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

I love reading the books on which many classic flicks are based. In fact, I collect them. I thought you might like to read them, too. So, I'm starting something new. A free classic movie-related e-book will be featured weekly on my blog. And there will be a surprise waiting for you at the end of each book. :)

For today, I've chosen an old favorite of mine: Elmer Gantry by Sinclair Lewis.

Sinclair Lewis (Harry Sinclair Lewis)(February 7 1885 – January 10 1951) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first American to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of characters." His works are known for their insightful and critical views of American society and capitalist values, as well as their strong characterizations of modern working women.

As early as 1916, Lewis began taking notes for a realistic novel about small-town life. Work on that novel continued through mid-1920, when he completed Main Street which was published on October 23, 1920. As his biographer Mark Schorer wrote, the phenomenal success of Main Street "was the most sensational event in twentieth-century American publishing history." Based on sales of his prior books, Lewis's most optimistic projection was a sale of 25,000 copies. In the first six months of 1921 alone, Main Street sold 180,000 copies, and within a few years sales were estimated at two million. According to Richard Lingeman "Main Street earned Sinclair Lewis about three million current [2002] dollars."

He followed up this first great success with Babbitt (1922), a novel that satirized the American commercial culture and boosterism. The story was set in the fictional Zenith, Winnemac, a setting Lewis would return to in future novels, including Gideon Planish and Dodsworth.

Lewis' success in the 1920s continued with Arrowsmith (1925), a novel about an idealistic doctor which was awarded the Pulitzer Prize (which he refused). Elmer Gantry (1927), which depicted evangelicalism as hypocritical, was denounced by religious leaders and was banned in some U.S. cities. Lewis closed out the decade with Dodsworth (1929), a novel about the most affluent and successful members of American society leading essentially pointless lives in spite of their great wealth and advantages.

In 1930, Lewis won the Nobel Prize in Literature in his first year of nomination. In the Swedish Academy's presentation speech, special attention was paid to Babbitt. In his Nobel Lecture, he praised Theodore Dreiser, Willa Cather, Ernest Hemingway, and other contemporaries, but also lamented that "in America most of us — not readers alone, but even writers — are still afraid of any literature which is not a glorification of everything American, a glorification of our faults as well as our virtues," and that America is "the most contradictory, the most depressing, the most stirring, of any land in the world today."

Elmer Gantry is a satirical novel written by Sinclair Lewis in 1926 and published by Harcourt in March 1927.

On publication in 1927, Elmer Gantry created a public furor. The book was banned in Boston and other cities and denounced from pulpits across the USA. One cleric suggested that Lewis should be imprisoned for five years, and there were also threats of physical violence against the author. The famous evangelist Billy Sunday called Lewis "Satan's cohort." The novel remains unpopular with many evangelical Christians.

It was adapted into a 1960 film of the same name starring Burt Lancaster as Gantry and Jean Simmons as Sister Sharon Falconer.

The film won Academy Awards for Best Actor (Burt Lancaster), Best Supporting Actress (Shirley Jones) and Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium. It was also nominated for Best Music, Scoring of a Dramatic or Comedy Picture and Best Picture.





A Meredy.com E-book

Title: Elmer Gantry (1927)
Author: Sinclair Lewis
Edition: 1
Language: English
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Date first posted: March 2009
Date most recently updated: March 2009

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---

Elmer Gantry (1927)
By
Sinclair Lewis


To H. L. MENCKEN with profound admiration


No character in this book is the portrait of any actual person.

S. L.




CHAPTER I


1


Elmer Gantry was drunk. He was eloquently drunk, lovingly and pugnaciously drunk. He leaned against the bar of the Old Home Sample Room, the most
gilded and urbane saloon in Cato, Missouri, and requested the bartender to join him in "The Good Old Summer Time," the waltz of the day.

Blowing  on  a  glass, polishing it and glancing at Elmer through its flashing rotundity, the bartender remarked that he wasn't much of a hand at
this  here  singing  business. But he smiled. No bartender could have done other than smile on Elmer, so inspired and full of gallantry and hell-
raising was he, and so dominating was his beefy grin.

"All  right, old socks," agreed Elmer. "Me and my room-mate'll show you some singing as is singing! Meet roommate. Jim Lefferts. Bes' roommate in
world. Wouldn't live with him if wasn't! Bes' quarterback in Milwest. Meet roommate."

The bartender again met Mr. Lefferts, with protestations of distinguished pleasure.

Elmer and Jim Lefferts retired to a table to nourish the long, rich, chocolate strains suitable to drunken melody. Actually, they sang very well.
Jim  had a resolute tenor, and as to Elmer Gantry, even more than his bulk, his thick black hair, his venturesome black eyes, you remembered that
arousing  barytone. He was born to be a senator. He never said anything important, and he always said it sonorously. He could make "Good morning"
seem  profound  as  Kant, welcoming as a brass band, and uplifting as a cathedral organ. It was a 'cello, his voice, and in the enchantment of it
you did not hear his slang, his boasting, his smut, and the dreadful violence which (at this period) he performed on singulars and plurals.

Luxuriously as a wayfarer drinking cool beer they caressed the phrases in linked sweetness long drawn out:


Strolling  through  the  shaaaaady lanes, with your baby-mine, You hold her hand and she holds yours, and that's a very good sign That she's your
tootsey-wootsey in the good old summer time.


Elmer  wept  a little, and blubbered, "Lez go out and start a scrap. You're lil squirt, Jim. You get somebody to pick on you, and I'll come along
and  knock  his block off. I'll show 'em!" His voice flared up. He was furious at the wrong about to be suffered. He arched his paws with longing
to  grasp the non-existent scoundrel. "By God, I'll knock the tar out of um! Nobody can touch MY roommate! Know who I am? Elmer Gantry! Thash me!
I'll show um!"

The bartender was shuffling toward them, amiably ready for homicide.

"Shut  up,  Hell-cat.  What  you need is 'nother drink. I'll get 'nother drink," soothed Jim, and Elmer slid into tears, weeping over the ancient
tragic sorrows of one whom he remembered as Jim Lefferts.

Instantly,  by  some tricky sort of magic, there were two glasses in front of him. He tasted one, and murmured foolishly, "'Scuse me." It was the
chase,  the  water.  But  they  couldn't  fool him! The whisky would certainly be in that other lil sawed-off glass. And it was. He was right, as
always.  With  a smirk of self-admiration he sucked in the raw Bourbon. It tickled his throat and made him feel powerful, and at peace with every
one  save  that  fellow--he  could  not  recall  who, but it was some one whom he would shortly chastise, and after that float into an Elysium of
benevolence.

The  barroom was deliriously calming. The sour invigorating stench of beer made him feel healthy. The bar was one long shimmer of beauty--glowing
mahogany,  exquisite  marble  rail,  dazzling  glasses, curiously shaped bottles of unknown liqueurs, piled with a craftiness which made him very
happy.  The  light was dim, completely soothing, coming through fantastic windows such as are found only in churches, saloons, jewelry shops, and
other retreats from reality. On the brown plaster walls were sleek naked girls.

He turned from them. He was empty now of desire for women.

