of it on Monday morning as he walked from his boarding-house to the post office.

He  saw  one  Lem Staples, a jovial horse-doctor who was known as the Village Atheist, sitting on a decayed carriage seat in front of the Fashion
Livery  Barn. Doc Staples was a subscriber to the Truth Seeker, a periodical said to be infidel, and he quoted Robert Ingersoll, Ed Howe, Colonel
Watterson,  Elbert  Hubbard,  and  other writers who were rumored to believe that a Catholic was as good as a Methodist or Baptist. The Doc lived
alone,  "baching  it"  in  a little yellow cottage, and Frank had heard that he sat up till all hours, eleven and even later, playing cribbage in
Mart Blum's saloon.

Frank  disliked  him, and did not know him. He was prepared to welcome honest inquiry, but a fellow who was an avowed athetist, why, Frank raged,
he was a fool! Who made the flowers, the butterflies, the sunsets, the laughter of little children? Those things didn't just HAPPEN! Besides: why
couldn't  the  man  keep  his  doubts  to himself, and not try to take from other people the religion which was their one comfort and strength in
illness, sorrow, want? A matter not of Morality but of reverence for other people's belief, in fact of Good Taste--

This morning, as Frank scampered down Vermont Street, Lem Staples called to him, "Fine day, Reverend. Say! In a hurry?"

"I'm--No, not especially."

"Come sit down. Couple o' questions I'm worried about."

Frank sat, his neck prickling with embarrassment.

"Say,  Reverend,  old  Ma Gherkins was telling me about your sermon yesterday. You figger that no matter what kind of a creed a fellow's got, the
one thing we can all bank on, absolute, is the teaching of Jesus?"

"Why, yes, that's it roughly, Doctor."

"And you feel that any sensible fellow will follow his teaching?"

"Why, yes, certainly."

"And  you  feel that the churches, no matter what faults they may have, do hand out this truth of Jesus better than if we didn't have no churches
at all?"

"Certainly. Otherwise, I shouldn't be in the church!"

"Then  can  you tell me why it is that nine-tenths of the really sure-enough on-the-job membership of the churches is made up of two classes: the
plumb ignorant, that're scared of hell and that swallow any fool doctrine, and, second, the awful' respectable folks that play the church so's to
seem  more  respectable?  Why  is that? Why is it the high-class skilled workmen and the smart professional men usually snicker at the church and
don't go near it once a month? Why is it?"

"It  isn't  true,  perhaps  that's  why!" Frank felt triumphant. He looked across at the pile of rusty horseshoes and plowshares among the mullen
weeds beside the blacksmith's shop; he reflected that he would clean up this town, be a power for good. Less snappishly he explained, "Naturally,
I  haven't  any  statistics  about it, but the fact is that almost every intelligent and influential man in the country belongs to some church or
other."

"Yeh--belongs. But does he go?"

Frank  plodded  off,  annoyed.  He  tried  to restore himself by insisting that Doc Staples was a lout, very amusing in the way he mingled rustic
grammar with half-digested words from his adult reading. But he was jarred. Here was the Common Man whom the church was supposed to convince.

Frank  remembered  from  his  father's  pastorates  how many theoretical church-members seemed blithely able month on month to stay away from the
sermonizing; he remembered the merchants who impressively passed the contribution plate yet afterward, in conversation with his father, seemed to
have but vague notions of what the sermon had been.

He  studied  his  own congregation. There they were: the stiff-collared village respectables, and the simple, kindly, rustic mass, who understood
him  only  when  he promised Heaven as a reward for a life of monogamy and honest chicken-raising, or threatened them with Hell for drinking hard
cider.

Catawba  had--its  only  urban feature--a furniture factory with unusually competent workmen, few of whom attended church. Now Frank Shallard had
all  his  life  been  insulated  from  what  he  gently despised as "the working class." Maids at his father's house and the elderly, devout, and
incompetent  negroes who attended the furnace; plumbers or electricians coming to the parsonage for repairs; railway men to whom he tried to talk
on journeys; only these had he known, and always with unconscious superiority.

Now he timidly sought to get acquainted with the cabinetmakers as they sat at lunch in the factory grounds. They accepted him good-naturedly, but
he felt that they chuckled behind his back when he crept away.

For the first time he was ashamed of being a preacher, of being a Christian. He longed to prove he was nevertheless a "real man," and didn't know
how  to  prove it. He found that all the cabinet-makers save the Catholics laughed at the church and thanked the God in whom they did not believe
that  they  did  not  have  to listen to sermons on Sunday mornings, when there were beautiful back porches to sit on, beautiful sporting news to
read, beautiful beer to drink. Even the Catholics seemed rather doubtful about the power of a purchased mass to help their deceased relatives out
of Purgatory. Several of them admitted that they merely "did their Easter duty"--went to confession and mass but once a year.

It  occurred  to  him  that  he had never known how large a race of intelligent and independent workmen there were in between the masters and the
human  truck-horses.  He had never known how casually these manual aristocrats despised the church; how they jeered at their leaders, officers of
the  A.F.  of L., who played safe by adhering to a voluble Christianity. He could not get away from his discoveries. They made him self-conscious
as he went about the village streets trying to look like a junior prophet and feeling like a masquerader.

He might have left the ministry but for the Reverend Andrew Pengilly, pastor of the Catawba Methodist Church.


3


If  you  had  cut Andrew Pengilly to the core, you would have found him white clear through. He was a type of clergyman favored in pious fiction,
yet he actually did exist.

To  every  congregation he had served these forty years, he had been a shepherd. They had loved him, listened to him, and underpaid him. In 1906,
when  Frank came to Catawba, Mr. Pengilly was a frail stooped veteran with silver hair, thin silver mustache, and a slow smile which embraced the
world.

Andrew Pengilly had gone into the Civil War as a drummer boy, slept blanketless and barefoot and wounded in the frost of Tennessee mountains, and
come out still a child, to "clerk in a store" and teach Sunday School. He had been converted at ten, but at twenty-five he was overpowered by the
preaching  of  Osage  Joe,  the  Indian  evangelist, became a Methodist preacher, and never afterward doubted the peace of God. He was married at
thirty  to  a  passionate,  singing girl with kind lips. He loved her so romantically--just to tuck the crazy-quilt about her was poetry, and her
cowhide  shoes were to him fairy slippers--he loved her so ungrudgingly that when she died, in childbirth, within a year after their marriage, he
had  nothing left for any other woman. He lived alone, with the undiminished vision of her. Not the most scandalmongering Mother in Zion had ever
hinted that Mr. Pengilly looked damply upon the widows in his fold.

Little  book-learning had Andrew Pengilly in his youth, and to this day he knew nothing of Biblical criticism, of the origin of religions, of the
sociology  which  was  beginning to absorb church-leaders, but his Bible he knew, and believed, word by word, and somehow he had drifted into the
reading  of ecstatic books of mysticism. He was a mystic, complete; the world of plows and pavements and hatred was less to him than the world of
angels,  whose silver robes seemed to flash in the air about him as he meditated alone in his cottage. He was as ignorant of Modern Sunday School
Methods as of single tax or Lithuanian finances, yet few Protestants had read more in the Early Fathers.

On  Frank  Shallard's  first  day  in  Catawba,  when he was unpacking his books in his room at the residence of Deacon Halter, the druggist, the
Reverend  Mr.  Pengilly was announced. Frank went down to the parlor (gilded cat-tails and a basket of stereopticon views) and his loneliness was
warmed by Mr. Pengilly's enveloping smile, his drawling voice:

"Welcome,  Brother!  I'm  Pengilly, of the Methodist Church. I never was much of a hand at seeing any difference between the denominations, and I
hope  we'll be able to work together for the glory of God. I do hope so! And I hope you'll go fishing with me. I know," enthusiastically, "a pond
where there's some elegant pickerel!"

Many  evenings  they spent in Mr. Pengilly's cottage, which was less littered and odorous than that of the village atheist, Doc Lem Staples, only
because  the  stalwart  ladies  of  Mr. Pengilly's congregation vied in sweeping for him, dusting for him, disarranging his books and hen-tracked
sermon-notes,  and bullying him in the matters of rubbers and winter flannels. They would not let him prepare his own meals--they made him endure
the  several  boarding-houses  in  turn--but  sometimes of an evening he would cook scrambled eggs for Frank. He had pride in his cooking. He had
never tried anything but scrambled eggs.

His  living-room  was  overpowering  with  portraits  and carbon prints. Though every local official board pled with him about it, he insisted on
including  madonnas,  cinquecento resurrections, St. Francis of Assisi, and even a Sacred Heart, with such Methodist worthies as Leonidas Hamline
and  the  cloaked  romantic  Francis  Asbury.  In the bay window was a pyramid of wire shelves filled with geraniums. Mr. Pengilly was an earnest
gardener, except during such weeks as he fell into dreams and forgot to weed and water, and through the winter he watched for the geranium leaves
to wither enough so that he could pick them off and be able to feel busy.

All  over  the  room  were  the aged dog and ancient cat, who detested each other, never ceased growling at each other, and at night slept curled
together.

In  an antiquated and badly listed rocking-chair, padded with calico cushions, Frank listened to Mr. Pengilly's ramblings. For a time they talked
only  of  externals;  gossip  of  their  parishes;  laughter  at  the  man  who  went  from church to church fretting the respectable by shouting
"Hallelujah";  local  chatter  not  without  a  wholesome and comforting malice. Frank was at first afraid to bare his youthful hesitancies to so
serene an old saint, but at last he admitted his doubts.

How,  he  demanded, could you reconcile a Loving God with one who would strike down an Uzza for the laudable act of trying to save the Ark of the
Covenant  from  falling,  who  would  kill forty-two children (and somewhat ludicrously) for shouting at Elisha as any small boy in Catawba today
would  shout?  Was  it  reasonable? And, if it wasn't, if any part of the Bible was mythical, where to stop? How would we know if anything in the
Bible was "inspired"?

Mr. Pengilly was not shocked, nor was he very agitated. His thin fingers together, far down in his worn plush chair, he mused:

"Yes, I'm told the higher critics ask these things. I believe it bothers people. But I wonder if perhaps God hasn't put these stumbling blocks in
the  Bible  as a test of our faith, of our willingness to accept with all our hearts and souls a thing that may seem ridiculous to our minds? You
see,  our  minds  don't go far. Think--how much does even an astronomer know about folks on Mars, if there are any folks there? Isn't it with our
hearts,  our  faith,  that we have to accept Jesus Christ, and not with our historical charts? Don't we FEEL his influence on our lives? Isn't it
the  biggest men that feel it the most? Maybe God wants to keep out of the ministry all the folks that are so stuck on their poor minds that they
can't be humble and just accept the great overpowering truth of Christ's mercy. Do you--When do you feel nearest to God? When you're reading some
awful'  smart  book criticizing the Bible or when you kneel in prayer and your spirit just flows forth and you KNOW that you're in communion with
him?"

"Oh, of course--"

"Don't  you  think maybe he will explain all these puzzling things in his own good time? And meanwhile wouldn't you rather be a help to poor sick
worried folks than write a cute little book finding a fault?"

"Oh, well--"

"And has there ever been anything like the Old Book for bringing lost souls home to happiness? Hasn't it WORKED?"

In  Andrew  Pengilly's  solacing presence these seemed authentic arguments, actual revelations; Bruno Zechlin was far off and gray; and Frank was
content.

Equally did Mr. Pengilly console him about the intelligent workmen who would have none of the church. The old man simply laughed.

"Good  Heavens,  boy! What do you expect, as a preacher? A whole world that's saved, and nothing for you to do? Reckon you don't get much salary,
but how do you expect to earn that much? These folks don't go to any Christian church? Huh! When the Master started out, wa'nt anybody going to a
Christian church! Go out and get 'em!"

Which seemed disastrously reasonable to the shamed Frank; and he went out to get 'em, and didn't do so, and continued in his ministry.

He had heard in theological seminary of the "practise of the presence of God" as a papist mystery. Now he encountered it. Mr. Pengilly taught him
to kneel, his mind free of all worries, all prides, all hunger, his lips repeating "Be thou visibly present with me"--not as a charm but that his
lips  might  not  be  soiled  with  more earthly phrases--and, when he had become strained and weary and exalted, to feel a Something glowing and
almost terrifying about him, and to experience thus, he was certain, the actual, loving, proven nearness of the Divinity.

He began to call his mentor Father Pengilly, and the old man eluded him only a little . . . presently did not chide him at all.

For all his innocence and his mysticism, Father Pengilly was not a fool nor weak. He spoke up harshly to a loud-mouthed grocer, new come to town,
who  considered  the  patriarch a subject for what he called "kidding," and who shouted, "Well, I'm getting tired of waiting for you preachers to
pray  for  rain.  Guess  you don't believe the stuff much yourselves!" He spoke up to old Miss Udell, the purity specialist of the town, when she
came  to  snuffle  that  Amy  Dove  was carrying on with the boys in the twilight. "I know how you like a scandal, Sister," said he. "Maybe taint
Christian  to  deny  you  one. But I happen to know all about Amy. Now if you'd go out and help poor old crippled Sister Eckstein do her washing,
maybe you'd keep busy enough so's you could get along without your daily scandal."

He had humor, as well, Father Pengilly. He could smile over the cranks in the congregation. And he liked the village atheist, Doc Lem Staples. He
had  him  at the house, and it healed Frank's spirit to hear with what beatific calm Father Pengilly listened to the Doc's jibes about the penny-
pinchers and the sinners in the church.

"Lem,"  said Father Pengilly, "you'll be surprised at this, but I must tell you that there's two-three sinners in your fold, too. Why, I've heard
of  even  horse-thieves  that  didn't belong to churches. That must prove something, I guess. Yes, sir, I admire to hear you tell about the kind-
hearted atheists, after reading about the cannibals, who are remarkably little plagued with us Methodists and Baptists."

Not in his garden only but in the woods, along the river, Father Pengilly found God in Nature. He was insane about fishing--though indifferent to
the  catching  of  any actual fish. Frank floated with him in a mossy scow, in a placid backwater under the willows. He heard the gurgle of water
among  the roots and watched the circles from a leaping bass. The old man (his ruddy face and silver mustache shaded by a shocking hayfield straw
hat)  hummed  "There's  a wideness in God's mercy like the wideness of the sea." When Father Pengilly mocked him, "And you have to go to books to
find  God,  young  man!"  then  Frank  was content to follow him, to be his fellow preacher, to depend more on Pengilly's long experience than on
irritating  questions,  to take any explanation of the validity of the Bible, of the mission of the church, the leadership of Christ, which might
satisfy this soldier of the cross.

Frank  became more powerful as a preacher. He went from Catawba, via pastorates in two or three larger towns, to Eureka, a camp of forty thousand
brisk industrialists, and here he was picked up and married by the amiable Bess.


4


Bess  Needham,  later  to  be  Bess  Shallard, was remarkably like a robin. She had the same cheerfulness, the same round ruddiness, and the same
conviction  that  early  rising,  chirping, philoprogenitiveness, and strict attention to food were the aims of existence. She had met Frank at a
church  "social,"  she  had  pitied  what  she regarded as his underfed pallor, she had directed her father, an amiable and competent dentist, to
invite  Frank  home,  for "a real feed" and bright music on the phonograph. She listened fondly to his talk--she had no notion what it was about,
but she liked the sound of it.

He  was  stirred by her sleek neck, her comfortable bosom, by the dimpled fingers which stroked his hair before he knew that he longed for it. He
was  warmed  by  her  assertion  that  he "put it all over" the Rev. Dr. Seager, the older Baptist parson in Eureka. So she was able to marry him
without a struggle, and they had three children in the shortest possible time.

She  was an admirable wife and mother. She filled the hot water bottle for his bed, she cooked corn beef and cabbage perfectly, she was polite to
the  most  exasperating  parishioners,  she  saved  money,  and  when he sat with fellow clerics companionably worrying about the sacraments, she
listened to him, and him alone, with beaming motherliness.

He  realized that with a wife and three children he could not consider leaving the church; and the moment he realized it he began to feel trapped
and to worry about his conscience all the more.


5


There  was, in Eureka, with its steel mills, its briskness, its conflict between hard-fisted manufacturers and hard-headed socialists, nothing of
the  contemplation  of  Catawba, where thoughts seemed far-off stars to gaze on through the mist. Here was a violent rush of ideas, and from this
rose the "Preachers' Liberal Club," toward which Frank was drawn before he had been in Eureka a fortnight.

The  ring-leader  of  these  liberals  was  Hermann  Kassebaum,  the  modernist rabbi--young, handsome, black of eye and blacker of hair, full of
laughter,  regarded  by  the  elect of the town as a shallow charlatan and a dangerous fellow, and actually the most scholarly man Frank had ever
encountered,  except for Bruno Zechlin. With him consorted a placidly atheistic Unitarian minister, a Presbyterian who was orthodox on Sunday and
revolutionary  on Monday, a wavering Congregationalist, and an Anglo-Catholic Episcopalian, who was enthusiastic about the beauties of the ritual
and the Mithraic origin of the same.

And  Frank's fretting wearily started all over again. He re-read Harnack's "What Is Christianity?" Sunderland's "Origin and Nature of the Bible,"
James's "Varieties of Religious Experience," Fraser's "Golden Bough."

He  was in the pleasing situation where whatever he did was wrong. He could not content himself with the discussions of the Liberal Club. "If you
fellows  believe  that  way,  why don't you get out of the church?" he kept demanding. Yet he could not leave them; could not, therefore, greatly
succeed  among  the  Baptist  brethren.  His  good  wife, Bess, when he diffidently hinted of his doubts, protested, "You can't reach people just
through their minds. Besides, they wouldn't understand you if you DID come right out and tell 'em the truth--as you see it. They aren't ready for
it."

His  worst  doubt was the doubt of himself. And in this quite undignified wavering he remained, envying equally Rabbi Kassebaum's public scoffing
at all religion and the thundering certainties of the cover-to-cover evangelicals. He who each Sunday morning neatly pointed his congregation the
way  to  Heaven  was  himself  tossed  in  a  Purgatory  of self-despising doubt, where his every domestic virtue was cowardice, his every mystic
aspiration a superstitious mockery, and his every desire to be honest a cruelty which he must spare Bess and his well-loved brood.

He  was  in  this  mood  when  the  Reverend  Elmer Gantry suddenly came, booming and confident, big and handsome and glossy, into his study, and
explained  that  if Frank could let him have a hundred dollars, Elmer, and presumably the Lord, would be grateful and return the money within two
weeks.

The sight of Elmer as a fellow pastor was too much for Frank. To get rid of him, he hastily gave Elmer the hundred he had saved up toward payment
of the last two obstetrical bills, and sat afterward at his desk, his head between his lax hands, praying, "O Lord, guide me!"

He  leapt  up.  "No! Elmer said the Lord had been guiding HIM! I'll take a chance on guiding myself! I will--" Again, weakly, "But how can I hurt
Bess, hurt my dad, hurt Father Pengilly? Oh, I'll go on!"



CHAPTER XVIII


1


The  Reverend Elmer Gantry was writing letters--he had no friends, and the letters were all to inquirers about his Prosperity Classes--at a small
oak-desk in the lobby of the O'-Hearn House in Zenith.

His  Zenith  classes  here had gone not badly, not brilliantly. He had made enough to consider paying the hundred dollars back to Frank Shallard,
though  certainly  not  enough  to  do  so.  He was tired of this slippery job; he was almost willing to return to farm implements. But he looked
anything but discouraged, in his morning coat, his wing collar, his dotted blue bow tie.

Writing  at the other half of the lobby desk was a little man with an enormous hooked nose, receding chin, and a Byzantine bald head. He was in a
brown business suit, with a lively green tie, and he wore horn-rimmed spectacles.

"Vice-president  of  a bank, but started as a school-teacher," Elmer decided. He was conscious that the man was watching him. A possible student?
No. Too old.

Elmer leaned back, folded his hands, looked as pontifical as possible, cleared his throat with a learned sound, and beamed.

The little man kept glancing up, rat-like, but did not speak.

"Beautiful morning," said Elmer.

"Yes. Lovely. On mornings like this all Nature exemplifies the divine joy!"

"My God! No business for me here! He's a preacher or an osteopath," Elmer lamented within.

"Is this--this is Dr. Gantry, I believe."

"Why, yes. I'm, uh, sorry, I--"

"I'm  Bishop Toomis, of the Zenith area of the Methodist Church. I had the great pleasure of hearing one of your exordiums the other evening, Dr.
Gantry."

Elmer was hysterically thrilled.

Bishop  Wesley  R.  Toomis!  For  years he had heard of the bishop as one of the giants, one of the pulpit orators, one of the profound thinkers,
exalted  speakers,  and  inspired  executives of the Methodist Church, North. He had addressed ten thousand at Ocean Grove; he had spoken in Yale
chapel; he had been a success in London. Elmer rose and, with a handshake which must have been most painful to the bishop, he glowed:

"Well,  well,  well,  sir, this certainly is a mighty great pleasure, sir. It sure is! So you came and listened to me! Well, wish I'd known that.
I'd of asked you to come sit on the platform."

Bishop Toomis had risen also; he waved Elmer back into his chair, himself perched like a keen little hawk, and trilled:

"No, no, not at all, not at all. I came only as an humble listener. I dare say I have, by the chance and circumstance of age, had more experience
of  Christian  life  and doctrine than you, and I can't pretend I exactly in every way agreed with you, you might say, but at the same time, that
was  a  very impressive thought about the need of riches to carry on the work of the busy workaday world, as we have it at present, and the value
of  concentration  in the silence as well as in those happy moments of more articulate prayer. Yes, yes. I firmly believe that we ought to add to
our  Methodist  practise  some  of  the  Great  Truths  about  the,  alas,  too  often  occulted  and obstructed Inner Divine Powers possessed in
unconsciousness  by  each  of  us,  as New Thought has revealed them to us, and that we ought most certainly not to confine the Church to already
perceived  dogmas  but  encourage  it to grow. It stands to reason that really devout prayer and concentration should most materially effect both
bodily  health  and financial welfare. Yes, yes. I was interested in what you had to say about it and--The fact is that I am going to address the
Chamber of Commerce luncheon this noon, along much these same lines, and if you happen to be free, I should be very glad if--"

They went, Elmer and Bishop Toomis, and Elmer added to the bishop's observations a few thoughts, and the most caressing compliments about bishops
in  general, Bishop Wesley R. Toomis in particular, pulpit oratory, and the beauties of prosperity. Everybody had a radiant time, except possibly
the members of the Chamber of Commerce, and after the luncheon Elmer and the bishop walked off together.

"My,  my,  I  feel  flattered that you should know so much about me! I am, after all, a very humble servant of the Methodist Church--of the Lord,
that is--and I should not have imagined that any slight local reputation I might have would have penetrated into the New Thought world," breathed
the bishop.

"Oh,  I'm  not a New Thoughter. I'm, uh, temporarily conducting these courses--as a sort of psychological experiment, you might say. Fact is, I'm
an ordained Baptist preacher, and of course in seminary your sermons were always held up to us as models."

"I'm afraid you flatter me, Doctor."

"Not at all. In fact they attracted me so that--despite my great reverence for the Baptist Church, I felt, after reading your sermons, that there
was  more  breadth and vigor in the Methodist Church, and I've sometimes considered asking some Methodist leader, like yourself, about my joining
your ministry."

"Is  that  a fact? Is that a fact? We could use you. Uh--I wonder if you couldn't come out to the house tomorrow night for supper--just take pot-
luck with us?"

"I should be most honored, Bishop."

Alone  in  his  room,  Elmer exulted, "That's the stunt! I'm sick of playing this lone game. Get in with a real big machine like the Methodists--
maybe  have  to start low down, but climb fast--be a bishop myself in ten years--with all their spondulix and big churches and big membership and
everything to back me up. Me for it. O Lord, thou hast guided me. . . . No, honest, I mean it. . . . No more hell-raising. Real religion from now
on. Hurray! Oh, Bish, you watch me hand you the ole flattery!"


2


The  Episcopal  Palace.  Beyond  the  somber length of the drawing-room an alcove with groined arches and fan-tracery---remains of the Carthusian
chapel.  A  dolorous  crucifixion  by  a  pupil of El Greco, the sky menacing and wind-driven behind the gaunt figure of the dying god. Mullioned
windows  that  still  sparkled  with the bearings of hard-riding bishops long since ignoble dust. The refectory table, a stony expanse of ancient
oak, set round with grudging monkish chairs. And the library--on either side the lofty fireplace, austerely shining rows of calf-bound wisdom now
dead as were the bishops.

The  picture  must  be  held  in mind, because it is so beautifully opposite to the residence of the Reverend Dr. Wesley R. Toomis, bishop of the
Methodist area of Zenith.

Bishop  Toomis'  abode  was  out  in  the  section  of  Zenith  called  Devon Woods, near the junction of the Chaloosa and Appleseed rivers, that
development  (quite new in 1913, when Elmer Gantry first saw it) much favored by the next-to-the-best surgeons, lawyers, real estate dealers, and
hardware  wholesalers.  It  was  a chubby modern house, mostly in tapestry brick with varicolored imitation tiles, a good deal of imitation half-
timbering  in the gables, and a screened porch with rocking-chairs, much favored on summer evenings by the episcopal but democratic person of Dr.
Toomis.

The  living-room  had  built-in  book-shelves  with  leaded glass, built-in seats with thin brown cushions, and a huge electrolier with shades of
wrinkled  glass in ruby, emerald, and watery blue. There were a great many chairs--club chairs, Morris chairs, straight wooden chairs with burnt-
work  backs--and  a  great  many  tables,  so that progress through the room was apologetic. But the features of the room were the fireplace, the
books, and the foreign curios.

The  fireplace  was  an ingenious thing. Basically it was composed of rough-hewn blocks of a green stone. Set in between the larger boulders were
pebbles,  pink  and brown and earth-colored, which the good bishop had picked up all over the world. This pebble, the bishop would chirp, guiding
you  about  the room, was from the shore of the Jordan, this was a fragment from the Great Wall of China, and this he had stolen from a garden in
Florence. They were by no means all the attractions of the fireplace. The mantel was of cedar of Lebanon, genuine, bound with brass strips from a
ship  wrecked in the Black Sea in 1902--the bishop himself had bought the brass in Russia in 1904. The andirons were made from plowshares as used
by  the bishop himself when but an untutored farm lad, all unaware of coming glory, in the cornfields of Illinois. The poker was, he assured you,
a  real whaling harpoon, picked up, surprisingly cheap, at Nantucket. Its rude shaft was decorated with a pink bow. This was not the doing of the
bishop  but  of  his  lady.  Himself, he said, he preferred the frank, crude, heroic strength of the bare woods, but Mrs. Toomis felt it needed a
touch, a brightening--

Set  in  the  rugged  chimney  of  the fireplace was a plaque of smooth marble on which was carved in artistic and curly and gilded letters: "The
Virtue of the Home is Peace, the Glory of the Home is Reverence."

The  books  were,  as  the  bishop  said,  "worth  browsing over." There were, naturally, the Methodist Discipline and the Methodist Hymnal, both
handsomely  bound  Roycrofty in limp blue calfskin with leather ties; there was an impressive collection of Bibles, including a very ancient one,
dated  1740,  and  one  extra-illustrated  with  all  the  Hoffmann  pictures and one hundred and sixty other Biblical scenes; and there were the
necessary  works  of  theological  scholarship  befitting a bishop--Moody's Sermons, Farrar's "Life of Christ," "Flowers and Beasties of the Holy
Land," and "In His Steps," by Charles Sheldon. The more workaday ministerial books were kept in the study.

But  the  bishop was a man of the world and his books fairly represented his tastes. He had a complete Dickens, a complete Walter Scott, Tennyson
in  the  red-line  edition bound in polished tree calf with polished gilt edges, many of the better works of Macaulay and Ruskin and, for lighter
moments,  novels  by  Mrs.  Humphry Ward, Winston Churchill, and Elizabeth of the German Garden. It was in travel and nature-study that he really
triumphed.  These were represented by not less than fifty volumes with such titles as "How to Study the Birds," "Through Madagascar with Camp and
Camera,"  "My  Summer  in  the  Rockies,"  "My  Mission  in  Darkest Africa," "Pansies for Thoughts," and "London from a Bus." Nor had the bishop
neglected  history and economics: he possessed the Rev. Dr. Hockett's "Complete History of the World: Illustrated," in eleven handsome volumes, a
second-hand copy of Hartley's "Economics," and "The Solution of Capitalism vs. Labor--Brotherly Love."

Yet  not  the  fireplace,  not the library, so much as the souvenirs of foreign travel gave to the bishop's residence a flair beyond that of most
houses  in  Devon  Woods. The bishop and his lady were fond of travel. They had made a six months' inspection of missions in Japan, Korea, China,
India,  Borneo,  Java,  and the Philippines, which gave the bishop an authoritative knowledge of all Oriental governments, religions, psychology,
commerce,  and  hotels.  But besides that, six several summers they had gone to Europe, and usually on the more refined and exclusive tours. Once
they  had spent three solid weeks seeing nothing but London--with side-trips to Oxford, Canterbury, and Stratford--once they had taken a four-day
walking trip in the Tyrol, and once on a channel steamer they had met a man who, a steward said, was a Lord.

The living-room reeked with these adventures. There weren't exactly so many curios--the bishop said he didn't believe in getting a lot of foreign
furniture  and  stuff  when  we made the best in the world right here at home--but as to pictures--The Toomises were devotees of photography, and
they had brought back the whole world in shadow.

Here  was  the  Temple of Heaven at Peking, with the bishop standing in front of it. Here was the Great Pyramid, with Mrs. Toomis in front of it.
Here  was the cathedral at Milan, with both of them in front of it--this had been snapped for them by an Italian guide, an obliging gentleman who
had assured the bishop that he believed in prohibition.


3


Into  this room Elmer Gantry came with overpowering politeness. He bent, almost as though he were going to kiss it, over the hand of Mrs. Toomis,
who was a large lady with eyeglasses and modest sprightliness, and he murmured, "If you could only know what a privilege this is!"

She blushed, and looked at the bishop as if to say, "This, my beloved, is a good egg."

He shook hands reverently with the bishop and boomed, "How good it is of you to take in a homeless wanderer!"

"Nonsense, nonsense, Brother. It is a pleasure to make you at home! Before supper is served, perhaps you'd like to glance at one or two books and
pictures  and things that Mother and I have picked up in the many wanderings to which we have been driven in carrying on the Work. . . . Now this
may interest you. This is a photograph of the House of Parliament, or Westminster, as it is also called, in London, England, corresponding to our
Capitol in Washington."

"Well, well, is that a fact!"

"And  here's  another  photo that might have some slight interest. This is a scene very rarely photographed--in fact it was so interesting that I
sent  it  to the National Geographic Magazine, and while they were unable to use it, because of an overload of material, one of the editors wrote
to  me--I have the letter some place--and he agreed with me that it was a very unusual and interesting picture. It is taken right in front of the
Sacra  Cur,  the  famous church in Paris, up on the hill of Moant-marter, and if you examine it closely you will see by the curious light that it
was taken JUST BEFORE SUNRISE! And yet you see how bully it came out! The lady to the right, there, is Mrs. Toomis. Yes, sir, a real breath right
out of Paris!"

"Well, say, that certainly is interesting! Paris, eh!"

"But,  oh,  Dr.  Gantry,  a  sadly  wicked  city! I do not speak of the vices of the French themselves--that is for them to settle with their own
consciences,  though  I certainly do advocate the most active and widespread extension of our American Protestant missions there, as in all other
European  countries  which suffer under the blight and darkness of Catholicism. But what saddens me is the thought--and I know whereof I speak, I
myself  have  seen  that  regrettable spectacle--what would sadden you, Dr. Gantry, is the sight of fine young Americans going over there and not
profiting  by  the  sermons  in  stones,  the  history  to be read in those historical structures, but letting themselves be drawn into a life of
heedless and hectic gaiety if not indeed of actual immorality. Oh, it gives one to think, Dr. Gantry."

"Yes, it certainly must. By the way, Bishop, it isn't Dr. Gantry--it's Mr. Gantry--just plain Reverend."

"But I thought your circulars--"

"Oh, that was a mistake on the part of the man who wrote them for me. I've talked to him good!"

"Well,  well, I admire you for speaking about it! It is none too easy for us poor weak mortals to deny honors and titles whether they are rightly
or  wrongly conferred upon us. Well, I'm sure that it is but a question of time when you WILL wear the honor of a Doctor of Divinity degree, if I
may  without  immodesty  so refer to a handle which I myself happen to possess--yes, indeed, a man who combines strength with eloquence, charm of
presence, and a fine high-grade vocabulary as you do, it is but a question of time when--"

"Wesley, dear, supper is served."

"Oh,  very  well,  my  dear.  The  ladies,  Dr. Gantry--Mr. Gantry--as you may already have observed, they seem to have the strange notion that a
household must be run on routine lines, and they don't hesitate, bless 'em, to interrupt even an abstract discussion to bid us come to the festal
board when they feel that it's time, and I for one make haste to obey and--After supper there's a couple of other photographs that might interest
you,  and  I do want you to take a peep at my books. I know a poor bishop has no right to yield to the lust for material possessions, but I plead
guilty  to one vice--my inordinate love for owning fine items of literature. . . . Yes, dear, we're coming at once. Toojoor la fam, Mr. Gantry!--
always the ladies! Are you, by the way, married?"

"Not yet, sir."

"Well, well, you must take care of that. I tell you in the ministry there is always a vast, though often of course unfair, amount of criticism of
the unmarried preacher, which seriously cramps him. Yes, my dear, we are coming."

There were rolls hidden in the cornucopia-folded napkins, and supper began with a fruit cocktail of orange, apple, and canned pineapple.

"Well,"  said  Elmer, with a courtly bow to Mrs. Toomis, "I see I'm in high society--beginning with a cocktail! I tell you I just have to have my
cocktail before the eats!"

It went over immensely. The bishop repeated it, choking.


4


Elmer  managed,  during  supper,  to let them know that not only was he a theological seminary man, not only had he mastered psychology, Oriental
occultism, and the methods of making millions, but also he had been general manager for the famous Miss Sharon Falconer.

Whether  Bishop  Toomis was considering, "I want this man--he's a comer--he'd be useful to me," is not known. But certainly he listened with zeal
to Elmer, and cooed at him, and after supper, with not more than an hour of showing him the library and the mementos of far-off roamings, he took
him  off  to  the  study, away from Mrs. Toomis, who had been interrupting, every quarter of an hour, with her own recollections of roast beef at
Simpson's,  prices  of rooms on Bloomsbury Square, meals on the French wagon restaurant, the speed of French taxicabs, and the view of the Eiffel
Tower at sunset.

The  study  was  less  ornate  than  the  living-room.  There  was a business-like desk, a phonograph for dictation, a card catalogue of possible
contributors  to funds, a steel filing-cabinet, and the bishop's own typewriter. The books were strictly practical: Cruden's Concordance, Smith's
Dictionary  of  the  Bible, an atlas of Palestine, and the three published volumes of the Bishop's own sermons. By glancing at these for not more
than ten minutes, he could have an address ready for any occasion.

The  bishop  sank  into  his golden oak revolving desk-chair, pointed at his typewriter, and sighed, "From this horrid room you get a hint of how
pressed  I  am  by  practical  affairs. What I should like to do is to sit down quietly there at my beloved machine and produce some work of pure
beauty  that  would  last  forever,  where  even the most urgent temporal affairs tend, perhaps, to pass away. Of course I have editorials in the
Advocate, and my sermons have been published."

He looked sharply at Elmer.

"Yes, of COURSE, Bishop, I've read them!"

"That's very kind of you. But what I've longed for all these years is sinfully worldly literary work. I've always fancied, perhaps vainly, that I
have  a talent--I've longed to do a book, in fact a novel--I have rather an interesting plot. You see, this farm boy, brought up in circumstances
of want, with very little opportunity for education, he struggles hard for what book-learning he attains, but there in the green fields, in God's
own  pure  meadows,  surrounded  by  the leafy trees and the stars overhead at night, breathing the sweet open air of the pastures, he grows up a
strong,  pure, reverent young man, and of course when he goes up to the city--I had thought of having him enter the ministry, but I don't want to
make  it autobiographical, so I shall have him enter a commercial line, but one of the more constructive branches of the great realm of business,
say  like  banking. Well, he meets the daughter of his boss--she is a lovely young woman, but tempted by the manifold temptations and gaieties of
the  city,  and I want to show how his influence guides her away from the broad paths that lead to destruction, and what a splendid effect he has
not only on her but on others in the mart of affairs. Yes, I long to do that, but--Sitting here, just us two, one almost feels as though it would
be pleasant to smoke--DO YOU SMOKE?"

"No, thanks be to God, Bishop. I can honestly say that for years I have never known the taste of nicotine or alcohol."

"God be praised!"

"When  I  was  younger,  being  kind  of,  you  might say, a vigorous fellow, I was led now and then into temptation, but the influence of Sister
Falconer--oh,  there  was  a sanctified soul, like a nun--only strictly Protestant, of course--they so uplifted me that now I am free of all such
desires."

"I  am  glad to hear it, Brother, so glad to hear it. . . . Now, Gantry, the other day you said something about having thought of coming into the
Methodist fold. How seriously have you thought about it?"

"Very."

"I  wish you would. I mean--Of course neither you nor I is necessary to the progress of that great Methodist Church, which day by day is the more
destined  to  instruct  and  guide  our  beloved  nation.  But  I  mean--When I meet a fine young man like you, I like to think of what spiritual
satisfaction  he  would  have  in  this  institution. Now the work you're doing at present is inspiring to many fine young men, but it is single-
handed--it  has  no PERMANENCE. When you go, much of the good you have done dies, because there is no institution like the living church to carry
it  on.  You ought to be in one of the large denominations, and of these I feel, for all my admiration of the Baptists, that the Methodist Church
is in some ways the great exemplar. It is so broad-spirited and democratic, yet very powerful. It is the real church of the people."

"Yes,  I  rather  believe you're right, Bishop. Since I talked with you I've been thinking--Uh, if the Methodist Church should want to accept me,
what would I have to do? Would there be much red tape?"

"It  would be a very simple matter. As you're already ordained, I could have the District Conference, which meets next month at Sparta, recommend
you  to  the  Annual Conference for membership. I am sure when the Annual Conference meets in spring of next year, a little less than a year from
now,  with  your credits from Terwillinger and Mizpah I could get you accepted by the Conference and your orders recognized. Till then I can have
you  accepted  as  a  preacher  on  trial. And I have a church right now, at Banjo Crossing, that is in need of just such leadership as you could
furnish.  Banjo  has  only  nine hundred people, but you understand that it would be necessary for you to begin at the bottom. The brethren would
very properly be jealous if I gave you a first-class appointment right at the first. But I am sure I could advance you rapidly. Yes, we must have
you in the church. Great is the work for consecrated hands--and I'll bet a cookie I live to see you a bishop yourself!"


5


He  couldn't,  Elmer  complained,  back  in the refuge of his hotel, sink to a crossroads of nine hundred people, with a salary of perhaps eleven
hundred  dollars;  not  after  the  big  tent  and Sharon's throngs, not after suites and morning coats and being Dr. Gantry to brokers' wives in
ballrooms.

But  also  he  couldn't  go on. He would never get to the top in the New Thought business. He admitted that he hadn't quite the creative mind. He
could never rise to such originality as, say, Mrs. Riddle's humorous oracle: "Don't be scared of upsetting folks 'coz most of 'em are topsy-turvy
anyway, and you'll only be putting 'em back on their feet"

Fortunately, except in a few fashionable churches, it wasn't necessary to say anything original to succeed among the Baptists or Methodists.

He would be happy in a regular pastorate. He was a professional. As an actor enjoyed grease-paint and call-boards and stacks of scenery, so Elmer
had  the  affection of familiarity for the details of his profession--hymn books, communion service, training the choir, watching the Ladies' Aid
grow,  the  drama  of  coming  from  the  mysteries  back-stage,  so  unknown  and  fascinating  to the audience, to the limelight of the waiting
congregation.

And  his  mother--He had not seen her for two years, but he retained the longing to solace her, and he knew that she was only bewildered over his
New Thought harlequinade.

But--nine hundred population!

He  held  out  for  a fortnight; demanded a bigger church from Bishop Toomis; brought in all his little clippings about eloquence in company with
Sharon.

Then the Zenith lectures closed, and he had ahead only the most speculative opportunities.

Bishop  Toomis  grieved,  "I  am  disappointed,  Brother,  that  you  should  think more of the size of the flock than of the great, grrrrrrrreat
opportunities for good ahead of you!"

Elmer  looked  his  most  flushing,  gallant, boyish self. "Oh, no, Bishop, you don't get me, honest! I just wanted to be able to use my training
where it might be of the most value. But I'm eager to be guided by you!"

Two months later Elmer was on the train to Banjo Crossing, as pastor of the Methodist Church in that amiable village under the sycamores.



CHAPTER XIX


1


A Thursday in June 1913.

The train wandered through orchard-land and cornfields--two seedy day-coaches and a baggage car. Hurry and efficiency had not yet been discovered
on this branch line, and it took five hours to travel the hundred and twenty miles from Zenith to Banjo Crossing.

The  Reverend  Elmer  Gantry was in a state of grace. Having resolved henceforth to be pure and humble and humanitarian, he was benevolent to all
his traveling companions, he was mothering the world, whether the world liked it or not.

But  he  did not insist on any outward distinction as a parson, a Professional Good Man. He wore a quietly modest gray sack suit, a modestly rich
maroon  tie.  Not  just  as  a  minister,  but  as  a citizen, he told himself, it was his duty to make life breezier and brighter for his fellow
wayfarers.

The  aged conductor knew most of his passengers by their first names, and they hailed him as "Uncle Ben," but he resented strangers on their home
train.  When  Elmer  shouted,  "Lovely  day,  Brother!"  Uncle  Ben  looked at him as if to say "Well, 'tain't my fault!" But Elmer continued his
philadelphian violences till the old man sent in the brakeman to collect the tickets the rest of the way.

At  a  traveling  salesman who tried to borrow a match, Elmer roared, "I don't smoke, Brother, and I don't believe George Washington did either!"
His  benignancies  were  received with so little gratitude that he almost wearied of good works, but when he carried an old woman's suit-case off
the  train, she fluttered at him with the admiration he deserved, and he was moved to pat children upon the head--to their terror--and to explain
crop-rotation to an ancient who had been farming for forty-seven years.

Anyway,  he  satisfied  the day's lust for humanitarianism, and he turned back the seat in front of his, stretched out his legs, looked sleepy so
that no one would crowd in beside him, and rejoiced in having taken up a life of holiness and authority.

He  glanced  out  at  the patchy country with satisfaction. Rustic, yes, but simple, and the simple honest hearts of his congregation would yearn
toward him as the bookkeepers could not be depended upon to do in Prosperity Classes. He pictured his hearty reception at Banjo Crossing. He knew
that  his  district  superintendent (a district superintendent is a lieutenant-bishop in the Methodist Church--formerly called a presiding elder)
had  written  the  hour  of  his  coming to Mr. Nathaniel Benham of Banjo Crossing, and he knew that Mr. Benham, the leading trustee of the local
church,  was  the chief general merchant in the Banjo Valley. Yes, he would shake hands with all of his flock, even the humblest, at the station;
he would look into their clear and trusting eyes, and rejoice to be their shepherd, leading them on and upward, for at least a year.