"That damn' Juanita. Jus' wants to get all she can out of you. That's all," he grumbled.

But  there  was an interesting affair beside him. A piece of newspaper sprang up, apparently by itself, and slid along the floor. That was a very
funny incident, and he laughed greatly.

He  was  conscious  of  a voice which he had been hearing for centuries, echoing from a distant point of light and flashing through ever-widening
corridors of a dream.

"We'll get kicked out of here, Hell-cat. Come on!"

He  floated  up.  It was exquisite. His legs moved by themselves, without effort. They did a comic thing once--they got twisted and the right leg
leaped  in front of the left when, so far as he could make out, it should have been behind. He laughed, and rested against some one's arm, an arm
with no body attached to it, which had come out of the Ewigkeit to assist him.

Then  unknown invisible blocks, miles of them, his head clearing, and he made grave announcement to a Jim Lefferts who suddenly seemed to be with
him:

"I gotta lick that fellow."

"All right, all RIGHT. You might as well go find a nice little fight and get it out of your system!"

Elmer  was astonished; he was grieved. His mouth hung open and he drooled with sorrow. But still, he was to be allowed one charming fight, and he
revived as he staggered industriously in search of it.

Oh, he exulted, it was a great party. For the first time in weeks he was relieved from the boredom of Terwillinger College.


2


Elmer  Gantry,  best  known to classmates as Hell-cat, had, this autumn of 1902, been football captain and led the best team Terwillinger College
had  known  in ten years. They had won the championship of the East-middle Kansas Conference, which consisted of ten denominational colleges, all
of  them with buildings and presidents and chapel services and yells and colors and a standard of scholarship equal to the best high-schools. But
since  the  last night of the football season, with the glorious bonfire in which the young gentlemen had burned up nine tar barrels, the sign of
the Jew tailor, and the president's tabby-cat, Elmer had been tortured by boredom.

He regarded basket-ball and gymnasium antics as light-minded for a football gladiator. When he had come to college, he had supposed he would pick
up  learnings  of cash-value to a lawyer or doctor or insurance man--he had not known which he would become, and in his senior year, aged twenty-
two this November, he still was doubtful. But this belief he found fallacious. What good would it be in the courtroom, or at the operating table,
to  understand  trigonometry,  or  to  know  (as  last spring, up to the examination on European History, he remembered having known) the date of
Charlemagne?  How  much  cash  would it bring in to quote all that stuff--what the dickens was it now?--all that rot about "The world is too much
around us, early and soon" from that old fool Wordsworth?

Punk,  that's  what  it  was.  Better  be out in business. But still, if his mother claimed she was doing so well with her millinery business and
wanted him to be a college graduate, he'd stick by it. Lot easier than pitching hay or carrying two-by-fours anyway.

Despite  his  invaluable  voice,  Elmer  had not gone out for debating because of the irritating library-grinding, nor had he taken to prayer and
moral eloquence in the Y.M.C.A., for with all the force of his simple and valiant nature he detested piety and admired drunkenness and profanity.

Once  or  twice in the class in Public Speaking, when he had repeated the splendors of other great thinkers, Dan'l Webster and Henry Ward Beecher
and  Chauncey  M.  Depew,  he  had  known the intoxication of holding an audience with his voice as with his closed hand, holding it, shaking it,
lifting  it. The debating set urged him to join them, but they were rabbit-faced and spectacled young men, and he viewed as obscene the notion of
digging statistics about immigration and the products of San Domingo out of dusty spotted books in the dusty spotted library.

He kept from flunking only because Jim Lefferts drove him to his books.

Jim was less bored by college. He had a relish for the flavor of scholarship. He liked to know things about people dead these thousand years, and
he  liked  doing  canned miracles in chemistry. Elmer was astounded that so capable a drinker, a man so deft at "handing a girl a swell spiel and
getting  her  going"  should find entertainment in Roman chariots and the unenterprising amours of sweet-peas. But himself--no. Not on your life.
He'd get out and finish law school and never open another book--kid the juries along and hire some old coot to do the briefs.

To  keep  him  from  absolutely  breaking  under  the burden of hearing the professors squeak, he did have the joy of loafing with Jim, illegally
smoking  the  while;  he  did  have  researches  into  the lovability of co-eds and the baker's daughter; he did revere becoming drunk and world-
striding. But he could not afford liquor very often and the co-eds were mostly ugly and earnest.

It  was  lamentable  to  see this broad young man, who would have been so happy in the prize-ring, the fish-market, or the stock exchange, poking
through the cobwebbed corridors of Terwillinger.


3


Terwillinger  College,  founded and preserved by the more zealous Baptists, is on the outskirts of Gritzmacher Springs, Kansas. (The springs have
dried  up and the Gritzmachers have gone to Los Angeles, to sell bungalows and delicatessen.) It huddles on the prairie, which is storm-racked in
winter, frying and dusty in summer, lovely only in the grass-rustling spring or drowsy autumn.

You  would  not  be  likely  to  mistake  Terwillinger  College  for an Old Folks' Home, because on the campus is a large rock painted with class
numerals.

Most of the faculty are ex-ministers.

There  is  a  men's  dormitory,  but  Elmer  Gantry  and Jim Lefferts lived together in the town, in a mansion once the pride of the Gritzmachers
themselves: a square brick bulk with a white cupola. Their room was unchanged from the days of the original August Gritzmacher; a room heavy with
a  vast  bed  of  carved  black walnut, thick and perpetually dusty brocade curtains, and black walnut chairs hung with scarves that dangled gilt
balls. The windows were hard to open. There was about the place the anxious propriety and all the dead hopes of a second-hand furniture shop.

In  this  museum, Jim had a surprising and vigorous youthfulness. There was a hint of future flabbiness in Elmer's bulk, but there would never be
anything  flabby  about  Jim  Lefferts. He was slim, six inches shorter than Elmer, but hard as ivory and as sleek. Though he came from a prairie
village, Jim had fastidiousness, a natural elegance. All the items of his wardrobe, the "ordinary suit," distinctly glossy at the elbows, and the
dark-brown "best suit," were ready-made, with faltering buttons, and seams that betrayed rough ends of thread, but on him they were graceful. You
felt  that he would belong to any set in the world which he sufficiently admired. There was a romantic flare to his upturned overcoat collar; the
darned  bottoms  of  his trousers did not suggest poverty but a careless and amused ease; and his thoroughly commonplace ties hinted of clubs and
regiments.

His  thin  face was resolute. You saw only its youthful freshness first, then behind the brightness a taut determination, and his brown eyes were
amiably scornful.

Jim Lefferts was Elmer's only friend; the only authentic friend he had ever had.

Though  Elmer was the athletic idol of the college, though his occult passion, his heavy good looks, caused the college girls to breathe quickly,
though  his  manly  laughter  was as fetching as his resonant speech, Elmer was never really liked. He was supposed to be the most popular man in
college;  every  one  believed  that  every  one  else  adored  him;  and  none  of them wanted to be with him. They were all a bit afraid, a bit
uncomfortable, and more than a bit resentful.

It  was  not merely that he was a shouter, a pounder on backs, an overwhelming force, so that there was never any refuge of intimacy with him. It
was  because  he  was always demanding. Except with his widow mother, whom he vaguely worshiped, and with Jim Lefferts, Elmer assumed that he was
the center of the universe and that the rest of the system was valuable only as it afforded him help and pleasure.

He wanted everything.

His  first  year,  as  the  only  Freshman  who was playing on the college football team, as a large and smiling man who was expected to become a
favorite,  he  was  elected  president.  In that office, he was not much beloved. At class-meetings he cut speakers short, gave the floor only to
pretty girls and lads who toadied to him, and roared in the midst of the weightiest debates, "Aw, come on, cut out this chewing the rag and let's
get down to business!" He collected the class-fund by demanding subscriptions as arbitrarily as a Catholic priest assessing his parishoners for a
new church.

"He'll  never hold any office again, not if I can help it!" muttered one Eddie Fislinger, who, though he was a meager and rusty-haired youth with
protruding  teeth  and  an  uneasy titter, had attained power in the class by always being present at everything, and by the piety and impressive
intimacy of his prayers in the Y.M.C.A.

There  was a custom that the manager of the Athletic Association should not be a member of any team. Elmer forced himself into the managership in
Junior  year  by threatening not to play football if he were not elected. He appointed Jim Lefferts chairman of the ticket committee, and between
them, by only the very slightest doctoring of the books, they turned forty dollars to the best of all possible uses.

At  the beginning of Senior year, Elmer announced that he desired to be president again. To elect any one as class-president twice was taboo. The
ardent  Eddie  Fislinger,  now president of the Y.M.C.A. and ready to bring his rare talents to the Baptist ministry, asserted after an enjoyable
private prayer-meeting in his room that he was going to face Elmer and forbid him to run.

"Gwan! You don't dare!" observed a Judas who three minutes before had been wrestling with God under Eddie's coaching.

"I don't, eh? Watch me! Why, everybody hates him, the darn' hog!" squeaked Eddie.

By scurrying behind trees he managed to come face to face with Elmer on the campus. He halted, and spoke of football, quantitative chemistry, and
the Arkansas spinster who taught German.

Elmer grunted.

Desperately, his voice shrill with desire to change the world, Eddie stammered:

"Say--say, Hell-cat, you hadn't ought to run for president again. Nobody's ever president twice!"

"Somebody's going to be."

"Ah,  gee, Elmer, don't run for it. Ah, come on. Course all the fellows are crazy about you but--Nobody's ever been president twice. They'll vote
against you."

"Let me catch 'em at it!"

"How can you stop it? Honest, Elm--Hell-cat--I'm just speaking for your own good. The voting's secret. You can't tell--"

"Huh!  The  nominations  ain't  secret! Now you go roll your hoop, Fissy, and let all the yellow coyotes know that anybody that nominates anybody
except Uncle Hell-cat will catch it right where the chicken caught the ax. See? And if they tell me they didn't know about this, you'll get merry
Hail Columbia for not telling 'em. Get me? If there's anything but an unanimous vote, you won't do any praying the rest of this year!"

Eddie  remembered  how  Elmer  and  Jim  had  shown a Freshman his place in society by removing all his clothes and leaving him five miles in the
country.

Elmer was elected president of the senior class--unanimously.

He  did  not  know  that  he was unpopular. He reasoned that men who seemed chilly to him were envious and afraid, and that gave him a feeling of
greatness.

Thus it happened that he had no friend save Jim Lefferts.

Only Jim had enough will to bully him into obedient admiration. Elmer swallowed ideas whole; he was a maelstrom of prejudices; but Jim accurately
examined every notion that came to him. Jim was selfish enough, but it was with the selfishness of a man who thinks and who is coldly unafraid of
any destination to which his thoughts may lead him. The little man treated Elmer like a large damp dog, and Elmer licked his shoes and followed.

He also knew that Jim, as quarter, was far more the soul of the team than himself as tackle and captain.

A  huge young man, Elmer Gantry; six foot one, thick, broad, big handed; a large face, handsome as a Great Dane is handsome, and a swirl of black
hair, worn rather long. His eyes were friendly, his smile was friendly--oh, he was always friendly enough; he was merely astonished when he found
that  you  did  not  understand  his importance and did not want to hand over anything he might desire. He was a barytone solo turned into portly
flesh; he was a gladiator laughing at the comic distortion of his wounded opponent.

He  could  not  understand men who shrank from blood, who liked poetry or roses, who did not casually endeavor to seduce every possibly seducible
girl. In sonorous arguments with Jim he asserted that "these fellows that study all the time are just letting on like they're so doggone high and
mighty, to show off to those doggone profs that haven't got anything but lemonade in their veins."


4


Chief  adornment of their room was the escritoire of the first Gritzmacher, which held their library. Elmer owned two volumes of Conan Doyle, one
of  E.  P.  Roe,  and  a priceless copy of "Only a Boy." Jim had invested in an encyclopedia which explained any known subject in ten lines, in a
"Pickwick Papers," and from some unknown source he had obtained a complete Swinburne, into which he was never known to have looked.

But  his  pride  was in the possession of Ingersoll's "Some Mistakes of Moses," and Paine's "The Age of Reason." For Jim Lefferts was the college
freethinker,  the  only man in Terwillinger who doubted that Lot's wife had been changed into salt for once looking back at the town where, among
the young married set, she had had so good a time; who doubted that Methuselah lived to nine hundred and sixty-nine.

They  whispered  of  Jim  all  through  the  pious  dens  of  Terwillinger. Elmer himself was frightened, for after giving minutes and minutes to
theological profundities Elmer had concluded that "there must be something to all this religious guff if all these wise old birds believe it, and
some  time a fellow had ought to settle down and cut out the hell-raising." Probably Jim would have been kicked out of college by the ministerial
professors  if  he  had  not  had so reverent a way of asking questions when they wrestled with his infidelity that they let go of him in nervous
confusion.

Even  the  President,  the  Rev. Dr. Willoughby Quarles, formerly pastor of the Rock of Ages Baptist Church of Moline, Ill., than whom no man had
written  more  about the necessity of baptism by immersion, in fact in every way a thoroughly than-whom figure--even when Dr. Quarles tackled Jim
and  demanded,  "Are  you  getting  the best out of our instruction, young man? Do you believe with us not only in the plenary inspiration of the
Bible but also in its verbal inspiration, and that it is the only divine rule of faith and practise?" then Jim looked docile and said mildly:

"Oh, yes, Doctor. There's just one or two little things that have been worrying me, Doctor. I've taken them to the Lord in prayer, but he doesn't
seem  to  help  me  much.  I'm  sure  you  can.  Now  why did Joshua need to have the sun stand still? Of course it happened--it SAYS so right in
Scripture.  But why did he need to, when the Lord always helped those Jews, anyway, and when Joshua could knock down big walls just by having his
people yell and blow trumpets? And if devils cause a lot of the diseases, and they had to cast 'em out, why is it that good Baptist doctors today
don't go on diagnosing devil-possession instead of T. B. and things like that? DO people have devils?"

"Young man, I will give you an infallible rule. Never question the ways of the Lord!"

"But why don't the doctors talk about having devils now?"