Banjo Crossing seemed very small as the train staggered into it. There were back porches with wash-tubs and broken-down chairs; there were wooden
sidewalks.

As  Elmer  pontifically descended at the red frame station, as he looked for the reception and the holy glee, there wasn't any reception, and the
only  glee  visible  was on the puffy face of the station agent as he observed a City Fellow trying to show off. "Hee, hee, there AIN'T no 'bus!"
giggled the agent. "Guess yuh'll have to carry your own valises over to the hotel!"

"Where," demanded Elmer, "is Mr. Benham, Mr. Nathaniel Benham?"

"Old Nat? Ain't seen him today. Guess yuh'll find him at the store, 'bout as usual, seeing if he can't do some farmer out of two cents on a batch
of eggs. Traveling man?"

"I am the new Methodist preacher!"

"Oh,  well,  say!  That a fact! Pleased to meet yuh! Wouldn't of thought you were a preacher. You look too well fed! You're going to room at Mrs.
Pete Clark's--the Widow Clark's. Leave your valises here, and I'll have my boy fetch 'em over. Well, good luck, Brother. Hope you won't have much
trouble with your church. The last fellow did, but then he was kind of pernickety--wa'n't just plain folks."

"Oh,  I'm just plain folks, and mighty happy, after the great cities, to be among them!" was Elmer's amiable greeting, but what he observed as he
walked away was "I am like hell!"

Altogether depressed now, he expected to find the establishment of Brother Benham a littered and squalid cross-roads store, but he came to a two-
story  brick  structure  with  plate-glass windows and, in the alley, the half-dozen trucks with which Mr. Benham supplied the farmers for twenty
miles  up and down the Banjo Valley. Respectful, Elmer walked through broad aisles, past counters trim as a small department-store, and found Mr.
Benham dictating letters.

If in a small way Nathaniel Benham had commercial genius, it did not show in his aspect. He wore a beard like a bath sponge, and in his voice was
a righteous twang.

"Yes?" he quacked.

"I'm Reverend Gantry, the new pastor."

Benham  rose,  not  too nimbly, and shook hands dryly. "Oh, yes. The presiding elder said you were coming today. Glad you've come, Brother, and I
hope the blessing of the Lord will attend your labors. You're to board at the Widow Clark's--anybody'll show you where it is."

Apparently he had nothing else to say.

A little bitterly, Elmer demanded, "I'd like to look over the church. Have you a key?"

"Now  let's  see. Brother Jones might have one--he's got the paint and carpenter shop right up here on Front Street. No, guess he hasn't, either.
We  got  a  young  fella, just a boy you might say, who's doing the janitor work now, and guess he'd have a key, but this bein' vacation he's off
fishin' more'n likely. Tell you: you might try Brother Fritscher, the shoemaker--he might have a key. You married?"

"No. I've, uh, I've been engaged in evangelistic work, so I've been denied the joys and solaces of domestic life."

"Where you born?"

"Kansas."

"Folks Christians?"

"They certainly were! My mother was--she is--a real consecrated soul."

"Smoke or drink?"

"Certainly not!"

"Do any monkeying with this higher criticism?"

"No, indeed!"

"Ever go hunting?"

"I, uh--Well, yes!"

"That's fine! Well, glad you're with us, Brother. Sorry I'm busy. Say, Mother and I expect you for supper tonight, six-thirty. Good luck!"

Benham's  smile,  his  handshake,  were  cordial  enough,  but  he was definitely giving dismissal, and Elmer went out in a fury alternating with
despair. . . . To this, to the condescension of a rustic store-keeper, after the mounting glory with Sharon!

As  he  walked  toward  the house of the widow Clark, to which a loafer directed him, he hated the shabby village, hated the chicken-coops in the
yards,  the  frowsy  lawns,  the  old buggies staggering by, the women with plump aprons and wet red arms--women who made his delights of amorous
adventures seem revolting--and all the plodding yokels with their dead eyes and sagging jaws and sudden guffawing.

Fallen to this. And at thirty-two. A failure!

As  he waited on the stoop of the square, white, characterless house of the Widow Clark, he wanted to dash back to the station and take the first
train--anywhere.  In  that moment he decided to return to farm implements and the bleak lonely freedom of the traveling man. Then the screen door
was  opened  by  a jolly ringleted girl of fourteen or fifteen, who caroled, "Oh, is it Reverend Gantry! My, and I kept you waiting! I'm terrible
sorry!  Ma's  just sick she can't be here to welcome you, but she had to go over to Cousin Etta's--Cousin Etta busted her leg. Oh, please do come
in. My, I didn't guess we'd have a young preacher this time!"

She was charming in her excited innocence.

After a faded provincial fashion, the square hall was stately, with its Civil War chromos.

Elmer  followed  the  child--Jane  Clark,  she was--up to his room. As she frisked before him, she displayed six inches of ankle above her clumsy
shoes,  and  Elmer  was clutched by that familiar feeling, swifter than thought, more elaborate than the strategy of a whole war, which signified
that  here  was a girl he was going to pursue. But as suddenly--almost wistfully, in his weary desire for peace and integrity--he begged himself,
"No! Don't! Not any more! Let the kid alone! Please be decent! Lord, give me decency and goodness!"

The  struggle was finished in the half-minutes of ascending the stairs, and he could shake hands casually, say carelessly, "Well, I'm mighty glad
you were here to welcome me, Sister, and I hope I may bring a blessing on the house."

He  felt  at home now, warmed, restored. His chamber was agreeable--Turkey-red carpet, stove a perfect shrine of polished nickel, and in the bow-
window, a deep arm-chair. On the four-poster bed was a crazy-quilt, and pillow-shams embroidered with lambs and rabbits and the motto, "God Bless
Our Slumbers."

"This is going to be all right. Kinda like home, after these doggone hotels," he meditated.

He  was  again ready to conquer Banjo Crossing, to conquer Methodism; and when his bags and trunk had come, he set out, before unpacking, to view
his kingdom.


2


Banjo Crossing was not extensive, but to find the key to the First Methodist Church was a Scotland Yard melodrama.

Brother  Fritscher, the shoemaker, had lent it to Sister Anderson of the Ladies' Aid, who had lent it to Mrs. Pryshetski, the scrubwoman, who had
lent  it  to  Pussy  Byrnes,  president  of  the Epworth League, who had lent it to Sister Fritscher, consort of Brother Fritscher, so that Elmer
captured it next door to the shoemaker's shop from which he had irritably set out.

Each  of  them,  Brother Fritscher and Sister Fritscher, Sister Pryshetski and Sister Byrnes, Sister Anderson and most of the people from whom he
inquired directions along the way, asked him the same questions:

"You the new Methodist preacher?" and "Not married, are you?" and "Just come to town?" and "Hear you come from the City--guess you're pretty glad
to get away, ain't you?"

He hadn't much hope for his church-building--but he expected a hideous brown hulk with plank buttresses. He was delighted then, proud as a worthy
citizen  elected  mayor,  when he came to an agreeable little church covered with gray shingles, crowned with a modest spire, rimmed with cropped
lawn and flower-beds. Excitedly he let himself in, greeted by the stale tomb-like odor of all empty churches.

The  interior  was  pleasant.  It would hold two hundred and ninety, perhaps. The pews were of a light yellow, too glaring, but the walls were of
soft  cream,  and  in the chancel, with a white arch graceful above it, was a seemly white pulpit and a modest curtained choir-loft. He explored.
There was a goodish Sunday School room, a basement with tables and a small kitchen. It was all cheerful, alive; it suggested a chance of growth.

As he returned to the auditorium, he noted one good colored memorial window, and through the clear glass of the others the friendly maples looked
in at him.

He walked round the building. Suddenly he was overwhelmed and exalted with the mystic pride of ownership. It was all his; his own; and as such it
was all beautiful. What beautiful soft gray shingles! What an exquisite spire! What a glorious maple-tree! Yes, and what a fine cement walk, what
a fine new ash-can, what a handsome announcement board, soon to be starred with his own name! His! To do with as he pleased! And, oh, he would do
fine  things, aspiring things, very important things! Never again, with this new reason for going on living, would he care for lower desires--for
pride, for the adventure of women. . . . HIS!

He  entered  the church again; he sat proudly in each of the three chairs on the platform which, as a boy, he had believed to be reserved for the
three persons of the Trinity. He stood up, leaned his arms on the pulpit, and to a worshiping throng (many standing) he boomed, "My brethren!"

He  was in an ecstasy such as he had not known since his hours with Sharon. He would start again--HAD started again, he vowed. Never lie or cheat
or boast. This town, it might be dull, but he would enliven it, make it his own creation, lift it to his own present glory. He could! Life opened
before  him,  clean,  joyous, full of the superb chances of a Christian knighthood. Some day he would be a bishop, yes, but even that was nothing
compared with the fact that he had won a victory over his lower nature.

He  knelt,  and  with  his  arms  wide  in supplication he prayed, "Lord, thou who hast stooped to my great unworthiness and taken even me to thy
Kingdom,  who this moment hast shown me the abiding joy of righteousness, make me whole and keep me pure, and in all things, Our Father, thy will
be done. Amen."

He stood by the pulpit, tears in his eyes, his meaty hands clutching the cover of the great leather Bible till it cracked.

The door at the other end of the aisle was opening, and he saw a vision standing on the threshold in the June sun.

He  remembered  afterward, from some forgotten literary adventure in college, a couplet which signified to him the young woman who was looking at
him from the door:


Pale beyond porch and portal, Crowned with calm leaves she stands.


She  was  younger  than himself, yet she suggested a serene maturity, a gracious pride. She was slender, but her bosom was full, and some day she
might  be  portly.  Her  face  was  lovely, her forehead wide, her brown eyes trusting, and smooth her chestnut hair. She had taken off her rose-
trimmed straw hat and was swinging it in her large and graceful hands. . . . Virginal, stately, kind, most generous.

She  came  placidly  down the aisle, a hand out, crying, "It's Reverend Gantry, isn't it? I'm so proud to be the first to welcome you here in the
church! I'm Cleo Benham--I lead the choir. Perhaps you've seen Papa--he's a trustee--he has the store."

"You  sure are the first to welcome me, Sister Benham, and it's a mighty great pleasure to meet you! Yes, your father was so nice as to invite me
for supper tonight."

They  shook  hands with ceremony and sat beaming at each other in a front pew. He informed her that he was certain there was "going to be a great
spiritual awakening here," and she told him what lovely people there were in the congregation, in the village, in the entire surrounding country.
And her panting breast told him that she, the daughter of the village magnate, had instantly fallen in love with him.


3


Cleo  Benham  had spent three years in the Sparta Women's College, specializing in piano, organ, French, English literature, strictly expurgated,
and  study  of  the Bible. Returned to Banjo Crossing, she was a fervent church-worker. She played the organ and rehearsed the choir; she was the
superintendent of the juvenile department in the Sunday School; she decorated the church for Easter, for funerals, for the Halloween Supper.

She was twenty-seven, five years younger than Elmer.

Though  she  was  not  very  lively in summer-evening front-porch chatter, though on the few occasions when she sinned against the Discipline and
danced she seemed a little heavy on her feet, though she had a corseted purity which was dismaying to the earthy young men of Banjo Crossing, yet
she  was  handsome,  she  was  kind,  and  her father was reputed to be worth not a cent less than seventy-five thousand dollars. So almost every
eligible male in the vicinity had hinted at proposing to her.

Gently  and  compassionately  she had rejected them one by one. Marriage must, she felt, be a sacrament; she must be the helpmate of some one who
was "doing a tremendous amount of good in the world." This good she identified with medicine or preaching.

Her  friends  assured  her, "My! With your Bible training and your music and all, you'd make a perfect pastor's wife. Just dandy! You'd be such a
help to him."

But no detached preacher or doctor had happened along, and she had remained insulated, a little puzzled, hungry over the children of her friends,
each year more passionately given to hymnody and agonized solitary prayer.

Now,  with innocent boldness, she was exclaiming to Elmer: "We were so afraid the bishop would send us some pastor that was old and worn-out. The
people  here  are  lovely,  but  they're  kind of slow-going; they need somebody to wake them up. I'm so glad he sent somebody that was young and
attractive--Oh, my, I shouldn't have said that! I was just thinking of the church, you understand."

Her eyes said that she had not been just thinking of the church.

She looked at her wrist-watch (the first in Banjo Crossing) and chanted, "Why, my gracious, it's six o'clock! Would you like to walk home with me
instead of going to Mrs. Clark's--you could wash up at Papa's."

"You  can't  lose me!" exulted Elmer, hastily amending, "--as the slangy youngers say! Yes, indeed, I should be very pleased to have the pleasure
of walking home with you."

Under the elms, past the rose-bushes, through dust emblazoned by the declining sun, he walked with his stately abbess.

He  knew  that  she  was  the  sort  of wife who would help him to capture a bishopric. He persuaded himself that, with all her virtue, she would
eventually  be  interesting  to kiss. He noted that they "made a fine couple." He told himself that she was the first woman he had ever found who
was  worthy  of him. . . . Then he remembered Sharon. . . . But the pang lasted only a moment, in the secure village peace, in the gentle flow of
Cleo's voice.


4


Once  he  was  out  of the sacred briskness of his store, Mr. Nathaniel Benham forgot discounts and became an affable host. He said, "Well, well,
Brother,"  ever  so many times, and shook hands profusely. Mrs. Benham--she was a large woman, rather handsome; she wore figured foulard, with an
apron over it, as she had been helping in the kitchen--Mrs. Benham was equally cordial. "I'll just bet you're hungry, Brother!" cried she.

He was, after a lunch of ham sandwich and coffee at a station lunch-room on the way down.

The Benham house was the proudest mansion in town. It was of yellow clapboards with white trim; it had a huge screened porch and a little turret;
a  staircase  window  with a border of colored glass; and there was a real fireplace, though it was never used. In front of the house, to Elmer's
admiration, was one of the three automobiles which were all that were to be found in 1913 in Banjo Crossing. It was a bright red Buick with brass
trimmings.

The  Benham  supper was as replete with fried chicken and theological questions as Elmer's first supper with Deacon Bains in Schoenheim. But here
was wealth, for which Elmer had a touching reverence, and here was Cleo.

Lulu  Bains  had  been  a  tempting mouthful; Cleo Benham was of the race of queens. To possess her, Elmer gloated, would in itself be an empire,
worth  any  battling. . . . And yet he did not itch to get her in a corner and buss her, as he had Lulu; the slope of her proud shoulders did not
make his fingers taut.

After supper, on the screened porch pleasant by dusk, Mr. Benham demanded, "What charges have you been holding, Brother Gantry?"

Elmer  modestly  let him know how important he had been in the work of Sister Falconer; he admitted his scholarly research at Mizpah Seminary; he
made  quite  enough  of  his  success  at  Schoenheim; he let it be known that he had been practically assistant sales-manager of the Pequot Farm
Implement Company.

Mr.  Benham  grunted with surprised admiration. Mrs. Benham gurgled, "My, we're lucky to have a real high-class preacher for once!" And Cleo--she
leaned toward Elmer, in a deep willow chair, and her nearness was a charm.

He walked back happily in the June darkness; he felt neighborly when an unknown muttered, "Evening, Reverend!" and all the way he saw Cleo, proud
as Athena yet pliant as golden-skinned Aphrodite.

He had found his work, his mate, his future.

Virtue, he pointed out, certainly did pay.



CHAPTER XX


1


He had two days to prepare his first sermon and unpack his trunk, his bags, and the books which he had purchased in Zenith.

His possessions were not very consistent. He had a beautiful new morning coat, three excellent lounge suits, patent leather shoes, a noble derby,
a  flourishing  top hat, but he had only two suits of underclothes, both ragged. His socks were of black silk, out at the toes. For breast-pocket
display, he had silk handkerchiefs; but for use, only cotton rags torn at the hem. He owned perfume, hair-oil, talcum powder; his cuff links were
of solid gold; but for dressing-gown he used his overcoat; his slippers were a frowsy pulp; and the watch which he carried on a gold and platinum
chain was a one-dollar alarm clock.

He  had  laid  in a fruitful theological library. He had bought the fifty volumes of the Expositors' Bible--source of ready-made sermons--second-
hand  for $13.75. He had the sermons of Spurgeon, Jefferson, Brooks, and J. Wilbur Chapman. He was willing to be guided by these masters, and not
insist  on  forcing  his  own  ideas  on  the  world.  He had a very useful book by Bishop Aberman, "The Very Appearance of Evil," advising young
preachers to avoid sin. Elmer felt that this would be unusually useful in his new life.

He  had  a  dictionary--he  liked  to look at the colored plates depicting jewels, flags, plants, and aquatic birds; he had a Bible dictionary, a
concordance,  a  history of the Methodist Church, a history of Protestant missions, commentaries on the individual books of the Bible, an outline
of  theology,  and  Dr.  Argyle's "The Pastor and His Flock," which told how to increase church collections, train choirs, take exercise, placate
deacons, and make pasteboard models of Solomon's Temple to lead the little ones to holiness in the Sunday School.

In  fact  he  had  had  a  sufficient library--"God's artillery in black and white," as Bishop Toomis wittily dubbed it--to inform himself of any
detail in the practice of the Professional Good Man. He would be able to produce sermons which would be highly informative about the geography of
Palestine,  yet  useful  to such of his fold as might have a sneaking desire to read magazines on the Sabbath. Thus guided, he could increase the
church  membership;  he  could give advice to errant youth; he could raise missionary funds so that the heathen in Calcutta and Peking might have
the opportunity to become like the Reverend Elmer Gantry.


2


Though Cleo took him for a drive through the country, most of the time before Sunday he dedicated to refurbishing a sermon which he had often and
successfully  used  with  Sharon.  The  text was from Romans 1:16: "For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto
salvation to every one that believeth."

When  he  came  up to the church on Sunday morning, tall and ample, grave and magnificent, his face fixed in a smile of friendliness, his morning
coat  bright  in the sun, a Bible under his arm, Elmer was exhilarated by the crowd filtering into the church. The street was filled with country
buggies  and  a  Ford  or  two.  As  he  went round to the back of the church, passing a knot at the door, they shouted cordially, "Good morning,
Brother!" and "Fine day, Reverend!"

Cleo  was  waiting for him with the choir--Miss Kloof, the school-teacher, Mrs. Diebel, wife of the implement dealer, Ed Perkins, deliveryman for
Mr. Benham, and Ray Faucett, butter-maker at the creamery.

Cleo held his hand and rejoiced, "What a wonderful crowd there is this morning! I'm so glad!"

Together  they  peeped  through  the  parlor door into the auditorium, and he almost put his arm about her firm waist. . . . It would have seemed
natural, very pleasant and right and sweet.

When  he  marched  out  to the chancel, the church was full, a dozen standing. They all breathed with admiration. (He learned later that the last
pastor had had trouble with his false teeth and a fondness for whining.)

He led the singing.

"Come  on  now!"  he  laughed.  "You've  got  to  welcome your new preacher! The best way is to put a lot of lung-power into it and sing like the
dickens! You can all make some kind of noise. Make a lot!"

Himself  he gave example, his deep voice rolling out in hymns of which he had always been fond: "I Love to Tell the Story" and "My Faith Looks up
to Thee."

He  prayed briefly--he was weary of prayers in which the priest ramblingly explained to God that God really was God. This was, he said, his first
day with the new flock. Let the Lord give him ways of showing them his love and his desire to serve them.

Before his sermon he looked from brother to brother. He loved them all, that moment; they were his regiment, and he the colonel; his ship's crew,
and he the skipper; his patients, and he the loyal physician. He began slowly, his great voice swelling to triumphant certainty as he talked.

Voice,  sureness, presence, training, power, he had them all. Never had he so well liked his rôle; never had he acted so well; never had he known
such sincerity of histrionic instinct.

He had solid doctrine for the older stalwarts. With comforting positiveness he preached that the atonement was the one supreme fact in the world.
It  rendered  the  most  sickly  and  threadbare  the  equals of kings and millionaires; it demanded of the successful that they make every act a
recognition of the atonement. For the young people he had plenty of anecdotes, and he was not afraid to make them laugh.

While  he  did  tell  the gloomy incident of the boy who was drowned while fishing on Sunday, he also gave them the humorous story of the lad who
declared  he wouldn't go to school, "because it said in the Twenty-third Psalm that the Lord made him lie down in green pastures, and he sure did
prefer that to school!"

For all of them, but particularly for Cleo, sitting at the organ, her hands clasped in her lap, her eyes loyal, he winged into poetry.

To preach the good news of the gospel, ah! That was not, as the wicked pretended, a weak, sniveling, sanctimonious thing! It was a job for strong
men and resolute women. For this, the Methodist missionaries had faced the ferocious lion and the treacherous fevers of the jungle, the poisonous
cold of the Arctic, the parching desert and the fields of battle. Were we to be less heroic than they? Here, now, in Banjo Crossing, there was no
triumph  of  business so stirring, no despairing need of a sick friend so urgent, as the call to tell blinded and perishing sinners the necessity
of repentance.

"Repentance--repentance--repentance--in the name of the Lord God!"

His superb voice trumpeted it, and in Cleo's eyes were inspired tears.

Beyond  controversy,  it was the best sermon ever heard in Banjo Crossing. And they told him so as he cheerily shook hands with them at the door.
"Enjoyed your discourse a lot, Reverend!"

And Cleo came to him, her two hands out, and he almost kissed her.


3


Sunday School was held after morning service. Elmer determined that he was not going to attend Sunday School every week--"not on your life; sneak
in  a  nap  before dinner"--but this morning he was affably and expansively there, encouraging the little ones by a bright short talk in which he
advised  them  to  speak the truth, obey their fathers and mothers, and give heed to the revelations of their teachers, such as Miss Mittie Lamb,
the milliner, and Oscar Scholtz, manager of the potato warehouse.

Banjo  Crossing  had  not  yet  touched  the modern Sunday School methods which, in the larger churches, in another ten years, were to divide the
pupils  as  elaborately as public school and to provide training-classes for the teachers. But at least they had separated the children up to ten
years from the older students, and of this juvenile department Cleo Benham was superintendent.

Elmer watched her going from class to class; he saw how naturally and affectionately the children talked to her.

"She'd make a great wife and mother--a great wife for a preacher--a great wife for a bishop," he noted.


4


Evening  services  at  the  Banjo  Crossing  Methodist  Church had normally drawn less than forty people, but there were a hundred tonight, when,
fumblingly, Elmer broke away from old-fashioned church practise and began what was later to become his famous Lively Sunday Evenings.

He  chose  the  brighter  hymns, "Onward, Christian Soldiers," "Wonderful Words of Life," "Brighten the Corner Where You Are," and the triumphant
paean  of  "When  the Roll is Called up Yonder, I'll be There." Instead of making them drone through many stanzas, he had them sing one from each
hymn.  Then  he  startled them by shouting, "Now I don't want any of you old fellows to be shocked, or say it isn't proper in church, because I'm
going  to  get  the  spirit awakened and maybe get the old devil on the run! Remember that the Lord who made the sunshine and the rejoicing hills
must  have  been behind the fellows that wrote the glad songs, so I want you to all pipe up good and lively with 'Dixie'! Yes, SIR! Then, for the
old fellows, like me, we'll have a stanza of that magnificent old reassurance of righteousness, 'How Firm a Foundation.'"

They  did  look  shocked,  some of them; but the youngsters, the boys and the girls keeping an aseptic tryst in the back pews, were delighted. He
made them sing the chorus of 'Dixie' over and over, till all but one or two rheumatic saints looked cheerful.

His text was from Galatians: "But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace."

"Don't you ever listen for one second," he commanded, "to these wishy-washy fellows that carry water on both shoulders, that love to straddle the
fence,  that  are  scared of the sternness of the good old-time Methodist doctrine and tell you that details don't mean anything, that dogmas and
the  discipline  don't  mean  anything.  They  do! Justification means something! Baptism means something! It means something that the wicked and
worldly  stand  for  this  horrible stinking tobacco and this insane alcohol, which makes a man like a murderer, but we Methodists keep ourselves
pure and unspotted and undefiled.

"But  tonight,  on this first day of getting acquainted with you, Brothers and Sisters, I don't want to go into these details. I want to get down
to the fundamental thing which details merely carry out, and that fundamental thing--What is it? What is it? What is it but Jesus Christ, and his
love for each and every one of us!

"Love! Love! Love! How beauteous the very word! Not carnal love but the divine presence. What is Love? Listen! It is the rainbow that stands out,
in all its glorious many-colored hues, illuminating and making glad against the dark clouds of life. It is the morning and the evening star, that
in glad refulgence, there on the awed horizon, call Nature's hearts to an uplifted rejoicing in God's marvelous firmament! Round about the cradle
of the babe, sleeping so quietly while o'er him hangs in almost agonized adoration his loving mother, shines the miracle of Love, and at the last
sad end, comforting the hearts that bear its immortal permanence, round even the quiet tomb, shines Love.

"What  is  great  art--and I am not speaking of ordinary pictures but of those celebrated Old Masters with their great moral lessons--what is the
mother  of  art,  the  inspiration of the poet, the patriot, the philosopher, and the great man of affairs, be he business man or statesman--yes,
what inspires their every effort save Love?

"Oh,  do  you not sometimes hear, stealing o'er the plains at dawn, coming as it were from some far distant secret place, a sound of melody? When
our  dear  sister  here  plays  the offertory, do you not seem sometimes to catch the distant rustle of the wings of cherubim? And what is music,
lovely,  lovely  music,  what  is fair melody? Ah, music, 'tis the voice of Love! Ah, 'tis the magician that makes right royal kings out of plain
folks  like  us! 'Tis the perfume of the wondrous flower, 'tis the strength of the athlete, strong and mighty to endure 'mid the heat and dust of
the valorous conquest. Ah, Love, Love, Love! Without it, we are less than beasts; with it, earth is heaven and we are as the gods!

"Yes,  that  is  what  Love--created by Christ Jesus and conveyed through all the generations by his church, particularly, it seems to me, by the
great, broad, democratic, liberal brotherhood of the Methodist Church--that is what it means to us.

"I  am  reminded of an incident in my early youth, while I was in the university. There was a young man in my class--I will not give you his name
except  to  say that we called him Jim--a young man pleasing to the eye, filled with every possibility for true deep Christian service, but alas!
so  beset  with the boyish pride of mere intellect, of mere smart-aleck egotism, that he was unwilling to humble himself before the source of all
intellect and accept Jesus as his savior.

"I  was very fond of Jim--in fact I had been willing to go and room with him in the hope of bringing him to his senses and getting him to embrace
salvation.  But  he  was  a man who had read books by folks like Ingersoll and Thomas Paine--fool, swell-headed folks that thought they knew more
than Almighty God! He would quote their polluted and devil-inspired ravings instead of listening to the cool healing stream that gushes blessedly
forth  from  the  Holy  Bible.  Well, I argued and argued and argued--I guess that shows I was pretty young and foolish myself! But one day I was
inspired to something bigger and better than any arguments.

"I  just  said  to Jim, all of a sudden, 'Jim,' I said, 'do you love your father?' (A fine old Christian gentleman his father was, too, a country
doctor, with that heroism, that self-sacrifice, that wide experience which the country doctor has.) 'Do you love your old dad?' I asked him.

"Naturally, Jim was awful' fond of his father, and he was kind of hurt that I should have asked him.

"'Sure,  of course I do!' he says. 'Well, Jim,' I says, 'does your father love you?' 'Why, of course he does,' said Jim. 'Then look here, Jim,' I
said;  'if your earthly father can love you, how much more must your Father in Heaven, who created all Love, how much more must he care and yearn
for you!'

"Well,  sir,  that  knocked  him right over. He forgot all the smart-aleck things he'd been reading. He just looked at me, and I could see a tear
quivering in the lad's eyes as he said, 'I see how you mean, now, and I want to say, friend, that I'm going to accept Jesus Christ as my lord and
master!'

"Oh,  yes,  yes,  yes, how beautiful it is, the golden glory of God's Love! Do you not FEEL it? I mean that! I don't mean just a snuffling, lazy,
mechanical acceptance, but a passionate--"


5


He had them!

It  had  been  fun to watch the old fanatics, who had objected to the singing of Dixie, come under the spell and admit his power. He had preached
straight at one of them after another; he had conquered them all.

At the end they shook hands even more warmly than in the morning.

Cleo  stood  back,  hypnotized. When he came to her she intoned, her eyes unseeing, "Oh, Reverend Gantry, this is the greatest day our old church
has ever known!"

"Did you like what I said of Love?"

"Oh . . . LOVE . . . yes!"

She spoke as one asleep; she seemed not to know that he was holding her hand, softly; she walked out of the church beside him, unspeaking, and of
her tranced holiness he felt a little awe.


6


In  his attention to business, Elmer had not given especial heed to the collections. It had not been carelessness, for he knew his technique as a
Professional  Good  Man.  But  the first day, he felt, he ought to establish himself as a spiritual leader, and when they all understood that, he
would see to it that they paid suitably for the spiritual leadership. Was not the Laborer worthy of his Hire?


7


The  reception to welcome Elmer was held the next Tuesday evening in the basement of the church. From seven-thirty, when they met, till a quarter
of eight, he was busy with a prodigious amount of hand-shaking.

They  told  him  he was very eloquent, very spiritual. He could see Cleo's pride at their welcome. She had the chance to whisper, "Do you realize
how much it means? Mostly they aren't anything like so welcoming to a new preacher. Oh, I am so glad!"

Brother  Benham  called them to order, in the basement, and Sister Kilween sang "The Holy City" as a solo. It was pretty bad. Brother Benham in a
short  hesitating  talk  said  they  had  been  delighted by Brother Gantry's sermons. Brother Gantry in a long and gushing talk said that he was
delighted  by Brother Benham, the other Benhams, the rest of the congregation, Banjo Crossing, Banjo County, the United States of America, Bishop
Toomis, and the Methodist Episcopal Church (North) in all its departments.

Cleo  concluded the celebration with a piano solo, and there was a great deal more of hand-shaking. It seemed to be the rule that whoever came or
was pushed within reach of the pastor, no matter how many times during the evening, should attack his hand each time.

And they had cake and homemade ice cream.

It was very dull and, to Elmer, very grateful. He felt accepted, secure, and ready to begin his work.


8


He  had  plans for the Wednesday evening prayer-meeting. He knew what a prayer-meeting in Banjo Crossing would be like. They would drone a couple
of hymns and the faithful, half a dozen of them, always using the same words, would pop up and mumble, "Oh, I thank the Lord that he has revealed
himself to me and has shown me the error of my ways and oh that those who have not seen his light and whose hearts are heavy with sin may turn to
him  this  evening while they still have life and breath"--which they never did. And the sullenly unhappy woman in the faded jacket, at the back,
would demand, "I want the prayers of the congregation to save my husband from the sins of smoking and drinking."

"I  may  not,"  Elmer  meditated, "be as swell a scholar as old Toomis, but I can invent a lot of stunts and everything to wake the church up and
attract the crowds, and that's worth a whole lot more than all this yowling about the prophets and theology!"

He began his "stunts" with that first prayer-meeting.

He  suggested,  "I  know  a  lot  of us want to give testimony, but sometimes it's hard to think of new ways of saying things, and let me suggest
something  new.  Let's  give our testimony by picking out hymns that express just how we feel about the dear Savior and his help. Then we can all
join together in the gladsome testimony."

It went over.

"That's a fine fellow, that new Methodist preacher," said the villagers that week.

They  were  shy  enough,  and awkward and apparently indifferent, but in a friendly way they were spying on him, equally ready to praise him as a
neighbor or snicker at him as a fool.

"Yes,"  they said; "a fine fellow, and smart's a whip, and mighty eloquent, and a real husky MAN. Looks you right straight in the eye. Only thing
that  bothers  me--He's  too good to stay here with us. And if he is so good, why'd they ever send him here in the first place? What's wrong with
him? Boozer, d'ye think?"

Elmer,  who  knew  his  Paris,  Kansas,  his Gritzmacher Springs, had guessed that precisely these would be the opinions, and he took care, as he
handshook his way from store to store, house to house, to explain that for years he had been out in the evangelistic field, and that by advice of
his old and true friend, Bishop Toomis, he was taking this year in a smaller garden-patch to rest up for his labors to come.

He  was  assiduous,  but  careful, in his pastoral calls on the women. He praised their gingerbread, Morris chairs, and souvenirs of Niagara, and
their  children's  school-exercise  books.  He  became  friendly,  as  friendly  as he could be to any male, with the village doctor, the village
homeopath, the lawyer, the station-agent, and all the staff at Benham's store.

But  he  saw  that  if he was to take the position suitable to him in the realm of religion, he must study, he must gather several more ideas and
ever so many new words, to be put together for the enlightenment of the generation.


9


His  duties  at  Banjo  Crossing were not violent, and hour after hour, in his quiet chamber at the residence of the Widow Clark, he gave himself
trustingly to scholarship.

He  continued his theological studies; he read all the sermons by Beecher, Brooks, and Chapman; he read three chapters of the Bible daily; and he
got  clear through the letter G in the Bible dictionary. Especially he studied the Methodist Discipline, in preparation for his appearance before
the Annual Conference Board of Examiners as a candidate for full conference membership--full ministerhood.

The  Discipline,  which  is a combination of Methodist prayer-book and by-laws, was not always exciting. Elmer felt a lack of sermon-material and
spiritual quickening in the paragraph:


The concurrent recommendation of two-thirds of all the members of the several Annual Conferences present and voting, and of two-thirds of all the
members  of the Lay Electoral Conferences present and voting, shall suffice to authorize the next ensuing General Conference by a two-thirds vote
to  alter  or amend any of the provisions of this Constitution excepting Article X, 1; and also, whenever such alteration or amendment shall have
been  first  recommended  by  a  General  Conference  by  a  two-thirds vote, then so soon as two-thirds of all the members of the several Annual
Conferences  present  and  voting,  and  two-thirds  of  all the members of the Lay Electoral Conference present and voting, shall have concurred
therein, such alteration or amendment shall take effect; and the result of the vote shall be announced by the General Superintendents.


He liked better, from the Articles of Religion in the Discipline:


The  offering of Christ, once made, is that perfect redemption, propitiation, and satisfaction for all the sins of the whole world, both original
and actual; and there is none other satisfaction for sin but that alone. Wherefore the sacrifice of masses, in the which it is commonly said that
the priest doth offer Christ for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt, is a blasphemous fable and dangerous deceit.


He wasn't altogether certain what it meant, but it had such a fine uplifting roll. "Blasphemous fable and dangerous deceit." Fine!

He  informed  his  edified  congregation the next Sunday that the infallibility of the Pope was "a blasphemous fable and a dangerous deceit," and
they almost jumped.

He had much edification from these "Rules for a Preacher's Conduct" in the Discipline:


Be Serious. Let your motto be, "Holiness to the Lord." Avoid all lightness, jesting, and foolish talking. Converse sparingly and conduct yourself
prudently with women. . . . Tell every one under your care what you think wrong in his conduct and temper, and that lovingly and plainly, as soon
as may be; else it will fester in your heart.

As  a  general  method of employing our time we advise you, 1. As often as possible to rise at four. 2. From four to five in the morning and from
five to six in the evening to meditate, pray, and read the Scriptures with notes.

Extirpate out of our Church buying or selling goods which have not paid the duty laid upon them by government. . . . Extirpate bribery--receiving
anything, directly or indirectly--for voting at any election.


Elmer  became  a  model  in  all  these departments except, perhaps, avoiding lightness and jesting; conducting himself in complete prudence with
women;  telling  every  one  under  his  care  what  he  thought  wrong with them--that would have taken all his spare time; arising at four; and
extirpating sellers of smuggled goods.

For  his  grades,  to be examined by the Annual Conference, he wrote to Dean Trosper at Mizpah. He explained to the dean that he had seen a great
new  light, that he had worked with Sister Falconer, but that it had been the early influence of Dean Trosper which, working somewhat slowly, had
led him to his present perfection.

He received the grades, with a letter in which the dean observed:

"I  hope  you will not overwork your new zeal for righteousness. It might be hard on folks. I seem to recall a tendency in you to overdo a lot of
things.  As  a  Baptist,  let me congratulate the Methodists on having you. If you really do mean all you say about your present state of grace--
well, don't let that keep you from going right on praying. There may still be virtues for you to acquire."

"Well,  by  God!"  raged  the  misjudged  saint,  and, "Oh, rats, what's the odds! Got the credentials, anyway, and he says I can get my B. D. by
passing an examination. Trouble with old Trosper is he's one of these smart alecks. T' hell with him!"


10


Along  with his theological and ecclesiastical researches, Elmer applied himself to more worldly literature. He borrowed books from Cleo and from
the  tiny  village library, housed in the public school; and on his occasional trips to Sparta, the nearest sizable city, he even bought a volume
or two, when he could find good editions secondhand.

He began with Browning.

He had heard a lot about Browning. He had heard that he was a stylish poet and an inspiring thinker. But personally he did not find that he cared
so  much for Browning. There were so many lines that he had to read three or four times before they made sense, and there was so much stuff about
Italy and all those Wop countries.

But  Browning  did  give him a number of new words for the notebook of polysyllables and phrases which he was to keep for years, and which was to
secrete material for some of his most rotund public utterances. There has been preserved a page from it:


incinerate--burn  up  Merovingian--French  tribe about A.D. 500 rem Golgotha was scene crucifixn Leigh Hunt--poet--1840--n. g. lupin--blue flower
defeasance--making  nix  chanson  (pro.  Shan-song)--French  kind  of song Rem: Man worth while is m. who can smile when ev thing goes dead wrong
Sermon on man that says other planets inhabited--nix. cause Bible says o of Xt trying to save THEM.


Tennyson,  Elmer found more elevating then Browning. He liked "Maud"--she resembled Cleo, only not so friendly; and he delighted in the homicides
and  morality  of "Idylls of the King." He tried Fitzgerald's Omar, which had been recommended by the literary set at Terwillinger, and he made a
discovery which he thought of communicating through the press.

He had heard it said that Omar was non-religious, but when he read:


Myself  when  young  did  eagerly  frequent Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument About it and about: but evermore Came out by the same door
wherein I went,


he perceived that in this quatrain Omar obviously meant that though teachers might do a whole lot of arguing, Omar himself stuck to his belief in
Jesus.

In Dickens Elmer had a revelation.

He  had not known that any literature published previous to the Saturday Evening Post could be thrilling. He did not care so much for the humor--
it  seemed  to  him that Mr. Dickens was vulgar and almost immoral when he got Pickwick drunk and caused Mantalini to contemplate suicide--but he
loved the sentiment. When Paul Dombey died, Elmer could have wept; when Miss Nickleby protected her virtue against Sir Mulberry Hawk, Elmer would
have  liked  to  have  been  there,  both  as  a  parson and as an athlete, to save her from the accursed society man, so typical of his class in
debauching youth and innocence.

"Yes,  sir,  you bet, that's great stuff!" exulted Elmer. "There's a writer that goes right down to the depths of human nature. Great stuff. I'll
preach on him when I get these hicks educated up to literary sermons."

But  his  artistic  pursuits  could  not  be  all  play.  He had to master philosophy as well; and he plunged into Carlyle and Elbert Hubbard. He
terminated  the  first  plunge,  very  icy,  with  haste;  but  in  the  biographies by Mr. Hubbard, at that time dominating America, Elmer found
inspiration.  He learned that Rockefeller had not come to be head of Standard Oil by chance, but by labor, genius, and early Baptist training. He
learned that there are sermons in stones, edification in farmers, beatitude in bankers, and style in adjectives.

Elmer,  who  had  always lived as publicly as a sparrow, could not endure keeping his literary treasures to himself. But for once Cleo Benham was
not  an  adequate  mate.  He felt that she had read more of such belles-lettres as "The Message to Garcia" than even himself, so his companion in
artistic adventure was Clyde Tippey, the Reverend Clyde Tippey, pastor of the United Brethren Church of Banjo Crossing.

Clyde  was not, like Elmer, educated. He had left high school after his second year, and since then he had had only one year in a United Brethren
seminary.  Elmer  didn't  think much, he decided, of all this associating and fellowshiping with a lot of rival preachers--it was his job, wasn't
it, to get their parishioners away from them? But it was an ecstasy to have, for once, a cleric to whom he could talk down.

He  called frequently on the Reverend Mr. Tippey in the modest cottage which (at the age of twenty-six) Clyde occupied with his fat wife and four
children. Mr. Tippey had pale blue eyes and he wore a fourteen-and-a-half collar encircling a thirteen neck.

"Clyde,"  crowed  Elmer,  "if  you're  going to reach the greatest number and not merely satisfy their spiritual needs but give 'em a rich, full,
joyous life, you gotta explain great literature to 'em."

"Yes. Maybe that's so. Haven't had time to read much, but I guess there's lot of fine lessons to be learned out of literature," said the Reverend
Mr. Tippey.

"IS there! Say, listen to this! From Longfellow. The poet.


Life is real! Life is earnest! And the grave is not its goal,


and this--just get the dandy swing to it:


Lives of great men all remind us We can make our lives sublime, And, departing, leave behind us Footprints on the sands of time.


I  read  that way back in school-reader, but I never had anybody to show me what it meant, like I'm going to do with my congregation. Just think!
'The grave is NOT its goal!' Why, say, Longfellow is just as much of a preacher as you or I are! Eh?"

"Yes, that's so. I'll have to read some of his poetry. Could you lend me the book?"

"You bet I will, Clyde! Be a fine thing for you. A young preacher like you has got to remember, if you'll allow an older hand to say so, that our
education  isn't  finished when we start preaching. We got to go on enlarging our mental horizons. See how I mean? Now I'm going to start you off
reading  'David  Copperfield.' Say, that's full of fine passages. There's this scene where--This David, he had an aunt that everybody thought she
was simply an old crab, but the poor little fellow, his father-in-law--I hope it won't shock you to hear a preacher say it, but he was an old son
of  a gun, that's what he was, and he treated David terribly, simply terribly, and David ran away, and found his aunt's house, and then it proved
she was fine and dandy to him! Say, 'll just make the tears come to your eyes, the place where he finds her house and she don't recognize him and
he  tells  her who he is, and then she kneels right down beside him--And shows how none of us are justified in thinking other folks are mean just
because we don't understand 'em. You bet! Yes, sir. 'David Copperfield.' You sure can't go wrong reading that book!"

"'David Copperfield.' I've heard the name. It's mighty nice of you to come and tell me about it, Brother."

"Oh, that's nothing, nothing at all! Mighty glad to help you in any way I can, Clyde."

Elmer's success as a literary and moral evangel to Mr. Clyde Tippey sent him back to his excavations with new fervor. He would lead the world not
only to virtue but to beauty.

Considering everything, Longfellow seemed the best news to carry to this surprised and waiting world, and Elmer managed to get through many, many
pages, solemnly marking the passages which he was willing to sanction, and which did not mention wine.


Ah,  nothing  is  too  late  Till  the tired heart shall cease to palpitate. Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles Wrote his grand Oedipus, and
Simonides Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers, When each had numbered more than fourscore years.


Elmer  did not, perhaps, know very much about Simonides, but with these instructive lines he was able to decorate a sermon in each of the pulpits
he was henceforth to hold.

He worked his way with equal triumph through James Russell Lowell, Whittier, and Ella Wheeler Wilcox. He gave up Kipling because he found that he
really enjoyed reading Kipling, and concluded that he could not be a good poet. But he was magnificent in discovering Robert Burns.

Then he collided with Josiah Royce.


11


Bishop  Wesley  R. Toomis had suggested to Elmer that he ought to read philosophy, and he had recommended Royce. He himself, he said, hadn't been
able  to  give so much time to Royce as he would have liked, but he knew that here was a splendid field for any intellectual adventurer. So Elmer
came back from Sparta with the two volumes of Royce's "The World and the Individual," and two new detective stories.

He  would  skip pleasantly but beneficially through Royce, then pick up whatever ideas he might find in all these other philosophers he had heard
mentioned: James and Kant and Bergson and who was that fellow with the funny name--Spinoza?

He opened the first volume of Royce confidently, and drew back in horror.

He  had  a nice, long, free afternoon in which to become wise. He labored on. He read each sentence six times. His mouth drooped pathetically. It
did not seem fair that a Christian knight who was willing to give his time to listening to people's ideas should be treated like this. He sighed,
and read the first paragraph again. He sighed, and the book dropped into his lap.

He  looked  about.  On  the  stand beside him was one of the detective stores. He reached for it. It began as all proper detective stories should
begin--with  the tap-room of the Cat and Fiddle Inn, on a stormy night when gusts of rain beat against the small ancient casement, but within all
was bright and warm; the Turkey-red curtains shone in the firelight, and the burnished handles of the beer-pump--

An  hour later Elmer had reached the place where the Scotland Yard Inspector was attacked from the furze-bush by the maniac. He excitedly crossed
his legs, and Royce fell to the floor and lay there.

But he kept at it. In less than three months he had reached page fifty-one of the first volume of Royce. Then he bogged down in a footnote:


The  scholastic text-books, namely, as for instance the Disputations of Suarez, employ our terms much as follows. Being (ens), taken quite in the
abstract,  such  writers said, is a word that shall equally apply BOTH to the WHAT and to the THAT. Thus if I speak of the being of a man, I may,
according to this usage, mean either the ideal nature of a man, apart from man's existence, or the existence of a man. The term "Being" is so far
indifferent  to  both  of  the  sharply  sundered  senses. In this sense Being may be viewed as of two sorts. As the WHAT it means the Essence of
things,  or  the Esse Essentiæ. In this sense, by the Being of a man, you mean simply the definition of what a man as an idea means. As the THAT,
Being  means  the Existent Being, or Esse Existentiæ. The Esse Existentiæ of a man, or its existent being, would be what it would possess only if
it  existed.  And so the scholastic writers in question always have to point out whether by the term Ens or Being, they in any particular passage
are referring to the WHAT or to the THAT, to the Esse Essentiæ or to the Existentiæ.


The Reverend Elmer Gantry drew his breath, quietly closed the book, and shouted, "OH, SHUT UP!"

He never again read any philosophy more abstruse than that of Wallace D. Wattles or Edward Bok.


12


He  did not neglect his not very arduous duties. He went fishing--which gained him credit among the males. He procured a dog, also a sound, manly
thing  to do, and though he occasionally kicked the dog in the country, he was clamorously affectionate with it in town. He went up to Sparta now
and  then  to  buy  books,  attend  the  movies, and sneak into theaters; and though he was tempted by other diversions even less approved by the
Methodist Discipline, he really did make an effort to keep from falling.

By  enthusiasm  and brass, he raised most of the church debt, and made agitation for a new carpet. He risked condemnation by having a cornet solo
right  in  church  one  Sunday  evening.  He  kept  himself  from paying any attention, except for rollickingly kissing her once or twice, to the
fourteen-year-old daughter of his landlady. He was, in fact, full of good works and clerical exemplariness.

But the focus of his life now was Cleo Benham.



CHAPTER XXI


1


With  women Elmer had always considered himself what he called a "quick worker," but the properties of the ministry, the delighted suspicion with
which  the  gossips watched a preacher who went courting, hindered his progress with Cleo. He could not, like the young blades in town, walk with
Cleo up the railroad tracks or through the willow-shaded pasture by Banjo River. He could hear ten thousand Methodist elders croaking, "Avoid the
vurry APPEARANCE of evil."

He  knew that she was in love with him--had been ever since she had first seen him, a devout yet manly leader, standing by the pulpit in the late
light  of  summer  afternoon.  He  was  certain  that  she would surrender to him whenever he should demand it. He was certain that she had every
desirable quality. And yet--

Oh,  somehow,  she did not stir him. Was he afraid of being married and settled and monogamic? Was it simply that she needed awakening? How could
he awaken her when her father was always in the way?

Whenever he called on her, old Benham insisted on staying in the parlor. He was, strictly outside of business hours, an amateur of religion, fond
of  talking about it. Just as Elmer, shielded by the piano, was ready to press Cleo's hand, Benham would lumber up and twang, "What do you think,
Brother? Do you believe salvation comes by faith or works?"

Elmer  made  it  all  clear--muttering  to himself, "Well, you, you old devil, with that cut-throat store of yours, you better get into Heaven on
faith, for God knows you'll never do it on works!"

And  when Elmer was about to slip out to the kitchen with her to make lemonade, Benham held him by demanding, "What do you think of John Wesley's
doctrine of perfection?"

"Oh, it's absolutely sound and proven," admitted Elmer, wondering what the devil Mr. Wesley's doctrine of perfection might be.

It  is  possible  that the presence of the elder Benhams, preventing too close a communion with Cleo, kept Elmer from understanding what it meant
that he should not greatly have longed to embrace her. He translated his lack of urgency into virtue; and went about assuring himself that he was
indeed  a  reformed  and  perfected  character  .  . . and so went home and hung about the kitchen, chattering with little Jane Clark in pastoral
jokiness.

Even  when  he  was  alone  with  Cleo,  when she drove him in the proud Benham motor for calls in the country, even while he was volubly telling
himself how handsome she was, he was never quite natural with her.


2


He  called  on  an  evening  of  late  November, and both her parents were out, attending Eastern Star. She looked dreary and red-eyed. He crowed
benevolently while they stood at the parlor door, "Why, Sister Cleo, what's the matter? You look kind of sad."

"Oh, it's nothing--"

"Come on now! Tell me! I'll pray for you, or beat somebody up, whichever you prefer!"

"Oh, I don't think you ought to joke about--Anyway, it's really nothing."

She  was  staring  at  the  floor.  He  felt  buoyant  and dominating, so delightfully stronger than she. He lifted her chin with his forefinger,
demanding, "Look up at me now!"

In her naked eyes there was such shameful, shameless longing for him that he was drawn. He could not but slip his arm around her, and she dropped
her  head  on  his  shoulder,  weeping,  all  her  pride gone from her. He was so exalted by the realization of his own power that he took it for
passion,  and  suddenly he was kissing her, conscious of the pale fineness of her skin, her flattering yielding to him; suddenly he was blurting,
"I've loved you, oh, terrible, ever since the first second I saw you!"

As she sat on his knee, as she drooped against him unresisting, he was certain that she was very beautiful, altogether desirable.

The  Benhams  came  home--Mrs.  Benham to cry happily over the engagement, and Mr. Benham to indulge in a deal of cordial back-slapping, and such
jests as, "Well, by golly, now I'm going to have a real live preacher in the family, guess I'll have to be so doggone honest that the store won't
hardly pay!"


3


His  mother came on from Kansas for the wedding, in January. Her happiness in seeing him in his pulpit, in seeing the beauty and purity of Cleo--
and  the prosperity of Cleo's father--was such that she forgot her long dragging sorrow in his many disloyalties to the God she had given him, in
his having deserted the Baptist sanctuary for the dubious, the almost agnostic liberalisms of the Methodists.

With  his  mother  present, with Cleo going about roused to a rosy excitement, with Mrs. Benham mothering everybody and frantically cooking, with
Mr.  Benham  taking  him  out  to the back-porch and presenting him with a check for five thousand dollars, Elmer had the feeling of possessing a
family, of being rooted and solid and secure.

For  the  wedding  there were scores of cocoanut cakes and hundreds of orange blossoms, roses from a real city florist in Sparta, new photographs
for  the  family  album, a tub of strictly temperance punch and beautiful but modest lingerie for Cleo. It was tremendous. But Elmer was a little
saddened by the fact that there was no one whom he wanted for best man; no one who had been his friend since Jim Lefferts.

He  asked  Ray  Faucett,  butter-maker  at the creamery and choir-singer in the church, and the village was flattered that out of the hundreds of
intimates Elmer must have in the great world outside, he should have chosen one of their own boys.

They  were  married,  during  a  half blizzard, by the district superintendent. They took the train for Zenith, to stop overnight on their way to
Chicago.

Not  till he was on the train, the shouting and the rice-showers over, did Elmer gasp to himself, looking at Cleo's rather unchanging smile, "Oh,
good God, I've gone and tied myself up, and I never can have any fun again!"

But he was very manly, gentlemanly in fact; he concealed his distaste for her and entertained her with an account of the beauties of Longfellow.


4


Cleo  looked  tired,  and  toward the end of the journey, in the winter evening, with the gale desolate, she seemed scarce to be listening to his
observations  on  graded  Sunday  School  lessons, the treatment of corns, his triumphs at Sister Falconer's meetings, and the inferiority of the
Reverend Clyde Tippey.

"Well, you might pay a LITTLE attention to me, anyway!" he snarled.

"Oh, I'm sorry! I really was paying attention. I'm just tired--all the preparations for the wedding and everything."

She looked at him beseechingly. "Oh, Elmer, you must take care of me! I'm giving myself to you entirely--oh, completely."

"Huh! So you look at it as a SACRIFICE to marry me, do you!"

"Oh, no, I didn't mean it that way--"

"And  I  suppose  you  think I don't intend to take care of you! Sure! Prob'ly I stay out late nights and play cards and gamble and drink and run
around after women! Of course! I'm not a minister of the gospel--I'm a saloon-keeper!"

"Oh,  dear, dear, dear, oh, my dearest, I didn't mean to hurt you! I just meant--You're so strong, and big, and I'm--oh, of course I'm not a tiny
little thing, but I haven't got your strength."

He enjoyed feeling injured, but he was warning himself, "Shut up, you chump! You'll never educate her to make love if you go bawling her out."

He  magnanimously  comforted her: "Oh, I know. Of course, you poor dear. Fool thing anyway, your mother having this big wedding, and all the eats
and the relatives coming in and everything."

And with all this, she still seemed distressed.

But  he  patted her hand, and talked about the cottage they were going to furnish in Banjo Crossing; and as he thought of the approaching Zenith,
of  their room at the O'Hearn House (there was no necessity for a whole suite, as formerly, when he had had to impress his Prosperity pupils), he
became more ardent, whispered to her that she was beautiful, stroked her arm till she trembled.


5


The  bell-boy  had  scarcely closed the door of their room, with its double bed, when he had seized her, torn off her overcoat, with its snow-wet
collar,  and  hurled  it on the floor. He kissed her throat. When he had loosened his clasp, she retreated, the back of her hand fearfully at her
lips, her voice terrified as she begged, "Oh, don't! Not now! I'm afraid!"

"That's damned nonsense!" he raged, stalking her as she backed away.

"Oh, no, please!"

"Say, what the devil do you think marriage is?"

"Oh, I've never heard you curse before!"

"My  God,  I  wouldn't, if you didn't act so's it'd try the patience of a saint on a monument!" He controlled himself. "Now, now, now! I'm sorry!
Guess I'm kind of tired, too. There, there, little girl. Didn't mean to scare you. Excuse me. Just showed I was crazy in love with you, don't you
see?"

To  his  broad  and apostolic smirk she responded with a weak smile, and he seized her again, laid his thick hand on her breast. Between his long
embraces, though his anger at her limpness was growing, he sought to encourage her by shouting, "Come on now, Clee, show some spunk!"

She did not forbid him again; she was merely a pale acquiescence--pale save when she flushed unhappily as he made fun of the old-fashioned, long-
sleeved nightgown which she timidly put on in the indifferent privacy of the bathroom.

"Gee,  you might as well wear a gunny-sack!" he roared, holding out his arms. She tried to look confident as she slowly moved toward him. She did
not succeed.

"Fellow OUGHT to be brutal, for her own sake," he told himself, and seized her shoulders.

When he awoke beside her and found her crying, he really did have to speak up to her.

"You  look  here now! The fact you're a preacher's wife doesn't keep you from being human! You're a fine one to teach brats in Sunday School!" he
said, and many other strong spirited things, while she wept, her hair disordered round her meek face, which he hated.


6


The discovery that Cleo would never be a lively lover threw him the more into ambition when they had returned to Banjo Crossing.

Cleo,  though  she  was  unceasingly bewildered by his furies, found something of happiness in furnishing their small house, arranging his books,
adoring  his  pulpit  eloquence, and in receiving, as the Pastor's Wife, homage even from her old friends. He was able to forget her, and all his
thought went to his holy climbing. He was eager for the Annual Conference, in spring; he had to get on, to a larger town, a larger church.

He  was  bored by Banjo Crossing. The life of a small-town preacher, prevented from engaging even in the bucolic pleasures, is rather duller than
that of a watchman at a railroad-crossing.

Elmer hadn't actually, enough to do. Though later, in "institutional churches" he was to be as hustling as any other business man, now he had not
over  twenty  hours  a  week  of real activity. There were four meetings every Sunday, if he attended Sunday School and Epworth League as well as
church;  there  was  prayer-meeting on Wednesday evening, choir practise on Friday, the Ladies' Aid and the Missionary Society every fortnight or
so,  and  perhaps  once  a fortnight a wedding, a funeral. Pastoral calls took not over six hours a week. With the aid of his reference books, he
could  prepare his two sermons in five hours--and on weeks when he felt lazy, or the fishing was good, that was three hours more than he actually
took.

In  the  austerities  of  the  library  Elmer  was indolent, but he did like to rush about, meet people, make a show of accomplishment. It wasn't
possible to accomplish much in Banjo. The good villagers were content with Sunday and Wednesday-evening piety.

But he did begin to write advertisements for his weekly services--the inception of that salesmanship of salvation which was to make him known and
respected  in every advertising club and forward-looking church in the country. The readers of notices to the effect that services would be held,
as  usual, at the Banjo Valley Pioneer were startled to find among the Presbyterian Church, the Disciples Church, the United Brethren Church, the
Baptist Church, this advertisement:


WAKE UP, MR. DEVIL!

If  old  Satan were as lazy as some would-be Christians in this burg, we'd all be safe. But he isn't! Come out next Sunday, 10:30 A.M. and hear a
red-blooded sermon by Rev. Gantry on

WOULD JESUS PLAY POKER? M. E. Church


He  improved  his typewriting, and that was a fine thing to do. The Reverend Elmer Gantry's powerful nature had been cramped by the slow use of a
pen; it needed the gallop of the keys; and from his typewriter were increasingly to come floods of new moral and social gospels.

In  February he held two weeks' of intensive evangelistic meetings. He had in a traveling missioner, who wept, and his wife, who sang. Neither of
them, Elmer chuckled privily, could compare with himself, who had worked with Sharon Falconer. But they were new to Banjo Crossing, and he saw to
it  that  it was himself who at the climax of hysteria charged down into the frightened mob and warned them that unless they came up and knelt in
subjection, they might be snatched to hell before breakfast.

There  were  twelve  additions  to the church, and five renewals of faith on the part of backsliders, and Elmer was able to have published in the
Western Christian Advocate a note which carried his credit through all the circles of the saints:


The  church  at  Banjo Crossing has had a remarkable and stirring revival under Brother T. R. Feesels and Sister Feesels, the singing evangelist,
assisted  by  the  local pastor, Reverend Gantry, who was himself formerly in evangelistic work as assistant to the late Sharon Falconer. A great
outpouring of the spirit and far-reaching results are announced, with many uniting with the church.


He  also,  after  letting  the  town  know  how much it added to his burdens, revived and every week for two weeks personally supervised a Junior
Epworth  League--the  juvenile  department  of that admirable association of young people whose purpose is, it has itself announced, to "take the
WRECK out of recreation and make it re-creation."

He had a note from Bishop Toomis hinting that the bishop had most gratifying reports from the district superintendent about Elmer's "diligent and
genuinely creative efforts" and hinting that at the coming Annual Conference, Elmer would be shifted to a considerably larger church.

"Fine!"  glowed  Elmer.  "Gosh,  I'll  be glad to get away. These rubes here get about as much out of high-class religion, like I give them, as a
fleet of mules!"


7


Ishuah  Rogers  was dead, and they were holding his funeral at the Methodist Church. As farmer, as store-keeper, as post-master, he had lived all
his seventy-nine years in Banjo Crossing.

Old J. F. Whittlesey was shaken by Ishuah's death. They had been boys together, young men together, neighbors on the farm, and in his last years,
when Ishuah was nearly blind and living with his daughter Jenny, J. F. Whittlesey had come into town every day to spend hours sitting with him on
the  porch,  wrangling  over  Blaine and Grover Cleveland. Whittlesey hadn't another friend left alive. To drive past Jenny's now and not see old
Ishuah made the world empty.

He  was  in  the  front row at the church; he could see his friend's face in the open coffin. All of Ishuah's meanness and fussiness and care was
wiped  out; there was only the dumb nobility with which he had faced blizzard and August heat, labor and sorrow; only the heroic thing Whittlesey
had loved in him.

And he would not see Ishuah again, ever.

He  listened  to  Elmer,  who,  his  eyes  almost  filled  at  the drama of the church full of people mourning their old friend, lulled them with
Revelation's triumphant song:


These  are  they that come out of the great tribulation, and they washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb. Therefore are
they before the throne of God; and they serve him day and night in his temple; and he that sitteth on the throne shall spread his tabernacle over
them. They shall hunger no more, neither thirst any more; neither shall the sun strike upon them, nor any heat; for the Lamb that is in the midst
of the throne shall be their shepherd, and shall guide them unto fountains of waters of life: and God shall wipe away every tear from their eyes.


They sang, "O God, Our Help in Ages Past," and Elmer led the singing, while old Whittlesey tried to pipe up with them.

They filed past the coffin. When Whittlesey had this last moment's glimpse of Ishuah's sunken face, his dry eyes were blind, and he staggered.

Elmer caught him with his great arms, and whispered, "He has gone to his glory, to his great reward! Don't let's sorrow for him!"

In Elmer's confident strength old Whittlesey found reassurance. He clung to him, muttering, "God bless you, Brother," before he hobbled out.


8


"You were wonderful at the funeral today! I've never seen you so sure of immortality," worshiped Cleo, as they walked home.

"Yuh,  but  they  don't appreciate it--not even when I said about how this old fellow was a sure-enough hero. We got to get on to some burg where
I'll have a chance."

"Don't you think God's in Banjo Crossing as much as in a city?"

"Oh,  now, Cleo, don't go and get religious on me! You simply can't understand how it takes it out of a fellow to do a funeral right and send 'em
all home solaced. You may find God here, but you don't find the salaries!"

He  was not angry with Cleo now, nor bullying. In these two months he had become indifferent to her; indifferent enough to stop hating her and to
admire her conduct of the Sunday School, her tactful handling of the good sisters of the church when they came snooping to the parsonage.

"I think I'll take a little walk," he muttered when they reached home.

He came to the Widow Clark's house, where he had lived as bachelor.

Jane  was  out  in the yard, the March breeze molding her skirt about her; rosy face darker and eyes more soft as she saw the pastor hailing her,
magnificently raising his hat.

She fluttered toward him.

"You folks ever miss me? Guess you're glad to get rid of the poor old preacher that was always cluttering up the house!"

"We miss you awfully!"

He  felt his whole body yearning toward her. Hurriedly he left her and wished he hadn't left her, and hastened to get himself far from the danger
to his respectability. He hated Cleo again now, in an injured, puzzled way.

"I think I'll sneak up to Sparta this week," he fumed, then: "No! Conference coming in ten days; can't take any chances till after that."


9


The  Annual  Conference,  held  in  Sparta,  late in March. The high time of the year, when the Methodist preachers of half a dozen districts met
together  for  prayer  and rejoicing, to hear of the progress of the Kingdom and incidentally to learn whether they were to have better jobs this
coming year.

The bishop presiding--Wesley R. Toomis, himself--with his district superintendents, grave and bustling.

The preachers, trying to look as though prospective higher salaries were unworthy their attention.

Between  meetings  they  milled  about in the large auditorium of the Preston Memorial Methodist Church: visiting laymen and nearly three hundred
ministers.

Veteran  country parsons, whiskered and spectacled, rusty-coated and stooped, still serving two country churches, or three or four; driving their
fifty miles a week; content for reading with the Scriptures and the weekly Advocate.

New-fledged  country preachers, their large hands still calloused from plow-handle and reins, content for learning with two years of high school,
content with the Old Testament for history and geology.

The  preachers of the larger towns; most of them hard to recognize as clerics, in their neat business suits and modest four-in-hands; frightfully
cordial  one  to another; perhaps a quarter of them known as modernists and given to reading popular manuals of biology and psychology; the other
three-quarters still devoted to banging the pulpit apropos of Genesis.

But  moving  through  these  masses,  easily  noticeable,  the  inevitable  successes:  the  district  superintendents, the pastors of large city
congregations, the conceivable candidates for college presidencies, mission-boards, boards of publication, bishoprics.

They were not all of them leonine and actor-like, these staff officers. No few were gaunt, or small, wiry, spectacled, and earnest; but they were
all  admirable  politicians, long in memory of names, quick to find flattering answers. They believed that the Lord rules everything, but that it
was  only  friendly  to  help  him out; and that the enrollment of political allies helped almost as much as prayer in becoming known as suitable
material for lucrative pastorates.

Among  these  leaders  were  the  Savonarolas,  gloomy fellows, viewing the progress of machine civilization with biliousness; capable of drawing
thousands of auditors by their spicy but chaste denunciations of burglary, dancing, and show-windows filled with lingerie.

Then  the  renowned  liberals,  preachers  who  filled  city tabernacles or churches in university towns by showing that skipping whatever seemed
unreasonable in the Bible did not interfere with considering it all divinely inspired, and that there are large moral lessons in the paintings of
Landseer and Rosa Bonheur.

Most  notable  among  the  aristocrats  were a certain number of large, suave, deep-voiced, inescapably cordial clerical gentlemen who would have
looked well in Shakespearean productions or as floor-walkers. And with them was presently to be found the Reverend Elmer Gantry.

He  was  a  new-comer,  he  was merely hoping to have the Conference recognize his credentials and accept him as a member, and he had only a tiny
church,  yet  from  somewhere  crept  the rumor that he was a man to be watched, to be enrolled in one's own political machine; and he was called
"Brother"  by  a pastor whose sacred rating was said to be not less than ten thousand a year. They observed him; they conversed with him not only
on  the  sacraments  but  on automobiles and the use of pledge envelopes; and as they felt the warmth of his handshake, as they heard the amiable
bim-bom  of  his voice, saw his manly eyes, untroubled by doubts or scruples, and noted that he wore his morning clothes as well as any spiritual
magnate among them, they greeted him and sought him out and recognized him as a future captain of the hosts of the Almighty.

Cleo's graciousness added to his prestige.

For three whole days before bringing her up to the Conference, Elmer had gone out of his way to soothe her, flatter her, assure her that whatever
misunderstandings  they  might have had, all was now a warm snugness of domestic bliss, so that she was eager, gently deferential to the wives of
older pastors as she met them at receptions at hotels.

Her obvious admiration of Elmer convinced the better clerical politicians of his domestic safeness.

And  they knew that he had been sent for by the bishop--oh, they knew it! Nothing that the bishop did in these critical days was not known. There
were many among the middle-aged ministers who had become worried over prolonged stays in small towns, and who wanted to whisper to the bishop how
well they would suit larger opportunities. (The list of appointments had already been made out by the bishop and his council, yet surely it could
be  changed a little--just the least bit.) But they could not get near him. Most of the time the bishop was kept hidden from them at the house of
the president of Winnemac Wesleyan University.

But he sent for Elmer, and even called him by his first name.

"You  see,  Brother  Elmer, I was right! The Methodist Church just suits you," said the bishop, his eyes bright under his formidable brows. "I am
able  to give you a larger church already. It wouldn't be cricket, as the English say--ah, England! how you will enjoy going there some time; you
will find such a fruitful source of the broader type of sermons in travel; I know that you and your lovely bride--I've had the pleasure of having
her  pointed  out  to me--you will both know the joy and romance of travel one of these days. But as I was saying: I can give you a rather larger
town  this  time,  though  it  wouldn't  be  proper to tell you which one till I read the list of appointments to the Conference. And in the near
future,  if  you  continue  as you have in your studies and attention to the needs of our flock and in your excellence of daily living, which the
district superintendent has noted, why, you'll be due for a MUCH larger field of service. God bless you!"


10


Elmer was examined by the Conference and readily admitted to membership.

Among the questions, from the Discipline, which he was able to answer with a hearty "yes" were these:

Are you going on to perfection?

Do you expect to be made perfect in love in this life?

Are you earnestly striving after it?

Are you resolved to devote yourself wholly to God and his work?

Have  you  considered  the  Rules  for a Preacher, especially those relating to Diligence, to Punctuality, and to Doing the Work to which you are
assigned?

Will you recommend fasting or diligence, both by precept and example?

* * * * * * *

It  was,  the  Conference  members  said,  one  to  another,  a  pleasure to examine a candidate who could answer the questions with such ringing
certainty.

* * * * * * *

Celebrating  his  renunciation  of all fleshy devices and pleasures by wolfing a steak, fried onions, fried potatoes, corn, three cups of coffee,
and  two  slices  of apple pie with ice cream, Elmer condescended to Cleo, "I went through a-whooping! Liked to of seen any of those poor boobs I
was with in the seminary answer up like I did!"


11


They  listened  to  reports  on collections for missions, on the creation of new schools and churches; they heard ever so many prayers; they were
polite  during what were known as "inspirational addresses" by the bishop and the Rev. Dr. S. Palmer Shootz. But they were waiting for the moment
when the bishop should read the list of appointments.

They  looked  as blank as they could, but their nails creased their palms as the bishop rose. They tried to be loyal to their army, but this lean
parson  thought  of  the  boy  who was going to college, this worried-faced youngster thought of the operation for his wife, this aged campaigner
whose voice had been failing wondered whether he would be kept on in his well-padded church.

The bishop's snappy voice popped:

Sparta District: Albee Center, W. A. Vance Ardmore, Abraham Mundon--

And Elmer listened with them, suddenly terrified.

What did the bishop mean by a "rather larger town"? Some horrible hole with twelve hundred people?

Then he startled and glowed, and his fellow priests nodded to him in congratulation, as the bishop read out "Rudd Center, Elmer Gantry."

For  there were forty-one hundred people in Rudd Center; it was noted for good works and a large pop factory; and he was on his way to greatness,
to inspiring the world and becoming a bishop.



CHAPTER XXII


1


A  year he spent in Rudd Center, three years in Vulcan, and two years in Sparta. As there were 4,100 people in Rudd Center, 47,000 in Vulcan, and
129,000 in Sparta, it may be seen that the Reverend Elmer Gantry was climbing swiftly in Christian influence and character.

In  Rudd  Center  he  passed  his  Mizpah  final  examinations  and received his Bachelor of Divinity degree from the seminary; in Rudd Center he
discovered  the  art  of  joining, which was later to enable him to meet the more enterprising and solid men of affairs--oculists and editors and
manufacturers of bathtubs--and enlist their practical genius in his crusades for spirituality.

He  joined the Masons, the Odd Fellows, and the Maccabees. He made the Memorial Day address to the G. A. R., and he made the speech welcoming the
local representative home from Congress after having won the poker championship of the Houses.

Vulcan  was marked, aside from his labors for perfection, by the birth of his two children--Nat, in 1916, and Bernice, whom they called Bunny, in
1917--and by his ceasing to educate his wife in his ideals of amour.

It all blew up a month after the birth of Bunny.

Elmer  had,  that evening, been addressing the Rod and Gun Club dinner. He had pointed out that our Lord must have been in favor of Rods and Guns
for,  he  said,  "I  want you boys to notice that the Master, when he picked out his first disciples, didn't select a couple of stoop-shouldered,
pigeon-toed mollycoddles but a pair of first-class fishermen!"

He was excited to intoxication by their laughter.

Since  Bunny's  birth  he  had been sleeping in the guest-room, but now, walking airily, he tiptoed into Cleo's room at eleven, with that look of
self-conscious innocence which passionless wives instantly catch and dread.

"Well,  you sweet thing, it sure went off great! They all liked my spiel. Why, you poor lonely girl, shame you have to sleep all alone here, poor
baby!" he said, stroking her shoulder as she sat propped against the pillows. "Guess I'll have to come sleep here tonight."

She breathed hard, tried to look resolute. "Please! Not yet!"

"What do you MEAN?"

"Please! I'm tired tonight. Just kiss me good night, and let me pop off to sleep."

"Meaning  my  attentions  aren't  welcome to Your Majesty!" He paced the floor. "Young woman, it's about time for a showdown! I've hinted at this
before,  but  I've  been as charitable and long-suffering as I could, but by God, you've gotten away with too much, and then you try to pretend--
'Just  kiss  me  good  night!' Sure! I'm to be a monk! I'm to be one of these milk-and-water husbands that's perfectly content to hang around the
house  and not give one little yip if his wife don't care for his method of hugging! Well, believe me, young woman, you got another guess coming,
and  if you think that just because I'm a preacher I'm a Willie-boy--You don't even make the slightest smallest effort to learn some passion, but
just  act  like  you  had hard work putting up with me! Believe me, there's other women a lot better and prettier--yes, and more religious!--that
haven't thought I was such a damn' pest to have around! I'm not going to stand--Never even making the slightest effort--"

"Oh, Elmer, I have! Honestly I have! If you'd only been more tender and patient with me at the very first, I might have learned--"

"Rats!  All damned nonsense! Trouble with you is, you always were afraid to face hard facts! Well, I'm sick of it, young woman. You can go to the
devil! This is the last time, believe me!"

He  banged  the  door;  he  had  satisfaction in hearing her sob that night; and he kept his vow about staying away from her, for almost a month.
Presently he was keeping it altogether; it was a settled thing that they had separate bedrooms.

And all the while he was almost as confused, as wistful, as she was; and whenever he found a woman parishioner who was willing to comfort him, or
whenever  he was called on important but never explained affairs to Sparta, he had no bold swagger of satisfaction, but a guilt, an uneasiness of
sin, which displayed itself in increasingly furious condemnation of the same sin from his pulpit.

"O  God,  if I could only have gone on with Sharon, I might have been a decent fellow," he mourned, in his sorrow sympathetic with all the world.
But  the  day  after,  in  the  sanctuary, he would be salving that sorrow by raging, "And these dance-hall proprietors, these tempters of lovely
innocent  girls,  whose  doors  open  to the pit of death and horror, they shall have reward--they shall burn in uttermost hell--burn literally--
BURN!--and for their suffering we shall have but joy that the Lord's justice has been resolutely done!"


2


Something  like  statewide fame began to cling about the Reverend Elmer Gantry during his two years in Sparta--1918 to 1920. In the spring of '18
he  was  one  of  the  most  courageous  defenders of the Midwest against the imminent invasion of the Germans. He was a Four-Minute Man. He said
violent  things  about atrocities, and sold Liberty Bonds hugely. He threatened to leave Sparta to its wickedness while he went out to "take care
of our poor boys" as a chaplain, and he might have done so had the war lasted another year.

In  Sparta,  too,  he  crept  from  timidly  sensational church advertisements to such blasts as must have shaken the Devil himself. Anyway, they
brought  six  hundred  delighted  sinners to church every Sunday evening, and after one sermon on the horrors of booze, a saloon-keeper, slightly
intoxicated, remarked "Whoop!" and put a fifty-dollar bill in the plate.

Not  to  this  day,  with  all the advance in intellectual advertising, has there been seen a more arousing effort to sell salvation than Elmer's
prose poem in the Sparta World-Chronicle on a Saturday in December, 1919:


WOULD YOU LIKE YOUR MOTHER TO GO BATHING WITHOUT STOCKINGS?

Do  you  believe  in old-fashioned womanhood, that can love and laugh and still be the symbols of God's own righteousness, bringing a tear to the
eye  as  one remembers their brooding tenderness? Would you like to see your own dear mammy indulging in mixed bathing or dancing that Hell's own
fool monkeyshine, the one-step?

REVEREND ELMER GANTRY

will answer these questions and others next Sunday morning. Gantry shoots straight from the shoulder.

POPLAR AVENUE METHODIST CHURCH

Follow the crowd to the beautiful times At the beautiful church with the beautiful chimes.


3


While  he  was  in Sparta, national prohibition arrived, with its high-colored opportunities for pulpit-orators, and in Sparta he was inspired to
his greatest political campaign.

The  obviously respectable candidate for mayor of Sparta was a Christian Business Man, a Presbyterian who was a manufacturer of rubber overshoes.
It is true that he was accused of owning the buildings in which were several of the worst brothels and blind tigers in the city, but it had amply
been  explained  that the unfortunate gentleman had not been able to kick out his tenants, and that he gave practically all his receipts from the
property to missionary work in China.

His  opponent  was  a  man in every way objectionable to Elmer's principles: a Jew, a radical who criticized the churches for not paying taxes, a
sensational  and  publicity-seeking  lawyer  who took the cases of labor unions and negroes without fee. When he consulted them, Elmer's Official
Board agreed that the Presbyterian was the only man to support. They pointed out that the trouble with the radical Jew was that he was not only a
radical but a Jew.

Yet Elmer was not satisfied. He had, possibly, less objection to houses of ill fame than one would have judged from his pulpit utterances, and he
certainly  approved  the  Presbyterian's position that "we must not try dangerous experiments in government but adhere courageously to the proven
merits  and  economies  of  the present administration." But talking with members of his congregation, Elmer found that the Plain People--and the
plain,  the  very  plain,  people did make up such a large percentage of his flock--hated the Presbyterian and had a surprised admiration for the
Jew.

"He's awful' kind to poor folks," said they.

Elmer had what he called a "hunch."

"All  the  swells are going to support this guy McGarry, but darned if I don't think the Yid'll win, and anybody that roots for him'll stand ace-
high after the election," he reasoned.

He came out boisterously for the Jew. The newspapers squealed and the Presbyterians bellowed and the rabbis softly chuckled.

Not only from his pulpit but in scattered halls Elmer campaigned and thundered. He was smeared once with rotten eggs in a hall near the red-light
district, and once an illicit booze-dealer tried to punch his nose, and that was a very happy time for Elmer.

The  booze-dealer, a bulbous angry man, climbed up on the stage of the hall and swayed toward Elmer, weaving with his fists, rumbling, "You damn'
lying gospel-shark, I'll show you--"

The  forgotten star of the Terwillinger team leaped into life. He was calm as in a scrimmage. He strode over, calculatingly regarded the point of
the bootlegger's jaw, and caught him on it, exact. He saw the man slumping down, but he did not stand looking; he swung back to the reading-stand
and went on speaking. The whole audience rose, clamorous with applause, and Elmer Gantry had for a second become the most famous man in town.

The  newspapers  admitted  that he was affecting the campaign, and one of them swung to his support. He was so strong on virtue and the purity of
womanhood and the evils of liquor that to oppose him was to admit one's self a debauchee.

At  the  business meeting of his church there was a stirring squabble over his activities. When the leading trustee, a friend of the Presbyterian
candidate,  declared  that  he was going to resign unless Elmer stopped, an aged janitor shrieked, "And all the rest of us will resign unless the
Reverend keeps it up!" There was gleeful and unseemly applause, and Elmer beamed.

The  campaign  grew so bellicose that reporters came up from the Zenith newspapers; one of them the renowned Bill Kingdom of the Zenith Advocate-
Times.  Elmer  loved  reporters.  They quoted him on everything from the Bible in the schools to the Armenian mandate. He was careful not to call
them  "boys"  but "gentlemen," not to slap them too often on the back; he kept excellent cigars for them; and he always said, "I'm afraid I can't
talk  to you as a preacher. I get too much of that on Sunday. I'm just speaking as an ordinary citizen who longs to have a clean city in which to
bring up his kiddies."

Bill  Kingdom  almost  liked  him, and the story about "the crusading parson" which he sent up to the Zenith Advocate-Times--the Thunderer of the
whole  state  of  Winnemac--was  run  on the third page, with a photograph of Elmer thrusting out his fist as if to crush all the sensualists and
malefactors in the world.

Sparta papers reprinted the story and spoke of it with reverence.

The Jew won the campaign.

And immediately after this--six months before the Annual Conference of 1920--Bishop Toomis sent for Elmer.


4


"At  first  I  was  afraid,"  said  the bishop, "you were making a great mistake in soiling yourself in this Sparta campaign. After all, it's our
mission  to  preach  the  pure  gospel  and  the saving blood of Jesus, and not to monkey with politics. But you've been so successful that I can
forgive  you,  and  the time has come--At the next Conference I shall be able to offer you at last a church here in Zenith, and a very large one,
but  with problems that call for heroic energy. It's the old Wellspring Church, down here on Stanley Avenue, corner of Dodsworth, in what we call
'Old Town.' It used to be the most fashionable and useful Methodist church in town, but the section has run down, and the membership has declined
from  something  like  fourteen  hundred  to  about  eight hundred, and under the present pastor--you know him--old Seriere, fine noble Christian
gentleman,  great  soul,  but a pretty rotten speaker--I don't guess they have more than a hundred or so at morning service. Shame, Elmer, wicked
shame  to  see  this great institution, meant for the quickening of such vast multitudes of souls, declining and, by thunder, not hardly giving a
cent  for  missions!  I  wonder  if  you could revive it? Go look it over, and the neighborhood, and let me know what you think. Or whether you'd
rather  stay  on in Sparta. You'll get less salary at Wellspring than you're getting in Sparta--four thousand, isn't it?--but if you build up the
church, guess the Official Board will properly remunerate your labors."

A church in Zenith! Elmer would--almost--have taken it with no salary whatever. He could see his Doctor of Divinity degree at hand, his bishopric
or college presidency or fabulous pulpit in New York.

He  found  the  Wellspring  M.  E. Church a hideous graystone hulk with gravy-colored windows, and a tall spire ornamented with tin gargoyles and
alternate  layers  of tiles in distressing red and green. The neighborhood had been smart, but the brick mansions, once leisurely among lawns and
gardens, were scabrous and slovenly, turned into boarding-houses with delicatessen shops in the basements.

"Gosh,  this  section  never  will  come back. Too many of the doggone hoi polloi. Bunch of Wops. Nobody for ten blocks that would put more'n ten
cents in the collection. Nothing doing! I'm not going to run a soup-kitchen and tell a bunch of dirty bums to come to Jesus. Not on your life!"

But he saw, a block from the church, a new apartment-house, and near it an excavation.

"Hm.  Might  come  back,  in  apartments,  at that. Mustn't jump too quick. Besides, these folks need the gospel just as much as the swell-headed
plutes out on Royal Ridge," reflected the Reverend Mr. Gantry.

Through  his  old  acquaintance,  Gil  O'Hearn of the O'Hearn House, Elmer met a responsible contractor and inquired into the fruitfulness of the
Wellspring vineyard.

"Yes,  they're  dead  certain  to  build  a  bunch of apartment-houses, and pretty good ones, in that neighborhood these next few years. Be a big
residential  boom  in  Old Town. It's near enough in to be handy to the business section, and far enough from the Union Station so's they haven't
got any warehouses or wholesalers. Good buy, Reverend."

"Oh,  I'm  not  buying--I'm  just  selling--selling  the  gospel!"  said  the Reverend, and he went to inform Bishop Toomis that after prayer and
meditation he had been led to accept the pastorate of the Wellspring Church.

So, at thirty-nine, Cæsar came to Rome, and Rome heard about it immediately.



CHAPTER XXIII


1


He  did  not stand by the altar now, uplifted in a vow that he would be good and reverent. He was like the new general manager of a factory as he
bustled for the first time through the Wellspring Methodist Church, Zenith, and his first comment was "The plant's run down--have to buck it up."

He  was accompanied on his inspection by his staff: Miss Bundle, church secretary and personal secretary to himself, a decayed and plaintive lady
distressingly  free of seductiveness; Miss Weezeger, the deaconess, given to fat and good works; and A. F. Cherry, organist and musical director,
engaged only on part time.

He  was  disappointed that the church could not give him a pastoral assistant or a director of religious education. He'd have them, soon enough--
and boss them! Great!

He  found an auditorium which would hold sixteen hundred people but which was offensively gloomy in its streaky windows, its brown plaster walls,
its  cast-iron  pillars.  The  rear  wall  of the chancel was painted a lugubrious blue scattered with stars which had ceased to twinkle; and the
pulpit  was of dark oak, crowned with a foolish, tasseled, faded green velvet cushion. The whole auditorium was heavy and forbidding; the stretch
of empty brown-grained pews stared at him dolorously.

"Certainly  must  have  been a swell bunch of cheerful Christians that made this layout! I'll have a new church here in five years--one with some
pep to it, and Gothic fixin's and an up-to-date educational and entertainment plant," reflected the new priest.

The  Sunday  School rooms were spacious enough, but dingy, scattered with torn hymn books; the kitchen in the basement, for church suppers, had a
rusty  ancient  stove  and  piles  of  chipped  dishes. Elmer's own study and office was airless, and looked out on the flivver-crowded yard of a
garage. And Mr. Cherry said the organ was rather more than wheezy.

"Oh,  well,"  Elmer conferred with himself afterward, "what do I care! Anyway, there's plenty of room for the crowds, and believe me, I'm the boy
can  drag  'em in! . . . God, what a frump that Bundle woman is! One of these days I'll have a smart girl secretary--a good-looker. Well, hurray,
ready for the big work! I'll show this town what high-class preaching is!"

Not for three days did he chance to think that Cleo might also like to see the church.


2


Though  there were nearly four hundred thousand people in Zenith and only nine hundred in Banjo Crossing, Elmer's reception in the Zenith church-
basement  was  remarkably  like  his  reception  in  the Banjo basement. There were the same rugged, hard-handed brothers, the same ample sisters
renowned  for  making doughnuts, the same brisk little men given to giggling and pious jests. There were the same homemade ice cream and homemade
oratory.  But  there were five times as many people as at the Banjo reception, and Elmer was ever a lover of quantity. And among the transplanted
rustics  were  several  prosperous  professional  men, several well-gowned women, and some pretty girls who looked as though they went to dancing
school, Discipline or not.