"I  have no time for vain arguments that lead nowhere! If you would think a little less of your wonderful powers of reasoning, if you'd go humbly
to God in prayer and give him a chance, you'd understand the true spiritual significances of all these things."

"But how about where Cain got his wife--"

Most respectfully Jim said it, but Dr. Quarles (he had a chin-whisker and a boiled shirt) turned from him and snapped, "I have no further time to
give you, young man! I've told you what to do. Good morning!"

That  evening  Mrs.  Quarles breathed, "Oh, Willoughby, did you 'tend to that awful senior--that Lefferts--that's trying to spread doubt? Did you
fire him?"

"No," blossomed President Quarles. "Certainly not. There was no need. I showed him how to look for spiritual guidance and--Did that freshman come
and mow the lawn? The idea of him wanting fifteen cents an hour!"

Jim  was  hair-hung  and breeze-shaken over the abyss of hell, and apparently enjoying it very much indeed, while his wickedness fascinated Elmer
Gantry and terrified him.


5


That November day of 1902, November of their Senior year, was greasy of sky, and slush blotted the wooden sidewalks of Gritzmacher Springs. There
was nothing to do in town, and their room was dizzying with the stench of the stove, first lighted now since spring.

Jim  was  studying  German,  tilted  back in an elegant position of ease, with his legs cocked up on the desk tablet of the escritoire. Elmer lay
across the bed, ascertaining whether the blood would run to his head if he lowered it over the side. It did, always.

"Oh, God, let's get out and do something!" he groaned.

"Nothing to do, Useless," said Jim.

"Let's go over to Cato and see the girls and get drunk."

As Kansas was dry, by state prohibition, the nearest haven was at Cato, Missouri, seventeen miles away.

Jim scratched his head with a corner of his book and approved:

"Well, that's a worthy idea. Got any money?"

"On the twenty-eighth? Where the hell would I get any money before the first?"

"Hell-cat,  you've  got one of the deepest intellects I know. You'll be a knock-out at the law. Aside from neither of us having any money, and me
with a Dutch quiz tomorrow, it's a great project."

"Oh, well--" sighed ponderous Elmer, feebly as a sick kitten, and lay revolving the tremendous inquiry.

It  was  Jim who saved them from the lard-like weariness into which they were slipping. He had gone back to his book, but he placed it, precisely
and evenly, on the desk, and rose.

"I  would  like  to see Nellie," he sighed. "Oh, man, I could give her a good time! Little Devil! Damn these co-eds here. The few that'll let you
love 'em up, they hang around trying to catch you on the campus and make you propose to 'em."

"Oh,  gee!  And  I  got  to  see  Juanita," groaned Elmer. "Hey, cut out talking about 'em will you! I've got a palpitating heart right now, just
thinking about Juanny!"

"Hell-cat!  I've  got it. Go and borrow ten off this new instructor in chemistry and physics. I've got a dollar sixty-four left, and that'll make
it."

"But I don't know him."

"Sure,  you poor fish. That's why I suggested him! Do the check-failed-to-come. I'll get another hour of this Dutch while you're stealing the ten
from him--"

"Now," lugubriously, "you oughtn't to talk like that!"

"If you're as good a thief as I think you are, we'll catch the five-sixteen to Cato."

They were on the five-sixteen for Cato.

The train consisted of a day coach, a combined smoker and baggage car, and a rusty old engine and tender. The train swayed so on the rough tracks
as  it  bumped  through the dropping light that Elmer and Jim were thrown against each other and gripped the arm of their seat. The car staggered
like  a freighter in a gale. And tall raw farmers, perpetually shuffling forward for a drink at the water-cooler, stumbled against them or seized
Jim's shoulder to steady themselves.

To every surface of the old smoking-car, to streaked windows and rusty ironwork and mud-smeared cocoanut matting, clung a sickening bitterness of
cheap  tobacco  fumes,  and whenever they touched the red plush of the seat, dust whisked up and the prints of their hands remained on the plush.
The car was jammed. Passengers came to sit on the arm of their seat to shout at friends across the aisle.

But  Elmer  and Jim were unconscious of filth and smell and crowding. They sat silent, nervously intent, panting a little, their lips open, their
eyes veiled, as they thought of Juanita and Nellie.

The  two  girls,  Juanita Klauzel and Nellie Benton, were by no means professional daughters of joy. Juanita was cashier of the Cato Lunch--Quick
Eats;  Nellie  was assistant to a dressmaker. They were good girls but excitable, and they found a little extra money useful for red slippers and
nut-center chocolates.

"Juanita--what a lil darling--she understands a fellow's troubles," said Elmer, as they balanced down the slushy steps at the grimy stone station
of Cato.

When  Elmer,  as  a Freshman just arrived from the pool-halls and frame high school of Paris, Kansas, had begun to learn the decorum of amour, he
had  been a boisterous lout who looked shamefaced in the presence of gay ladies, who blundered against tables, who shouted and desired to let the
world  know  how valiantly vicious he was being. He was still rather noisy and proud of wickedness when he was in a state of liquor, but in three
and  a  quarter  years of college he had learned how to approach girls. He was confident, he was easy, he was almost quiet; he could look them in
the eye with fondness and amusement.

Juanita  and  Nellie  lived with Nellie's widow aunt--she was a moral lady, but she knew how to keep out of the way--in three rooms over a corner
grocery.  They  had just returned from work when Elmer and Jim stamped up the rickety outside wooden steps. Juanita was lounging on a divan which
even  a  noble  Oriental  red  and  yellow  cover (displaying a bearded Wazir, three dancing ladies in chiffon trousers, a narghile, and a mosque
slightly larger than the narghile) could never cause to look like anything except a disguised bed. She was curled up, pinching her ankle with one
tired  and  nervous  hand,  and  reading  a  stimulating  chapter of Laura Jean Libbey. Her shirt-waist was open at the throat, and down her slim
stocking was a grievous run. She was so un-Juanita-like--an ash-blonde, pale and lovely, with an ill-restrained passion in her blue eyes.

Nellie, a buxom jolly child, dark as a Jewess, was wearing a frowsy dressing-gown. She was making coffee and narrating her grievances against her
employer,  the  pious  dressmaker,  while  Juanita  paid no attention whatever. The young men crept into the room without knocking. "You devils--
sneaking in like this, and us not dressed!" yelped Nellie.

Jim sidled up to her, dragged her plump hand away from the handle of the granite-ware coffee-pot, and giggled, "But aren't you glad to see us?"

"I don't know whether I AM or not! Now you quit! You behave, will you?"

Rarely  did  Elmer  seem  more deft than Jim Lefferts. But now he was feeling his command over women--certain sorts of women. Silent, yearning at
Juanita, commanding her with hot eyes, he sank on the temporarily Oriental couch, touched her pale hand with his broad finger-tips, and murmured,
"Why you poor kid, you look so tired!"

"I am and--You hadn't ought to come here this afternoon. Nell's aunt threw a conniption fit the last time you were here."

"Hurray for aunty! But YOU'RE glad to see me?"

She would not answer.

"Aren't you?"

Bold eyes on hers that turned uneasily away, looked back, and sought the safety of the blank wall.

"Aren't you?"