He  felt  cheerful and loving toward them--his, as he pointed out to them, "fellow crusaders marching on resolutely to achievement of the Kingdom
of God on earth."

It  was  easy to discover which of the members present from the Official Board of the church were most worth his attentions. Mr. Ernest Apfelmus,
one  of the stewards, was the owner of the Gem of the Ocean Pie and Cake Corporation. He looked like a puffy and bewildered urchin suddenly blown
up  to vast size; he was very rich, Miss Bundle whispered; and he did not know how to spend his money except on his wife's diamonds and the cause
of the Lord. Elmer paid court to Mr. Apfelmus and his wife, who spoke quite a little English.

Not so rich but even more important, Elmer guessed, was T. J. Rigg, the famous criminal lawyer, a trustee of Wellspring Church.

Mr.  Rigg  was  small,  deep-wrinkled, with amused and knowing eyes. He would be, Elmer felt instantly, a good man with whom to drink. His wife's
face was that of a girl, round and smooth and blue-eyed, though she was fifty and more, and her laughter was lively.

"Those are folks I can shoot straight with," decided Elmer, and he kept near them.

Rigg  hinted, "Say, Reverend, why don't you and your good lady come up to my house after this, and we can loosen up and have a good laugh and get
over this sewing-circle business."

"I'd certainly like to." As he spoke Elmer was considering that if he was really to loosen up, he could not have Cleo about. "Only, I'm afraid my
wife has a headache, poor girl. We'll just send her along home and I'll come with you."

"After you shake hands a few thousand more times!"

"Exactly!"

Elmer  was  edified to find that Mr. Rigg had a limousine with a chauffeur--one of the few in which Elmer had yet ridden. He did like to have his
Christian brethren well heeled. But the sight of the limousine made him less chummy with the Riggses, more respectful and unctuous, and when they
had  dropped  Cleo  at the hotel, Elmer leaned gracefully back on the velvet seat, waved his large hand poetically, and breathed, "Such a welcome
the dear people gave me! I am so grateful! What a real outpouring of the spirit!"

"Look here," sniffed Rigg, "you don't have to be pious with us! Ma and I are a couple of old dragoons. We like religion; like the good old hymns-
-takes  us  back  to  the  hick  town  we came from; and we believe religion is a fine thing to keep people in order--they think of higher things
instead  of  all  these  strikes and big wages and the kind of hell-raising that's throwing the industrial system all out of kilter. And I like a
fine  upstanding preacher that can give a good show. So I'm willing to be a trustee. But we ain't pious. And any time you want to let down--and I
reckon  there  must be times when a big cuss like you must get pretty sick of listening to the sniveling sisterhood!--you just come to us, and if
you want to smoke or even throw in a little jolt of liquor, as I've been known to do, why we'll understand. How about it, Ma?"

"You bet!" said Mrs. Rigg. "And I'll go down to the kitchen, if cook isn't there, and fry you a couple of eggs, and if you don't tell the rest of
the brethren, there's always a couple of bottles of beer on the ice. Like one?"

"WOULD  I!"  cheered  Elmer.  "You bet I would! Only--I cut out drinking and smoking quite a few years ago. Oh, I had my share before that! But I
stopped,  absolute,  and  I'd  hate  to break my record. But you go right ahead. And I want to say that it'll be a mighty big relief to have some
folks  in the church that I can talk to without shocking 'em half to death. Some of these holier-than-thou birds--Lord, they won't let a preacher
be a human being!"

The  Rigg  house  was large, rather faded, full of books which had been read--history, biography, travels. The smaller sitting-room, with its log
fire  and large padded chairs, looked comfortable, but Mrs. Rigg shouted, "Oh, let's go out to the kitchen and shake up a welsh rabbit! I love to
cook, and I don't dast till after the servants go to bed."

So  his  first  conference with T. J. Rigg, who became the only authentic friend Elmer had known since Jim Lefferts, was held at the shiny white-
enamel-topped table in the huge kitchen, with Mrs. Rigg stalking about, bringing them welsh rabbit, with celery, cold chicken, whatever she found
in the ice box.

"I  want  your advice, Brother Rigg," said Elmer. "I want to make my first sermon here something sen--well, something that'll make 'em sit up and
listen. I don't have to get the subject in for the church ads till tomorrow. Now what do you think of some pacifism?"

"Eh?"

"I  know  what  you  think.  Of  course  during  the war I was just as patriotic as anybody--Four-Minute Man, and in another month I'd of been in
uniform.  But honest, some of the churches are getting a lot of kick out of hollering pacifism now the war's all safely over--some of the biggest
preachers in the country. But far's I've heard, nobody's started it here in Zenith yet, and it might make a big sensation."

"Yes, that's so, and course it's perfectly all right to adopt pacifism as long as there's no chance for another war."

"Or  do you think--you know the congregation here--do you think a more dignified and kind of you might say poetic expository sermon would impress
'em  more?  Or  what  about  a  good, vigorous, right-out-from-the-shoulder attack on vice? You know, booze and immorality--like short skirts--by
golly, girls' skirts getting shorter every year!"

"Now  that's  what  I'd  vote  for,"  said  Rigg.  "That's what gets 'em. Nothing like a good juicy vice sermon to bring in the crowds. Yes, sir!
Fearless  attack on all this drinking and this awful sex immorality that's getting so prevalent." Mr. Rigg meditatively mixed a highball, keeping
it  light  because next morning in court he had to defend a lady accused of running a badger game. "You bet. Some folks say sermons like that are
just  sensational,  but I always tell 'em: once the preacher gets the folks into the church that way--and mighty few appreciate how hard it is to
do a good vice sermon; jolt 'em enough and yet not make it too dirty--once you get in the folks, then you can give 'em some good, solid, old-time
religion  and  show 'em salvation and teach 'em to observe the laws and do an honest day's work for an honest day's pay, 'stead of clock-watching
like  my  doggone  clerks do! Yep, if you ask me, try the vice. . . . Oh, say, Ma, do you think the Reverend would be shocked by that story about
the chambermaid and the traveling man that Mark was telling us?"

Elmer was not shocked. In fact he had another droll tale himself.

He went home at one.

"I'll  have  a good time with those folks," he reflected, in the luxury of a taxicab. "Only, better be careful with old Rigg. He's a shrewd bird,
and  he's  onto me. . . . Now what do you mean?" indignantly. "What do you mean by 'onto me'? There's nothing to be onto! I refused a drink and a
cigar,  didn't  I?  I  never cuss except when I lose my temper, do I? I'm leading an absolutely Christian life. And I'm bringing a whale of a lot
more souls into churches than any of these pussy-footing tin saints that're afraid to laugh and jolly people. 'Onto me' nothing!"


3


On  Saturday morning, on the page of religious advertisements in the Zenith newspapers, Elmer's first sermon was announced in a two-column spread
as dealing with the promising problem: "Can Strangers Find Haunts of Vice in Zenith?"

They  could,  and  with gratifying ease, said Elmer in his sermon. He said it before at least four hundred people, as against the hundred who had
normally been attending.

He himself was a stranger in Zenith, and he had gone forth and he had been "appalled--aghast--bowed in shocked horror" at the amount of vice, and
such  interesting and attractive vice. He had investigated Braun's Island, a rackety beach and dance floor and restaurant at South Zenith, and he
had  found  mixed  bathing.  He described the ladies' legs; he described the two amiable young women who had picked him up. He told of the waiter
who,  though  he  denied  that Braun's restaurant itself sold liquor, had been willing to let him know where to get it, and where to find an all-
night game of poker--"and, mind you, playing poker for keeps, you understand," Elmer explained.

On Washington Avenue, North, he had found two movies in which "the dreadful painted purveyors of putrescent vice"--he meant the movie actors--had
on  the  screen danced "suggestive steps which would bring the blush of shame to the cheeks of any decent woman," and in which the same purveyors
had  taken  drinks which he assumed to be the deadly cocktails. On his way to his hotel after these movies three ladies of the night had accosted
him,  right  under  the  White Way of lights. Street-corner loafers--he had apparently been very chummy with them--had told him of blind pigs, of
dope-peddlers, of strange lecheries.

"That," he shouted, "is what one stranger was able to find in your city--now MY city, and well beloved! But could he find virtue so easily, could
he,  could  he?  Or  just  a  lot  of  easygoing churches, lollygagging along, while the just God threatens this city with the fire and devouring
brimstone  that destroyed proud Sodom and Gomorrah in their abominations! Listen! With the help of God Almighty, let us raise here in this church
a  standard of virtue that no stranger can help seeing! We're lazy. We're not burning with a fever of righteousness. On your knees, you slothful,
and  pray God to forgive you and to aid you and me to form a brotherhood of helpful, joyous, fiercely righteous followers of every commandment of
the Lord Our God!"

The  newspapers  carried almost all of it. . . . It had just happened that there were reporters present--it had just happened that Elmer had been
calling  up the Advocate-Times on Saturday--it had just happened that he remembered he had met Bill Kingdom, the Advocate reporter, in Sparta--it
had just happened that to help out good old Bill he had let him know there would be something stirring in the church, come Sunday.

The  next  Saturday  Elmer  advertised  "Is There a Real Devil Sneaking Around with Horns and Hoofs?" On Sunday there were seven hundred present.
Within  two  months  Elmer  was preaching, ever more confidently and dramatically, to larger crowds than were drawn by any other church in Zenith
except four or five.

But,  "Oh,  he's  just  a new sensation--he can't last out--hasn't got the learning and staying-power. Besides, Old Town is shot to pieces," said
Elmer's fellow vinters--particularly his annoyed fellow Methodists.


4


Cleo  and  he  had found a gracious old house in Old Town, to be had cheap because of the ragged neighborhood. He had hinted to her that since he
was  making such a spiritual sacrifice as to take a lower salary in coming to Zenith, her father, as a zealous Christian, ought to help them out;
and if she should be unable to make her father perceive this, Elmer would regretfully have to be angry with her.

She came back from a visit to Banjo Crossing with two thousand dollars.

Cleo  had  an  instinct  for agreeable furniture. For the old house, with its white mahogany paneling, she got reproductions of early New England
chairs and commodes and tables. There was a white-framed fireplace and a fine old crystal chandelier in the living-room.

"Some  class!  We  can entertain the bon ton here, and, believe me, I'll soon be having a lot of 'em coming to church! . . . Sometimes I do wish,
though, I'd gone out for the Episcopal Church. Lots more class there, and they don't beef if a minister takes a little drink," he said to Cleo.

"Oh, Elmer, how CAN you! When Methodism stands for--"

"Oh,  God,  I  do wish that just once you wouldn't deliberately misunderstand me! Here I was just carrying on a philosophical discussion, and not
speaking personal, and you go and--"

His  house in order, he gave attention to clothes. He dressed as calculatingly as an actor. For the pulpit, he continued to wear morning clothes.
For his church study, he chose offensively inoffensive lounge suits, gray and brown and striped blue, with linen collars and quiet blue ties. For
addresses  before  slightly  boisterous  lunch-clubs,  he  went  in for manly tweeds and manly soft collars, along with his manly voice and manly
jesting.

He combed his thick hair back from his strong, square face, and permitted it to hang, mane-like, just a bit over his collar. But it was still too
black to be altogether prophetic.

The two thousand was gone before they had been in Zenith a month.

"But it's all a good investment," he said. "When I meet the Big Bugs, they'll see I may have a dump of a church in a bum section but I can put up
as good a front as if I were preaching on Chickasaw Road."


5


If in Banjo Crossing Elmer had been bored by inactivity, in Zenith he was almost exhausted by the demands.

Wellspring Church had been carrying on a score of institutional affairs, and Elmer doubled them, for nothing brought in more sympathy, publicity,
and  contributions. Rich old hyenas who never went to church would ooze out a hundred dollars or even five hundred when you described the shawled
mothers coming tearfully to the milk station.

There  were  classes  in  manual training, in domestic science, in gymnastics, in bird study, for the poor boys and girls of Old Town. There were
troops  of  Boy  Scouts,  of Camp Fire Girls. There were Ladies' Aid meetings, Women's Missionary Society meetings, regular church suppers before
prayer-meeting,  a  Bible Training School for Sunday School teachers, a sewing society, nursing and free food for the sick and poor, half a dozen
clubs of young men and women, half a dozen circles of matrons, and a Men's Club with monthly dinners, for which the pastor had to snare prominent
speakers  without  payment.  The  Sunday  School was like a small university. And every day there were dozens of callers who asked the pastor for
comfort,  for  advice, for money--young men in temptation, widows wanting jobs, old widows wanting assurance of immortality, hoboes wanting hand-
outs, and eloquent book-agents. Where in Banjo the villagers had been shy to expose their cancerous sorrows, in the city there were always lonely
people  who  reveled  in  being  a little twisted, a little curious, a little shameful; who yearned to talk about themselves and who expected the
pastor to be forever interested.

Elmer  scarce  had  time to prepare his sermons, though he really did yearn now to make them original and eloquent. He was no longer satisfied to
depend  on  his  barrel.  He  wanted  to  increase his vocabulary; he was even willing to have new ideas, lifted out of biology and biography and
political editorials.

He  was  out of the house daily at eight in the morning--usually after a breakfast in which he desired to know of Cleo why the deuce she couldn't
keep  Nat  and Bunny quiet while he read the paper--and he did not return till six, burning with weariness. He had to study in the evening. . . .
He  was  always  testy.  . . . His children were afraid of him, even when he boisterously decided to enact the Kind Parent for one evening and to
ride  them  pickaback,  whether  or no they wanted to be ridden pickaback. They feared God properly and kept his commandments, did Nat and Bunny,
because their father so admirably prefigured God.

When  Cleo  was busy with meetings and clubs at the church, Elmer blamed her for neglecting the house; when she slackened her church work, he was
able  equally  to  blame  her for not helping him professionally. And obviously it was because she had so badly arranged the home routine that he
never  had  time  for morning Family Worship. . . . But he made up for it by the violence of his Grace before Meat, during which he glared at the
children if they stirred in their chairs.

And always the telephone was ringing--not only in his office but at home in the evening.

What  should  Miss Weezeger, the deaconess, do about this old Miss Mally, who wanted a new nightgown? Could the Reverend Gantry give a short talk
on  "Advertising  and the Church" to the Ad Club next Tuesday noon? Could he address the Letitia Music and Literary Club on "Religion and Poetry"
next  Thursday  at  four--just when he had a meeting with the Official Board. The church janitor wanted to start the furnace, but the coal hadn't
been  delivered.  What  advice would the Reverend Mr. Gantry give to a young man who wanted to go to college and had no money? From what book was
that  quotation about "Cato learned Greek at eighty Sophocles" which he had used in last Sunday's sermon? Would Mr. Gantry be so kind and address
the  Lincoln  School  next Friday morning at nine-fifteen--the dear children would be so glad of any Message he had to give them, and the regular
speaker  couldn't  show up. Would it be all right for the Girls' Basket Ball team to use the basement tonight? Could the Reverend come out, right
now,  to  the  house  of  Ben  T.  Evers, 2616 Appleby Street--five miles away--because grandmother was very ill and needed consolation. What the
dickens  did the Reverend mean by saying, last Sunday, that hell-fire might be merely spiritual and figurative--didn't he know that that was agin
Matthew  V:  29:  "Thy whole body should be cast into hell." Could he get the proof of the church bulletin back to the printers right away? Could
the  officers  of  the  Southwest  Circle  of  Women meet in Mr. Gantry's study tomorrow? Would Reverend Gantry speak at the Old Town Improvement
Association Banquet? Did the Reverend want to buy a secondhand motor car in A-1 shape? Could the Reverend--

"God!"  said  the  Reverend;  and, "Huh? Why, no, of course you couldn't answer 'em for me, Cleo. But at least you might try to keep from humming
when I'm simply killing myself trying to take care of all these blame' fools and sacrificing myself and everything!"

And the letters.

In response to every sermon he had messages informing him that he was the bright hope of evangelicism and that he was a cloven-hoofed fiend; that
he  was a rousing orator and a human saxophone. One sermon on the delights of Heaven, which he pictured as a perpetual summer afternoon at a lake
resort, brought in the same mail four comments:


i have got an idea for you verry important since hearing yrs of last Sunday evening why do'nt you hold services every evning to tell people & etc
about  heven  and  danger of hell we must hurry hurry hurry, the church in a bad way and is up to us who have many and infaliable proofs of heven
and hell to hasten yes we must rescew the parishing, make everywhere the call of the lord, fill the churches and empty these damable theatre.

Yrs for his coming, James C. Wickes, 2113 A, McGrew Street.


The  writer is an honest and unwavering Christian and I want to tell you, Gantry, that the only decent and helpful and enjoyable thing about your
sermon  last Sunday A.M. was your finally saying "Let us pray," only YOU should have said "Let me prey." By your wibbly-wabbly emphasis on Heaven
and  your fear to emphasize the horrors of Hell, you get people into an easy-going, self-satisfied frame of mind where they slip easily into sin,
and  while  pretending  to  be  an  earnest  and literal believer in every word of the Scriptures, you are an atheist in sheep's clothing. I am a
minister of the gospel and know whereof I speak.

Yours, ALMON JEWINGS STRAFE.


I heard your rotten old-fashioned sermon last Sunday. You pretend to be liberal, but you are just a hide-bound conservative. Nobody believes in a
material heaven or hell any more, and you make yourself ridiculous by talking about them. Wake up and study some modern dope.

A student.


Dear  Brother,  your lovely sermon last Sunday about Heaven was the finest I have ever heard. I am quite an old lady and not awful well and in my
ills and griefs, especially about my grandson who drinks, your wonderful words give me such a comfort I cannot describe to you.

Yours admiringly, MRS. R. R. GOMMERIE.


And  he  was  expected, save with the virulent anonymous letters, to answer all of them . . . in his stuffy office, facing a shelf of black-bound
books,  dictating  to the plaintive Miss Bundle, who never caught an address, who always single-spaced the letters which should have been double-
spaced, and who had a speed which seemed adequate until you discovered that she attained it by leaving out most of the verbs and adjectives.


6


Whether  or  not he was irritable on week days, Sundays were to his nervous family a hell of keeping out of his way, and for himself they had the
strain of a theatrical first night.

He  was  up  at  seven,  looking over his sermon notes, preparing his talk to the Sunday School, and snarling at Cleo, "Good Lord, you might have
breakfast  on  time  today,  at  least, and why in heaven's name you can't get that furnace-man here so I won't have to freeze while I'm doing my
studying--"

He  was  at Sunday School at a quarter to ten, and often he had to take the huge Men's Bible Class and instruct it in the more occult meanings of
the Bible, out of his knowledge of the original Hebrew and Greek as denied to the laity.

Morning  church services began at eleven. Now that he often had as many as a thousand in the audience, as he peeped out at them from the study he
had stage-fright. Could he hold them? What the deuce had he intended to say about communion? He couldn't remember a word of it.

It  was  not easy to keep on urging the unsaved to come forward as though he really thought they would and as though he cared a hang whether they
did or not. It was not easy, on communion Sundays, when they knelt round the altar rail, to keep from laughing at the sanctimonious eyes and prim
mouths of brethren whom he knew to be crooks in private business.

It  was  not  easy  to  go on saying with proper conviction that whosoever looked on a woman to lust after her would go booming down to hell when
there  was  a pretty and admiring girl in the front row. And it was hardest of all, when he had done his public job, when he was tired and wanted
to  let  down,  to stand about after the sermon and be hand-shaken by aged spinster saints who expected him to listen without grinning while they
quavered that he was a silver-plated angel and that they were just like him.

To  have  to  think  up  a new, bright, pious quip for each of them! To see large sporting males regarding him the while as though he were an old
woman in trousers!

By the time he came home for Sunday lunch he was looking for a chance to feel injured and unappreciated and pestered and put upon, and usually he
found the chance.

There were still ahead of him, for the rest of the day, the Sunday evening service, often the Epworth League, sometimes special meetings at four.
Whenever  the  children  disturbed  his Sunday afternoon nap, Elmer gave an impersonation of the prophets. Why! All he asked of Nat and Bunny was
that,  as a Methodist minister's children, they should not be seen on the streets or in the parks on the blessed Sabbath afternoon, and that they
should  not  be  heard  about the house. He told them, often, that they were committing an unexampled sin by causing him to fall into bad tempers
unbecoming a Man of God.

But through all these labors and this lack of domestic sympathy he struggled successfully.


7


Elmer was as friendly as ever with Bishop Toomis.

He had conferred early with the bishop and with the canny lawyer-trustee, T. J. Rigg, as to what fellow-clergymen in Zenith it would be worth his
while to know.

Among  the  ministers  outside  the  Methodist  Church,  they  recommended  Dr.  G.  Prosper  Edwards,  the highly cultured pastor of the Pilgrim
Congregational  Church, Dr. John Jennison Drew, the active but sanctified leader of the Chatham Road Presbyterian Church, that solid Baptist, the
Reverend  Hosea  Jessup,  and  Willis  Fortune Tate, who, though he was an Episcopalian and very shaky as regards liquor and hell, had one of the
suavest  and  most expensive flocks in town. And if one could endure the Christian Scientists' smirking conviction that they alone had the truth,
there was the celebrated leader of the First Christian Science Church, Mr. Irving Tillish.

The  Methodist  ministers  of Zenith Elmer met and studied at their regular Monday morning meetings, in the funeral and wedding chapel of Central
Church.  They  looked  like  a group of prosperous and active business men. Only two of them ever wore clerical waistcoats, and of these only one
compromised  with  the Papacy and the errors of Canterbury by turning his collar around. A few resembled farmers, a few stone-masons, but most of
them  looked  like  retail shops. The Reverend Mr. Chatterton Weeks indulged in claret-colored "fancy socks," silk handkerchiefs, and an enormous
emerald  ring,  and  gave a pleasant suggestion of vaudeville. Nor were they too sanctimonious. They slapped one another's backs, they used first
names,  they  shouted,  "I hear you're grabbing off all the crowds in town, you old cuss!" and for the manlier and more successful of them it was
quite the thing to use now and then a daring "damn."

It  would,  to  an  innocent  layman, have been startling to see them sitting in rows like schoolboys; to hear them listening not to addresses on
credit  and  the routing of hardware but to short helpful talks on Faith. The balance was kept, however, by an adequate number of papers on trade
subjects--the  sort of pews most soothing to the back; the value of sending postcards reading "Where were you last Sunday, old scout? We sure did
miss  you  at the Men's Bible Class"; the comparative values of a giant imitation thermometer, a giant clock, and a giant automobile speedometer,
as  a  register  of the money coming in during special drives; the question of gold and silver stars as rewards for Sunday School attendance; the
effectiveness of giving the children savings-banks in the likeness of a jolly little church to encourage them to save their pennies for Christian
work; and the morality of violin solos.

Nor were the assembled clergy too inhumanly unboastful in their reports of increased attendance and collections.

Elmer  saw  that the Zenith district superintendent, one Fred Orr, could be neglected as a creeping and silent fellow who was all right at prayer
and who seemed to lead an almost irritatingly pure life, but who had no useful notions about increasing collections.

The Methodist preachers whom he had to take seriously as rivals were four.

There was Chester Brown, the ritualist, of the new and ultra-Gothic Asbury Church. He was almost as bad, they said, as an Episcopalian. He wore a
clerical  waistcoat  buttoned  up  to  his collar; he had a robed choir and the processional; he was rumored once to have had candles on what was
practically  an  altar.  He was, to Elmer, distressingly literary and dramatic. It was said that he had literary gifts; his articles appeared not
only  in  the  Advocate but in the Christian Century and the New Republic--rather whimsical essays, safely Christian but frank about the church's
sloth  and  wealth  and  blindness. He had been Professor of English Literature and Church History in Luccock College, and he did such sermons on
books as Elmer, with his exhausting knowledge of Longfellow and George Eliot, could never touch.

Dr.  Otto  Hickenlooper of Central Church was an even more distressing rival. His was the most active institutional church of the whole state. He
had  not  only  manual training and gymnastics but sacred pageants, classes in painting (never from the nude), classes in French and batik-making
and  sex  hygiene  and bookkeeping and short-story writing. He had clubs for railroad men, for stenographers, for bell-boys; and after the church
suppers the young people were encouraged to sit about in booths to which the newspapers referred flippantly as "courting corners."

Dr.  Hickenlooper  had  come out hard for Social Service. He was in sympathy with the American Federation of Labor, the I. W. W., the Socialists,
the Communists, and the Non-partisan League, which was more than they were with one another. He held Sunday evening lectures on the Folly of War,
the  Minimum  Wage, the need of clean milk; and once a month he had an open forum, to which were invited the most dangerous radical speakers, who
were allowed to say absolutely anything they liked, provided they did not curse, refer to adultery, or criticize the leadership of Christ.

Dr.  Mahlon  Potts,  of  the  First  Methodist Church, seemed to Elmer at first glance less difficult to oust. He was fat, pompous, full of heavy
rumbles  of  piety.  He was a stage parson. "Ah, my dear Brother!" he boomed; and "How are we this morning, my dear Doctor, and how is the lovely
little  wife?"  But  Dr.  Potts  had the largest congregation of any church of any denomination in Zenith. He was so respectable. He was so safe.
People  knew  where  they  were,  with him. He was adequately flowery of speech--he could do up a mountain, a sunset, a burning of the martyrs, a
reception of the same by the saints in heaven, as well as any preacher in town. But he never doubted nor let any one else doubt that by attending
the  Methodist Church regularly, and observing the rules of repentance, salvation, baptism, communion, and liberal giving, every one would have a
minimum of cancer and tuberculosis and sin, and unquestionably arrive in heaven.

These three Elmer envied but respected; one man he envied and loathed.

That was Philip McGarry of the Arbor Methodist Church.

Philip  McGarry,  Ph. D. of Chicago University in economics and philosophy--only everybody who liked him, layman or fellow-parson, seemed to call
him "Phil"--was at the age of thirty-five known through the whole American Methodist Church as an enfant terrible. The various sectional editions
of  the  Advocate  admired him but clucked like doting and alarmed hens over his frequent improprieties. He was accused of every heresy. He never
denied them, and the only dogma he was known to give out positively was the leadership of Jesus--as to whose divinity he was indefinite.

He was a stocky, smiling man, fond of boxing, and even at a funeral incapable of breathing, "Ah, Sister!"

He  criticized everything. He criticized even bishops--for being too fat, for being too ambitious, for gassing about Charity during a knock-down-
and-drag-out  strike.  He criticized, but amiably, the social and institutional and generally philanthropic Dr. Otto Hickenlooper, with his clubs
for the study of Karl Marx and his Sunday afternoon reception for lonely traveling-men.

"You're  a  good  lad,  Otto,"  said  Dr.  McGarry--and openly, in the preachers' Monday meetings: "You mean well, but you're one of these darned
philanthropists."

"Nice word to use publicly--'darned'!" meditated the Reverend Elmer Gantry.

"All  your stuff at Central, Otto," said Dr. McGarry, "is paternalistic. You hand out rations to the dear pee-pul and keep 'em obedient. You talk
about  socialism  and  pacifism,  and  say a lot of nice things about 'em, but you always explain that reforms must come in due time, which means
never,  and  then  only through the kind supervision of Rockefeller and Henry Ford. And I always suspect that your activities have behind 'em the
sneaking purpose of luring the poor chumps into religion--even into Methodism!"

The whole ministerial meeting broke into yelps.

"Well, of course, that's the purpose--"

"Well, if you'll kindly tell me why you stay in the Methodist Church when you think it's so unimportant to--"

"Just what are you, a minister of the gospel, seeking EXCEPT religion--"

The meeting, on such a morning, was certain to stray from the consideration of using egg-coal in church furnaces to the question as to what, when
they weren't before their congregations and on record, they really believed about the whole thing.

That  was  a  very  dangerous  and silly thing, reflected Elmer Gantry. No telling where you'd get to, if you went blatting around about a lot of
these  fool  problems.  Preach the straight Bible gospel and make folks good, he demanded, and leave all these ticklish questions of theology and
social service to the profs!

Philip  McGarry  wound  up  his cheerful attack on Dr. Hickenlooper, the first morning when Elmer disgustedly encountered him, by insisting, "You
see, Otto, your reforms couldn't mean anything, or you wouldn't be able to hold onto as many prosperous money-grabbing parishioners as you do. No
risk  of  the  working-men  in  your  church  turning dangerous as long as you've got that tight-fisted Joe Hanley as one of your trustees! Thank
Heaven, I haven't got a respectable person in my whole blooming flock!"

("Yeh, and there's where you gave yourself away, McGarry," Elmer chuckled inwardly. "That's the first thing you've said that's true!")

Philip  McGarry's church was in a part of the city incomparably more run-down than Elmer's Old Town. It was called "The Arbor"; it had in pioneer
days  been  the  vineyard-sheltered  village,  along  the Chaloosa River, from which had grown the modern Zenith. Now it was all dives, brothels,
wretched  tenements,  cheap-jack  shops.  Yet  here McGarry lived, a bachelor, seemingly well content, counseling pickpockets and scrubwomen, and
giving  on  Friday evenings a series of lectures packed by eager Jewish girl students, radical workmen, old cranks, and wistful rich girls coming
in limousines down from the spacious gardens of Royal Ridge.

"I'll have trouble with that McGarry if we both stay in this town. Him and I will never get along together," thought Elmer. "Well, I'll keep away
from  him;  I'll  treat him with some of this Christian charity that he talks so darn' much about and can't understand the real meaning of! We'll
just dismiss him--and most of these other birds. But the big three--how'll I handle them?"

He could not, even if he should have a new church, outdo Chester Brown in ecclesiastical elegance or literary messages. He could never touch Otto
Hickenlooper in institutions and social service. He could never beat Mahlon Potts in appealing to the well-to-do respectables.

Yet he could beat them all together!

Planning  it  delightedly,  at  the  ministers'  meeting,  on  his  way  home,  by the fireplace at night, he saw that each of these stars was so
specialized  that  he  neglected  the good publicity-bringing features of the others. Elmer would combine them; be almost as elevating as Chester
Brown,  almost  as  solidly  safe  and moral as Mahlon Potts. And all three of them, in fact every preacher in town except one Presbyterian, were
neglecting  the--well,  some  people  called  it sensational, but that was just envy; the proper word, considered Elmer, was POWERFUL, or perhaps
FEARLESS,  or  STIMULATING--all of them were neglecting a powerful, fearless, or stimulating, and devil-challenging concentration on vice. Booze.
Legs. Society bridge. You bet!

Not  overdo it, of course, but the town would come to know that in the sermons of the Reverend Elmer Gantry there would always be something spicy
and yet improving.

"Oh,  I  can put it over the whole bunch!" Elmer stretched his big arms in joyous vigor. "I'll build a new church. I'll take the crowds away from
all of 'em. I'll be the one big preacher in Zenith. And then--Chicago? New York? Bishopric? Whatever I want! Whee!"



CHAPTER XXIV


1


It  was  during  his  inquiry about clerical allies and rivals--they were the same thing--that Elmer learned that two of his classmates at Mizpah
Seminary were stationed in Zenith.

Wallace Umstead, the Mizpah student-instructor in gymnastics, was now general secretary of the Zenith Y.M.C.A.

"He's  a  boob.  We  can  pass  him  up," Elmer decided. "Husky but no finesse and culture. No. That's wrong. Preacher can get a lot of publicity
speaking at the Y., and get the fellows to join his church."

So  he  called  on Mr. Umstead, and that was a hearty and touching meeting between classmates, two strong men come face to face, two fellow manly
Christians.

But  Elmer  was  not  pleased to learn of the presence of the second classmate, Frank Shallard. He angrily recalled: "Sure--the fellow that high-
hatted me and sneaked around and tried to spy on me when I was helping him learn the game at Schoenheim."

He  was  glad to hear that Frank was in disgrace with the sounder and saner clergy of Zenith. He had left the Baptist Church; it was said that he
had  acted  in  a  low  manner  as  a common soldier in the Great War; and he had gone as pastor to a Congregational Church in Zenith--not a God-
fearing,  wealthy  Congregational  Church,  like  that  of  Dr. G. Prosper Edwards, but one that was suspected of being as shaky and cowardly and
misleading as any Unitarian fold.

Elmer  remembered  that he still owed Frank the hundred dollars which he had borrowed to reach Zenith for the last of his Prosperity lectures. He
was furious to remember it. He couldn't pay it, not now, with a motor car just bought and only half paid for! But was it safe to make an enemy of
this crank Shallard, who might go around shooting his mouth off and telling a lot of stories--not more'n half of 'em true?

He  groaned  with  martyrdom,  made  out  a  check  for  a hundred--it was one-half of his present bank-balance--and sent it to Frank with a note
explaining  that  for  years  he  had  yearned  to  return this money, but he had lost Frank's address. Also, he would certainly call on his dear
classmate just as soon as he got time.

"And that'll be about sixteen years after the Day of Judgment," he snorted.


2


Not  all  the  tenderness, all the serene uprightness, all the mystic visions of Andrew Pengilly, that village saint, had been able to keep Frank
Shallard  satisfied  with  the  Baptist  ministry  after  his  association with the questioning rabbi and the Unitarian minister at Eureka. These
liberals proved admirably the assertion of the Baptist fundamentalists that to tamper with biology and ethnology was to lose one's Baptist faith,
wherefore State University education should be confined to algebra, agriculture, and Bible study.

Early in 1917, when it was a question as to whether he would leave his Baptist church or to be kicked out, Frank was caught by the drama of war--
caught, in his wavering, by what seemed strength--and he resigned, for all of Bess' bewildered protests; he sent her and the children back to her
father, and enlisted as a private soldier.

Chaplain? No! He wanted, for the first time, to be normal and uninsulated.

Through  the  war he was kept as a clerk in camp in America. He was industrious, quick, accurate, obedient; he rose to a sergeancy and learned to
smoke; he loyally brought his captain home whenever he was drunk; and he read half a hundred volumes of science.

And all the time he hated it.

He hated the indignity of being herded with other men, no longer a person of leisure and dignity and command, whose idiosyncrasies were important
to  himself  and  to  other  people,  but  a  cog,  to be hammered brusquely the moment it made any rattle of individuality. He hated the seeming
planlessness of the whole establishment. If this was a war to end war, he heard nothing of it from any of his fellow soldiers or his officers.

But  he learned to be easy and common with common men. He learned not even to hear cursing. He learned to like large males more given to tobacco-
chewing  than to bathing, and innocent of all words longer than "hell." He found himself so devoted to the virtues of these common people that he
wanted  "to  do  something  for  them"--and  in  bewildered reflection he could think of no other way of "doing something for them" than to go on
preaching.

But not among the Baptists, with their cast-iron minds.

Nor  yet  could  he  quite  go over to the Unitarians. He still revered Jesus of Nazareth as the one path to justice and kindness, and he still--
finding  even as in childhood a magic in the stories of shepherds keeping watch by night, of the glorified mother beside the babe in the manger--
he still had an unreasoned feeling that Jesus was of more than human birth, and veritably the Christ.

It  seemed  to  him that the Congregationalists were the freest among the more or less trinitarian denominations. Each Congregational church made
its own law. The Baptists were supposed to, but they were ruled by a grim general opinion.

After  the  war  he talked to the state superintendent of Congregational churches of Winnemac. Frank wanted a free church, and a poor church, but
not poor because it was timid and lifeless.

They  would,  said  the superintendent, be glad to welcome him among the Congregationalists, and there was available just the flock Frank wanted:
the  Dorchester  Church,  on  the edge of Zenith. The parishioners were small shopkeepers and factory foremen and skilled workmen and railwaymen,
with  a  few  stray  music-teachers and insurance agents. They were mostly poor; and they had the reputation of really wanting the truth from the
pulpit.

When Elmer arrived, Frank had been at the Dorchester Church for two years, and he had been nearly happy.

He  found that the grander among his fellow Congregational pastors--such as G. Prosper Edwards, with his downtown plush-lined cathedral--could be
shocked  almost  as  readily  as  the  Baptists by a suggestion that we didn't really quite KNOW about the virgin birth. He found that the worthy
butchers and haberdashers of his congregation did not radiate joy at a defense of Bolshevik Russia. He found that he was still not at all certain
that he was doing any good, aside from providing the drug of religious hope to timorous folk frightened of hell-fire and afraid to walk alone.

But to be reasonably free, to have, after army life, the fleecy comfort of a home with jolly Bess and the children, this was oasis, and for three
years Frank halted in his fumbling for honesty.

Even more than Bess, the friendship of Dr. Philip McGarry, of the Arbor Methodist Church, kept Frank in the ministry.

McGarry  was  three  or four years younger than Frank, but in his sturdy cheerfulness he seemed more mature. Frank had met him at the Ministerial
Alliance's  monthly  meeting, and they had liked in each other a certain disdainful honesty. McGarry was not to be shocked by what biology did to
Genesis,  by the suggestion that certain Christian rites had been stolen from Mithraic cults, by Freudianism, by any social heresies, yet McGarry
loved  the  church,  as  a  comradely gathering of people alike hungry for something richer than daily selfishness, and this love he passed on to
Frank.

But  Frank  still  resented  it  that,  as  a parson, he was considered not quite virile; that even clever people felt they must treat him with a
special manner; that he was barred from knowing the real thoughts and sharing the real desires of normal humanity.

And when he received Elmer's note of greeting he groaned, "Oh, Lord, I wonder if people ever class me with a fellow like Gantry?"

He  suggested to Bess, after a spirited account of Elmer's eminent qualities for spiritual and amorous leadership, "I feel like sending his check
back to him."

"Let's  see it," said Bess, and, placing the check in her stocking, she observed derisively, "There's a new suit for Michael, and a lovely dinner
for  you  and  me,  and  a  new  lip-stick,  and money in the bank. Cheers! I adore you, Reverend Shallard, I worship you, I adhere to you in all
Christian fidelity, but let me tell you, my lad, it wouldn't hurt you one bit if you had some of Elmer's fast technique in love-making!"



CHAPTER XXV


1


Elmer  had,  even  in Zenith, to meet plenty of solemn and whiskery persons whose only pleasure aside from not doing agreeable things was keeping
others from doing them. But the general bleakness of his sect was changing, and he found in Wellspring Church a Young Married Set who were nearly
as cheerful as though they did not belong to a church.

This  Young  Married  Set, though it was in good odor, though the wives taught Sunday School and the husbands elegantly passed collection plates,
swallowed  the  Discipline  with such friendly ease as a Catholic priest uses toward the latest bleeding Madonna. They lived, largely, in the new
apartment-houses  which  were  creeping into Old Town. They were not rich, but they had Fords and phonographs and gin. They danced, and they were
willing to dance even in the presence of the Pastor.

They  smelled in Elmer one of them, and though Cleo's presence stiffened them into uncomfortable propriety, when he dropped in on them alone they
shouted,  "Come  on, Reverend, I bet you can shake a hoof as good as anybody! The wife says she's gotta dance with you! Gotta get acquainted with
these Sins of the World if you're going to make snappy sermons!"

He  agreed, and he did dance, with a pretty appearance of being shocked. He was light-footed still, for all his weight, and there was electricity
in his grasp as his hands curled about his partner's waist.

"Oh,  my,  Reverend,  if  you hadn't been a preacher you'd have been some dancing-man!" the women fluttered, and for all his caution he could not
keep  from looking into their fascinated eyes, noting the flutter of their bosoms, and murmuring, "Better remember I'm human, honey! If I did cut
loose--Zowie!"

And they admired him for it.

Once,  when rather hungrily he sniffed at the odors of alcohol and tobacco, the host giggled, "Say, I hope you don't smell anything on my breath,
Reverend--be fierce if you thought a good Methodist like me could ever throw in a shot of liquor!"

"It's  not  my business to smell anything except on Sundays," said Elmer amiably, and, "Come on now, Sister Gilson, let's try and fox-trot again.
My  gracious, you talk about me smelling for liquor! Think of what would happen if Brother Apfelmus knew his dear Pastor was slipping in a little
dance! Mustn't tell on me, folks!"

"You  bet  we  won't!"  they  said,  and not even the elderly pietists on whom he called most often became louder adherents of the Reverend Elmer
Gantry, better advertisers of his sermons, than these blades of the Young Married Set.

He  acquired  a habit of going to their parties. He was hungry for brisk companionship, and it was altogether depressing now to be with Cleo. She
could  never  learn,  not after ten efforts a day, that she could not keep him from saying "Damn!" by looking hurt and murmuring, "Oh, Elmer, how
can you?"

He  told her, regarding the parties, that he was going out to call on parishioners. And he was not altogether lying. His ambition was more to him
now  than any exalted dissipation, and however often he yearned for the mechanical pianos and the girls in pink kimonos of whom he so lickerishly
preached, he violently kept away from them.

But  the  jolly  wives of the Young Married Set--Particularly this Mrs. Gilson, Beryl Gilson, a girl of twenty-five, born for cuddling. She had a
bleached and whining husband, who was always quarreling with her in a weakly violent sputtering; and she was obviously taken by Elmer's confident
strength. He sat by her in "cozy-corners," and his arm was tense. But he won glory by keeping from embracing her. Also, he wasn't so sure that he
could  win her. She was flighty, fond of triumphs, but cautious, a city girl used to many suitors. And if she did prove kind--She was a member of
his church, and she was talkative. She might go around hinting.

After  these  meditations  he  would  flee to the hospitality of T. J. Rigg, in whose cheerfully sloven house he could relax safely, from whom he
could  get  the facts about the private business careers of his more philanthropic contributors. But all the time the attraction of Beryl Gilson,
the vision of her dove-smooth shoulders, was churning him to insanity.


2


He  had  not  noticed  them  during that Sunday morning sermon in late autumn, not noticed them among the admirers who came up afterward to shake
hands. Then he startled and croaked, so that the current hand-shaker thought he was ill.

Elmer had seen, loitering behind the others, his one-time forced fiancée, Lulu Bains of Schoenheim, and her lanky, rugged, vengeful cousin, Floyd
Naylor.

They  strayed  up  only when all the others were gone, when the affable ushers had stopped pouncing on victims and pump-handling them and patting
their  arms,  as  all ushers always do after all church services. Elmer wished the ushers were staying, to protect him, but he was more afraid of
scandal than of violence.

He  braced  himself, feeling the great muscles surge along his back, then took quick decision and dashed toward Lulu and Floyd, yammering, "Well,
well, well, well, well, well--"

Floyd  shambled up, not at all unfriendly, and shook hands powerfully. "Lulu and I just heard you were in town--don't go to church much, I guess,
so we didn't know. We're married!"

While he shook hands with Lulu, much more tenderly, Elmer gave his benign blessing with "Well, well! Mighty glad to hear it."

"Yep, been married--gosh, must be fourteen years now--got married just after we last seen you at Schoenheim."

By  divine  inspiration Elmer was led to look as though he were wounded clear to the heart at the revived memory of that unfortunate last seeing.
He  folded  his hands in front of his beautiful morning coat, and looked noble, slightly milky and melancholy of eye. . . . But he was not milky.
He  was  staring  hard  enough.  He saw that though Floyd was still as clumsily uncouth as ever, Lulu--she must be thirty-three or -four now--had
taken on the city. She wore a simple, almost smart hat, a good tweed top-coat, and she was really pretty. Her eyes were ingratiatingly soft, very
inviting;  she  still smiled with a desire to be friendly to every one. Inevitably, she had grown plump, but she had not yet overdone it, and her
white little paw was veritably that of a kitten.