She would not answer.

"Juanita!  And  I've  longed  for  you  something fierce, ever since I saw you!" His fingers touched her throat, but softly. "Aren't you a LITTLE
glad?"

As  she  turned  her head, for a second she looked at him with embarrassed confession. She sharply whispered, "No--don't!" as he caught her hand,
but she moved nearer to him, leaned against his shoulder.

"You're so big and strong," she sighed.

"But, golly, you don't know how I need you! The president, old Quarles--quarrels is right, by golly, ha, ha, ha!--'member I was telling you about
him?--he's laying for me because he thinks it was me and Jim that let the bats loose in chapel. And I get so sick of that gosh-awful Weekly Bible
Study--all about these holy old gazebos. And then I think about you, and gosh, if you were just sitting on the other side of the stove from me in
my room there, with your cute lil red slippers cocked up on the nickel rail--gee, how happy I'd be! You don't think I'm just a bonehead, do you?"

Jim and Nellie were at the stage now of nudging each other and bawling, "Hey, quit, will yuh!" as they stood over the coffee.

"Say, you girls change your shirts and come on out and we'll blow you to dinner, and maybe we'll dance a little," proclaimed Jim.

"We  can't,"  said  Nellie.  "Aunty's sore as a pup because we was up late at a dance night before last. We got to stay home, and you boys got to
beat it before she comes in."

"Aw, come ON!"

"No, we CAN'T!"

"Yuh, fat chance you girls staying home and knitting! You got some fellows coming in and you want to get rid of us, that's what's the trouble."

"It is not, Mr. James Lefferts, and it wouldn't be any of your business if it was!"

While  Jim  and  Nellie  squabbled,  Elmer  slipped  his hand about Juanita's shoulder, slowly pressed her against him. He believed with terrible
conviction  that  she  was beautiful, that she was glorious, that she was life. There was heaven in the softness of her curving shoulder, and her
pale flesh was living silk.

"Come on in the other room," he pleaded.

"Oh--no--not now."

He gripped her arm.

"Well--don't come in for a minute," she fluttered. Aloud, to the others, "I'm going to do my hair. Looks just TER-ble!"

She  slipped  into  the  room  beyond. A certain mature self-reliance dropped from Elmer's face, and he was like a round-faced big baby, somewhat
frightened.  With  efforts to appear careless, he fumbled about the room and dusted a pink and gilt vase with his large crumpled handkerchief. He
was near the inner door.

He peeped at Jim and Nellie. They were holding hands, while the coffee-pot was cheerfully boiling over. Elmer's heart thumped. He slipped through
the door and closed it, whimpering, as in terror:

"Oh--Juanita--"


6


They were gone, Elmer and Jim, before the return of Nellie's aunt. As they were not entertaining the girls, they dined on pork chops, coffee, and
apple pie at the Maginnis Lunch.

It  has  already  been  narrated  that  afterward,  in the Old Home Sample Room, Elmer became philosophical and misogynistic as he reflected that
Juanita was unworthy of his generous attention; it has been admitted that he became drunk and pugnacious.

As  he wavered through the sidewalk slush, on Jim's arm, as his head cleared, his rage increased against the bully who was about to be encouraged
to  insult his goo' frien' and roommate. His shoulders straightened, his fists clenched, and he began to look for the scoundrel among the evening
crowd of mechanics and coal-miners.

They  came  to  the chief corner of the town. A little way down the street, beside the red brick wall of the Congress Hotel, some one was talking
from the elevation of a box, surrounded by a jeering gang.

"What  they  picking  on  that fella that's talking for? They better let him alone!" rejoiced Elmer, throwing off Jim's restraining hand, dashing
down the side street and into the crowd. He was in that most blissful condition to which a powerful young man can attain--unrighteous violence in
a  righteous  cause.  He pushed through the audience, jabbed his elbow into the belly of a small weak man, and guffawed at the cluck of distress.
Then he came to a halt, unhappy and doubting.

The  heckled speaker was his chief detestation, Eddie Fislinger, president of the Terwillinger College Y.M.C.A., that rusty-haired gopher who had
obscenely opposed his election as president.

With  two  other  seniors  who were also in training for the Baptist ministry, Eddie had come over to Cato to save a few souls. At least, if they
saved no souls (and they never had saved any, in seventeen street meetings) they would have handy training for their future jobs.

Eddie  was  a rasping and insistent speaker who got results by hanging to a subject and worrying it, but he had no great boldness, and now he was
obviously afraid of his chief heckler, a large, blond, pompadoured young baker, who bulked in front of Eddie's rostrum and asked questions. While
Elmer stood listening, the baker demanded:

"What makes you think you know all about religion?"

"I  don't  pretend to know all about religion, my friend, but I do know what a powerful influence it is for clean and noble living, and if you'll
only be fair now, my friend, and give me a chance to tell these other gentlemen what my experience of answers to prayer has been--"

"Yuh, swell lot of experience you've had, by your looks!"

"See here, there are others who may want to hear--"

Though Elmer detested Eddie's sappiness, though he might have liked to share drinks with the lively young baker-heckler, there was no really good
unctuous  violence to be had except by turning champion of religion. The packed crowd excited him, and the pressure of rough bodies, the smell of
wet overcoats, the rumble of mob voices. It was like a football line-up.

"Here, you!" he roared at the baker. "Let the fellow speak! Give him a chance. Whyn't you pick on somebody your own size, you big stiff!"

At his elbow, Jim Lefferts begged, "Let's get out of this, Hell-cat. Good Lord! You ain't going to help a gospel-peddler!"

Elmer pushed him away and thrust his chest out toward the baker, who was cackling, "Heh! I suppose you're a Christer, too!"

"I would be, if I was worthy!" Elmer fully believed it, for that delightful moment. "These boys are classmates of mine, and they're going to have
a chance to speak!"

Eddie Fislinger bleated to his mates, "Oh, fellows, Elm Gantry! Saved!"

Even  this  alarming  interpretation of his motives could not keep Elmer now from the holy zeal of fighting. He thrust aside the one aged man who
stood  between  him and the baker--bashing in the aged one's derby and making him telescope like a turtle's neck--and stood with his fist working
like a connecting-rod by his side.

"If you're looking for trouble--" the baker suggested, clumsily wobbling his huge bleached fists.

"Not me," observed Elmer and struck, once, very judiciously, just at the point of the jaw.

The baker shook like a skyscraper in an earthquake and caved to the earth.

One of the baker's pals roared, "Come on, we'll kill them guys and--"

Elmer  caught  him  on  the  left  ear.  It was a very cold ear, and the pal staggered, extremely sick. Elmer looked pleased. But he did not feel
pleased.  He  was  almost  sober,  and  he  realized that half a dozen rejoicing young workmen were about to rush him. Though he had an excellent
opinion of himself, he had seen too much football, as played by denominational colleges with the Christian accompaniments of kneeing and gouging,
to imagine that he could beat half a dozen workmen at once.

It  is doubtful whether he would ever have been led to further association with the Lord and Eddie Fislinger had not Providence intervened in its
characteristically mysterious way. The foremost of the attackers was just reaching for Elmer when the mob shouted, "Look out! The cops!"