All this Elmer noted, while he looked injured but forgiving and while Floyd stammered:

"You  see,  Reverend, I guess you thought we played you a pretty dirty trick that night on the picnic at Dad Bains', when you came back and I was
kind of hugging Lulu."

"Yes, Floyd, I was pretty hurt, but--Let's forget and forgive!"

"No,  but listen, Reverend! Golly, 'twas hard for me to come and explain to you, but now I've got going--Lulu and me, we weren't making love. No,
sir!  She  was  just  feeling blue, and I was trying to cheer her up. Honest! Then when you got sore and skipped off, Pa Bains, he was so doggone
mad--got out his shotgun and cussed and raised the old Ned, yes, sir, he simply raised Cain, and he wouldn't give me no chance to explain. Said I
had to marry Lu. 'Well,' I says, 'if you think THAT'S any hardship--'"

Floyd stopped to chuckle. Elmer was conscious that Lulu was studying him, in awe, in admiration, in a palpitating resurgence of affection.

"'If  you  think  that's any hardship,' I says, 'let me tell you right now, Uncle,' I says, 'I been crazy to marry Lu ever since she was so high.
Well,  there was a lot of argument. Dad Bains says first we had to go in town and explain everything to you. But you was gone away, next morning,
and  what  with  one  thing and another--well, here we are! And doing pretty good. I own a garage out here on the edge of town, and we got a nice
flat,  and everything going fine. But Lulu and I kind of felt maybe we ought to come around and explain, when we heard you were here. And got two
fine kids, both boys!"

"Honestly, we never meant--we didn't!" begged Lulu.

Elmer  condescended, "Of course, I understand perfectly, Sister Lulu!" He shook hands with Floyd, warmly, and with Lulu more warmly. "And I can't
tell  you how pleased I am that you were both so gallant and polite as to take the trouble and come and explain it to me. That was real courtesy,
when  I'd  been  such  a  silly idiot! THAT night--I suffered so over what I thought was your disloyalty that I didn't think I'd live through the
night.  But  come! Shall we not talk of it again? All's understood now, and all's right!" He shook hands all over again. "And now that I've found
you,  two old friends like you--of course I'm still practically a stranger in Zenith--I'm not going to let you go! I'm going to come out and call
on you. Do you belong to any church body here in Zenith?"

"Well, no, not exactly," said Floyd.

"Can't I persuade you to come here, sometimes, and perhaps think of joining later?"

"Well,  I'll  tell  you, Reverend, in the auto business--kind of against my religion, at that, but you know how it is, in the auto business we're
awful' busy on Sunday."

"Well, perhaps Lulu would like to come now and then."

"Sure.  Women  ought to stick by the church, that's what I always say. Dunno just how we got out of the habit, here in the city, and we've always
talked about starting going again, but--Oh, we just kinda never got around to it, I guess."

"I  hope,  uh,  I  hope,  Brother  Floyd, that our miscomprehension, yours and mine that evening, had nothing to do with your alienation from the
church! Oh, that would be a pity! Yes. Such a pity! But I could, perhaps, have a--a comprehension of it." (He saw that Lulu wasn't missing one of
his  dulcet  and sinuous phrases; so different from Floyd's rustic blurting. She WAS pretty. Just plump enough. Cleo would be a fat old woman, he
was  afraid,  instead  of  handsome.  He couldn't of married Lulu. No. He'd been right. Small-town stuff. But awful nice to pat!) "Yes, I think I
could  understand  it  if  you'd been offended, Floyd. What a young chump I was, even if I WAS a preacher, to not--not to see the real situation.
Really, it's you who must forgive me for my wooden-headedness, Floyd!"

Sheepishly,  Floyd grunted, "Well, I DID think you flew off the handle kind of easy, and I guess it did make me kind of sore. But it don't matter
none now."

Very interestedly, Elmer inquired of Floyd, "And I'll bet Lulu was even angrier at me for my silliness!"

"No,  by  gosh,  she  never  would  let me say a word against you, Reverend! Ha, ha, ha! Look at her! By golly, if she ain't blushing! Well, sir,
that's a good one on her all right!" Elmer looked, intently.

"Well,  I'm  glad  everything's  explained,"  he said unctuously. "Now, Sister Lulu, you must let me come out and explain about our fine friendly
neighborhood  church  here,  and  the splendid work we're doing. I know that with two dear kiddies--two, was it?--splendid!--with them and a fine
husband to look after, you must be kept pretty busy, but perhaps you might find time to teach a Sunday School class or, anyway, you might like to
come  to  our  jolly  church suppers on Wednesday now and then. I'll tell you about our work, and you can talk it over with Floyd and see what he
thinks.  What would be a good time to call on you, and what's the address, Lulu? How, uh, how would tomorrow afternoon, about three, do? I wish I
could come when Floyd's there, but all my evenings are so dreadfully taken up."

Next  afternoon,  at  five minutes to three, the Reverend Elmer Gantry entered the cheap and flimsy apartment-house in which lived Floyd and Mrs.
Naylor,  impatiently  kicked  a  baby-carriage out of the way, panted a little as he skipped up-stairs, and stood glowing, looking at Lulu as she
opened the door.

"All alone?" he said--he almost whispered.

Her eyes dropped before his. "Yes. The boys are in school."

"Oh,  that's too bad! I'd hoped to see them." As the door closed, as they stood in the inner hall, he broke out, "Oh, Lulu, my darling, I thought
I'd lost you forever, and now I've found you again! Oh, forgive me for speaking like that! I shouldn't have! Forgive me! But if you knew how I've
thought  of  you,  dreamed  of  you,  waited  for you, all these years--No. I'm not allowed to talk like that. It's wicked. But we're going to be
friends, aren't we, such dear, trusting, tender friends . . . Floyd and you and I?"

"Oh,  YES!"  she  breathed,  as  she  led him into the shabby sitting-room with its thrice-painted cane rockers, its couch covered with a knitted
shawl, its department-store chromos of fruit and Versailles.

They  stood recalling each other in the living-room. He muttered huskily, "Dear, it wouldn't be wrong for you to kiss me? Just once? Would it? To
let me know you really do forgive me? You see, now we're like brother and sister."

She kissed him, shyly, fearfully, and she cried, "Oh, my darling, it's been so long!" Her arms clung about his neck, invincible, unrestrained.

When  the boys came in from school and rang the clicker bell downstairs, the romantics were unduly cordial to them. When the boys had gone out to
play, she cried, wildly, "Oh, I know it's wrong, but I've always loved you so!"

He inquired interestedly, "Do you feel wickeder because I'm a minister?"

"No!  I'm  proud of it! Like as if you were different from other men--like you were somehow closer to God. I'm PROUD you're a preacher! Any woman
would be! It's--you know. Different!"

He kissed her. "Oh, you darling!" he said.


3


They  had  to  be  careful.  Elmer had singularly little relish for having the horny-handed Floyd Naylor come in some afternoon and find him with
Lulu.

Like  many  famous  lovers in many ages, they found refuge in the church. Lulu was an admirable cook, and while in her new life in Zenith she had
never reached out for such urban opportunities as lectures or concerts or literary clubs, she had by some obscure ambitiousness, some notion of a
shop  of  her  own,  been stirred to attend a cooking-school and learn salads and pastry and canapés. Elmer was able to give her a weekly Tuesday
evening cooking-class to teach at Wellspring, and even to get out of the trustees for her a salary of five dollars a week.

The  cooking-class  was  over  at  ten.  By  that  time the rest of the church was cleared, and Elmer had decided that Tuesday evening would be a
desirable time for reading in his church office.

Cleo had many small activities in the church--clubs, Epworth League, fancy-work--but none on Tuesday evening.

Before  Lulu  came  stumbling  through the quiet church basement, the dark and musty corridor, before she tapped timidly at his door, he would be
walking up and down, and when he held out his arms she flew into them unreasoning.

He had a new contentment.

"I'm  really  not  a  bad fellow. I don't go chasing after women--oh, that fool woman at the hotel didn't count--not now that I've got Lulu. Cleo
never  WAS  married to me; she doesn't matter. I like to be good. If I'd just been married to somebody like Sharon! O God! Sharon! Am I untrue to
her? No! Dear Lulu, sweet kid, I owe something to her, too. I wonder if I could get to see her Saturday--"

A new contentment he had, and explosive success.



CHAPTER XXVI


1


In  the  autumn  of  his  first  year in Zenith Elmer started his famous Lively Sunday Evenings. Mornings, he announced, he would give them solid
religious meat to sustain them through the week, but Sunday evenings he would provide the best cream puffs. Christianity was a Glad Religion, and
he was going to make it a lot gladder.

There was a safe, conservative, sanguinary hymn or two at his Lively Sunday Evenings, and a short sermon about sunsets, authors, or gambling, but
most of the time they were just happy boys and girls together. He had them sing "Auld Lang Syne," and "Swanee River," with all the balladry which
might  have been considered unecclesiastical if it had not been hallowed by the war: "Tipperary," and "There's a Long, Long, Trail," and "Pack Up
Your Troubles in Your Old Kit Bag and Smile, Smile, Smile."

He  made  the  women  sing in contest against the men; the young people against the old; and the sinners against the Christians. That was lots of
fun,  because  some  of the most firmly saved brethren, like Elmer himself, pretended for a moment to be sinners. He made them whistle the chorus
and hum it and speak it; he made them sing it while they waved handkerchiefs, waved one hand, waved both hands.

Other  attractive  features  he  provided.  There was a ukulele solo by the champion uke-player from the University of Winnemac. There was a song
rendered  by  a sweet little girl of three, perched up on the pulpit. There was a mouth-organ contest, between the celebrated Harmonica Quartette
from  the  Higginbotham Casket Factory and the best four harmonicists from the B. & K. C. railroad shops; surprisingly won (according to the vote
of the congregation) by the enterprising and pleasing young men from the railroad.

When  this was over, Elmer stepped forward and said--you would never in the world have guessed he was joking unless you were near enough to catch
the  twinkle  in his eyes--he said, "Now perhaps some of you folks think the pieces the boys have played tonight, like 'Marching Through Georgia'
and 'Mammy,' aren't quite proper for a Methodist Church, but just let me show you how well our friend and brother, Billy Hicks here, can make the
old mouth-organ behave in a real highbrow religious hymn."

And Billy played "Ach Du Lieber Augustin."

How  they all laughed, even the serious old stewards! And when he had them in this humor, the Reverend Mr. Gantry was able to slam home, good and
hard,  some  pretty  straight  truths  about the horrors of starting children straight for hell by letting them read the colored comics on Sunday
morning.

Once,  to  illustrate  the  evils  of  betting,  he  had them bet as to which of two frogs would jump first. Once he had the representative of an
illustrious  grape-juice  company  hand  around  sample  glasses  of his beverage, to illustrate the superiority of soft drinks to the horrors of
alcohol. And once he had up on the platform a sickening twisted motor-car in which three people had been killed at a railroad-crossing. With this
as an example, he showed his flock that motor speeding was but one symptom of the growing madness and worldliness and materialism of the age, and
that this madness could be cured only by returning to the simple old-time religion as preached at the Wellspring Methodist Church.

The motor-car got him seven columns of publicity, with pictures of himself, the car, and the killed motorists.

In fact there were few of his new paths to righteousness which did not get adequate and respectful attention from the press.

There was, perhaps, no preacher in Zenith, not even the liberal Unitarian minister or the powerful Catholic bishop, who was not fond of the young
gentlemen  of  the press. The newspapers of Zenith were as likely to attack religion as they were to attack the department-stores. But of all the
clerics,  none  was so hearty, so friendly, so brotherly, to the reporters as the Reverend Elmer Gantry. His rival parsons were merely cordial to
the sources of publicity when they called. Elmer did his own calling.

Six  months  after  his coming to Zenith he began preparing a sermon on "The Making and Mission of a Great Newspaper." He informed the editors of
his  plan,  and  had  himself  taken through the plants and introduced to the staffs of the Advocate-Times, its sister, the Evening Advocate, the
Press, the Gazette, and the Crier.

Out  of his visits he managed to seize and hold the acquaintanceship of at least a dozen reporters. And he met the magnificent Colonel Rutherford
Snow,  owner  of  the Advocate, a white-haired, blasphemous, religious, scoundrelly old gentleman, whose social position in Zenith was as high as
that  of  a bank-president or a corporation-counsel. Elmer and the Colonel recognized in each other an enterprising boldness, and the Colonel was
so  devoted  to  the  church  and  its  work  in  preserving  the free and democratic American institutions that he regularly gave to the Pilgrim
Congregational  Church  more than a tenth of what he made out of patent medicine advertisements--cancer cures, rupture cures, tuberculosis cures,
and  the  notices of Old Dr. Bly. The Colonel was cordial to Elmer, and gave orders that his sermons should be reported at least once a month, no
matter how the rest of the clergy shouted for attention.

But  somehow  Elmer  could  not  keep  the friendship of Bill Kingdom, that peculiarly hard-boiled veteran reporter of the Advocate-Times. He did
everything  he  could; he called Bill by his first name, he gave him a quarter cigar, and he said "damn," but Bill looked uninterested when Elmer
came  around  with  the  juiciest  of stories about dance-halls. In grieved and righteous wrath, Elmer turned his charm on younger members of the
Advocate staff, who were still new enough to be pleased by the good-fellowship of a preacher who could say "damn."

Elmer  was  particularly benevolent with one Miss Coey, sob-sister reporter for the Evening Gazette and an enthusiastic member of his church. She
was worth a column a week. He always breathed at her after church.

Lulu  raged,  "It's hard enough to sit right there in the same pew with your wife, and never be introduced to her, because you say it isn't safe!
But when I see you holding hands with that Coey woman, it's a little too much!"

But  he  explained  that  he  considered Miss Coey a fool, that it made him sick to touch her, that he was nice to her only because he had to get
publicity;  and  Lulu  saw  that  it  was all proper and truly noble of him . . . even when in the church bulletins, which he wrote each week for
general  distribution, he cheered, "Let's all congratulate Sister Coey, who so brilliantly represents the Arts among us, on her splendid piece in
the recent Gazette about the drunken woman who was saved by the Salvation Army. Your pastor felt the quick tears springing to his eyes as he read
it,  which  is  a tribute to Sister Coey's powers of expression. And he is always glad to fellowship with the Salvation Army, as well as with all
other  branches of the true Protestant Evangelical Universal Church. Wellspring is the home of liberality, so long as it does not weaken morality
or the proven principles of Bible Christianity."


2


As important as publicity to Elmer was the harassing drive of finance.

He had made one discovery superb in its simple genius--the best way to get money was to ask for it, hard enough and often enough. To call on rich
men,  to set Sunday School classes in competition against one another, to see that every one received pledge-envelopes, these were all useful and
he  pursued  them  earnestly. But none of them was so useful as to tell the congregation every Sunday what epochal good Wellspring and its pastor
were doing, how much greater good they could do if they had more funds, and to demand their support now, this minute.

His Official Board was charmed to see the collections increasing even faster than the audiences. They insisted that the bishop send Elmer back to
them for another year--indeed for many years--and they raised Elmer's salary to forty-five hundred dollars.

And  in the autumn they let him have two subordinates--the Reverend Sidney Webster, B. A., B. D., as Assistant Pastor, and Mr. Henry Wink, B. A.,
as Director of Religious Education.

Mr.  Webster had been secretary to Bishop Toomis, and it was likely that he would some day be secretary of one of the powerful church boards--the
board  of publications, the board of missions, the board of temperance and morals. He was a man of twenty-eight; he had been an excellent basket-
ball  player  in  Boston  University; he was tight-mouthed as a New England president, efficient as an adding machine, and cold as the heart of a
bureaucrat.  If  he loved God and humanity-in-general with rigid devotion, he loved no human individual; if he hated sin, he was too contemptuous
of  any  actual  sinner to hate him--he merely turned his frigid face away and told him to go to hell. He had no vices. He was also competent. He
could preach, get rid of beggars, be quietly devout in death-bed prayers, keep down church expenses, and explain about the Trinity.

Henry  Wink  had a lisp and he told little simpering stories, but he was admirable in the direction of the Sunday School, vacation Bible schools,
and the Epworth Leagues.

With  Mr.  Webster and Mr. Wink removing most of the church detail from him, Elmer became not less but more occupied. He no longer merely invited
the public, but galloped out and dragged it in. He no longer merely scolded sin. He gratifyingly ended it.


3


When  he  had been in Zenith for a year and three-quarters, Elmer formed the Committee on Public Morals, and conducted his raids on the red-light
district.

It  seemed  to him that he was getting less publicity. Even his friend, Colonel Rutherford Snow, owner of the Advocate-Times, explained that just
saying things couldn't go on being news; news was essentially a report of things done.

"All right, I'll DO things, by golly, now that I've got Webster and Wink to take care of the glad hand for the brethren!" Elmer vowed.

He  received  an  inspiration to the effect that all of a sudden, for reasons not defined, "things have gotten so bad in Zenith, immorality is so
rampant  in high places and low, threatening the morals of youth and the sanctity of domesticity, that it is not enough for the ministry to stand
back warning the malefactors, but a time now to come out of our dignified seclusion and personally wage open war on the forces of evil."

He said these startling things in the pulpit, he said them in an interview, and he said them in a letter to the most important clergymen in town,
inviting them to meet with him to form a Committee on Public Morals and make plans for open war.

The devil must have been shaken. Anyway, the newspapers said that the mere threat of the formation of the Committee had caused "a number of well-
known crooks and women of bad reputation to leave town." Who these scoundrels were, the papers did not say.

The  Committee  was  to  be composed of the Reverends Elmer Gantry and Otto Hickenlooper, Methodists; G. Prosper Edwards, Congregationalist; John
Jennison  Drew,  Presbyterian;  Edmund  St.  Vincent  Zahn,  Lutheran; James F. Gomer, Disciples; Father Matthew Smeesby, Catholic; Bernard Amos,
Jewish;  Hosea  Jessup,  Baptist;  Willis  Fortune  Tate,  Episcopalian;  and Irving Tillish, Christian Science reader; with Wallace Umstead, the
Y.M.C.A. secretary, four moral laymen, and a lawyer, Mr. T. J. Rigg.

They  assembled  at lunch in a private dining-room at the palatial Zenith Athletic Club. Being clergymen, and having to prove that they were also
red-blooded,  as  they  gathered  before  lunch  in the lobby of the club they were particularly boisterous in shouting to passing acquaintances,
florists and doctors and wholesale plumbers. To one George Babbitt, a real estate man, Dr. Drew, the Presbyterian, clamored, "Hey, Georgie! Got a
flask along? Lunching with a bunch of preachers, and I reckon they'll want a drink!"

There  was  great  admiration  on  the part of Mr. Babbitt, and laughter among all the clergymen, except the Episcopal Mr. Tate and the Christian
Scientific Mr. Tillish.

The  private  dining-room  at  the club was a thin red apartment with two pictures of young Indian maidens of Lithuanian origin sitting in native
costumes,  which  gave free play to their legs, under a rugged pine-tree against a background of extremely high mountains. In Private Dining-room
A,  beside  them, was a lunch of the Men's Furnishers Association, addressed by S. Garrison Siegel of New York on "The Rented Dress Suit Business
and How to Run It in a High-class Way."

The incipient Committee on Public Morals sat about a long narrow table in bent-wood chairs, in which they were always vainly trying to tilt back.
Their table did not suggest debauchery and the demon rum. There were only chilly and naked-looking goblets of ice water.

They  lunched,  gravely, on consommé, celery, roast lamb, which was rather cold, mashed potatoes, which were arctic, Brussels sprouts, which were
overstewed, ice cream, which was warm; with very large cups of coffee, and no smoking afterward.

Elmer  began,  "I  don't know who is the oldest among us, but certainly no one in this room has had a more distinguished or more valuable term of
Christian service than Dr. Edwards, of Pilgrim Congregational, and I know you'll join me in asking him to say grace before meat."

The table conversation was less cheerful than the blessing.

They  all  detested  one  another.  Every  one knew of some case in which each of the others had stolen, or was said to have tried to steal, some
parishioner,  to  have  corrupted his faith and appropriated his contributions. Dr. Hickenlooper and Dr. Drew had each advertised that he had the
largest  Sunday  School  in the city. All of the Protestants wanted to throw ruinous questions about the Immaculate Conception at Father Smeesby,
and  Father Smeesby, a smiling dark man of forty, had ready, in case they should attack the Catholic Church, the story of the ant who said to the
elephant,  "Move  over, who do you think you're pushing?" All of them, except Mr. Tillish, wanted to ask Mr. Tillish how he'd ever been fooled by
this charlatan, Mary Baker Eddy, and all of them, except the rabbi, wanted to ask Rabbi Amos why the Jews were such numbskulls as not to join the
Christian faith.

They were dreadfully cordial. They kept their voices bland, and smiled too often, and never listened to one another. Elmer, aghast, saw that they
would flee before making an organization if he did not draw them together. And what was the one thing in which they were all joyously interested?
Why, vice! He'd begin the vice rampage now, instead of waiting till the business meeting after lunch.

He  pounded  on the table, and demanded, "Most of you have been in Zenith longer than myself. I admit ignorance. It is true that I have unearthed
many  dreadful,  DREADFUL  cases  of secret sin. But you gentlemen, who know the town so much better--Am I right? Are Conditions as dreadful as I
think, or do I exaggerate?"

All of them lighted up and, suddenly looking on Elmer as a really nice man after all, they began happily to tell of their woeful discoveries. . .
.  The blood-chilling incident of the father who found in the handbag of his sixteen-year-old daughter improper pictures. The suspicion that at a
dinner of war veterans at the Leroy House there had danced a young lady who wore no garments save slippers and a hat.

"I know all about that dinner--I got the details from a man in my church--I'll tell you about it if you feel you ought to know," said Dr. Gomer.

They  looked as though they decidedly felt that they ought to know. He went into details, very, and at the end Dr. Jessup gulped, "Oh, that Leroy
House is absolutely a den of iniquity! It ought to be pulled!"

"It  certainly ought to! I don't think I'm cruel," shouted Dr. Zahn, the Lutheran, "but if I had my way, I'd burn the proprietor of that joint at
the stake!"

All of them had incidents of shocking obscenity all over the place--all of them except Father Smeesby, who sat back and smiled, the Episcopal Dr.
Tate,  who  sat  back  and  looked  bored,  and Mr. Tillish, the healer, who sat back and looked chilly. In fact it seemed as though, despite the
efforts  of  themselves  and  the  thousands  of  other  inspired  and  highly  trained Christian ministers who had worked over it ever since its
foundation,  the city of Zenith was another Sodom. But the alarmed apostles did not appear to be so worried as they said they were. They listened
with  almost  benign attention while Dr. Zahn, in his German accent, told of alarming crushes between the society girls whom he knew so well from
dining once a year with his richest parishioner.

They were all, indeed, absorbed in vice to a degree gratifying to Elmer.

But at the time for doing something about it, for passing resolutions and appointing sub-committees and outlining programs, they drew back.

"Can't we all get together--pool our efforts?" pleaded Elmer. "Whatever our creedal differences, surely we stand alike in worshiping the same God
and advocating the same code of morals. I'd like to see this Committee as a permanent organization, and finally, when the time is ripe--Think how
it  would  jolt  the  town!  All  of  us  getting  ourselves  appointed  special police or deputy sheriffs, and personally marching down on these
abominations,  arresting  the blood-guilty wretches, and putting them where they can do no harm! Maybe leading our church members in the crusade!
Think of it!"

They did think of it, and they were alarmed.

Father  Smeesby  spoke.  "My  church,  gentlemen,  probably  has  a  more  rigid theology than yours, but I don't think we're quite so alarmed by
discovering  the fact, which seems to astonish you, that sinners often sin. The Catholic Church may be harder to believe, but it's easier to live
with."

"My organization," said Mr. Tillish, "could not think of joining in a wild witch-hunt, any more than we could in indiscriminate charity. For both
the  poverty-laden  and the vicious--" He made a little whistling between his beautiful but false teeth, and went on with frigid benignancy. "For
all  such,  the  truth  is clearly stated in 'Science and Health' and made public in all our meetings--the truth that both vice and poverty, like
sickness,  are unreal, are errors, to be got rid of by understanding that God is All-in-all; that disease, death, evil, sin deny good, omnipotent
God,  life. Well! If these so-called sufferers do not care to take the truth when it is freely offered them, is that our fault? I understand your
sympathy with the unfortunate, but you are not going to put out ignorance by fire."

"Golly,  let me crawl too," chuckled Rabbi Amos. "If you want to get a vice-crusading rabbi, get one of these smart-aleck young liberals from the
Cincinnati  school--and  they'll  mostly  have  too  much  sympathy  with  the sinners to help you either! Anyway, my congregation is so horribly
respectable that if their rabbi did anything but sit in his study and look learned, they'd kick him out."

"And  I," said Dr. Willis Fortune Tate, of St. Colomb's Episcopal, "if you will permit me to say so, can regard such a project as our acting like
policemen and dealing with these malefactors in person as nothing short of vulgar, as well as useless. I understand your high ideals, Dr. Gantry-
-"

"Mr. Gantry."

"--Mr.  Gantry,  and  I  honor  you for them, and respect your energy, but I beg you to consider how the press and the ordinary laity, with their
incurably common and untrained minds, would misunderstand."

"I'm  afraid  I  must agree with Dr. Tate," said the Congregational Dr. G. Prosper Edwards, in the manner of the Pilgrim's Monument agreeing with
Westminister Abbey.

And as for the others, they said they really must "take time and think it over," and they all got away as hastily and cordially as they could.

Elmer walked with his friend and pillar, Mr. T. J. Rigg, toward the dentist's office in which even an ordinary minister of God would shortly take
on strangely normal writhings and gurglings.

"They're a fine bunch of scared prophets, a noble lot of apostolic ice-cream cones!" protested Mr. Rigg. "Hard luck, Brother Elmer! I'm sorry. It
really  is good stuff, this vice-crusading. Oh, I don't suppose it makes the slightest difference in the amount of vice--and I don't know that it
ought  to  make any. Got to give fellows that haven't our advantages some chance to let off steam. But it does get the church a lot of attention.
I'm  mighty  proud  of  the way we're building up Wellspring Church again. Kind of a hobby with me. But makes me indignant, these spiritual cold-
storage eggs not supporting you!"

But as he looked up he saw that Elmer was grinning.

"I'm not worried, T. J. Fact, I'm tickled to death. First place, I've scared 'em off the subject of vice. Before they get back to preaching about
it,  I'll  have  the  whole  subject absolutely patented for our church. And now they won't have the nerve to imitate me if I do do this personal
crusading  stunt.  Third, I can preach against 'em! And I will! You watch me! Oh, not mention any names--no come-back--but tell 'em how I pleaded
with a gang of preachers to take practical methods to end immorality, and they were all scared!"

"Fine!" said the benevolent trustee. "We'll let 'em know that Wellspring is the one church that's really following the gospel."

"We sure will! Now listen, T. J.: if you trustees will stand for the expense, I want to get a couple of good private detectives or something, and
have  'em  dig  up  a  lot  of real addresses of places that ARE vicious--there must be some of 'em--and get some evidence. Then I'll jump on the
police for not having pinched these places. I'll say they're so wide open that the police MUST know of 'em. And probably that's true, too. Man! A
sensation! Run our disclosures every Sunday evening for a month! Make the chief of police try to answer us in the press!"

"Good  stuff!  Well,  I  know  a  fellow--he was a government man, prohibition agent, and got fired for boozing and blackmail. He's not exactly a
double-crosser, lot straighter than most prohibition agents, but still I think he could slip us some real addresses. I'll have him see you."


4


When from his pulpit the Reverend Elmer Gantry announced that the authorities of Zenith were "deliberately conniving in protected vice," and that
he  could give the addresses and ownerships of sixteen brothels, eleven blind tigers, and two agencies for selling cocaine and heroin, along with
an  obscene  private  burlesque  show  so dreadful that he could only hint at the nature of its program, when he attacked the chief of police and
promised to give more detailed complaints next Sunday, then the town exploded.

There  were front-page newspaper stories, yelping replies by the mayor and chief of police, re-replies from Elmer, interviews with everybody, and
a full-page account of white slavery in Chicago. In clubs and offices, in church societies and the back-rooms of "soft-drink stands," there was a
blizzard  of  talk.  Elmer  had to be protected against hundreds of callers, telephoners, letter writers. His assistant, Sidney Webster, and Miss
Bundle, the secretary, could not keep the mob from him, and he hid out in T. J. Rigg's house, accessible to no one, except to newspaper reporters
who for any Christian and brotherly reason might care to see him.

For  the second Sunday evening of his jeremiad, the church was full half an hour before opening-time, standing-room was taken even to the back of
the lobby, hundreds clamored at the closed doors.

He  gave  the exact addresses of eight dives, told what dreadful drinkings of corn whisky went on there, and reported the number of policemen, in
uniform, who had been in the more attractive of these resorts during the past week.

Despite  all the police could do to help their friends close up for a time, it was necessary for them to arrest ten or fifteen of the hundred-odd
criminals whom Elmer named. But the chief of police triumphed by announcing that it was impossible to find any of the others.

"All  right,"  Elmer  murmured  to  the chief, in the gentleness of a boxed newspaper interview in bold-face type, "if you'll make me a temporary
lieutenant of police and give me a squad, I'll find and close five dives in one evening--any evening save Sunday."

"I'll do it--and you can make your raids tomorrow," said the chief, in the official dignity of headlines.

Mr. Rigg was a little alarmed.

"Think  you're going too far, Elmer," he said. "If you really antagonize any of the big wholesale bootleggers, they'll get us financially, and if
you hit any of the tough ones, they're likely to bump you off. Darn' dangerous."

"I  know.  I'm just going to pick out some of the smaller fellows that make their own booze and haven't got any police protection except slipping
five  or ten to the cop on the beat. The newspapers will make 'em out regular homicidal gangsters, to get a good story, and we'll have the credit
without being foolish and taking risks."


5


At  least a thousand people were trying to get near the Central Police Station on the evening when a dozen armed policemen marched down the steps
of the station-house and stood at attention, looking up at the door, awaiting their leader.

He  came  out,  the  great Reverend Mr. Gantry, and stood posing on the steps, while the policemen saluted, the crowd cheered or sneered, and the
press  cameras  went  off in a fury of flashlight powder. He wore the gilt-encircled cap of a police lieutenant, with a lugubrious frock coat and
black trousers, and under his arm he carried a Bible.

Two  patrol  wagons  clanged  away, and all the women in the crowd, except certain professional ladies, who were grievously profane, gasped their
admiration of this modern Savonarola.

He had promised the mob at least one real house of prostitution.


6


There  were  two  amiable young females who, tired of working in a rather nasty bread factory and of being unremuneratively seduced by the large,
pale,  puffy  bakers on Sunday afternoons, had found it easier and much jollier to set up a small flat in a street near Elmer's church. They were
fond of reading the magazines and dancing to the phonograph and of going to church--usually Elmer's church. If their relations to their gentlemen
friends  were  more  comforting  than a preacher could expect, after his experience of the sacred and chilly state of matrimony, they entertained
only a few of these friends, often they darned their socks, and almost always they praised Elmer's oratory.

One  of  the  girls,  this evening, was discoursing with a man who was later proved in court not to be her husband; the other was in the kitchen,
making  a birthday-cake for her niece and humming "Onward, Christian Soldiers." She was dazed by a rumbling, a clanging, a shouting in the street
below,  then  mob-sounds  on  the stairs. She fluttered into the living-room, to see their pretty imitation mahogany door smashed in with a rifle
butt.

Into  the  room  crowded a dozen grinning policemen, followed, to her modest shame, by her adored family prophet, the Reverend Gantry. But it was
not  the cheerful, laughing Mr. Gantry that she knew. He held out his arm in a horrible gesture of holiness, and bawled, "Scarlet woman! Thy sins
be  upon  thy head! No longer are you going to get away with leading poor unfortunate young men into the sink and cesspool of iniquity! Sergeant!
Draw your revolver! These women are known to be up to every trick!"

"All right, sure, loot!" giggled the brick-faced police sergeant.

"Oh,  rats! This girl looks as dangerous as a goldfish, Gantry," remarked Bill Kingdom, of the Advocate-Times . . . he who was two hours later to
do an epic of the heroism of the Great Crusader.

"Let's see what the other girl's up to," snickered one of the policemen.

They  all  laughed  very  much  as  they looked into the bedroom, where a half-dressed girl and a man shrank by the window, their faces sick with
shame.

It  was  with  her--ignoring  Bill  Kingdom's  mutters  of  "Oh,  drop it! Pick on somebody your size!"--that Elmer the vice-slayer became really
Biblical.

Only the insistence of Bill Kingdom kept Lieutenant Gantry from making his men load the erring one into the patrol wagon in her chemise.

Then  Elmer  led  them  to  a secret den where, it was securely reported, men were ruining their bodies and souls by guzzling the devil's brew of
alcohol.


7


Mr. Oscar Hochlauf had been a saloon-keeper in the days before prohibition, but when prohibition came, he was a saloon-keeper. A very sound, old-
fashioned,  drowsy, agreeable resort was Oscar's Place; none of the grander public houses had more artistic soap scrawls on the mirror behind the
bar; none had spicier pickled herring.

Tonight  there  were  three  men  before  the  bar:  Emil Fischer, the carpenter, who had a mustache like an ear-muff; his son Ben, whom Emil was
training  to  drink  wholesome  beer  instead  of the whisky and gin which America was forcing on the people; and old Daddy Sorenson, the Swedish
tailor.

They were discussing jazz.

"I  came to America for liberty--I think Ben's son will go back to Germany for liberty," said Emil. "When I was a young man here, four of us used
to play every Saturday evening--Bach we played, and Brahms--Gott weiss we played terrible, but we liked it, and we never made others listen. Now,
wherever  you  go,  this jazz, like a St. Vitus's. Jazz iss to music what this Reverend Gantry you read about is to an old-time Prediger. I guess
maybe he was never born, that Gantry fellow--he was blowed out of a saxophone."

"Aw, this country's all right, Pa," said Ben.

"Sure,  dot's  right," said Oscar Hochlauf contentedly, while he sliced the foam off a glass of beer. "The Americans, like when I knew dem first,
when dere was Bill Nye and Eugene Field, dey used to laugh. Now dey get solemn. When dey start laughing again, dey roar dere heads off at fellows
like Gantry and most all dese preachers dat try to tell everybody how dey got to live. And if the people laugh--oof!--God help the preachers!"

"Vell, that's how it is. Say, did I tell you, Oscar," said the Swedish tailor, "my grandson Villiam, he got a scholarship in the university!"

"That's  fine!"  they  all  agreed, slapping Daddy Sorenson on the back. . . as a dozen policemen, followed by a large and gloomy gentleman armed
with  a  Bible,  burst in through the front and back doors, and the gloomy gentleman, pointing at the astounded Oscar, bellowed, "Arrest that man
and hold all these other fellows!"

To Oscar then, and to an audience increasing ten a second:

"I've  got  you!  You're  the  kind that teaches young boys to drink--it's you that start them on the road to every hellish vice, to gambling and
murder, with your hellish beverages, with your draught of the devil himself!"

Arrested  for  the  first time in his life, bewildered, broken, feebly leaning on the arms of two policemen, Oscar Hochlauf straightened at this,
and screamed:

"Dot's a damned lie! Always when you let me, I handle Eitelbaum's beer, the finest in the state, and since den I make my own beer. It is good! It
is honest! 'Hellish beverage!' Dot YOU should judge of beer--dot a pig should judge poetry! Your Christ dot made vine, HE vould like my beer!"

Elmer  jumped  forward  with  his  great fist doubled. Only the sudden grip of the police sergeant kept him from striking down the blasphemer. He
shrieked, "Take that foul-mouthed bum to the wagon! I'll see he gets the limit!"

And Bill Kingdom murmured to himself, "Gallant preacher single-handed faces saloon full of desperate gun-men and rebukes them for taking the name
of the Lord in vain. Oh, I'll get a swell story. . . . Then I think I'll commit suicide."


8


The  attendant  crowd and the policemen had whispered that, from the careful way in which he followed instead of leading, it might be judged that
the  Reverend  Lieutenant  Gantry  was  afraid  of the sinister criminals whom he was attacking. And it is true that Elmer had no large fancy for
revolver  duels. But he had not lost his delight in conflict; he was physically no coward; and they were all edified to see this when the raiders
dashed into the resort of Nick Spoletti.

Nick,  who  conducted  a  bar  in  a  basement,  had been a prizefighter; he was cool and quick. He heard the crusaders coming and shouted to his
customers, "Beat it! Side door! I'll hold 'em back!"

He met the first of the policemen at the bottom of the steps, and dropped him with the crack of a bottle over his head. The next tripped over the
body, and the others halted, peering, looking embarrassed, drawing revolvers. But Elmer smelled battle. He forgot holiness. He dropped his Bible,
thrust aside two policemen, and swung on Nick from the bottom step. Nick slashed at his head, but with a boxer's jerk of the neck Elmer slid away
from the punch, and knocked out Nick with a deliberately murderous left.

"Golly, the parson's got an awful wallop!" grunted the sergeant, and Bill Kingdom sighed, "Not so bad!" and Elmer knew that he had won . . . that
he would be the hero of Zenith . . . that he was now the Sir Lancelot as well as the William Jennings Bryan of the Methodist Church.


9


After two more raids he was delivered at his home by patrol wagon, and left with not entirely sardonic cheers by the policemen.

Cleo rushed to meet him, crying, "Oh, you're safe! Oh, my dear, you're hurt!"

His cheek was slightly bleeding.

In  a  passion of admiration for himself so hot that it extended even to her, he clasped her, kissed her wetly, and roared, "It's nothing! Oh, it
went  great! We raided five places--arrested twenty-seven criminals--took them in every sort of horrible debauchery--things I never dreamed could
exist!"

"You poor dear!"

There was not enough audience, with merely Cleo, and the maid peering from the back of the hall.

"Let's go and tell the kids. Maybe they'll be proud of their dad!" he interrupted her.

"Dear, they're asleep--"

"Oh! I see! Sleep is more important to 'em than to know their father is a man who isn't afraid to back up his gospel with his very life!"

"Oh,  I  didn't mean--I meant--Yes, of course, you're right. It'll be a wonderful example and inspiration. But let me put some stickum plaster on
your cheek first."

By  the  time she had washed the cut, and bound it and fussed over it, he had forgotten the children and their need of an heroic exemplar, as she
had  expected,  and he sat on the edge of the bath-tub telling her that he was an entire Trojan army. She was so worshipful that he became almost
amorous, until it seemed to him from her anxious patting of his arm that she was trying to make him so. It angered him--that she, so unappealing,
should  have  the  egotism  to  try  to  attract  a  man like himself. He went off to his own room, wishing that Lulu were here to rejoice in his
splendor, the beginning of his fame as the up-to-date John Wesley.



CHAPTER XXVII


1


Elmer,  in court, got convictions of sixteen out of the twenty-seven fiends whom he had arrested, with an extra six months for Oscar Hochlauf for
resisting  arrest  and  the use of abusive and profane language. The judge praised him; the mayor forgave him; the chief of police shook his hand
and invited him to use a police squad at any time; and some of the younger reporters did not cover their mouths with their hands.

Vice  was  ended  in  Zenith.  It  was  thirty  days before any of the gay ladies were really back at work--though the gentlemanly jailers at the
workhouse did let some of them out for an occasional night.

Every  Sunday  evening  now  people  were  turned from the door of Elmer's church. If they did not always have a sermon about vice, at least they
enjoyed  the  saxophone  solos,  and  singing  "There'll be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight." And once they were entertained by a professional
juggler who wore (it was Elmer's own idea) a placard proclaiming that he stood for "God's Word" and who showed how easy it was to pick up weights
symbolically labeled "Sin" and "Sorrow" and "Ignorance" and "Papistry."

The  trustees were discussing the erection of a new and much larger church, a project for which Elmer himself had begun to prepare a year before,
by reminding the trustees how many new apartment-houses were replacing the run-down residences in Old Town.

The  trustees raised his salary to five thousand, and they increased the budget for institutional work. Elmer did not institute so many clubs for
students  of  chiropractic and the art of motion-picture acting as did Dr. Otto Hickenlooper of Central Methodist, but there was scarcely an hour
from nine in the morning till ten at night when some circle was not trying to do good to somebody . . . and even after ten there were often Elmer
and Lulu Bains Naylor, conferring on cooking classes.

Elmer  had  seen  the danger of his crusading publicity and his Lively Sunday Evenings--the danger of being considered a clown instead of a great
moral leader.

"I've  got  to figure out some way so's I keep dignified and yet keep folks interested," he meditated. "The thing is sort of to have other people
do  the  monkey-business,  but  me,  I got to be up-stage and not smile as much as I've been doing. And just when the poor chumps think my Sunday
evening  is  nothing  but a vaudeville show, I'll suddenly soak 'em with a regular old-time hell-fire and damnation sermon, or be poetic and that
stuff."

It  worked,  reasonably.  Though  many  of his rival preachers in Zenith went on calling him "clown" and "charlatan" and "sensationalist," no one
could  fail to appreciate his lofty soul and his weighty scholarship, once they had seen him stand in agonized silent prayer, then level his long
forefinger and intone:

"You  have laughed now. You have sung. You have been merry. But what came ye forth into the wilderness for to see? Merely laughter? I want you to
stop a moment now and think just how long it is since you have realized that any night death may demand your souls, and that then, laughter or no
laughter,  unless  you  have  found the peace of God, unless you have accepted Christ Jesus as your savior, you may with no chance of last-minute
repentance be hurled into horrible and shrieking and appalling eternal torture!"

Elmer had become so distinguished that the Rotary Club elected him to membership with zeal.

The  Rotary  Club was an assemblage of accountants, tailors, osteopaths, university-presidents, carpet-manufacturers, advertising men, millinery-
dealers,  ice-dealers,  piano  salesmen,  laundrymen,  and  like leaders of public thought, who met weekly for the purposes of lunching together,
listening to addresses by visiting actors and by lobbyists against the recognition of Russia, beholding vaudeville teams in eccentric dances, and
indulging  in  passionate  rhapsodies about Service and Business Ethics. They asserted that their one desire in their several callings was not to
make money but only to serve and benefit a thing called the Public. They were as earnest about this as was the Reverend Elmer Gantry about vice.

He  was  extraordinarily  at  home  among the Rotarians; equally happy in being a good fellow with such good fellows as these and in making short
speeches  to  the effect that "Jesus Christ would be a Rotarian if he lived today--Lincoln would be a Rotarian today--William McKinley would be a
Rotarian  today.  All  these men preached the principles of Rotary: one for all and all for one; helpfulness towards one's community, and respect
for God."