The police force of Cato, all three of them, were wedging into the crowd. They were lanky, mustached men with cold eyes.

"What's all this row about?" demanded the chief.

He was looking at Elmer, who was three inches taller than any one else in the assembly.

"Some of these fellows tried to stop a peaceable religious assembly--why, they tried to rough-house the Reverend here--and I was protecting him,"
Elmer said.

"That's right, Chief. Reg'lar outrage," complained Jim.

"That's true, Chief," whistled Eddie Fislinger from his box.

"Well, you fellows cut it out now. What the hell! Ought to be ashamed yourselves, bullyragging a Reverend! Go ahead, Reverend!"

The  baker  had  come  to,  and had been lifted to his feet. His expression indicated that he had been wronged and that he wanted to do something
about  it, if he could only find out what had happened. His eyes were wild, his hair was a muddy chaos, and his flat floury cheek was cut. He was
too dizzy to realize that the chief of police was before him, and his fumbling mind stuck to the belief that he was destroying all religion.

"Yah,  so  you're  one  of  them  wishy-washy  preachers,  too!"  he  screamed at Elmer--just as one of the lanky policemen reached out an arm of
incredible length and nipped him.

The attention of the crowd warmed Elmer, and he expanded in it, rubbed his mental hands in its blaze.

"Maybe  I ain't a preacher! Maybe I'm not even a good Christian!" he cried. "Maybe I've done a whole lot of things I hadn't ought to of done. But
let me tell you, I respect religion--"

"Oh, amen, praise the Lord, brother," from Eddie Fislinger.

"--and I don't propose to let anybody interfere with it. What else have we got except religion to give us hope--"

"Praise the Lord, oh, bless his name!"

"--of EVER leading decent lives, tell me that, will you, just tell me that!"

Elmer was addressing the chief of police, who admitted:

"Yuh, I guess that's right. Well now, we'll let the meeting go on, and if any more of you fellows interrupt--" This completed the chief's present
ideas  on  religion and mob-violence. He looked sternly at everybody within reach, and stalked through the crowd, to return to the police station
and resume his game of seven-up.

Eddie was soaring into enchanted eloquence:

"Oh,  my  brethren,  now you see the power of the spirit of Christ to stir up all that is noblest and best in us! You have heard the testimony of
our brother here, Brother Gantry, to the one and only way to righteousness! When you get home I want each and every one of you to dig out the Old
Book and turn to the Song of Solomon, where it tells about the love of the Savior for the Church--turn to the Song of Solomon, the fourth chapter
and  the  tenth  verse,  where it says--where Christ is talking about the church, and he says--Song of Solomon, the fourth chapter, and the tenth
verse--'How fair is thy love, my sister, my spouse! how much better is thy love than wine!'

"Oh, the unspeakable joy of finding the joys of salvation! You have heard our brother's testimony. We know of him as a man of power, as a brother
to  all them that are oppressed, and now that he has had his eyes opened and his ears unstopped, and he sees the need of confession and of humble
surrender before the throne--Oh, this is a historic moment in the life of Hell-c--of Elmer Gantry! Oh, Brother, be not afraid! Come! Step up here
beside me, and give testimony--"

"God! We better get outa here quick!" panted Jim.

"Gee, yes!" Elmer groaned and they edged back through the crowd, while Eddie Fislinger's piping pursued them like icy and penetrating rain:

"Don't be afraid to acknowledge the leading of Jesus! Are you boys going to show yourselves too cowardly to risk the sneers of the ungodly?"

They were safely out of the crowd, walking with severe countenances and great rapidity back to the Old Home Sample Room.

"That  was  a dirty trick of Eddie's!" said Jim. "God, it certainly was! Trying to convert me! Right before those muckers! If I ever hear another
yip  out of Eddie, I'll knock his block off! Nerve of him, trying to lead ME up to any mourners' bench! Fat chance! I'll fix him! Come on, show a
little speed!" asserted the brother to all them that were oppressed.

By the time for their late evening train, the sound conversation of the bartender and the sound qualities of his Bourbon had caused Elmer and Jim
to  forget  Eddie  Fislinger  and  the  horrors  of undressing religion in public. They were the more shocked, then, swaying in their seat in the
smoker, to see Eddie standing by them, Bible in hand, backed by his two beaming partners in evangelism.

Eddie bared his teeth, smiled all over his watery eyes, and caroled:

"Oh,  fellows,  you  don't know how wonderful you were tonight! But, oh, boys, now you've taken the first step, why do you put it off--why do you
hesitate--why  do  you  keep the Savior suffering as he waits for you, longs for you? He needs you boys, with your splendid powers and intellects
that we admire so--"

"This air," observed Jim Lefferts, "is getting too thick for me. I seem to smell a peculiar and a fishlike smell." He slipped out of the seat and
marched toward the forward car.

Elmer  sought to follow him, but Eddie had flopped into Jim's place and was blithely squeaking on, while the other two hung over them with tender
Y.M.C.A. smiles very discomforting to Elmer's queasy stomach as the train bumped on.

For all his brave words, Elmer had none of Jim's resolute contempt for the church. He was afraid of it. It connoted his boyhood . . . His mother,
drained  by  early widowhood and drudgery, finding her only emotion in hymns and the Bible, and weeping when he failed to study his Sunday School
lesson.  The  church, full thirty dizzy feet up to its curiously carven rafters, and the preachers, so overwhelming in their wallowing voices, so
terrifying in their pictures of little boys who stole watermelons or indulged in biological experiments behind barns. The awe-oppressed moment of
his  second  conversion,  at the age of eleven, when, weeping with embarrassment and the prospect of losing so much fun, surrounded by solemn and
whiskered adult faces, he had signed a pledge binding him to give up, forever, the joys of profanity, alcohol, cards, dancing, and the theater.

These clouds hung behind and over him, for all his boldness.

Eddie  Fislinger,  the  human  being,  he  despised. He considered him a grasshopper, and with satisfaction considered stepping on him. But Eddie
Fislinger, the gospeler, fortified with just such a pebble-leather Bible (bookmarks of fringed silk and celluloid smirking from the pages) as his
Sunday  School  teachers  had wielded when they assured him that God was always creeping about to catch small boys in their secret thoughts--this
armored  Eddie  was  an  official,  and  Elmer listened to him uneasily, never quite certain that he might not yet find himself a dreadful person
leading a pure a boresome life in a clean frock coat.

"--and  remember," Eddie was wailing, "how terribly dangerous it is to put off the hour of salvation! 'Watch therefore for you know not what hour
your Lord doth come,' it says. Suppose this train were wrecked! Tonight!"

The train ungraciously took that second to lurch on a curve.

"You see? Where would you spend Eternity, Hell-cat? Do you think that any sportin' round is fun enough to burn in hell for?"

"Oh, cut it out. I know all that stuff. There's a lot of arguments--You wait'll I get Jim to tell you what Bob Ingersoll said about hell!"

"Yes!  Sure! And you remember that on his deathbed Ingersoll called his son to him and repented and begged his son to hurry and be saved and burn
all his wicked writings!"

"Well--Thunder--I don't feel like talking religion tonight. Cut it out."

But  Eddie  did  feel  like talking religion, very much so. He waved his Bible enthusiastically and found ever so many uncomfortable texts. Elmer
listened as little as possible but he was too feeble to make threats.

It  was  a golden relief when the train bumped to a stop at Gritzmacher Springs. The station was a greasy wooden box, the platform was thick with
slush, under the kerosene lights. But Jim was awaiting him, a refuge from confusing theological questions, and with a furious "G'night!" to Eddie
he staggered off.

"Why didn't you make him shut his trap?" demanded Jim.

"I did! Whadja take a sneak for? I told him to shut up and he shut up and I snoozed all the way back and--Ow! My head! Don't walk so fast!"



CHAPTER II


1


For  years  the state of sin in which dwelt Elmer Gantry and Jim Lefferts had produced fascinated despair in the Christian hearts of Terwillinger
College. No revival but had flung its sulphur-soaked arrows at them--usually in their absence. No prayer at the Y.M.C.A. meetings but had worried
over their staggering folly.

Elmer  had  been known to wince when President the Rev. Dr. Willoughby Quarles was especially gifted with messages at morning chapel, but Jim had
held him firm in the faith of unfaith.

Now,  Eddie  Fislinger,  like  a  prairie  seraph, sped from room to room of the elect with the astounding news that Elmer had publicly professed
religion, and that he had endured thirty-nine minutes of private adjuration on the train. Instantly started a holy plotting against the miserable
sacrificial  lamb,  and  all  over  Gritzmacher Springs, in the studies of ministerial professors, in the rooms of students, in the small prayer-
meeting  room  behind the chapel auditorium, joyous souls conspired with the Lord against Elmer's serene and zealous sinning. Everywhere, through
the snowstorm, you could hear murmurs of "There is more rejoicing over one sinner who repenteth--"

Even collegians not particularly esteemed for their piety, suspected of playing cards and secret smoking, were stirred to ecstasy--or it may have
been  snickering.  The football center, in unregenerate days a companion of Elmer and Jim but now engaged to marry a large and sanctified Swedish
co-ed from Chanute, rose voluntarily in Y.M.C.A. and promised God to help him win Elmer's favor.

The  spirit  waxed  most fervent in the abode of Eddie Fislinger, who was now recognized as a future prophet, likely, some day, to have under his
inspiration one of the larger Baptist churches in Wichita or even Kansas City.

He  organized  an  all-day  and all-night prayer-meeting on Elmer's behalf, and it was attended by the more ardent, even at the risk of receiving
cuts and uncivil remarks from instructors. On the bare floor of Eddie's room, over Knute Halvorsted's paint-shop, from three to sixteen young men
knelt at a time, and no 1800 revival saw more successful wrestling with the harassed Satan. In fact one man, suspected of Holy Roller sympathies,
managed  to have the jerks, and while they felt that this was carrying things farther than the Lord and the Baptist association would care to see
it,  added  excitement  to  praying  at  three  o'clock in the morning, particularly as they were all of them extraordinarily drunk on coffee and
eloquence.

By  morning  they  felt sure that they had persuaded God to attend to Elmer, and though it is true that Elmer himself had slept quite soundly all
night, unaware of the prayer-meeting or of divine influences, it was but an example of the patience of the heavenly powers. And immediately after
those powers began to move.

To Elmer's misery and Jim's stilled fury, their sacred room was invaded by hordes of men with uncombed locks on their foreheads, ecstasy in their
eyes,  and  Bibles  under  their  arms. Elmer was safe nowhere. No sooner had he disposed of one disciple, by the use of spirited and blasphemous
arguments patiently taught to him by Jim, than another would pop out from behind a tree and fall on him.

At  his  boarding-house--Mother Metzger's, over on Beech Street--a Y.M.C.A. dervish crowed as he passed the bread to Elmer, "Jever study a kernel
of  wheat?  Swonnerful!  Think  a wonnerful intricate thing like that created ITSELF? Somebody must have created it. Who? God! Anybody that don't
recognize God in Nature--and acknowledge him in repentance--is DUMM. That's what he is!"

Instructors  who  had watched Elmer's entrance to classrooms with nervous fury now smirked on him and with tenderness heard the statement that he
wasn't  quite  prepared  to recite. The president himself stopped Elmer on the street and called him My Boy, and shook his hand with an affection
which, Elmer anxiously assured himself, he certainly had done nothing to merit.

He kept assuring Jim that he was in no danger, but Jim was alarmed, and Elmer himself more alarmed with each hour, each new greeting of: "We need
you with us, old boy--the world needs you!"

Jim did well to dread. Elmer had always been in danger of giving up his favorite diversions--not exactly giving them up, perhaps, but of sweating
in  agony  after  enjoying  them. But for Jim and his remarks about co-eds who prayed in public and drew their hair back rebukingly from egg-like
foreheads, one of these sirens of morality might have snared the easy-going pangynistic Elmer by proximity.

A  dreadful young woman from Mexico, Missouri, used to coax Jim to "tell his funny ideas about religion," and go off in neighs of pious laughter,
while she choked, "Oh, you're just too cute! You don't mean a word you say. You simply want to show off!" She had a deceptive sidelong look which
actually promised nothing whatever this side of the altar, and she might, but for Jim's struggles, have led Elmer into an engagement.

The  church and Sunday School at Elmer's village, Paris, Kansas, a settlement of nine hundred evangelical Germans and Vermonters, had nurtured in
him  a  fear of religious machinery which he could never lose, which restrained him from such reasonable acts as butchering Eddie Fislinger. That
small  pasty-white  Baptist church had been the center of all his emotions, aside from hell-raising, hunger, sleepiness, and love. And even these
emotions  were  represented  in  the House of the Lord, in the way of tacks in pew-cushions, Missionary suppers with chicken pie and angel's-food
cake,  soporific  sermons,  and the proximity of flexible little girls in thin muslin. But the arts and the sentiments and the sentimentalities--
they were for Elmer perpetually associated only with the church.

Except  for circus bands, Fourth of July parades, and the singing of "Columbia, the Gem of the Ocean" and "Jingle Bells" in school, all the music
which the boy Elmer had ever heard was in church.

The  church  provided  his  only  oratory,  except for campaign speeches by politicians ardent about Jefferson and the price of binding-twine; it
provided  all  his painting and sculpture, except for the portraits of Lincoln, Longfellow, and Emerson in the school-building, and the two china
statuettes of pink ladies with gilt flower-baskets which stood on his mother's bureau. From the church came all his profounder philosophy, except
the  teachers' admonitions that little boys who let gartersnakes loose in school were certain to be licked now and hanged later, and his mother's
stream of opinions on hanging up his overcoat, wiping his feet, eating fried potatoes with his fingers, and taking the name of the Lord in vain.