It was a rule of this organization, which was merry and full of greetings in between inspirational addresses, that every one should, at lunch, be
called  by  his  first name. They shouted at the Reverend Mr. Gantry as "Elmer" or "Elm," while he called his haberdasher "Ike" and beamed on his
shoe-seller as "Rudy." A few years before, this intimacy might have led him into indiscretions, into speaking vulgarly, or even desiring a drink.
But  he  had  learned  his  rôle of dignity now, and though he observed, "Dandy day, Shorty!" he was quick to follow it up unhesitatingly with an
orotund, "I trust that you have been able to enjoy the beauty of the vernal foliage in the country this week." So Shorty and his pals went up and
down  informing the citizenry that Reverend Gantry was a "good scout, a prince of a good fellow, but a mighty deep thinker, and a real honest-to-
God orator."

When  Elmer  informed T. J. Rigg of the joys of Rotary, the lawyer scratched his chin and suggested, "Fine. But look here, Brother Elmer. There's
one  thing  you're  neglecting:  the  really  big  boys  with  the  long  pockets.  Got  to know 'em. Not many of 'em Methodists--they go out for
Episcopalianism  or  Presbyterianism or Congregationalism or Christian Science, or stay out of the church altogether. But that's no reason why we
can't  turn  their MONEY Methodist. You wouldn't find but mighty few of these Rotarians in the Tonawanda Country Club--into which I bought my way
by blackmailing, you might say, a wheat speculator."

"But--but--why,  T.  J.,  those  Rotarians--why there's fellows in there like Ira Runyon, the managing editor of the Advocate, and Win Grant, the
realtor--"

"Yeh, but the owner of the Advocate, and the banker that's letting Win Grant run on till he bankrupts, and the corporation counsel that keeps 'em
all  out  of jail, you don't find THOSE malefactors going to no lunch club and yipping about Service! You find 'em sitting at small tables at the
old  Union  Club,  and  laughing  themselves sick about Service. And for golf, they go to Tonawanda. I couldn't get you into the Union Club. They
wouldn't  have any preacher that talks about vice--the kind of preacher that belongs to the Union talks about the new model Cadillac and how hard
it  is to get genuwine Eyetalian vermouth. But the Tonawanda--They might let you in. For respectability. To prove that they couldn't have the gin
they've got in their lockers in their lockers."

It was done, though it took six months and a deal of secret politics conducted by T. J. Rigg.

Wellspring  Church, including the pastor of Wellspring, bloomed with pride that Elmer had been so elevated socially as to be allowed to play golf
with bankers.

Only he couldn't play golf.

From April to July, while he never appeared on the links with other players, Elmer took lessons from the Tonawanda professional, three mornings a
week, driving out in the smart new Buick which he had bought and almost paid for.

The  professional  was  a  traditionally  small and gnarled and sandy Scotchman, from Indiana, and he was so traditionally rude that Elmer put on
meekness.

"Put back your divots! D'you think this is a church?" snapped the professional.

"Damn it, I always forget, Scotty," whined Elmer. "Guess it must be hard on you to have to train these preachers."

"Preachers is nothing to me, and millionaires is nothing to me, but gawf grounds is a lot," grunted Scotty. (He was a zealous Presbyterian and to
be  picturesquely  rude  to  Christian  customers  was  as  hard  for him as it was to keep up the Scotch accent which he had learned from a real
Liverpool Irishman.)

Elmer was strong, he was placid when he was out-of-doors, and his eye was quick. When he first appeared publicly at Tonawanda, in a foursome with
T. J. Rigg and two most respectable doctors, he and his game were watched and commended. When he dressed in the locker-room and did not appear to
note the square bottle in use ten feet away, he was accepted as a man of the world.

William Dollinger Styles, member of the Tonawanda house committee, president of the fabulous W. D. Styles Wholesale Hardware Company--the man who
had introduced the Bite Edge Ax through all the land from Louisville to Detroit, and introduced white knickers to the Tonawanda Club--this baron,
this bishop, of business actually introduced himself to Elmer and made him welcome.

"Glad to see you here, dominie. Played much golf?"

"No, I've only taken it up recently, but you bet I'm going to be a real fan from now on."

"That's fine. Tell you how I feel about it, Reverend. We fellows that have to stick to our desks and make decisions that guide the common people,
you  religiously  and  me commercially, it's a good thing for us, and through us for them, to go out and get next to Nature, and put ourselves in
shape  to  tackle our complicated problems (as I said recently in an after-dinner speech at the Chamber of Commerce banquet) and keep a good sane
outlook so's we won't be swept away by every breeze of fickle and changing public opinion and so inevitably--"

In fact, said Mr. William Dollinger Styles, he liked golf.

Elmer  tenderly  agreed with "Yes, that's certainly a fact; certainly is a fact. Be a good thing for a whole lot of preachers if they got out and
exercised more instead of always reading."

"Yes,  I  wish  you'd  tell  my  dominie  that--not that I go to church such a whole lot, but I'm church treasurer and take kind of an interest--
Dorchester Congregational--Reverend Shallard."

"Oh! Frank Shallard! Why, I knew him in theological seminary! Fine, straight, intelligent fellow, Frank."

"Well,  yes,  but  I  don't  like  the way he's always carrying on and almost coming right out and defending a lot of these crooked labor unions.
That's  why I don't hardly ever hear his sermons, but I can't get the deacons to see it. And as I say, be better for him if he got outdoors more.
Well, glad to met you, Reverend. You must join one of our foursomes some day--if you can stand a little cussing, maybe!"

"Well, I'll try to, sir! Been mighty fine to have met you!"

"H'm!" reflected Elmer. "So Frank, the belly-aching highbrow, has got as rich a man as Styles in his fold, and Styles doesn't like him. Wonder if
Styles could turn Methodist--wonder if he could be pinched off Frank? I'll ask Rigg."

But  the  charm  of  the  place,  the  day, the implied social position, was such that Elmer turned from these purely religious breedings to more
esthetic thoughts.

Rigg  had  driven home. Elmer sat by himself on the huge porch of the Tonawanda Club, a long gray countryhouse on a hill sloping to the Appleseed
River,  with  tawny  fields  of barley among orchards on the bank beyond. The golf-course was scattered with men in Harris tweeds, girls in short
skirts  which  fluttered  about  their legs. A man in white flannels drove up in a Rolls-Royce roadster--the only one in Zenith as yet--and Elmer
felt ennobled by belonging to the same club with a Rolls-Royce. On the lawn before the porch, men with English-officer mustaches and pretty women
in pale frocks were taking tea at tables under striped garden-umbrellas.

Elmer knew none of them actually, but a few by sight.

"Golly, I'll be right in with all these swells some day! Must work it careful, and be snooty, and not try to pick 'em up too quick."

A  group  of weighty-looking men of fifty, near him, were conversing on the arts and public policy. As he listened, Elmer decided, "Yep, Rigg was
right.  Those  are  fine  fellows  at  the  Rotary  Club; fine, high-class, educated gentlemen, and certainly raking in the money; mighty cute in
business but upholding the highest ideals. But they haven't got the class of these really Big Boys."

Entranced, he gave heed to the magnates--a bond broker, a mine-owner, a lawyer, a millionaire lumberman:

"Yes, sir, what the country at large doesn't understand is that the stabilization of sterling has a good effect on our trade with Britain--"

"I told them that far from refusing to recognize the rights of labor, I had myself come up from the ranks, to some extent, and I was doing all in
my  power  to  benefit  them, but I certainly did refuse to listen to the caterwauling of a lot of hired agitators from the so-called unions, and
that if they didn't like the way I did things--"

"Yes, it opened at 73 1/2, but knowing what had happened to Saracen Common--"

"Yes, sir, you can depend on a Pierce-Arrow, you certainly can--"

Elmer drew a youthful, passionate, shuddering breath at being so nearly in communion with the powers that governed Zenith and thought for Zenith,
that  governed  America  and  thought for it. He longed to stay, but he had the task, unworthy of his powers of social decoration, of preparing a
short clever talk on missions among the Digger Indians.

As he drove home he rejoiced, "Some day, I'll be able to put it over with the best of 'em socially. When I get to be a bishop, believe me I'm not
going  to hang around jawing about Sunday School methods! I'll be entertaining the bon ton, senators and everybody. . . . Cleo would look fine at
a  big  dinner,  with  the  right  dress.  .  .  . If she wasn't so darn' priggish. Oh, maybe she'll die before then. . . . I think I'll marry an
Episcopalian.  .  .  .  I  wonder  if I could get an Episcopal bishopric if I switched to that nightshirt crowd? More class. No; Methodist bigger
church; and don't guess the Episcopalopians would stand any good red-blooded sermons on vice and all that."


2


The  Gilfeather Chautauqua Corporation, which conducts week-long Chautauquas in small towns, had not been interested when Elmer had hinted, three
years  ago,  that he had a Message to the Youth of America, one worth at least a hundred a week, and that he would be glad to go right out to the
Youth  and  deliver  it. But when Elmer's demolition of all vice in Zenith had made him celebrated, and even gained him a paragraph or two as the
Crusading  Parson,  in  New  York and Chicago, the Gilfeather Corporation had a new appreciation. They came to him, besieged him, offered him two
hundred a week and headlines in the posters, for a three-months tour.

But  Elmer did not want to ask the trustees for a three-months leave. He had a notion of a summer in Europe a year or two from now. That extended
study of European culture, first hand, would be just the finishing polish to enable him to hold any pulpit in the country.

He  did,  however,  fill in during late August and early September as substitute for a Gilfeather headliner--the renowned J. Thurston Wallett, M.
D.,  D.  O.,  D. N., who had delighted thousands with his witty and instructive lecture, "Diet or Die, Nature or Nix," until he had unfortunately
been taken ill at Powassie, Iowa, from eating too many green cantaloupes.

Elmer  had  planned  to  spend August with his family in Northern Michigan--planned it most uncomfortably, for while it was conceivable to endure
Cleo  in  the  city,  with his work, his clubs, and Lulu, a month with no relief from her solemn drooping face and cry-baby voice would be trying
even to a Professional Good Man.

He  explained  to  her that duty called, and departed with speed, stopping only long enough to get several books of inspirational essays from the
public library for aid in preparing his Chautauqua lecture.

He  was  delighted  with  his  coming  adventure--money,  fame  in  new  quarters,  crowds  for whom he would not have to think up fresh personal
experiences.  And  he  might find a woman friend who would understand him and give to his own solid genius that lighter touch of the feminine. He
was, he admitted, almost as tired of Lulu as of Cleo. He pictured a Chautauqua lady pianist or soprano or ventriloquist or soloist on the musical
saw--he pictured a surprised, thrilled meeting in the amber light under the canvas roof--recognition between kindred fine and lonely souls--

And he found it of course.


3


Elmer's  metaphysical lecture, entitled "Whoa Up, Youth!" with its counsel about abstinence, chastity, industry, and honesty, its heaven-vaulting
poetic passage about Love (the only bow on life's dark cloud, the morning and the evening star), and its anecdote of his fight to save a college-
mate named Jim from drink and atheism, became one of the classics among Chautauqua masterpieces.

And  Elmer  better  than  any  one  else  among  the Talent (except perhaps the gentleman who played national anthems on water glasses, a Lettish
gentleman innocent of English) side-stepped on the question of the K. K. K.

The new Ku Klux Klan, an organization of the fathers, younger brothers, and employees of the men who had succeeded and became Rotarians, had just
become  a  political  difficulty.  Many  of the most worthy Methodist and Baptist clergymen supported it and were supported by it; and personally
Elmer  admired its principle--to keep all foreigners, Jews, Catholics, and negroes in their place, which was no place at all, and let the country
be led by native Protestants, like Elmer Gantry.

But  he perceived that in the cities there were prominent people, nice people, rich people, even among the Methodists and Baptists, who felt that
a  man  could be a Jew and still an American citizen. It seemed to him more truly American, also a lot safer, to avoid the problem. So everywhere
he took a message of reconciliation to the effect:

"Regarding  religious, political, and social organizations, I defend the right of every man in our free America to organize with his fellows when
and as he pleases, for any purpose he pleases, but I also defend the right of any other free American citizen to demand that such an organization
shall not dictate his mode of thought or, so long as it be moral, his mode of conduct."

That pleased both the K. K. K. and the opponents of the K. K. K., and everybody admired Elmer's powers of thought.

He  came  with  a  boom  and a flash to the town of Blackfoot Creek, Indiana, and there the local committee permitted the Methodist minister, one
Andrew Pengilly, to entertain his renowned brother priest.


4


Always a little lonely, lost in the ceaseless unfolding of his mysticism, old Andrew Pengilly had been the lonelier since Frank Shallard had left
him.

When  he  heard that the Reverend Elmer Gantry was coming, Mr. Pengilly murmured to the local committee that it would be a pleasure to put up Mr.
Gantry and save him from the scurfy village hotel.

He  had  read  of  Mr. Gantry as an impressive orator, a courageous fighter against Sin. Mr. Pengilly sighed. Himself, somehow, he had never been
able  to  find  so  very  much  Sin  about.  His fault. A silly old dreamer. He rejoiced that he, the mousy village curé, was about to have here,
glorifying his cottage, a St. Michael in dazzling armor.


5


After the evening Chautauqua Elmer sat in Mr. Pengilly's hovel, and he was graciously condescending.

"You  say,  Brother  Pengilly,  that  you've heard of our work at Wellspring? But do we get so near the hearts of the weak and unfortunate as you
here?  Oh, no; sometimes I think that my first pastorate, in a town smaller than this, was in many ways more blessed than our tremendous to-do in
the  great  city.  And  what  IS  accomplished there is no credit to me. I have such splendid, such touchingly loyal assistants--Mr. Webster, the
assistant  pastor--such a consecrated worker, and yet right on the job--and Mr. Wink, and Miss Weezeger, the deaconess, and DEAR Miss Bundle, the
secretary--SUCH  a  faithful  soul,  SO  industrious. Oh, yes, I am singularly blessed! But, uh, but--Given these people, who really do the work,
we've  been  able  to put over some pretty good things--with God's leading. Why, say, we've started the only class in show-window dressing in any
church  in  the  United  States--and  I should suppose England and France! We've already seen the most wonderful results, not only in raising the
salary  of  several  of  the  fine  young men in our church, but in increasing business throughout the city and improving the appearance of show-
windows,  and  you  know how much that adds to the beauty of the down-town streets! And the crowds do seem to be increasing steadily. We had over
eleven  hundred  present on my last Sunday evening in Zenith, and that in summer! And during the season we often have nearly eighteen hundred, in
an  auditorium  that's only supposed to seat sixteen hundred! And with all modesty--it's not my doing but the methods we're working up--I think I
may  say  that  every man, woman, and child goes away happy and yet with a message to sustain 'em through the week. You see--oh, of course I give
'em  the  straight  old-time  gospel  in  my  sermon--I'm  not  the  least  bit afraid of talking right up to 'em and reminding them of the awful
consequences  of  sin  and  ignorance  and  spiritual sloth. Yes, sir! No blinking the horrors of the old-time proven Hell, not in any church I'M
running!  But also we make 'em get together, and their pastor is just one of their own chums, and we sing cheerful, comforting songs, and do they
like it? Say! It shows up in the collections!"

"Mr. Gantry," said Andrew Pengilly, "why don't you believe in God?"



CHAPTER XXVIII


1


His friendship with Dr. Philip McGarry of the Arbor Church was all, Frank Shallard felt, that kept him in the church. As to his round little wife
Bess  and  the  three respectable children, he had for them less passion than compassion, and he could, he supposed, make enough money somehow to
care for them.

McGarry  was  not  an  extraordinary  scholar,  not especially eloquent, not remarkably virtuous, but in him there was kindness along with robust
humor,  a yearning for justice steeled by common sense, and just that quality of authentic good-fellowship which the Professional Good Fellows of
Zenith, whether preachers or shoe-salesmen, blasphemed against by shouting and guffawing and back-slapping. Women trusted in his strength and his
honor; children were bold with him; men disclosed to him their veiled sorrows; and he was more nimble to help them than to be shocked.

Frank worshiped him.

Himself  a  bachelor,  McGarry  had  become  an intimate of Frank's house. He knew where the ice-pick was kept, and where the thermos bottles for
picnics;  he was as likely as Frank to wash up after late suppers; and if he called and the elder Shallards were not in, he slipped up-stairs and
was found there scandalously keeping the children awake by stories of his hunting in Montana and Arizona and Saskatchewan.

It  was  thus  when Frank and Bess came home from prayer-meeting one evening. Philip McGarry's own prayer-meetings were brief. A good many people
said  they were as artificial a form of religious bait as Elmer Gantry's Lively Sunday Evenings, but if McGarry did also have the habit of making
people sing "Smile, Smile, Smile" on all public events except possibly funerals, at least he was not so insistent about their shouting it.

They  drifted  down to the parsonage living-room, which Bess had made gay with chintzes, Frank studious with portentous books of sociology. Frank
sat  deep  in  a  chair  smoking  a pipe--he could never quite get over looking like a youngish college professor who smokes to show what a manly
fellow  he is. McGarry wandered about the room. He had a way of pointing arguments by shaking objects of furniture--pokers, vases, books, lamps--
which was as dangerous as it looked.

"Oh,  I  was  rotten at prayer-meeting tonight," Frank grumbled. "Darn it, I can't seem to go on being interested in the fact that old Mrs. Besom
finds  God such a comfort in her trials. Mrs. Besom's daughter-in-law doesn't find Mrs. Besom any comfort in HER trials, let me tell you! And yet
I  don't  see  how I can say to her, after she's been fluttering around among the angels and advertising how dead certain she is that Jesus loves
her--I haven't quite the nerve to say, 'Sister, you tight-fisted, poison-tongued, old hellcat--'"

"Why, Frank!" from Bess, in placid piety.

"'--you  go  home  and  forget your popularity in Heaven and ask your son and his wife to forgive you for trying to make them your kind of saint,
with acidity of the spiritual stomach!'"

"Why, FRANK!"

"Let  him  rave, Bess," said McGarry. "If a preacher didn't cuss his congregation out once in a while, nobody but St. John would ever've lasted--
and I'll bet he wasn't very good at weekly services and parish visiting!"

"AND,"  went  on  Frank, "tomorrow I've got a funeral. That Henry Semp. Weighed two hundred and eighty pounds from the neck down and three ounces
from  the neck up. Perfectly good Christian citizen who believed that Warren G. Harding was the greatest man since George Washington. I'm sure he
never  beat his wife. Worthy communicant. But when his wife came to hire me, she wept like the dickens when she talked about Henry's death, but I
noticed  from  the window that when she went off down the street she looked particularly cheerful. Yes, Henry was a bulwark of the nation; not to
be  sneered  at by highbrows. And I'm dead certain, from something she said, that every year they've jipped the Government out of every cent they
could  on  their income tax. And tomorrow I'm supposed to stand up there and tell his friends what a moral example and intellectual Titan he was,
and how the poor little woman is simply broken by sorrow. Well, cheer up! From what I know of her, she'll be married again within six months, and
if  I  do  a  good  job  of  priesting  tomorrow, maybe I'll get the fee! Oh, Lord, Phil, what a job, what a lying compromising job, this being a
minister!"

It was their hundredth argument over the question.

McGarry  waved  a  pillow,  discarded it for Bess' purse, while she tried not to look alarmed, and shouted, "It is not! As I heard a big New York
preacher  say  one  day:  he knew how imperfect the ministry is, and how many second-raters get into it, and yet if he had a thousand lives, he'd
want  to  be  a minister of the gospel, to be a man showing the philosophy of Jesus to mankind, in every one of 'em. And the church universal, no
matter  what  its  failings,  is  still the only institution in which we can work together to hand on that gospel. Maybe it's your fault, not the
church's, young Frank, if you're so scared of your people that you lie at funerals! I don't, by Jiminy!"

"You  do,  by Jiminy, my dear Phil! You don't know it. No, what you do is, you hypnotize yourself until you're convinced that every dear departed
was a model of some virtue, and then you rhapsodize about that."

"Well, probably he was!"

"Of  course.  Probably  your burglar was a model of courage, and your gambler a model of kindness to everybody except the people he robbed, but I
don't  like  being hired to praise burglars and gamblers and respectable loan-sharks and food-hounds like Henry Semp, and encourage youngsters to
accept  their  standards, and so keep on perpetuating this barbarous civilization for which we preachers are as responsible as the lawyers or the
politicians  or  the  soldiers  or  even  the  school-masters. No, sir! Oh, I AM going to get out of the church! Think of it! A PREACHER, getting
religion, getting saved, getting honest, getting out! Then I'd know the joys of sanctification that you Methodys talk about!"

"Oh,  you  make  me tired!" Bess complained, not very aggressively. She looked, at forty-one, like a plump and amiable girl of twenty. "Honestly,
Phil, I do wish you could show Frank where he's wrong. I can't, and I've been trying these fifteen years."

"You have, my lamb!"

"Honestly,  Phil, can't you make him see it?" said Bess. "He's--of course I do adore him, but of all the cry-babies I ever met--He's the worst of
all my children! He talks about going into charity work, about getting a job with a labor bank or a labor paper, about lecturing, about trying to
write.  Can't  you  make  him see that he'd be just as discontented whatever he did? I'll bet you the labor leaders and radical agitators and the
Charity Organization Society people aren't perfect little angels any more than preachers are!"

"Heavens,  I  don't  expect  'em  to  be! I don't expect to be content," Frank protested. "And isn't it a good thing to have a few people who are
always  yammering?  Never  get  anywhere  without. What a joke that a minister, who's supposed to have such divine authority that he can threaten
people  with  hell,  is  also  supposed  to be such an office-boy that he can be cussed out and fired if he dares to criticize capitalists or his
fellow ministers! Anyway--Dear Bess, it's rotten on you. I'd LIKE to be a contented sort, I'd like to 'succeed,' to be satisfied with being half-
honest.  But I can't. . . . You see, Phil, I was brought up to believe the Christian God wasn't a scared and compromising public servant, but the
creator and advocate of the whole merciless truth, and I reckon that training spoiled me--I actually took my teachers seriously!"

"Oh,  tut, tut, Frank; trouble with you is," Philip McGarry yawned, "trouble with YOU is, you like arguing more than you do patiently working out
the  spiritual  problems  of some poor, dumb, infinitely piteous human being that comes to you for help, and that doesn't care a hoot whether you
advocate  Zoroastrianism  or Seventh-day Adventism, so long as he feels that you love him and that you can bring him strength from a power higher
than  himself.  I  know  that  if  you  could  lose  your intellectual pride, if you could forget that you have to make a new world, better'n the
Creator's,  right  away  tonight--you and Bernard Shaw and H. G. Wells and H. L. Mencken and Sinclair Lewis (Lord, how that book of Lewis', 'Main
Street,'  did bore me, as much of it as I read; it just rambled on forever, and all he could see was that some of the Gopher Prairie hicks didn't
go  to  literary  teas  quite  as  often  as he does!--that was all he could see among those splendid heroic pioneers)! Well, as I was saying, if
instead of starting in where your congregation has left off, because they never had your chance, you could draw them along with you--"

"I  try  to! And let me tell you, young fellow, I've got a few of 'em far enough along so they're having the sense to leave me and my evangelical
church  and  go off to the Unitarians or stay away from church altogether--thus, Bess darling, depriving my wife and babes of a few more pennies!
But seriously, Phil--"

"A man always says 'But seriously' when he feels the previous arguments haven't been so good yet!"

"Maybe. But anyway, what I mean to say is: Of course my liberalism is all foolishness! Do you know why my people stand for it? They're not enough
interested  to realize what I'm saying! If I had a successor who was a fundamentalist, they'd like him just as well or better, and they'd go back
a-whooping  to  the  sacred  hell-fire  that  I've  coaxed  'em  out  of.  They don't believe I mean it when I take a shot at the fear of eternal
punishment,  and  the whole magic and taboo system of worshiping the Bible and the ministry, and all the other skull-decorated vestiges of horror
there  are  in  so-called  Christianity!  They  don't know it! Partly it's because they've been trained not to believe anything much they hear in
sermons.  But  also  it's  my  fault.  I'm  not  aggressive.  I  ought  to jump around like a lunatic or a popular evangelist, and shout, 'D' you
understand?  When  I  say  that most of your religious opinions are bunk, why, what I mean is, they're BUNK!' I've never been violently enough in
earnest to be beaten for the sake of the Lord our God! . . . Not yet!"

"Hah,  there  I've  got  you, Frank! Tickles me to see you try to be the village atheist! 'For the sake of the Lord' you just said. And how often
I've heard you say at parting 'God bless you'--and you meant it! Oh, no, you don't believe in Christ! Not any more than the Pope at Rome!"

"I  suppose  that if I said 'God damn you,' that would also prove that I was a devout Christian! Oh, Phil, I can't understand how a man as honest
as  you, as really fond of helping people--and of tolerating them!--can stand being classed with a lot of your fellow preachers and not even kick
about  it!  Think  of  your  going  on enduring being a fellow Methodist preacher right in the same town with Elmer Gantry and not standing up in
ministers' meeting and saying, 'Either he gets out or I do!'"

"I  know!  You idiot, don't you suppose those of us that are halfway decent suffer from being classed with Gantry, and that we hate him more than
you  do?  But even if Elmer is rather on the swine side, what of it? Would you condemn a fine aspiring institution, full of broad-gauged, earnest
fellows, because one of them was a wash-out?"

"One?  Just  one? I'll admit there aren't many, not VERY many, hogs like Gantry in your church, or any other, but let me give my loving fraternal
opinions  of  a  few  others  of  your splendid Methodist fellows! Bishop Toomis is a gas-bag. Chester Brown, with his candles and chanting, he's
merely  an  Episcopalian  who'd  go over to the Episcopal church if he weren't afraid he'd lose too much salary in starting again--just as a good
share  of  the  Anglo-Catholic  Episcopalians  are  merely  Catholics  who'd  go over to Rome if they weren't afraid of losing social caste. Otto
Hickenlooper,  with  his  institutions--the  rich  are so moved by his charities that they hand him money and Otto gets praised for spending that
money.  Fine  vicious  circle. And think of some poor young idiot studying art, wasting his time and twisting his ideas, at Otto's strictly moral
art class, where the teacher is chosen more for his opinions on the sacraments than for his knowledge of composition."

"But, Frank, I've SAID all--"

"And  the  sound,  the  scholarly,  the  well-balanced  Dr.  Mahlon Potts! Oh, he's a perfectly good man, and not a fanatic. Doesn't believe that
evolution  is  a  fiendish  doctrine. The only trouble with him--as with most famous preachers--is that he hasn't the slightest notion what human
beings  are  like.  He's  insulated; has been ever since he became a preacher. He goes to the death-beds of prostitutes (but not very often, I'll
bet!) but he can't understand that perfectly decent husbands and wives often can't get along because of sexual incompatibility.

"Potts  lives  in  a  library;  he  gets  his  idea  of  human motives out of George Eliot and Margaret Deland, and his ideas of economics out of
editorials in the Advocate, and his idea as to what he really is accomplishing out of the flattery of his Ladies' Aid! He's a much worse criminal
than  Gantry! I imagine Elmer has some desire to be a good fellow and share his swag, but Dr. Potts wants to make over an entire world of living,
bleeding, sweating, loving, fighting human beings into the likeness of Dr. Potts--of Dr. Potts taking his afternoon nap and snoring under a shelf
of books about the doctrines of the Ante-Nicene Fathers!"

"Golly,  you  simply  love  us! And I suppose you think I admire all these fellows! Why, they regard me as a heretic, from the bishop down," said
Philip McGarry.

"And yet you stay with them!"

"Any other church better?"

"Oh, no. Don't think I give all my love to the Methodists. I take them only because they're your particular breed. My own Congregationalists, the
Baptists  who  taught me that immersion is more important than social justice, the Presbyterians, the Campbellites, the whole lot--oh, I love 'em
all about equally!"

"And what about yourself? What about me?"

"You  know  what I think of myself--a man too feeble to stand up and risk being called a crank or a vile atheist! And about you, my young liberal
friend, I was just saving you to the last in my exhibit of Methodist parsons! You're the worst of the lot!"

"Oh, now, Frank!" yawned Bess.

She was sleepy. How preachers did talk! Did plasterers and authors and stock-brokers sit up half the night discussing their souls, fretting as to
whether plastering or authorship or stock-broking was worth while?

She yawned again, kissed Frank, patted Philip's cheek, and made exit with, "You may be feeble, Frank, but you certainly can talk a strong, rugged
young wife to death!"

Frank, usually to be cowed by her jocose grumbling and Philip's friendly jabs, was tonight afire and unquenchable.

"Yes, you're the worst of all, Phil! You DO know something of human beings. You're not like old Potts, who's always so informative about how much
sin  there  is in the world and always so astonished when he meets an actual sinner. And you don't think it matters a hang whether a seeker after
decency  gets  ducked--otherwise  baptized--or  not. And yet when you get up in the pulpit, from the way you wallow in prayer people believe that
you're  just  as  chummy  with  the Deity as Potts or Gantry. Your liberalism never lasts you more than from my house to the street-car. You talk
about  the  golden  streets of Heaven and the blessed peace of the hereafter, and yet you've admitted to me, time and again, that you haven't the
slightest  idea  whether  there  is any personal life after death. You talk about Redemption, and the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, and how God
helps this nation to win a war and hits that other with a flood, and a lot more things that you don't believe privately at all."

"Oh, I know! Thunder! But you yourself--you pray in church."

"Not  really. For over a year now I've never addressed a prayer to any definite deity. I say something like 'Let us in meditation, forgetting the
worries of daily life, join our spirits in longing for the coming of perpetual peace'--something like that."

"Well,  it  sounds like a pretty punk prayer to me, Frankie! The only trouble with you is, you feel you're called on to rewrite the Lord's Prayer
for him!"

Philip laughed gustily, and slapped Frank's shoulder.

"Damn  it,  don't  be  so jocular! I know it's a poor prayer. It's terrible. Nebulous. Meaningless. Like a barker at the New Thought side-show. I
don't  mind  your disliking it, but I do mind your trying to be humorous! Why is it that you lads who defend the church are so facetious when you
really get down to discussing the roots of religion?"

"I  know,  Frank. Effect of too much preaching. But seriously: Yes, I do say things in the pulpit that I don't mean literally. What of it? People
understand  these symbols; they've been brought up with them, they're comfortable with them. My object in preaching is to teach the art of living
as  far  as I can; to encourage my people--and myself--to be kind, to be honest, to be clean, to be courageous, to love God and their fellow-men;
and  the  whole  experience  of  the  church  shows that those lessons can best be taught through such really noble concepts as salvation and the
presence of the Holy Ghost and Heaven and so on."

"Hm.  Does  it?  Has the church ever tried anything else? And just what the dickens do you mean by 'being clean' and 'being honest' and 'teaching
the  art  of living'? Lord, how we preachers do love to use phrases that don't mean anything! But suppose you were perfectly right. Nevertheless,
by using the same theological slang as a Gantry or a Toomis or a Potts, you unconsciously make everybody believe that you think and act like them
too."

"Nonsense! Not that I'm particularly drawn by the charms of any of these fellow sages. I'd rather be wrecked on a desert island with you, you old
atheist!--you  darned old fool! But suppose they were as bad as you think. I still wouldn't feel it was my duty to foul my own nest, to make this
grand  old  Methodist  Church,  with  its saints and heroes like Wesley and Asbury and Quayle and Cartwright and McDowell and McConnell--why, the
tears  almost  come  to  my  eyes  when I think of men like that! Look here: Suppose you were at war, in a famous regiment. Suppose a lot of your
fellow  soldiers,  even the present commander of the regiment himself, were rotters--cowards. Would you feel called on to desert? Or to fight all
the harder to make up for their faults?"

"Phil,  next  to  the  humorous  ragging  I  spoke  of,  and the use of stale phrases, the worst cancer in religious discussion is the use of the
metaphor!  The  Protestant  church  is  not  a  regiment. You're not a soldier. The soldier has to fight when and as he's told. You have absolute
liberty, outside of a few moral and doctrinal compulsions."

"Ah-hah,  now I've got you, my logical young friend! If we have that liberty, why aren't you willing to stay in the church? Oh, Frank, Frank, you
are  such  a  fool!  I  know  that you long for righteousness. Can't you see that you can get it best by staying in the church, liberalizing from
within, instead of running away and leaving the people to the ministrations of the Gantrys?"

"I  know. I've been thinking just that all these years. That's why I'm still a preacher! But I'm coming to believe that it's tommyrot. I'm coming
to  think  that  the  hell-howling  old  mossbacks  corrupt  the  honest liberals a lot more than the liberals lighten the backwoods minds of the
fundamentalists.  What the dickens is the church accomplishing, really? Why have a church at all? What has it for humanity that you won't find in
worldly sources--schools, books, conversation?"

"It  has this, Frank: It has the unique personality and teachings of Jesus Christ, and there is something in Jesus, there is something in the way
he  spoke,  there is something in the feeling of a man when he suddenly has that inexpressible experience of KNOWING the Master and his presence,
which makes the church of Jesus different from any other merely human institution or instrument whatsoever! Jesus is not simply greater and wiser
than  Socrates  or Voltaire; he is entirely DIFFERENT. Anybody can interpret and teach Socrates or Voltaire--in schools or books or conversation.
But  to  interpret  the  personality and teachings of Jesus requires an especially called, chosen, trained, consecrated body of men, united in an
especial institution--the church."

"Phil,  it  sounds  so splendid. But just what WERE the personality and the teachings of Jesus? I'll admit it's the heart of the controversy over
the  Christian  religion:--aside  from  the fact that, of course, most people believe in a church because they were BORN to it. But the essential
query  is:  Did  Jesus--if  the  Biblical  accounts  of him are even half accurate--have a particularly noble personality, and were his teachings
particularly  original and profound? You know it's almost impossible to get people to read the Bible honestly. They've been so brought up to take
the  church  interpretation of every word that they read into it whatever they've been taught to find there. It's been so with me, up to the last
couple of years. But now I'm becoming a quarter free, and I'm appalled to see that I don't find Jesus an especially admirable character!

"He  is  picturesque.  He tells splendid stories. He's a good fellow, fond of low company--in fact the idea of Jesus, whom the bishops of his day
cursed  as  a rounder and wine-bibber, being chosen as the god of the Prohibitionists is one of the funniest twists in history. But he's vain, he
praises  himself  outrageously,  he's  fond of astonishing people by little magical tricks which we've been taught to revere as 'miracles.' He is
furious  as  a child in a tantrum when people don't recognize him as a great leader. He loses his temper. He blasts the poor barren fig-tree when
it  doesn't  feed  him.  What  minds people have! They hear preachers proving by the Bible the exact opposites, that the Roman Catholic Church is
divinely  ordained  and  that it is against all divine ordinances, and it never occurs to them that far from the Christian religion--or any other
religion--being  a  blessing to humanity, it's produced such confusion in all thinking, such secondhand viewing of actualities, that only now are
we beginning to ask what and why we are, and what we can do with life!

"Just  what are the teachings of Christ? Did he come to bring peace or more war? He says both. Did he approve earthly monarchies or rebel against
them?  He  says  both. Did he ever--think of it, God himself, taking on human form to help the earth--did he ever suggest sanitation, which would
have saved millions from plagues? And you can't say his failure there was because he was too lofty to consider mere sickness. On the contrary, he
was awfully interested in it, always healing some one--providing they flattered his vanity enough!

"What  DID  he  teach? One place in the Sermon on the Mount he advises--let me get my Bible--here it is: 'Let your light so shine before men that
they may see your good works and glorify your Father which is in heaven,' and then five minutes later he's saying, 'Take heed that ye do not your
alms before men, to be seen of them, otherwise ye have no reward of your Father which is in heaven.' That's an absolute contradiction, in the one
document  which  is  the  charter of the whole Christian Church. Oh, I know you can reconcile them, Phil. That's the whole aim of the ministerial
training: to teach us to reconcile contradictions by saying that one of them doesn't mean what it means--and it's always a good stunt to throw in
'You'd understand it if you'd only read it in the original Greek'!

"There's  just  one  thing  that  does stand out clearly and uncontradicted in Jesus' teaching. He advocated a system of economics whereby no one
saved  money or stored up wheat or did anything but live like a tramp. If this teaching of his had been accepted, the world would have starved in
twenty years, after his death!

"No, wait, Phil, just one second and then I'm through!"

He talked till dawn.

Frank's last protest, as they stood on the steps in the cold grayness, was:

"My  objection  to  the church isn't that the preachers are cruel, hypocritical, actually wicked, though some of them are that, too--think of how
many  are  arrested  for  selling  fake stock, for seducing fourteen-year-old girls in orphanages under their care, for arson, for murder. And it
isn't  so  much that the church is in bondage to Big Business and doctrines as laid down by millionaires--though a lot of churches are that, too.
My chief objection is that ninety-nine percent of sermons and Sunday School teachings are so agonizingly DULL!"



CHAPTER XXIX


1


However  impatient  he  was  with  Frank,  Philip  McGarry's  last wish was to set Elmer Gantry piously baying on Frank's trail. It was rather an
accident.  Philip  sat  next to Elmer at a dinner to discuss missionary funds; he remembered that Frank and Elmer had been classmates; and with a
sincerely  affectionate  "It's  too  bad  the  poor boy worries so over what are really matters for Faith," he gave away to Elmer most of Frank's
heresies.

Now  in  the  bustle  of raising funds to build a vast new church, Elmer had forgotten his notion of saving the renowned hardware impresario, Mr.
William Dollinger Styles, and his millions from contamination by Frank's blasphemies.

"We  could use old Styles, and you could get some fine publicity by attacking Shallard's attempt to steal Jesus and even Hell away from us," said
Elmer's confidant, Mr. T. J. Rigg, when he was consulted.

"Say,  that's  great. How liberalism leads to theism. Fine! Wait till Mr. Frank Shallard opens his mouth and puts his foot in it again!" said the
Reverend  Elmer Gantry. "Say, I wonder how we could get a report of his sermons? The poor fish isn't important enough so's they very often report
his junk in the papers."

"I'll  take  care  of  that.  I've got a girl in my office, good fast worker, that I'll have go and take down all his sermons. They'll just think
she's practising stenography."

"Well, by golly, that's one good use for sermons. Ha, ha, ha!" said Elmer.

"Yes, sir, by golly, found at last. Ha, ha, ha!" said Mr. T. J. Rigg.


2


In less than a month Frank maddened the citizens of Zenith by asserting, in the pulpit, that though he was in favor of temperance, he was not for
Prohibition; that the methods of the Anti-Saloon League were those of a lumber lobby.

Elmer had his chance.

He advertised that he would speak on "Fake Preachers--and Who They Are."

In  his sermon he said that Frank Shallard (by name) was a liar, a fool, an ingrate whom he had tried to help in seminary, a thief who was trying
to steal Christ from an ailing world.

Elmer saw to it--T. J. Rigg arranged a foursome--that he played golf with William Dollinger Styles that week.

"I  was  awfully  sorry, Mr. Styles," he said, "to feel it my duty to jump on your pastor, Mr. Shallard, last Sunday, but when a fellow stands up
and makes fun of Jesus Christ--well, it's time to forget mercy!"

"I  thought  you  were  kind of hard on him. I didn't hear his sermon myself--I'm a church-member, but it does seem like things pile up so at the
office that I have to spend almost every Sunday morning there. But from what they've told me, he wasn't so wild."

"Then you don't think Shallard is practically an atheist?"

"Why, no! Nice decent fellow--"

"Mr.  Styles,  do  you  realize  that  all  over town people are wondering how a man like you can give his support to a man like Shallard? Do you
realize  that not only the ministers but also laymen are saying that Shallard is secretly both an agnostic and a socialist, though he's afraid to
come  out  and  admit  it?  I hear it everywhere. People are afraid to tell you. Jiminy, I'm kind of scared of you myself! Feel I've got a lot of
nerve!"

"Well, I ain't so fierce," said Mr. Styles, very pleased.

"Anyway,  I'd  hate  to  have  you think I was sneaking around damning Shallard behind his back. Why don't you do this? You and some of the other
Dorchester deacons have Shallard for lunch or dinner, and have me there, and let me put a few questions to him. I'll talk to the fellow straight!
Do you feel you can afford to be known as tolerating an infidel in your church? Oughtn't you to make him come out from under cover and admit what
he  thinks?  If  I'm  wrong, I'll apologize to you and to him, and you can call me all the kinds of nosey, meddling, cranky, interfering fool you
want to!"

"Well--He  seems  kind  of  a  nice fellow." Mr. Styles was uncomfortable. "But if you're right about him being really an infidel, don't know's I
could stand that."

"How'd  it  be  if  you  and  some  of  your  deacons and Shallard came and had dinner with me in a private room at the Athletic Club next Friday
evening?"

"Well, all right--"


3


Frank  was  so  simple  as  to  lose  his  temper when Elmer had bullied him, roared at him, bulked at him, long enough, with Frank's own deacons
accepting  Elmer  as  an  authority.  He  was  irritated out of all caution, and he screamed back at Elmer that he did not accept Jesus Christ as
divine; that he was not sure of a future life; that he wasn't even certain of a personal God.

Mr. William Dollinger Styles snapped, "Then just why, Mr. Shallard, don't you get out of the ministry before you're kicked out?"

"Because  I'm not yet sure--Though I do think our present churches are as absurd as a belief in witchcraft, yet I believe there could be a church
free  of superstition, helpful to the needy, and giving people that mystic something stronger than reason, that sense of being uplifted in common
worship  of  an unknowable power for good. Myself, I'd be lonely with nothing but bleak debating-societies. I think--at least I still think--that
for many souls there is this need of worship, even of beautiful ceremonial--"

"'Mystic  need of worship!' 'Unknowable power for good!' Words, words, words! Milk and water! THAT, when you have the glorious and certain figure
of  Christ  Jesus  to worship and follow!" bellowed Elmer. "Pardon me, gentlemen, for intruding, but it makes me, not as a preacher but just as a
humble  and  devout  Christian,  sick  to  my stomach to hear a fellow feel that he knows so blame' much he's able to throw out of the window the
Christ that the whole civilized world has believed in for countless centuries! And try to replace him with a lot of gassy phrases! Excuse me, Mr.
Styles,  but  after all, religion is a serious business, and if we're going to call ourselves Christians at all, we have to bear testimony to the
proven fact of God. Forgive me."

"It's  quite  all right, Dr. Gantry. I know just how you feel," said Styles. "And while I'm no authority on religion, I feel the same way you do,
and  I  guess  these  other  gentlemen do, too. . . . Now, Shallard, you're entitled to your own views, but not in our pulpit! Why don't you just
resign before we kick you out?"

"You can't kick me out! It takes the whole church to do that!"

"The whole church'll damn well do it, you watch 'em!" said Deacon William Dollinger Styles.


4


"What  are  we  going  to do, dear?" Bess said wearily. "I'll stand by you, of course, but let's be practical. Don't you think it would make less
trouble if you did resign?"

"I've  done nothing for which to resign! I've led a thoroughly decent life. I haven't lied or been indecent or stolen. I've preached imagination,
happiness,  justice,  seeking  for  the  truth.  I'm  no  sage,  Heaven knows, but I've given my people a knowledge that there are such things as
ethnology  and  biology,  that  there  are books like 'Ethan Frome' and 'Père Goriot' and Tono-Bungay' and Renan's 'Jesus,' that there is nothing
wicked in looking straight at life--"

"Dear, I said PRACTICAL!"

"Oh,  thunder,  I  don't  know.  I  think  I  can  get a job in the Charity Organization Society here--the general secretary happens to be pretty
liberal."

"I hate to have us leave the church entirely. I'm sort of at home there. Why not see if they'd like to have you in the Unitarian Church?"

"Too respectable. Scared. Same old sanctified phrases I'm trying to get rid of--and won't ever quite get rid of, I'm afraid."


5


A  meeting  of  the  church  body  had  been  called  to decide on Frank's worthiness, and the members had been informed by Styles that Frank was
attacking  all  religion.  Instantly  a  number  of  the  adherents  who had been quite unalarmed by what they themselves had heard in the pulpit
perceived that Frank was a dangerous fellow and more than likely to injure omnipotent God.

Before  the  meeting,  one  woman,  who  remained  fond of him, fretted to Frank, "Oh, can't you understand what a dreadful thing you're doing to
question  the divinity of Christ and all? I'm afraid you're going to hurt religion permanently. If you could open your eyes and see--if you could
only  understand  what  my  religion  has  meant  to  me  in times of despair! I don't know what I would have done during my typhoid without that
consolation!  You're  a  bright,  smart  man when you let yourself be. If you'd only go and have a good talk with Dr. G. Prosper Edwards. He's an
older  man  than  you,  and he's a doctor of divinity, and he has such huge crowds at Pilgrim Church, and I'm sure he could show you where you're
wrong and make everything perfectly clear to you."

Frank's  sister,  married  now  to an Akron lawyer, came to stay with them. They had been happy, Frank and she, in the tepid but amiable house of
their  minister-father;  they  had played at church, with dolls and salt-cellars for congregation; books were always about them, natural to them;
and at their father's table they had heard doctors, preachers, lawyers, politicians, talk of high matters.

The  sister bubbled to Bess, "You know, Frank doesn't believe half he says! He just likes to show off. He's a real good Christian at heart, if he
only  knew  it. Why, he was such a good Christian boy--he led the B.Y.P.U.--he COULDN'T have drifted away from Christ into all this nonsense that
nobody  takes  seriously  except  a  lot of long-haired dirty cranks! And he'll break his father's heart! I'm going to have a good talk with that
young man, and bring him to his senses!"

On the street Frank met the great Dr. McTiger, pastor of the Royal Ridge Presbyterian Church.

Dr.  McTiger  had  been  born  in  Scotland,  graduated  at  Edinburgh, and he secretly--not too secretly--despised all American universities and
seminaries and their alumni. He was a large, impatient, brusque man, renowned for the length of his sermons.

"I  hear,  young  man," he shouted at Frank, "that you have read one whole book on the pre-Christian mysteries and decided that our doctrines are
secondhand  and  that  you  are  now going to destroy the church. You should have more pity! With the loss of a profound intellect like yours, my
young friend, I should doubt if the church can stagger on! It's a pity that after discovering scholarship you didn't go on and get enough of that
same  scholarship  to  perceive that by the wondrous beneficence of God's mercy the early church was led to combine many alien factors in the one
perfection  of  the Christian brotherhood! I don't know whether it's ignorance of church history or lack of humor that chiefly distinguishes you,
my young friend! Go and sin no more!"

From Andrew Pengilly came a scrawled, shaky letter begging Frank to stand true and not deliver his appointed flock to the devil. That hurt.


6


The first church business meeting did not settle the question of Frank's remaining. He was questioned about his doctrines, and he shocked them by
being  candid,  but  the men whom he had helped, the women whom he had consoled in sickness, the fathers who had gone to him when their daughters
"had gotten into trouble," stood by him for all the threats of Styles.

A second meeting would have to be called before they took a vote.

When  Elmer  read  of  this, he galloped to T. J. Rigg. "Here's our chance!" he gloated. "If the first meeting had kicked Frank out, Styles might
have  stayed  with  their church, though I do think he likes my brand of theology and my Republican politics. But why don't you go to him now, T.
J., and hint around about how his church has insulted him?"

"All  right,  Elmer.  Another soul saved. Brother Styles has still got the first dollar he ever earned, but maybe we can get ten cents of it away
from  him  for the new church. Only--Him being so much richer than I, I hope you won't go to him for spiritual advice and inspiration, instead of
me."

"You bet I won't, T. J.! Nobody has ever accused Elmer Gantry of being disloyal to his friends! My only hope is that your guidance of this church
has been of some value to you yourself."

"Well--yes--in  a  way.  I've  had three brother Methodist clients from Wellspring come to me--two burglary and one forgery. But it's more that I
just like to make the wheels go round."

Mr.  Rigg  was saying, an hour later, to Mr. William Dollinger Styles, "If you came and joined us, I know you'd like it--you've seen what a fine,
upstanding,  two-fisted, one-hundred-percent he-man Dr. Gantry is. Absolutely sound about business. And it would be a swell rebuke to your church
for not accepting your advice. But we hate to invite you to come over to us--in fact Dr. Gantry absolutely forbade me to see you--for fear you'll
think it was just because you're rich."

For three days Styles shied, then he was led, trembling, up to the harness.

Afterward,  Dr.  G.  Prosper  Edwards of Pilgrim Congregational said to his spouse, "Why on earth didn't WE think of going right after Styles and
inviting him to join us? It was so simple we never even thought of it. I really do feel quite cross. Why didn't YOU think of it?"


7


The  second  church meeting was postponed. It looked to Elmer as though Frank would be able to stay on at Dorchester Congregational and thus defy
Elmer as the spiritual and moral leader of the city.

Elmer acted fearlessly.

In  sermon  after  sermon  he  spoke  of "that bunch of atheists out there at Dorchester." Frank's parishioners were alarmed. They were forced to
explain (only they were never quite sure what they were explaining) to customers, to neighbors, to fellow lodge-members. They felt disgraced, and
so it was that a second meeting was called.

Now  Frank had fancied a spectacular resignation. He heard himself, standing before a startled audience, proclaiming, "I have decided that no one
in  this  room, including your pastor, believes in the Christian religion. Not one of us would turn the other cheek. Not one of us would sell all
that  he  has and give to the poor. Not one of us would give his coat to some man who took his overcoat. Every one of us lays up all the treasure
he  can.  We  don't practise the Christian religion. We don't intend to practise it. Therefore, we don't believe in it. Therefore I resign, and I
advise you to quit lying and disband."

He saw himself, then, tramping down the aisle among his gaping hearers, and leaving the church forever.

But: "I'm too tired. Too miserable. And why hurt the poor bewildered souls? And--I am so tired."

He  stood  up  at the beginning of the second meeting and said gently, "I had refused to resign. I still feel I have an honest right to an honest
pulpit.  But  I  am  setting  brother  against brother. I am not a Cause--I am only a friend. I have loved you and the work, the sound of friends
singing  together,  the happiness of meeting on leisurely Sunday mornings. This I give up. I resign, and I wish I could say, 'God be with you and
bless  you  all.'  But  the good Christians have taken God and made him into a menacing bully, and I cannot even say 'God bless you,' during this
last moment, in a life given altogether to religion, when I shall ever stand in a pulpit."

Elmer  Gantry,  in  his  next  sermon,  said  that  he was so broad-minded that he would be willing to receive an Infidel Shallard in his church,
providing he repented.


8


When  he found that he liked the Charity Organization Society and his work in that bleak institution no better than his work in the church, Frank
laughed.

"As  Bess  said!  A  consistent  malcontent!  Well,  I  AM  consistent,  anyway. And the relief not to be a preacher any more! Not to have to act
sanctimonious! Not to have men consider you an old woman in trousers! To be able to laugh without watching its effect!"

Frank  was  given  charge,  at  the  C.  O.  S., of a lodging-house, a woodyard at which hoboes worked for two hours daily to pay for lodging and
breakfast,  and an employment bureau. He knew little about Scientific Charity, so he was shocked by the icy manner in which his subordinates--the
aged  virgin  at  the inquiry desk, the boss of the woodyard, the clerk at the lodging-house, the young lady who asked the applicants about their
religion and vices--treated the shambling unfortunates as criminals who had deliberately committed the crime of poverty.

They were as efficient and as tender as vermin-exterminators.

In  this  acid perfection, Frank longed for the mystery that clings to even the dourest or politest tabernacle. He fell in the way of going often
to  the  huge  St.  Dominic's  Catholic  Church,  of  which the eloquent Father de Pinna was pastor, with Father Matthew Smeesby, the new sort of
American, state-university-bred priest, as assistant pastor and liaison officer.

St.  Dominic's  was, for Zenith, an ancient edifice, and the coal-smoke from the South Zenith factories had aged the gray stone to a semblance of
historic  centuries.  The interior, with its dim irregularity, its lofty roof, the curious shrines, the mysterious door at the top of a flight of
stone  steps, unloosed Frank's imagination. It touched him to see the people kneeling at any hour. He had never known a church to which the plain
people  came  for  prayer.  Despite its dusky magnificence, they seemed to find in the church their home. And when he saw the gold and crimson of
solemn  high  mass blazing at the end of the dark aisle, with the crush of people visibly believing in the presence of God, he wondered if he had
indeed found the worship he had fumblingly sought.

He  knew  that  to  believe  literally  in  Purgatory and the Immaculate Conception, the Real Presence and the authority of the hierarchy, was as
impossible for him as to believe in Zeus.

"But,"  he  pondered, "isn't it possible that the whole thing is so gorgeous a fairy-tale that to criticize it would be like trying to prove that
Jack  did  not  kill  the  giant?  No  sane  priest  could  expect a man of some education to think that saying masses had any effect on souls in
Purgatory; they'd expect him to take the whole thing as one takes a symphony. And, oh, I am lonely for the fellowship of the church!"

He sought a consultation with Father Matthew Smeesby. They had met, as fellow ministers, at many dinners.

The  good  father sat at a Grand Rapids desk, in a room altogether business-like save for a carved Bavarian cupboard and a crucifix on the barren
plaster wall. Smeesby was a man of forty, a crisper Philip McGarry.

"You were an American university man, weren't you, Father?" Frank asked.

"Yes. University of Indiana. Played half-back."

"Then  I  think  I can talk to you. It seems to me that so many of your priests are not merely foreign by birth, Poles and whatnot, but they look
down on American mores and want to mold us to their ideas and ways. But you--Tell me: Would it be conceivable for an--I won't say an intelligent,
but at least a reasonably well-read man like myself, who finds it quite impossible to believe one word of your doctrines--"

"Huh!"

"--but  who  is  tremendously  impressed  by  your ritual and the spirit of worship--could such a man be received into the Roman Catholic Church,
honestly, with the understanding that to him your dogmas are nothing but symbols?"

"Most certainly not!"

"Don't you know any priests who love the Church but don't literally believe all the doctrines?"

"I  do not! I know no such persons! Shallard, you can't understand the authority and reasonableness of the Church. You're not ready to. You think
too  much  of your puerile powers of reasoning. You haven't enough divine humility to comprehend the ages of wisdom that have gone to building up
this  fortress,  and  you  stand outside its walls, one pitifully lonely little figure, blowing the trumpet of your egotism, and demanding of the
sentry,  'Take  me  to  your  commander.  I  am  graciously  inclined  to  assist him. Only he must understand that I think his granite walls are
pasteboard,  and  I  reserve  the  right  to blow them down when I get tired of them.' Man, if you were a prostitute or a murderer and came to me
saying  'Can  I  be saved?' I'd cry 'Yes!' and give my life to helping you. But you're obsessed by a worse crime than murder--pride of intellect!
And yet you haven't such an awfully overpowering intellect to be proud of, and I'm not sure but that's the worst crime of all! Good-day!"

He added, as Frank ragingly opened the door, "Go home and pray for simplicity."

"Go home and pray that I may be made like you? Pray to have your humility and your manners?" said Frank.

It  was  a  fortnight  later that for his own satisfaction Frank set down in the note-book which he had always carried for sermon ideas, which he
still carried for the sermons they would never let him preach again, a conclusion:

"The  Roman  Catholic Church is superior to the militant Protestant Church. It does not compel you to give up your sense of beauty, your sense of
humor, or your pleasant vices. It merely requires you to give up your honesty, your reason, your heart and soul."


9


Frank  had  been  with  the Charity Organization Society for three years, and he had become assistant general secretary at the time of the Dayton
evolution  trial. It was at this time that the brisker conservative clergymen saw that their influence and oratory and incomes were threatened by
any  authentic  learning. A few of them were so intelligent as to know that not only was biology dangerous to their positions, but also history--
which gave no very sanctified reputation to the Christian church; astronomy--which found no convenient Heaven in the skies and snickered politely
at  the  notion  of  making  the sun stand still in order to win a Jewish border skirmish; psychology--which doubted the superiority of a Baptist
preacher  fresh  from  the  farm  to  trained laboratory researchers; and all the other sciences of the modern university. They saw that a proper
school should teach nothing but bookkeeping, agriculture, geometry, dead languages made deader by leaving out all the amusing literature, and the
Hebrew Bible as interpreted by men superbly trained to ignore contradictions, men technically called "Fundamentalists."

This  perception  the  clergy  and  their  most  admired  laymen  expressed in quick action. They formed half a dozen competent and well-financed
organizations to threaten rustic state legislators with political failure and bribe them with unctuous clerical praise, so that these back-street
and backwoods Solons would forbid the teaching in all state-supported schools and colleges of anything which was not approved by the evangelists.

It worked edifyingly.

To  oppose them there were organized a few groups of scholars. One of these organizations asked Frank to speak for them. He was delighted to feel
an audience before him again, and he got leave from the Zenith Charity Organization Society for a lecture tour.

He came excitedly and proudly to his first assignment, in a roaring modern city in the Southwest. He loved the town; believed really that he came
to  it  with  a  "message." He tasted the Western air greedily, admired the buildings flashing up where but yesterday had been prairie. He smiled
from the hotel 'bus when he saw a poster which announced that the Reverend Frank Shallard would speak on "Are the Fundamentalists Witch Hunters?"
at Central Labor Hall, auspices of the League for Free Science.

"Bully! Fighting again! I've found that religion I've been looking for!"

He peered out for other posters. . . . They were all defaced.

At  his  hotel  was  a  note, typed, anonymous: "We don't want you and your hellish atheism here. We can think for ourselves without any imported
'liberals.' If you enjoy life, you'd better be out of this decent Christian city before evening. God help you if you aren't! We have enough mercy
to  give warning, but enough of God's justice to see you get yours right if you don't listen. Blasphemers get what they ask for. We wonder if you
would like the feeling of a blacksnake across your lying face? The Committee."

Frank  had  never  known physical conflict more violent than boyhood wrestling. His hand shook. He tried to sound defiant with: "They can't scare
me!"

His  telephone,  and  a voice: "This Shallard? Well this is a brother preacher speaking. Name don't matter. I just want to tip you off that you'd
better not speak tonight. Some of the boys are pretty rough."

Then Frank began to know the joy of anger.

The  hall  of  his  lecture  was half filled when he looked across the ice-water pitcher on the speaker's table. At the front were the provincial
intellectuals,  most  of them very eager, most of them dreadfully poor: a Jewish girl librarian with hungry eyes, a crippled tailor, a spectacled
doctor  sympathetic  to  radical disturbances but too good a surgeon to be driven out of town. There was a waste of empty seats, then, and at the
back a group of solid, prosperous, scowling burghers, with a leonine man who was either an actor, a congressman, or a popular clergyman.

This respectable group grumbled softly, and hissed a little as Frank nervously began.

America,  he  said,  in  its  laughter  at the "monkey trial" at Dayton, did not understand the veritable menace of the Fundamentalists' crusade.
("Outrageous!" from the leonine gentleman.) They were mild enough now; they spoke in the name of virtue; but give them rope, and there would be a
new Inquisition, a new hunting of witches. We might live to see men burned to death for refusing to attend Protestant churches.

Frank quoted the Fundamentalist who asserted that evolutionists were literally murderers, because they killed orthodox faith, and ought therefore
to be lynched; William Jennings Bryan, with his proposal that any American who took a drink outside the country should be exiled for life.

"That's  how  these  men  speak, with so little power--as yet!" Frank pleaded. "Use your imaginations! Think how they would rule this nation, and
compel the more easy-going half-liberal clergy to work with them, if they had the power!"

There  were  constant  grunts of "That's a lie!" and "They ought to shut him up!" from the back, and now Frank saw marching into the hall a dozen
tough young men. They stood ready for action, looking expectantly toward the line of prosperous Christian Citizens.

"And  you  have  here in your own city," Frank continued, "a minister of the gospel who enjoys bellowing that any one who disagrees with him is a
Judas."

"That's enough!" cried some one at the back, and the young toughs galloped down the aisle toward Frank, their eyes hot with cruelty, teeth like a
fighting  dog's,  hands  working--he  could  feel  them  at his neck. They were met and held a moment by the sympathizers in front. Frank saw the
crippled tailor knocked down by a man who stepped on the body as he charged on.

With a curious lassitude more than with any fear, Frank sighed, "Hang it, I've got to join the fight and get killed!"

He started down from the platform.

The chairman seized his shoulder. "No! Don't! You'll get beaten to death! We need you! Come here--come HERE! This back door!"

Frank was thrust through a door into a half-lighted alley.

A motor was waiting, and by it two men, one of whom cried, "Right in here, Brother."

It was a large sedan; it seemed security, life. But as Frank started to climb in he noted the man at the wheel, then looked closer at the others.
The  man  at  the  wheel  had  no lips but only a bitter dry line across his face--the mouth of an executioner. Of the other two, one was like an
unreformed bartender, with curly mustache and a barber's lock; one was gaunt, with insane eyes.

"Who are you fellows?" he demanded.

"Shut  your  damned trap and get t' hell in there!" shrieked the bartender, pushing Frank into the back of the car, so that he fell with his head
on the cushion.

The insane man scrambled in, and the car was off.

"We  told  you  to  get  out  of  town. We gave you your chance. By God, you'll learn something now, you God damned atheist--and probably a damn'
socialist  or I. W. W. too!" the seeming bartender said. "See this gun?" He stuck it into Frank's side, most painfully. "We may decide to let you
live  if you keep your mouth shut and do what we tell you to--and again we may not. You're going to have a nice ride with us! Just think what fun
you're going to have when we get you in the country--alone--where it's nice and dark and quiet!"

He placidly lifted his hands and gouged Frank's cheek with his strong fingernails.

"I won't stand it!" screamed Frank.

He rose, struggling. He felt the gaunt fanatic's fingers--just two fingers, demon-strong--close on his neck, dig in with pain that made him sick.
He felt the bartender's fist smashing his jaw. As he slumped down, limp against the forward seat, half-fainting, he heard the bartender chuckle:

"That'll give the blank, blank, blank of a blank some idea of the fun we'll have watching him squirm bimeby!"

The gaunt one snapped, "The boss said not to cuss."

"Cuss,  hell!  I don't pretend to be any tin angel. I've done a lot of tough things. But, by God, when a fellow pretending to be a minister comes
sneaking  around trying to make fun of the Christian religion--the only chance us poor devils have got to become decent again--then, by God, it's
time to show we've got some guts and appreciation!"

The  pseudo-bartender  spoke  with the smugly joyous tones of any crusader given a chance to be fiendish for a moral reason, and placidly raising
his leg, he brought his heel down on Frank's instep.

When  the  cloud  of  pain had cleared from his head, Frank sat rigid. . . . What would Bess and the kids do if these men killed him? . . . Would
they beat him much before he died?

The  car  left  the  highway, followed a country road and ran along a lane, through what seemed to Frank to be a cornfield. It stopped by a large
tree.

"Get out!" snapped the gaunt man.

Mechanically,  his  legs  limp,  Frank  staggered  out. He looked up at the moon. "It's the last time I'll ever see the moon--see the stars--hear
voices. Never again to walk on a fresh morning!"

"What are you going to do?" he said, hating them too much to be afraid.

"Well, dearie," said the driver, with a dreadful jocosity, "you're going to take a little walk with us, back here in the fields a ways."

"Hell!" said the bartender, "let's hang him. Here's a swell tree. Use the tow-rope."

"No,"  from the gaunt man. "Just hurt him enough so he'll remember, and then he can go back and tell his atheist friends it ain't healthy for 'em
in real Christian parts. Move, you!"

Frank  walked  in  front of them, ghastly silent. They followed a path through the cornfield to a hollow. The crickets were noisily cheerful; the
moon serene.

"This'll do," snarled the gaunt one; then to Frank: "Now get ready to feel good."

He  set  his  pocket  electric  torch on a clod of earth. In its light Frank saw him draw from his pocket a coiled black leather whip, a whip for
mules.

"Next time," said the gaunt one, slowly, "next time you come back here, we'll kill you. And any other yellow traitor and stinker and atheist like
you. Tell 'em all that! This time we won't kill you--not quite."

"Oh, quit talking and let's get busy!" said the bartender. "All right!"

The  bartender  caught  Frank's two arms behind, bending them back, almost breaking them, and suddenly with a pain appalling and unbelievable the
whip slashed across Frank's cheek, cutting it, and instantly it came again--again--in a darkness of reeling pain.


10


Consciousness  returned  waveringly  as  dawn crawled over the cornfield and the birds were derisive. Frank's only clear emotion was a longing to
escape  from this agony by death. His whole face reeked with pain. He could not understand why he could scarce see. When he fumblingly raised his
hand, he discovered that his right eye was a pulp of blind flesh, and along his jaw he could feel the exposed bone.

He staggered along the path through the cornfield, stumbling over hummocks, lying there sobbing, muttering, "Bess--oh, come--BESS!"

His  strength  lasted  him  just to the highroad, and he sloped to earth, lay by the road like a drunken beggar. A motor was coming, but when the
driver saw Frank's feebly uplifted arm he sped on. Pretending to be hurt was a device of holdup men.

"Oh,  God,  won't  anybody  help me?" Frank whimpered, and suddenly he was laughing, a choking twisted laughter. "Yes, I said it, Philip--'God' I
said--I suppose it proves I'm a good Christian!"

He  rocked  and  crawled  along  the  road  to  a cottage. There was a light--a farmer at early breakfast. "At last!" Frank wept. When the farmer
answered the knock, holding up a lamp, he looked once at Frank, then screamed and slammed the door.

An hour later a motorcycle policeman found Frank in the ditch, in half delirium.

"Another  drunk!"  said the policeman, most cheerfully, snapping the support in place on his cycle. But as he stooped and saw Frank's half-hidden
face, he whispered, "Good God Almighty!"


11


The doctors told him that though the right eye was gone completely, he might not entirely lose the sight of the other for perhaps a year.

Bess did not shriek when she saw him; she only stood with her hands shaky at her breast.

She seemed to hesitate before kissing what had been his mouth. But she spoke cheerfully:

"Don't you worry about a single thing. I'll get a job that'll keep us going. I've already seen the general secretary at the C. O. S. And isn't it
nice that the kiddies are old enough now to read aloud to you."

To be read aloud to, the rest of his life . . .


12


Elmer  called  and raged, "This is the most outrageous thing I've ever heard of in my life, Frank! Believe me, I'm going to give the fellows that
did  this to you the most horrible beating they ever got, right from my pulpit! Even though it may hinder me in getting money for my new church--
say,  we're  going to have a bang-up plant there, right up to date, cost over half a million dollars, seat over two thousand. But nobody can shut
ME up! I'm going to denounce those fiends in a way THEY'LL never forget!"

And that was the last Elmer is known ever to have said on the subject, privately or publicly.



CHAPTER XXX


1


The Reverend Elmer Gantry was in his oak and Spanish leather study at the great new Wellspring Church.

The  building was of cheerful brick, trimmed with limestone. It had Gothic windows, a carillon in the square stone tower, dozens of Sunday School
rooms, a gymnasium, a social room with a stage and a motion-picture booth, an electric range in the kitchen, and over it all a revolving electric
cross and a debt.

But the debt was being attacked. Elmer had kept on the professional church-money-raiser whom he had employed during the campaign for the building
fund.  This  financial  crusader  was  named  Emmanuel  Navitsky; he was said to be the descendant of a noble Polish Catholic family converted to
Protestantism;  and  certainly  he  was  a  most  enthusiastic  Christian--except  possibly on Passover Eve. He had raised money for Presbyterian
Churches,  Y.  M.  C. A. buildings, Congregational Colleges, and dozens of other holy purposes. He did miracles with card indices of rich people;
and he is said to have been the first ecclesiastical go-getter to think of inviting Jews to contribute to Christian temples.

Yes, Emmanuel would take care of the debt, and Elmer could give himself to purely spiritual matters.

He  sat  now in his study, dictating to Miss Bundle. He was happy in the matter of that dowdy lady, because her brother, a steward in the church,
had recently died, and he could presently get rid of her without too much discord.

To him was brought the card of Loren Larimer Dodd, M. A., D. D., LL. D., president of Abernathy College, an institution of Methodist learning.

"Hm,"  Elmer  mused.  "I  bet  he's out raising money. Nothing doing! What the devil does he think we are!" and aloud: "Go out and bring Dr. Dodd
right in, Miss Bundle. A great man! A wonderful educator! You know--president of Abernathy College!"

Looking her admiration at a boss who had such distinguished callers, Miss Bundle bundled out.

Dr. Dodd was a florid man with a voice, a Kiwanis pin, and a handshake.

"Well,  well, well, Brother Gantry, I've heard so much of your magnificent work here that I ventured to drop in and bother you for a minute. What
a magnificent church you have created! It must be a satisfaction, a pride! It's--magnificent!"

"Thanks, Doctor. Mighty pleased to meet you. Uh. Uh. Uh. Visiting Zenith?"

"Well, I'm, as it were, on my rounds."

("Not a cent, you old pirate!") "Visiting the alumni, I presume."

"In a way. The fact is I--"

("Not one damn' cent. My salary gets raised next!")

"--was  wondering  if  you  would  consent to my taking a little time at your service Sunday evening to call to the attention of your magnificent
congregation  the  great work and dire needs of Abernathy. We have such a group of earnest young men and women--and no few of the boys going into
the  Methodist  ministry.  But our endowment is so low, and what with the cost of the new athletic field--though I am delighted to be able to say
our  friends  have  made  it  possible  to  create a really magnificent field, with a fine cement stadium--but it has left us up against a heart-
breaking deficit. Why, the entire chemistry department is housed in two rooms in what was a cowshed! And--

"Can't  do it, Doctor. Impossible. We haven't begun to pay for this church. Be as much as my life is worth to go to my people with a plea for one
extra  cent.  But  possibly in two years from now--Though frankly," and Elmer laughed brightly, "I don't know why the people of Wellspring should
contribute to a college which hasn't thought enough of Wellspring's pastor to give him a Doctor of Divinity degree!"

The two holy clerks looked squarely at each other, with poker faces.

"Of  course,  Doctor,"  said  Elmer,  "I've been offered the degree a number of times, but by small, unimportant colleges, and I haven't cared to
accept  it.  So  you  can  see  that  this  is  in no way a hint that I would LIKE such a degree. Heaven forbid! But I do know it might please my
congregation, make them feel Abernathy was their own college, in a way."

Dr.  Dodd  remarked serenely, "Pardon me if I smile! You see I had a double mission in coming to you. The second part was to ask you if you would
honor Abernathy by accepting a D. D.!"

They did not wink at each other.

Elmer  gloated  to  himself, "And I've heard it cost old Mahlon Potts six hundred bucks for his D. D.! Oh, yes, Prexy, we'll begin to raise money
for Abernathy in two years--we'll BEGIN!"


2


The chapel of Abernathy College was full. In front were the gowned seniors, looking singularly like a row of arm-chairs covered with dust-cloths.
On  the  platform,  with  the president and the senior members of the faculty, were the celebrities whose achievements were to be acknowledged by
honorary degrees.

Besides  the  Reverend  Elmer  Gantry,  these  distinguished  guests  were the Governor of the state--who had started as a divorce lawyer but had
reformed  and  enabled the public service corporations to steal all the water-power in the state; Mr. B. D. Swenson, the automobile manufacturer,
who had given most of the money for the Abernathy football stadium; and the renowned Eva Evaline Murphy, author, lecturer, painter, musician, and
authority on floriculture, who was receiving a Litt. D. for having written (gratis) the new Abernathy College Song:


We'll think of thee where'er we be, On plain or mountain, town or sea, Oh, let us sing how round us clings, Dear Abernathy, thoooooooooughts--of-
-thee.


President Dodd was facing Elmer, and shouting: "--and now we have the privilege of conferring the degree of Doctor of Divinity upon one than whom
no man in our honored neighboring state of Winnemac has done more to inculcate sound religious doctrine, increase the power of the church, uphold
high standards of eloquence and scholarship, and in his own life give such an example of earnestness as is an inspiration to all of us!"

They cheered--and Elmer had become the Reverend Dr. Gantry.


3


It  was  a  great  relief at the Rotary Club. They had long felt uncomfortable in calling so weighty a presence "Elmer," and now, with a pride of
their own in his new dignity, they called him "Doc."

The church gave him a reception and raised his salary to seventy-five hundred dollars.


4


The  Rev.  Dr. Gantry was the first clergyman in the state of Winnemac, almost the first in the country, to have his services broadcast by radio.
He  suggested  it  himself. At that time, the one broadcasting station in Zenith, that of the Celebes Gum and Chicle Company, presented only jazz
orchestras  and  retired sopranos, to advertise the renowned Jolly Jack Gum. For fifty dollars a week Wellspring Church was able to use the radio
Sunday  mornings  from  eleven to twelve-thirty. Thus Elmer increased the number of his hearers from two thousand to ten thousand--and in another
pair of years it would be a hundred thousand.

Eight thousand radio-owners listening to Elmer Gantry--

A  bootlegger  in  his  flat,  coat off, exposing his pink silk shirt, his feet up on the table. . . . The house of a small-town doctor, with the
neighbors  come  in to listen--the drug-store man, his fat wife, the bearded superintendent of schools. . . . Mrs. Sherman Reeves of Royal Ridge,
wife of one of the richest young men in Zenith, listening in a black-and-gold dressing-gown, while she smoked a cigarette. . . . The captain of a
schooner,  out on Lake Michigan, hundreds of miles away, listening in his cabin. . . . The wife of a farmer in an Indiana valley, listening while
her  husband  read  the  Sears-Roebuck  catalogue  and  sniffed. . . . A retired railway conductor, very feeble, very religious. . . . A Catholic
priest,  in  a  hospital,  chuckling  a little. . . . A spinster school-teacher, mad with loneliness, worshiping Dr. Gantry's virile voice. . . .
Forty  people  gathered  in  a  country  church  too  poor  to  have a pastor. . . . A stock actor in his dressing-room, fagged with an all-night
rehearsal.

All of them listening to the Rev. Dr. Elmer Gantry as he shouted:

"--and  I  want  to tell you that the fellow who is eaten by ambition is putting the glories of this world before the glories of Heaven! Oh, if I
could  only  help you to understand that it is humility, that it is simple loving kindness, that it is tender loyalty, which alone make the heart
glad! Now, if you'll let me tell a story: It reminds me of two Irishmen named Mike and Pat--"


5


For  years Elmer had had a waking nightmare of seeing Jim Lefferts sitting before him in the audience, scoffing. It would be a dramatic encounter
and terrible; he wasn't sure but that Jim would speak up and by some magic kick him out of the pulpit.

But when, that Sunday morning, he saw Jim in the third row, he considered only, "Oh, Lord, there's Jim Lefferts! He's pretty gray. I suppose I'll
have to be nice to him."

Jim  came up afterward to shake hands. He did not look cynical; he looked tired; and when he spoke, in a flat prairie voice, Elmer felt urban and
urbane and superior.

"Hello, Hell-cat," said Jim.

"Well, well, well! Old Jim Lefferts! Well, by golly! Say, it certainly is a mighty great pleasure to see you, my boy! What you doing in this neck
of the woods?"

"Looking up a claim for a client."

"What you doing now, Jim?"

"I'm practising law in Topeka."

"Doing pretty well?"

"Oh, I can't complain. Oh, nothing extra special. I was in the state senate for a term though."

"That's fine! That's fine! Say, how long gonna be in town?"

"Oh, 'bout three days."

"Say, want to have you up to the house for dinner; but doggone it, Cleo--that's my wife--I'm married now--she's gone and got me all sewed up with
a  lot  of dates--you know how these women are--me, I'd rather sit home and read. But sure got to see you again. Say, gimme a ring, will you?--at
the house (find it in the tel'phone book) or at my study here in the church."

"Yuh, sure, you bet. Well, glad to seen you."

"You bet. Tickled t' death seen you, old Jim!"

Elmer watched Jim plod away, shoulders depressed, a man discouraged.

"And  that,"  he  rejoiced, "is the poor fish that tried to keep me from going into the ministry!" He looked about his auditorium, with the organ
pipes  a  vast  golden  pyramid, with the Chubbuck memorial window vivid in ruby and gold and amethyst. "And become a lawyer like him, in a dirty
stinking  little  office!  Huh! And he actually made fun of me and tried to hold me back when I got a clear and definite Call of God! Oh, I'll be
good and busy when he calls up, you can bet on that!"

Jim did not telephone.

On  the  third  day  Elmer  had a longing to see him, a longing to regain his friendship. But he did not know where Jim was staying; he could not
reach him at the principal hotels.

He  never  saw  Jim Lefferts again, and within a week he had forgotten him, except as it was a relief to have lost his embarrassment before Jim's
sneering--the last bar between him and confident greatness.


6


It was in the summer of 1924 that Elmer was granted a three-months leave, and for the first time Cleo and he visited Europe.

He  had  heard the Rev. Dr. G. Prosper Edwards say, "I divide American clergymen into just two classes--those who could be invited to preach in a
London  church,  and  those  who  couldn't." Dr. Edwards was of the first honorable caste, and Elmer had seen him pick up great glory from having
sermonized in the City Temple. The Zenith papers, even the national religious periodicals, hinted that when Dr. Edwards was in London, the entire
population  from  king  to  navvies  had  galloped  to worship under him, and the conclusion was that Zenith and New York would be sensible to do
likewise.

Elmer  thoughtfully  saw  to  it  that  he should be invited also. He had Bishop Toomis write to his Wesleyan colleagues, he had Rigg and William
Dollinger  Styles  write  to  their  Nonconformist  business  acquaintances  in London, and a month before he sailed he was bidden to address the
celebrated Brompton Road Chapel, so that he went off in a glow not only of adventure but of message-bearing.


7


Dr.  Elmer  Gantry was walking the deck of the Scythia, a bright, confident, manly figure in a blue suit, a yachting cap, and white canvas shoes,
swinging his arms and beaming pastorally on his fellow athletic maniacs.

He stopped at the deck chairs of a little old couple--a delicate blue-veined old lady, and her husband, with thin hands and a thin white beard.

"Well, you folks seem to be standing the trip pretty good--for old folks!" he roared.

"Yes, thank you very much," said the old lady.

He  patted her knee, and boomed, "If there's anything I can do to make things nice and comfy for you, mother, you just holler! Don't be afraid to
call  on  me. I haven't advertised the fact--kind of fun to travel what they call incognito--but fact is, I'm a minister of the gospel, even if I
am  a  husky  guy,  and  it's my pleasure as well as my duty to help folks anyway I can. Say, don't you think it's just about the loveliest thing
about this ocean traveling, the way folks have the leisure to get together and exchange ideas? Have you crossed before?"

"Oh, yes, but I don't think I ever shall again," said the old lady.

"That's  right--that's  right!  Tell you how I feel about it, mother." Elmer patted her hand. "We're Americans, and while it's a fine thing to go
abroad  maybe once or twice--there's nothing so broadening as travel, is there!--still, in America we've got a standard of decency and efficiency
that  these  poor old European countries don't know anything about, and in the long run the good old U. S. A. is the place where you'll find your
greatest  happiness--especially  for  folks  like  us, that aren't any blooming millionaires that can grab off a lot of castles and those kind of
things and have a raft of butlers. You bet! Well, just holler when I can be of any service to you. So long, folks! Got to do my three miles!"

When he was gone, the little, delicate old lady said to her husband:

"Fabian,  if that swine ever speaks to me again, I shall jump overboard! He's almost the most offensive object I have ever encountered! Dear--How
many times have we crossed now?"

"Oh, I've lost track. It was a hundred and ten two years ago."

"Not more?"

"Darling, don't be so snooty."

"But isn't there a law that permits one to kill people who call you 'Mother'?"

"Darling, the Duke calls you that!"

"I  know.  He does. That's what I hate about him! Sweet, do you think fresh air is worth the penalty of being called 'Mother'? The next time this
animal stops, he'll call you 'Father'!"

"Only once, my dear!"


8


Elmer  considered,  "Well, I've given those poor old birds some cheerfulness to go on with. By golly, there's nothing more important than to give
people some happiness and faith to cheer them along life's dark pathway."

He  was passing the veranda café. At a pale green table was a man who sat next to Elmer in the dining salon. With him were three men unknown, and
each had a whisky-and-soda in front of him.

"Well, I see you're keeping your strength up!" Elmer said forgivingly.

"Sure, you betcha," said his friend of the salon. "Don't you wanta sit down and have a jolt with us?"

Elmer sat, and when the steward stood at ruddy British attention, he gave voice:

"Well, of course, being a preacher, I'm not a big husky athalete like you boys, so all I can stand is just a ginger ale." To the steward: "Do you
keep anything like that, buddy, or have you only got hooch for big strong men?"

When  Elmer explained to the purser that he would be willing to act as chairman of the concert, with the most perspiratory regret the purser said
that the Rt. Hon. Lionel Smith had, unfortunately, already been invited to take the chair.


9


Cleo had not been more obnoxiously colorless than usual, but she had been seasick, and Elmer saw that it had been an error to bring her along. He
had  not  talked  to her an hour all the way. There had been so many interesting and broadening contacts; the man from China, who gave him enough
ideas  for  a  dozen  missionary  sermons;  the  professor from Higgins Presbyterian Institute, who explained that no really up-to-date scientist
accepted evolution; the pretty journalist lady who needed consolation.

But  now,  alone  with  Cleo  in the compartment of a train from Liverpool to London, Elmer made up for what she might have considered neglect by
explaining the difficult aspects of a foreign country:

"Heh!  English  certainly are behind the times! Think of having these dingy coops instead of a Pullman car, so you can see your fellow-passengers
and get acquainted. Just goes to show the way this country is still riddled with caste.

"Don't  think  so much of these towns. Kind of pretty, cottages with vines and all that, but you don't get any feeling that they're up and coming
and  forward-looking,  like  American burgs. I tell you there's one thing--and don't know's I've ever seen anybody bring this out--I might make a
sermon out of it--one of the big advantages of foreign travel is, it makes you a lot more satisfied with being an American!

"Here we are, coming into London, I guess. Cer'nly is smoky, isn't it.

"Well,  by  golly,  so THIS is what they call a depot in London! Well, I don't think much of it! Just look at all those dinky little trains. Why,
say, an American engineer would be ashamed to take advantage of child-sized trains like them! And no marble anywhere in the depot!"


10


The page who took their bags up to their room in the Savoy was a brisk and smiling boy with fabulous pink cheeks.

"Say, buddy," said the Rev. Dr. Gantry, "what do you pull down here?"

"Sorry, sir, I don't think I quite understand, sir."

"Whadda you make? How much do they pay you?"

"Oh. Oh, they pay me very decently, sir. Is there anything else I can do, sir? Thank you, sir."

When  the page was gone, Elmer complained, "Yuh, fine friendly kid THAT bell-boy, is, and can't hardly understand the English language! Well, I'm
glad  we're seeing the Old Country, but if folks aren't going to be any friendlier than HE is, I see where we'll be mighty darn glad to get back.
Why,  say,  if he'd of been an American bell-boy, we'd of jawed along for an hour, and I'd of learned something. Well, come on, come on! Get your
hat on, and let's go out and give the town the once-over."

They walked along the Strand.

"Say," Elmer said portentously, "do you notice that? The cops got straps under their chins! Well, well, that certainly is different!"

"Yes, isn't it!" said Cleo.

"But  I don't think so much of this street. I always heard it was a famous one, but these stores--why, say, we got a dozen streets in Zenith, say
nothing of N' York, that got better stores. No git up and git to these foreigners. Certainly does make a fellow glad he's an American!"

They came, after exploring Swan & Edgar's, to St. James's Palace.

"Now," said Elmer knowingly, "that certainly is an ancient site. Wonder what it is? Some kind of a castle, I guess."

To a passing policeman: "Say, excuse me, Cap'n, but could you tell me what that brick building is?"

"St. James's Palace, sir. You're an American? The Prince of Wales lives there, sir."

"Is that a fact! D'you hear that, Cleo? Well, sir, that's certainly something to remember!"


11


When he regarded the meager audience at Brompton Road Chapel, Elmer had an inspiration.

All the way over he had planned to be poetic in his first London sermon. He was going to say that it was the strong man, the knight in armor, who
was  most  willing  to  humble  himself before God; and to say also that Love was the bow on life's dark cloud, and the morning and evening star,
both. But in a second of genius he cast it away, and reflected, "No! What they want is a good, pioneering, roughneck American!"

And that he was, splendidly.

"Folks,"  he  said,  "it's  mighty  nice of you to let a plain American come and bring his message to you. But I hope you don't expect any Oxford
College man. All I've got to give you--and may the dear Lord help my feebleness in giving you even that--is the message that God reigns among the
grim frontiersmen of America, in cabin and trackless wild, even as he reigns here in your magnificent and towering city.

"It  is  true  that  just  at the present moment, through no virtue of my own, I am the pastor of a church even larger than your beautiful chapel
here. But, ah, I long for the day when the general superintendent will send me back to my own beloved frontier, to--Let me try, in my humble way,
to  give  you  a  picture  of  the  work I knew as a youth, that you may see how closely the grace of God binds your world-compelling city to the
humblest vastnesses.

"I  was the pastor--as a youngster, ignorant of everything save the fact that the one urgent duty of the preacher is to carry everywhere the Good
News  of  the  Atonement--of  a log chapel in a frontier settlement called Schoenheim. I came at nightfall, weary and anhungered, a poor circuit-
rider,  to  the  house  of  Barney  Bains,  a pioneer, living all alone in his log cabin. I introduced myself. 'I am Brother Gantry, the Wesleyan
preacher," I said. Well, he stared at me, a wild look in his eyes, beneath his matted hair, and slowly he spoke:

"'Brother,' he said, 'I ain't seen no strangers for nigh onto a year, and I'm mighty pleased to see you.'

"'You must have been awfully lonely, friend,' I said.

"'No, sir, not me!' he said.

"'How's that?' I said.

"'Because Jesus has been with me all the time!'"


12


They almost applauded.

They told him afterward that he was immense, and invited him to address them whenever he returned to London.

"Wait," he reflected, "till I get back to Zenith and tell old Potts and Hickenlooper THAT!"

As  they  rode  to  the  hotel  on  the 'bus, Cleo sighed, "Oh, you were wonderful! But I never knew you had such a wild time of it in your first
pastorate."

"Oh, well, it was nothing. A man that's a real man has to take the rough with the smooth."

"That's so!"


13


He  stood  impatiently  on  a corner of the Rue de la Paix, while Cleo gaped into the window of a perfumer. (She was too well trained to dream of
asking him to buy expensive perfume.) He looked at the façades in the Place Vendôme.

"Not much class--too kind of plain," he decided.

A little greasy man edged up to him, covertly sliding toward him a pack of postcards, and whispered, "Lovely cards--only two francs each."

"Oh," said Elmer intelligently, "you speak English."

"Sure. All language."

Then Elmer saw the topmost card and he was galvanized.

"Whee!  Golly!  Two francs apiece?" He seized the pack, gloating--But Cleo was suddenly upon him, and he handed back the cards, roaring, "You get
out of here or I'll call a cop! Trying to sell obscene pictures--and to a minister of the gospel! Cleo, these Europeans have dirty minds!"


14


It  was  on  the  steamer  home  that  he met and became intimate with J. E. North, the renowned vice-slayer, executive secretary of the National
Association for the Purification of Art and the Press--affectionately known through all the evangelical world as "the Napap." Mr. North was not a
clergyman (though he was a warm Presbyterian layman), but no clergyman in the country had more furiously pursued wickedness, more craftily forced
congressmen,  through  threats  in  their  home  districts,  to see legislation in the same reasonable manner as himself. For several sessions of
Congress  he  had  backed a bill for a federal censorship of all fiction, plays, and moving pictures, with a penitentiary sentence for any author
mentioning adultery even by implication, ridiculing prohibition, or making light of any Christian sect or minister.

The bill had always been defeated, but it was gaining more votes in every session. . . .

Mr.  North  was  a  tight-mouthed,  thin gentleman. He liked the earnestness, uprightness, and vigor of the Reverend Dr. Gantry, and all day they
walked the deck or sat talking--anywhere save in the smoking-room, where fools were befouling their intellects with beer. He gave Elmer an inside
view  of the great new world of organized opposition to immorality; he spoke intimately of the leaders of that world--the executives of the Anti-
Saloon League, the Lord's Day Alliance, the Watch and Ward Society, the Methodist Board of Temperance, Prohibition, and Public Morals--modern St.
Johns, armed with card indices.

He invited Elmer to lecture for him.

"We  need  men  like you, Dr. Gantry," said Mr. North, "men with rigid standards of decency, and yet with a physical power which will indicate to
the  poor misguided youth of this awful flask-toting age that morality is not less but more virile than immorality. And I think your parishioners
will appreciate your being invited to address gatherings in places like New York and Chicago now and then."

"Oh,  I'm  not  looking for appreciation. It's just that if I can do anything in my power to strike a blow at the forces of evil," said Elmer, "I
shall be most delighted to help you."

"Do you suppose you could address the Detroit Y. M. C. A. on October fourth?"

"Well, it's my wife's birthday, and we've always made rather a holiday of it--we're proud of being an old-fashioned homey family--but I know that
Cleo wouldn't want that to stand in the way of my doing anything I can to further the Kingdom."


15


So Elmer came, though tardily, to the Great Idea which was to revolutionize his life and bring him eternal and splendid fame.

That  shabby  Corsican artillery lieutenant and author, Bonaparte, first conceiving that he might be the ruler of Europe--Darwin seeing dimly the
scheme of evolution--Paolo realizing that all of life was nothing but an irradiation of Francesca--Newton pondering on the falling apple--Paul of
Tarsus  comprehending that a certain small Jewish sect might be the new religion of the doubting Greeks and Romans--Keats beginning to write "The
Eve  of  St.  Agnes"--none  of  these men, transformed by a Great Idea from mediocrity to genius, was more remarkable than Elmer Gantry of Paris,
Kansas, when he beheld the purpose for which the heavenly powers had been training him.

He  was walking the deck--but only in the body, for his soul was soaring among the stars--he was walking the deck alone, late at night, clenching
his fists and wanting to shout as he saw it all clearly.

He  would  combine  in  one association all the moral organizations in America--perhaps, later, in the entire world. He would be the executive of
that combination; he would be the super-president of the United States, and some day the dictator of the world.

Combine  them  all. The Anti-Saloon League, the W. C. T. U., and the other organizations fighting alcohol. The Napap and the other Vice Societies
doing  such magnificent work in censoring unmoral novels and paintings and motion pictures and plays. The Anti-Cigarette League. The associations
lobbying  for  anti-evolution  laws  in  the state legislatures. The associations making so brave a fight against Sunday baseball, Sunday movies,
Sunday  golfing,  Sunday motoring, and the other abominations whereby the Sabbath was desecrated and the preachers' congregations and collections
were  lessened.  The fraternities opposing Romanism. The societies which gallantly wanted to make it a crime to take the name of the Lord in vain
or to use the nine Saxon physiological monosyllables. And all the rest.

Combine  the  lot.  They  were  pursuing  the  same purpose--to make life conform to the ideals agreed upon by the principal Christian Protestant
denominations. Divided, they were comparatively feeble; united, they would represent thirty million Protestant church-goers; they would have such
a  treasury  and such a membership that they would no longer have to coax Congress and the state legislatures into passing moral legislation, but
in a quiet way they would merely state to the representatives of the people what they wanted, and get it.

And  the  head  of this united organization would be the Warwick of America, the man behind the throne, the man who would send for presidents, of
whatever  party,  and give orders . . . and that man, perhaps the most powerful man since the beginning of history, was going to be Elmer Gantry.
Not  even  Napoleon or Alexander had been able to dictate what a whole nation should wear and eat and say and think. That, Elmer Gantry was about
to do.

"A  BISHOP?  ME?  A  Wes Toomis? Hell, don't be silly! I'm going to be the emperor of America--maybe of the world. I'm glad I've got this idea so
early, when I'm only forty-three. I'll do it! I'll do it!" Elmer exulted. "Now let's see: The first step is to kid this J. S. North along, and do
whatever  he  wants  me  to--until  it  comes  time to kick him out--and get a church in New York, so they'll know I'm A-1. . . . My God, and Jim
Lefferts tried to keep me from becoming a preacher!"


16


"--and  I stood," Elmer was explaining, in the pulpit of Wellspring Church, "there on the Roo deluh Pay in Paris, filled almost to an intolerable
historical appreciation of those aged and historical structures, when suddenly up to me comes a man obviously a Frenchman.

"Now  to  me, of course, any man who is a countryman of Joan of Arc and of Marshal Foch is a friend. So when this man said to me, 'Brother, would
you  like  to  have  a  good  time  tonight?'  I answered--though truth to tell I did not like his looks entirely--I said, 'Brother, that depends
entirely on what you mean by a good time'--he spoke English.

"'Well,' he said, 'I can take you places where you can meet many pretty girls and have fine liquor to drink.'

"Well,  I  had  to  laugh. I think I was more sorry for him than anything else. I laid my hand on his shoulder and I said, 'Brother, I'm afraid I
can't go with you. I'm already dated up for a good time this evening.'

"'How's that?' he said. 'And what may you be going to do?'

"'I'm  going,'  I  said, 'back to my hotel to have dinner with my dear wife, and after that,' I said, 'I'm going to do something that you may not
regard as interesting but which is my idea of a dandy time! I'm going to read a couple of chapters of the Bible aloud, and say my prayers, and go
to  bed! And now,' I said, 'I'll give you exactly three seconds to get out of here, and if you're in my sight after that--well, it'll be over you
that I'll be saying the prayers!'

"I  see  that  my  time  is  nearly  up,  but  before  I close I want to say a word on behalf of the Napap--that great organization, the National
Association  for the Purification of Art and the Press. I am pleased to say that its executive secretary, my dear friend Dr. J. E. North, will be
with us next month, and I want you all to give him a rousing greeting--"



CHAPTER XXXI


1


For  over  a  year now it had been murmured through the church-world that no speaker was more useful to the reform organization than the Rev. Dr.
Elmer Gantry of Zenith. His own church regretted losing his presence so often, but they were proud to hear of him as speaking in New York, in Los
Angeles, in Toronto.

It  was said that when Mr. J. E. North retired from the Napap because of the press of his private interests (he was the owner of the Eppsburg, N.
Y.,  Times-Scimitar),  Dr.  Gantry  would be elected executive secretary of the Napap in his stead. It was said that no one in America was a more
relentless foe of so-called liberalism in theology and of misconduct in private life.

It was said that Dr. Gantry had refused support for election as a bishop at the 1928 General Conference of the Methodist Church, North, two years
from now. And it was definitely known that he had refused the presidency of Swenson University in Nebraska.

But  it  was  also  definitely  known, alas, that he was likely to be invited to take the pastorate of the Yorkville Methodist Church in New York
City,  which included among its members Dr. Wilkie Bannister, that resolute cover-to-cover fundamentalist who was also one of the most celebrated
surgeons  in  the  country,  Peter F. Durbar, the oil millionaire, and Jackie Oaks, the musical-comedy clown. The bishop of the New York area was
willing to give Dr. Gantry the appointment. But--Well, there were contradictory stories; one version said that Dr. Gantry had not decided to take
the  Yorkville  appointment; the other said that Yorkville, which meant Dr. Bannister, had not decided to take Dr. Gantry. Anyway, the Wellspring
flock hoped that their pastor, their spiritual guardian, their friend and brother, would not leave them.


2


After  he  had  discharged  Miss Bundle, the church secretary--and that was a pleasant moment; she cried so ludicrously--Elmer had to depend on a
series of incapable girls, good Methodists but rotten stenographers.

It  almost  made  him  laugh to think that while everybody supposed he was having such a splendid time with his new fame, he was actually running
into  horrible  luck. This confounded J. E. North, with all his pretenses of friendship, kept delaying his resignation from the Napap. Dr. Wilkie
Bannister,  the conceited chump--a fellow who thought he knew more about theology than a preacher!--delayed in advising the Official Board of the
Yorkville Church to call Elmer. And his secretaries infuriated him. One of them was shocked when he said just the least little small "damn"!

Nobody appreciated the troubles of a man destined to be the ruler of America; no one knew what he was sacrificing in his campaign for morality.

And  how  tired he was of the rustic and unimaginative devotion of Lulu Bains! If she lisped "Oh, Elmer, you are so strong!" just once more, he'd
have to clout her!


3


In  the  cue  of people who came up after the morning service to shake hands with the Reverend Dr. Gantry was a young woman whom the pastor noted
with interest.

She was at the end of the cue, and they talked without eavesdroppers.

If  a Marquis of the seventeenth century could have been turned into a girl of perhaps twenty-five, completely and ardently feminine yet with the
haughty head, the slim hooked nose, the imperious eyes of M. le Marquis, that would have been the woman who held Elmer's hand, and said:

"May I tell you, Doctor, that you are the first person in my whole life who has given me a sense of reality in religion?"

"Sister, I am very grateful," said the Reverend Dr. Gantry, while Elmer was saying within, "Say, you're a kid I'd like to get acquainted with!"

"Dr.  Gantry,  aside  from  my tribute--which is quite genuine--I have a perfectly unscrupulous purpose in coming and speaking to you. My name is
Hettie  Dowler--MISS,  unfortunately!  I've had two years in the University of Wisconsin. I've been secretary of Mr. Labenheim of the Tallahassee
Life  Insurance Company for the last year, but he's been transferred to Detroit. I'm really quite a good secretary. And I'm a Methodist--a member
of  Central, but I've been planning to switch to Wellspring. Now what I'm getting at is: If you should happen to need a secretary in the next few
months--I'm filling in as one of the hotel stenographers at the Thornleigh--"

They looked at each other, unswerving, comprehending. They shook hands again, more firmly.

"Miss Dowler, you're my secretary right now," said Elmer. "It'll take about a week to arrange things."

"Thank you."

"May I drive you home?"

"I'd love to have you."


4


Not  even  the  nights  when  they worked together, alone in the church, were more thrilling than their swift mocking kisses between the calls of
solemn  parishioners.  To  be  able  to  dash across the study and kiss her soft temple after a lugubrious widow had waddled out, and to have her
whisper, "Darling, you were TOO wonderful with that awful old hen; oh, you are so dear!"--that was life to him.

He  went  often  of  an  evening  to  Hettie  Dowler's  flat--a  pleasant white-and-blue suite in one of the new apartment hotels, with an absurd
kitchenette  and  an  electric refrigerator. She curled, in long leopard-like lines, on the damask couch, while he marched up and down rehearsing
his sermons and stopped for the applause of her kiss.

Always  he  slipped  down  to  the pantry at his house and telephoned good-night to her before retiring, and when she was kept home by illness he
telephoned  to  her  from his study every hour or scrawled notes to her. That she liked best. "Your letters are so dear and funny and sweet," she
told him. So he wrote in his unformed script:


Dearest  ittle  honeykins  bunnykins,  oo is such a darlings, I adore you, I haven't got another doggoned thing to say but I say that six hundred
million trillion times. Elmer.


BUT--and  he would never have let himself love her otherwise, for his ambition to become the chief moral director of the country was greater even
than his delight in her--Hettie Dowler was all this time a superb secretary.

No  dictation  was  too  swift  for  her;  she  rarely  made errors; she made of a typed page a beautiful composition; she noted down for him the
telephone numbers of people who called during his absence; and she had a cool sympathetic way of getting rid of the idiots who came to bother the
Reverend Dr. Gantry with their unimportant woes. And she had such stimulating suggestions for sermons. In these many years, neither Cleo nor Lulu
had  ever  made  a sermon-suggestion worth anything but a groan, but Hettie--why, it was she who outlined the sermon on "The Folly of Fame" which
caused  such  a  sensation  at  Terwillinger  College  when  Elmer received his LL. D., got photographed laying a wreath on the grave of the late
President Willoughby Quarles, and in general obtained publicity for himself and his "dear old Alma Mater."

He felt, sometimes, that Hettie was the reincarnation of Sharon.

They  were  very  different  physically--Hettie  was  slimmer, less tall, her thin eager face hadn't the curious long lines of Sharon's; and very
different were they mentally. Hettie, however gaily affectionate, was never moody, never hysterical. Yet there was the same rich excitement about
life and the same devotion to their man.

And there was the same impressive ability to handle people.

If  anything  could  have  increased  T.  J. Rigg's devotion to Elmer and the church, it was the way in which Hettie, instinctively understanding
Rigg's  importance, flattered him and jested with him and encouraged him to loaf in the church office though he interrupted her work and made her
stay later at night.

She  carried  out a harder, more important task--she encouraged William Dollinger Styles, who was never so friendly as Rigg. She told him that he
was  a Napoleon of Finance. She almost went too far in her attentions to Styles; she lunched with him, alone. Elmer protested, jealously, and she
amiably agreed never to see Styles again outside of the church.


5


That was a hard, a rather miserable job, getting rid of the Lulu Bains whom Hettie had made superfluous.

On the Tuesday evening after his first meeting with Hettie, when Lulu came cooing into his study, Elmer looked depressed, did not rise to welcome
her. He sat at his desk, his chin moodily in his two hands.

"What is it, dear?" Lulu pleaded.

"Sit down--no, PLEASE, don't kiss me--sit down over there, dearest. We must have an earnest talk," said the Reverend Dr. Gantry.

She looked so small, so rustic, for all her new frock, as she quivered in an ugly straight chair.

"Lulu,  I've  got  something  dreadful to tell you. In spite of our carefulness, Cleo--Mrs. Gantry--is onto us. It simply breaks my heart, but we
must stop seeing each other privately. Indeed--"

"Oh, Elmer, Elmer, oh, my lover, PLEASE!"

"You  must  be  calm,  dear!  We  must be brave and face this thing honestly. As I was saying, I'm not sure but that it might be better, with her
horrible suspicions, if you didn't come to church here any more."

"But what did she say--what did she SAY? I hate her! I hate your wife so! I won't be hysterical but--I hate her! What did she say?"

"Well,  last evening she just calmly said to me--You can imagine how surprised I was; like a bolt out of the blue! She said--my wife said, 'Well,
tomorrow  I  suppose  you'll  be  meeting that person that teaches cooking again, and get home as late as usual!' Well, I stalled for time, and I
found that she was actually thinking of putting detectives on us!"

"Oh, my dear, my poor dear! I won't ever see you again! You mustn't be disgraced, with your wonderful fame that I've been so proud of!"

"Darling  Lulu,  can't  you see it isn't that? Hell! I'm a man! I can face the whole kit and boodle of 'em, and tell 'em just where they get off!
But it's you. Honestly, I'm afraid Floyd will kill you if he knows."

"Yes, I guess he would. . . . I don't know's I care much. It would be easier than killing myself--"

"Now you look here, young woman! I'll have none of this idiotic suicide talk!" He had sprung up; he was standing over her, an impressive priestly
figure.  "It's  absolutely  against  every  injunction  of  God,  who  gave us our lives to use for his service and glory, to even think of self-
slaughter! Why, I could never have imagined that you could say such a wicked, wicked, WICKED thing!"

She  crawled  out after a time, a little figure in a shabby topcoat over her proud new dress. She stood waiting for a trolley car, alone under an
arc-light, fingering her new beaded purse, which she loved because in his generosity He had given it to her. From time to time she wiped her eyes
and  blew  her  nose,  and all the time she was quite stupidly muttering, "Oh, my dear, my dear, to think I made trouble for you--oh, my dear, my
very dear!"

Her  husband  was  glad  to find, the year after, that she had by some miracle lost the ambitiousness which had annoyed him, and that night after
night  she  was  willing  to stay home and play cribbage. But he was angry and rather talkative over the fact that whenever he came home he would
find  her  sitting blank-faced and idle, and that she had become so careless about her hair. But life is life, and he became used to her slopping
around in a dressing gown all day, and sometimes smelling of gin.


6


By  recommendation  of  J. E. North, it was Elmer who was chosen by the Sacred Sabbath League to lead the fight against Sunday motion pictures in
Zenith.  "This will be fine training for you," Mr. North wrote to Elmer, "in case the directors elect you my successor in the Napap; training for
the day when you will be laying down the law not merely to a city council but to congressmen and senators."

Elmer  knew that the high lords of the Napap were watching him, and with spirit he led the fight against Sunday movies. The State of Winnemac had
the  usual  blue  law  to  the  effect that no paid labor (except, of course, that of ministers of the gospel, and whatever musicians, lecturers,
educators,  janitors,  or  other  sacred  help  the  ministers  might choose to hire) might work on the Sabbath, and the usual blissful custom of
ignoring that law.

Elmer called on the sheriff of the county--a worried man, whose training in criminology had been acquired in a harness-shop--and shook hands with
him handsomely.

"Well,  Reverend,  it's  real nice to have the pleasure of making your acquaintance," said the sheriff. "I've read a lot about you in the papers.
Have a smoke?"

Elmer sat down impressively, leaning over a little, his elbow on the arm of the chair, his huge fist clenched.

"Thanks, but I never touch tobacco," he said grimly. "Now look here, Edelstein, are you the sheriff of this county?"

"Huh! I guess I am!"

"Oh, you guess so, do you! Well then, are you going to see that the state law against Sunday movies is obeyed?"

"Oh, now look here, Reverend! Nobody wants me to enforce--"

"Nobody?  Nobody?  Only  a  couple  of  hundred thousand citizens and church-members! Bankers, lawyers, doctors, decent people! And only an equal
number  of  wops  and hunkies and yids and atheists and papes want you to let the Sabbath be desecrated! Now you look here, Edelstein! Unless you
pinch  every  last  man,  movie owners and operators and ushers and the whole kit and bilin' of 'em that are responsible for this disgraceful and
illegal  traffic  of  Sunday movies, I'm going to call a giant mass-meeting of all the good citizens in town, and I'm going to talk a lot less to
'em  about the movie-proprietors than I am about YOU, and it's one fine fat, nice chance you'll have of being re-elected, if two hundred thousand
electors of this county (and the solid birds that take the trouble to vote) are out for your hide--"

"Say, who do you think is running this county? The Methodists and Baptists and Presbyterians?"

"Certainly!"

"Say, you look here now--"

In  fact,  upon  warrants sworn to by the Reverend Dr. Elmer Gantry, all persons connected with the profanation of the Sabbath by showing motion-
pictures  were  arrested  for  three  Sundays  in succession (after which the motion-pictures went on as before), and Elmer received telegrams of
esteem from the Sacred Sabbath League, J. E. North, Dr. Wilkie Bannister of the Yorkville Methodist Church of New York City, and a hundred of the
more prominent divines all over the land.


7


Within  twenty-four  hours  Mr.  J.  E.  North  let Elmer know that he was really resigning in a month, and that the choice for his successor lay
between  Elmer  and  only  two  other  holy  men; and Dr. Wilkie Bannister wrote that the Official Board of the Yorkville Methodist Church, after
watching Elmer's career for the last few months, was ready to persuade the bishop to offer him the pastorate, providing he should not be too much
distracted by outside interests.

It  was  fortunate that the headquarters of the Napap were in New York City and not, as was the case with most benevolent lobbying organizations,
in Washington.

Elmer  wrote  to  Dr.  Bannister  and  the other trustees of the Yorkville Church that while he would titularly be the executive secretary of the
National Association for the Purification of Art and the Press (and, oh! what a credit it would be to dear old Yorkville that their pastor should
hold  such a position!), he would be able to leave all the actual work of the Napap to his able assistants, and except for possibly a day a week,
give  all  his  energy  and  time and prayers to the work of guiding onward and upward, so far as might lie within his humble power, the flock at
Yorkville.

Elmer wrote to Mr. J. E. North and the trustees of the Napap that while he would titularly be the pastor of the Yorkville Methodist (and would it
not  be  a  splendid justification of their work that their executive secretary should be the pastor of one of the most important churches in New
York  City?) yet he would be able to leave all the actual work to his able assistants, and except possibly for Sabbaths and an occasional wedding
or  funeral,  give  all his energy and time to the work of guiding, so far as might lie within his humble power, the epochal work of the National
Association for the Purification of Art and the Press.

From  both  of  these  pious assemblies he had answers that they were pleased by his explanation, and that it would be a matter now of only a few
days--

It was Hettie Dowler who composed these letters, but Elmer made several changes in commas, and helped by kissing her while she was typing.


8


It was too vexatious that at this climax of his life Elmer's mother should have invited herself to come and stay with them.

He  was happy when he met her at the station. However pleasant it might be to impress the great of the world--Bishop Toomis or J. E. North or Dr.
Wilkie  Bannister--it  had  been  from  his  first  memory  the  object  of life to gain the commendation of his mother and of Paris, Kansas, the
foundation  of his existence. To be able to drive her in a new Willys-Knight sedan, to show her his new church, his extraordinarily genteel home,
Cleo in a new frock, was rapture.

But  when  she  had  been with them for only two days, his mother got him aside and said stoutly, "Will you sit down and try not to run about the
room, my son? I want to talk to you."

"That's splendid! But I'm awfully afraid I've got to make it short, because--"

"Elmer  Gantry! Will you hold your tongue and stop being such a wonderful success? Elmer, my dear boy, I'm sure you don't mean to do wrong, but I
don't like the way you're treating Cleo . . . and such a dear, sweet, bright, devout girl."

"What do you mean?"

"I think you know what I mean!"

"Now  you  look  here, Mother! All RIGHT, I'll sit down and be quiet, but--I certainly do not know what you mean! The way I've always been a good
husband to her, and stood for her total inability to be nice to the most important members of my congregation--And of all the chilly propositions
you  ever met! When I have folks here for dinner--even Rigg, the biggest man in the church--she hasn't got hardly a thing to say. And when I come
home  from  church,  just absolutely tired out, and she meets me--does she meet me with a kiss and look jolly? She does NOT! She begins crabbing,
the minute I enter the house, about something I've done or I haven't done, and of course it's natural--"

"Oh,  my  boy,  my little boy, my dear--all that I've got in this whole world! You were always so quick with excuses! When you stole pies or hung
cats  or  licked  the other boys! Son, Cleo is suffering. You never pay any attention to her, even when I'm here and you try to be nice to her to
show off. Elmer, who is this secretary of yours that you keep calling up all the while?"

The Reverend Dr. Gantry rose quietly, and sonorously he spoke:

"My  dear  mater,  I  owe  you  everything. But at a time when one of the greatest Methodist churches in the world and one of the greatest reform
organizations  in the world are begging for my presence, I don't know that I need to explain even to you, Ma, what I'm trying to do. I'm going up
to my room--"

"Yes, and that's another thing, having separate rooms--"

"--and  pray  that you may understand. . . . Say, listen, Ma! Some day you may come to the White House and lunch with me and the PRESIDENT! . . .
But I mean: Oh, Ma, for God's sake, quit picking on me like Cleo does all the while!"

And  he  did  pray; by his bed he knelt, his forehead gratefully cool against the linen spread, mumbling, "O dear God, I am trying to serve thee.
Keep Ma from feeling I'm not doing right--"

He sprang up.

"Hell!"  he said. "These women want me to be a house dog! To hell with 'em! No! Not with mother, but--Oh, damn it, she'll understand when I'm the
pastor of Yorkville! O God, why can't Cleo die, so I can marry Hettie!"

Two  minutes  later he was murmuring to Hettie Dowler, from the telephone instrument in the pantry, while the cook was grumbling and picking over
the potatoes down in the basement, "Dear, will you just say something nice to me--anything--anything!"



CHAPTER XXXII


1


Two evenings after Elmer's mother had almost alienated him, he settled down in his study at home to prepare three or four sermons, with a hope of
being  in bed by eleven. He was furious when the Lithuanian maid came in and said, "Somebody on the 'phone, Doctor," but when he heard Hettie the
ragged edges went out of his voice.

"Elmer? Hettie calling."

"Yes, yes, this is Dr. Gantry."

"Oh, you are so sweet and funny and dignified! Is the Lettish pot-walloper listening?"

"Yes!"

"Listen, dear. Will you do something for me?"

"You bet!"

"I'm so terribly lonely this evening. Is oo working hard?"

"I've got to get up some sermons."

"Listen!  Bring your little Bible dictionary along and come and work at my place, and let me smoke a cigarette and look at you. Wouldn't you like
to . . . dear . . . dearest?"

"You bet. Be right along."

He  explained  to  Cleo and his mother that he had to go and comfort an old lady in extremis, he accepted their congratulations on his martyrdom,
and hastened out.


2


Elmer  was  sitting  beside Hettie on the damask couch, under the standard lamp, stroking her hand and explaining how unjust his mother was, when
the door of her suite opened gravely and a thin, twitching-faced, gimlet-eyed man walked in.

Hettie sprang up, stood with a hand on her frightened breast.

"What d'you want here?" roared Elmer, as he rose also.

"Hush!" Hettie begged him. "It's my husband!"

"Your--" Elmer's cry was the bleat of a bitten sheep. "Your--But you aren't married!"

"I am, hang it! Oscar, you get out of here! How dare you intrude like this!"

Oscar walked slowly, appreciatively, into the zone of light.

"Well, I've caught you two with the goods!" he chuckled.

"What do you mean!" Hettie raged. "This is my boss, and he's come here to talk over some work."

"Yeh, I bet he has. . . . This afternoon I bribed my way in here, and I've got all his letters to you."

"Oh, you haven't!" Hettie dashed to her desk, stood in despair looking at an empty drawer.

Elmer bulked over Oscar. "I've had enough of this! You gimme those letters and you get out of here or I'll throw you out!"

Oscar  negligently  produced  an  automatic. "Shut up," he said, almost affectionately. "Now, Gantry, this ought to cost you about fifty thousand
dollars, but I don't suppose you can raise that much. But if I sue for alienation of Het's affections, that's the amount I'll sue for. But if you
want  to  settle  out  of  court,  in  a  nice gentlemanly manner without acting rough, I'll let you off for ten thousand--and there won't be the
publicity--oh, maybe that publicity wouldn't cook your reverend goose!"

"If you think you can blackmail me--"

"Think? Hell! I know I can! I'll call on you in your church at noon tomorrow."

"I won't be there."

"You  better  be!  If  you're  ready  to  compromise  for ten thousand, all right; no feelings hurt. If not, I'll have my lawyer (and he's Mannie
Silverhorn,  the  slickest  shyster in town) file suit for alienation tomorrow afternoon--and make sure that the evening papers get out extras on
it. By-by, Hettie. 'By, Elmer darling. Whoa, Elmer! Naughty, naughty! You touch me and I'll plug you! So long."

Elmer gaped after the departing Oscar. He turned quickly and saw that Hettie was grinning.

She hastily pulled down her mouth.

"My God, I believe you're in on this!" he cried.

"What  of  it,  you  big  lummox!  We've  got the goods on you. Your letters will sound lovely in court! But don't ever think for one moment that
workers  as  good  as  Oscar  and  I  were wasting our time on a tin-horn preacher without ten bucks in the bank! We were after William Dollinger
Styles. But he isn't a boob, like you; he turned me down when I went to lunch with him and tried to date him up. So, as we'd paid for this plant,
we  thought we might as well get our expenses and a little piece of change out of you, you short-weight, and by God we will! Now get out of here!
I'm  sick of hearing your blatting! No, I don't think you better hit me. Oscar'll be waiting outside the door. Sorry I won't be able to be at the
church tomorrow--don't worry about my things or my salary--I got 'em this afternoon!"


3


At  midnight,  his  mouth  hanging open, Elmer was ringing at the house of T. J. Rigg. He rang and rang, desperately. No answer. He stood outside
then and bawled "T. J.! T. J.!"

An upper window was opened, and an irritated voice, thick with sleepiness, protested, "Whadda yuh WANT!"

"Come down quick! It's me--Elmer Gantry. I need you, bad!"

"All right. Be right down."

A grotesque little figure in an old-fashioned nightshirt, puffing at a cigar, Rigg admitted him and led him to the library.

"T. J., they've got me!"

"Yuh? The bootleggers?"

"No. Hettie. You know my secretary?"

"Oh. Yuh. I see. Been pretty friendly with her?"

Elmer told everything.

"All  right,"  said  Rigg.  "I'll be there at twelve to meet Oscar with you. We'll stall for time, and I'll do something. Don't worry, Elmer. And
look here. Elmer, don't you think that even a preacher ought to TRY to go straight?"

"I've  learned my lesson, T. J.! I swear this is the last time I'll ever step out, even look at a girl. God, you've been a good friend to me, old
man!"

"Well, I like anything I'm connected with to go straight. Pure egotism. You better have a drink. You need it!"

"No!  I'm  going to hold onto THAT vow, anyway! I guess it's all I've got. Oh, my God! And just this evening I thought I was such a big important
guy, that nobody could touch."

"You might make a sermon out of it--and you probably will!"


4


The chastened and positively-for-the-last-time-reformed Elmer lasted for days. He was silent at the conference with Oscar Dowler, Oscar's lawyer,
Mannie Silverhorn, and T. J. Rigg in the church study next noon. Rigg and Silverhorn did the talking. (And Elmer was dismayed to see how friendly
and jocose Rigg was with Silverhorn, of whom he had spoken in most un-Methodist terms.)

"Yuh, you've got the goods on the Doctor," said Rigg. "We admit it. And I agree that it's worth ten thousand. But you've got to give us a week to
raise the money."

"All right, T. J. See you here a week from today?" said Mannie Silverhorn.

"No, better make it in your office. Too many snooping sisters around."

"All right."

Everybody  shook hands profusely--except that Elmer did not shake hands with Oscar Dowler, who snickered, "Why, Elmer, and us so closely related,
as it were!"

When they were gone, the broken Elmer whimpered, "But, T. J., I never in the world could raise ten thousand! Why, I haven't saved a thousand!"

"Hell's  big  bells,  Elmer!  You don't suppose we're going to pay 'em any ten thousand, do you? It may cost you fifteen hundred--which I'll lend
you--five hundred to sweeten Hettie, and maybe a thousand for detectives."

"Uh?"

"At  a quarter to two this morning I was talking to Pete Reese of the Reese Detective Agency, telling him to get busy. We'll know a lot about the
Dowlers in a few days. So don't worry."


5


Elmer  was  sufficiently  consoled  not  to  agonize  that  week,  yet  not  so consoled but that he became a humble and tender Christian. To the
embarrassed astonishment of his children, he played with them every evening. To Cleo he was almost uxorious.

"Dearest,"  he  said,  "I  realize  that  I  have--oh, it isn't entirely my fault; I've been so absorbed in the Work: but the fact remains that I
haven't given you enough attention, and tomorrow evening I want you to go to a concert with me."

"Oh, Elmer!" she rejoiced.

And he sent her flowers, once.

"You see!" his mother exulted. "I knew you and Cleo would be happier if I just pointed out a few things to you. After all, your old mother may be
stupid  and  Main-Street,  but  there's nobody like a mother to understand her own boy, and I knew that if I just spoke to you, even if you are a
Doctor of Divinity, you'd see things different!"

"Yes, and it was your training that made me a Christian and a preacher. Oh, a man does owe so much to a pious mother!" said Elmer.


6


Mannie  Silverhorn was one of the best ambulance-chasers in Zenith. A hundred times he had made the street-car company pay damages to people whom
they  had  not  damaged; a hundred times he had made motorists pay for injuring people whom they had not injured. But with all his talent, Mannie
had one misfortune--he would get drunk.

Now, in general, when he was drunk Mannie was able to keep from talking about his legal cases, but this time he was drunk in the presence of Bill
Kingdom, reporter for the Advocate-Times, and Mr. Kingdom was an even harder cross-examiner than Mr. Silverhorn.

Bill  had been speaking without affection of Dr. Gantry when Mannie leered, "Say, jeeze, Bill, your Doc Gantry is going to get his! Oh, I got him
where I want him! And maybe it won't cost him some money to be so popular with the ladies!"

Bill  looked rigorously uninterested. "Aw, what are you trying to pull, Mannie! Don't be a fool! You haven't got anything on Elmer, and you never
will have. He's too smart for you! You haven't got enough brains to get that guy, Mannie!"

"Me? I haven't got enough brains--Say, listen!"

Yes,  Mannie  was  drunk.  Even so, it was only after an hour of badgering Mannie about his inferiority to Elmer in trickiness, an hour of Bill's
harsh  yet  dulcet  flattery, an hour of Bill's rather novel willingness to buy drinks, that an infuriated Mannie shrieked, "All right, you get a
stenographer that's a notary public and I'll dictate it!"

And  at  two  in  the  morning, to an irritated but alert court reporter in his shambles of a hotel room, Mannie Silverhorn dictated and signed a
statement  that  unless  the  Reverend  Dr. Elmer Gantry settled out of court, he would be sued (Emmanuel Silverhorn attorney) for fifty thousand
dollars for having, by inexcusable intimacy with her, alienated Hettie Dowler's affections from her husband.




CHAPTER XXXIII


1


When  Mr.  Mannie  Silverhorn  awoke  at  ten, with a head, he remembered that he had been talking, and with agitation he looked at the morning's
Advocate-Times. He was cheered to see that there was no trace of his indiscretion.

But  the  next  morning  Mr.  Silverhorn  and  the Reverend Dr. Gantry at about the same moment noted on the front page of the Advocate-Times the
photostat  of  a  document  in  which  Emmanuel  Silverhorn,  atty.,  asserted  that unless Dr. Gantry settled out of court, he would be sued for
alienation of affections by Mr. Oscar Dowler, of whose wife, Dowler maintained, Dr. Gantry had taken criminal advantage.


2


It  was  not so much the clamor of the Zenith reporters, tracking him from his own house to that of T. J. Rigg and out to the country--it was not
so  much  the  sketches  of  his  career and hints of his uncovered wickedness in every Zenith paper, morning and evening--it was not so much the
thought  that  he had lost the respect of his congregation. What appalled him was the fact that the Associated Press spread the story through the
country, and that he had telegrams from Dr. Wilkie Bannister of the Yorkville Methodist Church and from the directors of the Napap to the effect:
Is this story true? Until the matter is settled, of course we must delay action.


3


At  the  second  conference  with  Mannie  Silverhorn  and  Oscar Dowler, Hettie was present, along with Elmer and T. J. Rigg, who was peculiarly
amiable.

They sat around Mannie's office, still hearing Oscar's opinion of Mannie's indiscretion.

"Well, let's get things settled," twanged Rigg. "Are we ready to talk business?"

"I am," snarled Oscar. "What about it? Got the ten thou.?"

Into Mannie's office, pushing aside the agitated office-boy, came a large man with flat feet.

"Hello, Pete," said Rigg affectionately.

"Hello, Pete," said Mannie anxiously.

"Who the devil are you?" said Oscar Dowler.

"Oh--Oscar!" said Hettie.

"All ready, Pete?" said T. J. Rigg. "By the way, folks, this is Mr. Peter Reese of the Reese Detective Agency. You see, Hettie, I figured that if
you pulled this, your past record must be interesting. Is it, Pete?"

"Oh, not especially; about average," said Mr. Peter Reese. "Now, Hettie, why did you leave Seattle at midnight on January 12, 1920?"

"None of your business!" shrieked Hettie.

"Ain't,  eh? Well, it's some of the business of Arthur L. F. Morrissey there. He'd like to hear from you," said Mr. Reese, "and know your present
address--and present name! Now, Hettie, what about the time you did time in New York for shop-lifting?"

"You go--"

"Oh, Hettie, don't use bad language! Remember there's a preacher present," tittered Mr. Rigg. "Got enough?"

"Oh, I suppose so," Hettie said wearily. (And for the moment Elmer loved her again, wanted to comfort her.) "Let's bat it, Oscar."

"No,  you  don't--not  till you sign this," said Mr. Rigg. "If you do sign, you get two hundred bucks to get out of town on--which will be before
tomorrow, or God help you! If you don't sign, you go back to Seattle to stand trial."

"All right," Hettie said, and Mr. Rigg read his statement:


I  hereby  voluntarily  swear  that  all  charges against the Reverend Dr. Elmer Gantry made directly or by implication by myself and husband are
false,  wicked, and absolutely unfounded. I was employed by Dr. Gantry as his secretary. His relations to me were always those of a gentleman and
a Christian pastor. I wickedly concealed from him the fact that I was married to a man with a criminal record.

The  liquor  interests, particularly certain distillers who wished to injure Dr. Gantry as one of the greatest foes of the booze traffic, came to
me and paid me to attack the character of Dr. Gantry, and in a moment which I shall never cease to regret, I assented, and got my husband to help
me by forging letters purporting to come from Dr. Gantry.

The  reason  why  I  am  making  this  confession is this: I went to Dr. Gantry, told him what I was going to do, and demanded money, planning to
double-cross  my  employers,  the  booze  interests. Dr. Gantry said, "Sister, I am sorry you are going to do this wrong thing, not on my behalf,
because  it  is a part of the Christian life to bear any crosses, but on behalf of your own soul. Do as seems best to you, Sister, but before you
go further, will you kneel and pray with me?"

When  I  heard  Dr. Gantry praying, I suddenly repented and went home and with my own hands typed this statement which I swear to be the absolute
truth.


When  Hettie  had signed, and her husband had signed a corroboration, Mannie Silverhorn observed, "I think you've overdone it a little, T. J. Too
good to be true. Still, I suppose your idea was that Hettie's such a fool that she'd slop over in her confession."

"That's the idea, Mannie."

"Well,  maybe  you're  right.  Now if you'll give me the two hundred bucks, I'll see these birds are out of town tonight, and maybe I'll give 'em
some of the two hundred."

"Maybe!" said Mr. Rigg.

"Maybe!" said Mr. Silverhorn.

"God!" cried Elmer Gantry, and suddenly he was disgracing himself with tears.

That was Saturday morning.


4


The  afternoon  papers  had  front-page stories reproducing Hettie's confession, joyfully announcing Elmer's innocence, recounting his labors for
purity, and assaulting the booze interests which had bribed this poor, weak, silly girl to attack Elmer.

Before  eight  on  Sunday  morning, telegrams had come in from the Yorkville Methodist Church and the Napap, congratulating Elmer, asserting that
they had never doubted his innocence, and offering him the pastorate of Yorkville and the executive secretaryship of the Napap.


5


When  the papers had first made charges against Elmer, Cleo had said furiously, "Oh, what a wicked, wicked lie--darling, you know I'll stand back
of you!" but his mother had crackled, "Just how much of this is true, Elmy? I'm getting kind of sick and tired of your carryings on!"

Now, when he met them at Sunday breakfast, he held out the telegrams, and the two women elbowed each other to read them.

"Oh,  my  dear, I am so glad and proud!" cried Cleo; and Elmer's mother--she was an old woman, and bent; very wretched she looked as she mumbled,
"Oh, forgive me, my boy! I've been as wicked as that Dowler woman!"


6


But for all that, would his congregation believe him?

If they jeered when he faced them, he would be ruined, he would still lose the Yorkville pastorate and the Napap. Thus he fretted in the quarter-
hour  before  morning  service,  pacing  his  study and noting through the window--for once, without satisfaction--that hundreds on hundreds were
trying to get into the crammed auditorium.

His study was so quiet. How he missed Hettie's presence!

He  knelt.  He did not so much pray as yearn inarticulately. But this came out clearly: "I've learned my lesson. I'll never look at a girl again.
I'm  going  to  be  the  head of all the moral agencies in the country--nothing can stop me, now I've got the Napap!--but I'm going to be all the
things I want other folks to be! Never again!"

He  stood  at  his study door, watching the robed choir filing out to the auditorium chanting. He realized how he had come to love the details of
his church; how, if his people betrayed him now, he would miss it: the choir, the pulpit, the singing, the adoring faces.

It had come. He could not put it off. He had to face them.

Feebly the Reverend Dr. Gantry wavered through the door to the auditorium and exposed himself to twenty-five hundred question marks.

They rose and cheered--cheered--cheered. Theirs were the shining faces of friends.

Without  planning  it,  Elmer  knelt  on the platform, holding his hands out to them, sobbing, and with him they all knelt and sobbed and prayed,
while  outside  the locked glass door of the church, seeing the mob kneel within, hundreds knelt on the steps of the church, on the sidewalk, all
down the block.

"Oh, my friends!" cried Elmer, "do you believe in my innocence, in the fiendishness of my accusers? Reassure me with a hallelujah!"

The church thundered with the triumphant hallelujah, and in a sacred silence Elmer prayed:

"O  Lord,  thou  hast  stooped  from thy mighty throne and rescued thy servant from the assault of the mercenaries of Satan! Mostly we thank thee
because  thus  we  can  go  on  doing  thy work, and thine alone! Not less but more zealously shall we seek utter purity and the prayer-life, and
rejoice in freedom from all temptations!"

He turned to include the choir, and for the first time he saw that there was a new singer, a girl with charming ankles and lively eyes, with whom
he would certainly have to become well acquainted. But the thought was so swift that it did not interrupt the pæan of his prayer:

"Let  me  count  this  day,  Lord,  as the beginning of a new and more vigorous life, as the beginning of a crusade for complete morality and the
domination of the Christian church through all the land. Dear Lord, thy work is but begun! We shall yet make these United States a moral nation!"

THE END

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