If  he  had sources of literary inspiration outside the church--in McGuffey's Reader he encountered the boy who stood on the burning deck, and he
had  a  very  pretty  knowledge of the Nick Carter Series and the exploits of Cole Younger and the James Boys--yet here too the church had guided
him.  In  Bible  stories,  in  the  words  of  the great hymns, in the anecdotes which the various preachers quoted, he had his only knowledge of
literature--

The  story  of  Little  Lame  Tom  who shamed the wicked rich man that owned the handsome team of grays and the pot hat and led him to Jesus. The
ship's  captain  who  in the storm took counsel with the orphaned but righteous child of missionaries in Zomballa. The Faithful Dog who saved his
master  during a terrific conflagration (only sometimes it was a snowstorm, or an attack by Indians) and roused him to give up horse-racing, rum,
and playing the harmonica.

How familiar they were, how thrilling, how explanatory to Elmer of the purposes of life, how preparatory for his future usefulness and charm.

The  church,  the Sunday School, the evangelistic orgy, choir-practise, raising the mortgage, the delights of funerals, the snickers in back pews
or  in the other room at weddings--they were as natural, as inescapable a mold of manners to Elmer as Catholic processionals to a street gamin in
Naples.

The Baptist Church of Paris, Kansas! A thousand blurred but indestructible pictures.

Hymns! Elmer's voice was made for hymns. He rolled them out like a negro. The organ-thunder of "Nicæa":


Holy, holy, holy! all the saints adore thee, Casting down their golden crowns around the glassy sea.


The  splendid  rumble  of  the  Doxology. "Throw Out the Lifeline," with its picture of a wreck pounded in the darkness by surf which the prairie
child imagined as a hundred feet high. "Onward, Christian Soldiers," to which you could without rebuke stamp your feet.

Sunday School picnics! Lemonade and four-legged races and the ride on the hay-rack singing "Seeing Nelly Home."

Sunday School text cards! True, they were chiefly a medium of gambling, but as Elmer usually won the game (he was the first boy in Paris to own a
genuine  pair of loaded dice) he had plenty of them in his gallery, and they gave him a taste for gaudy robes, for marble columns and the purple-
broidered  palaces  of kings, which was later to be of value in quickly habituating himself to the more decorative homes of vice. The three kings
bearing  caskets  of  ruby  and  sardonyx.  King  Zedekiah in gold and scarlet, kneeling on a carpet of sapphire-blue, while his men-at-arms came
fleeing  and  blood-stained, red blood on glancing steel, with tidings of the bannered host of Nebuchadnezzar, great king of Babylon. And all his
life  Elmer  remembered, in moments of ardor, during oratorios in huge churches, during sunset at sea, a black-bearded David standing against raw
red cliffs--a figure heroic and summoning to ambition, to power, to domination.

Sunday  School  Christmas  Eve!  The  exhilaration  of  staying  up,  and  publicly, till nine-thirty. The tree, incredibly tall, also incredibly
inflammable, flashing with silver cords, with silver stars, with cotton-batting snow. The two round stoves red-hot. Lights and lights and lights.
Pails  of  candy,  and  for every child in the school a present--usually a book, very pleasant, with colored pictures of lambs and volcanoes. The
Santa  Claus--he  couldn't  possibly  be Lorenzo Nickerson, the house-painter, so bearded was he, and red-cheeked, and so witty in his comment on
each child as it marched up for its present. The enchantment, sheer magic, of the Ladies' Quartette singing of shepherds who watched their flocks
by nights . . . brown secret hilltops under one vast star.

And  the  devastating  morning  when  the preacher himself, the Rev. Wilson Hinckley Skaggs, caught Elmer matching for Sunday School contribution
pennies  on  the  front  steps, and led him up the aisle for all to giggle at, with a sharp and not very clean ministerial thumb-nail gouging his
ear-lobe.

And  the  other  passing  preachers;  Brother  Organdy, who got you to saw his wood free; Brother Blunt, who sneaked behind barns to catch you on
Halloween; Brother Ingle, who was zealous but young and actually human, and who made whistles from willow branches for you.

And  the morning when Elmer concealed an alarm clock behind the organ and it went off, magnificently, just as the superintendent (Dr. Prouty, the
dentist) was whimpering, "Now let us all be par-TIC-ularly quiet as Sister Holbrick leads us in prayer."

And  always  the  three  chairs that stood behind the pulpit, the intimidating stiff chairs of yellow plush and carved oak borders, which, he was
uneasily sure, were waiting for the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost.

He had, in fact, got everything from the church and Sunday School, except, perhaps, any longing whatever for decency and kindness and reason.


2


Even  had  Elmer  not  known the church by habit, he would have been led to it by his mother. Aside from his friendship for Jim Lefferts, Elmer's
only authentic affection was for his mother, and she was owned by the church.

She  was  a  small  woman,  energetic,  nagging  but  kindly, once given to passionate caresses and now to passionate prayer, and she had unusual
courage. Early left a widow by Logan Gantry, dealer in feed, flour, lumber, and agricultural implements, a large and agreeable man given to debts
and  whisky,  she  had  supported  herself  and  Elmer  by  sewing,  trimming hats, baking bread, and selling milk. She had her own millinery and
dressmaking shop now, narrow and dim but proudly set right on Main Street, and she was able to give Elmer the three hundred dollars a year which,
with his summer earnings in harvest field and lumber-yard, was enough to support him--in Terwillinger, in 1902.

She had always wanted Elmer to be a preacher. She was jolly enough, and no fool about pennies in making change, but for a preacher standing up on
a platform in a long-tailed coat she had gaping awe.

Elmer had since the age of sixteen been a member in good standing of the Baptist Church--he had been most satisfactorily immersed in the Kayooska
River.  Large  though Elmer was, the evangelist had been a powerful man and had not only ducked him but, in sacred enthusiasm, held him under, so
that he came up sputtering, in a state of grace and muddiness. He had also been saved several times, and once, when he had pneumonia, he had been
esteemed by the pastor and all visiting ladies as rapidly growing in grace.

But  he  had  resisted  his  mother's  desire  that he become a preacher. He would have to give up his entertaining vices, and with wide-eyed and
panting  happiness  he  was  discovering  more  of them every year. Equally he felt lumbering and shamed whenever he tried to stand up before his
tittering gang in Paris and appear pious.

It was hard even in college days to withstand his mother. Though she came only to his shoulder, such was her bustling vigor, her swift shrewdness
of  tongue,  such  the  gallantry  of  her  long  care for him, that he was afraid of her as he was afraid of Jim Leffert's scorn. He never dared
honestly to confess his infidelity, but he grumbled, "Oh, gee, Ma, I don't know. Trouble is, fellow don't make much money preaching. Gee, there's
no hurry. Don't have to decide yet."

And she knew now that he was likely to become a lawyer. Well, that wasn't so bad, she felt; some day he might go to Congress and reform the whole
nation into a pleasing likeness of Kansas. But if he could only have become part of the mysteries that hovered about the communion table--

She  had  talked  him  over  with Eddie Fislinger. Eddie came from a town twelve miles from Paris. Though it might be years before he was finally
ordained as a minister, Eddie had by his home congregation been given a License to Preach as early as his Sophomore year in Terwillinger, and for
a  month,  one  summer  (while  Elmer  was  out in the harvest fields or the swimming hole or robbing orchards), Eddie had earnestly supplied the
Baptist pulpit in Paris.

Mrs. Gantry consulted him, and Eddie instructed her with the divinity of nineteen.

Oh, yes, Brother Elmer was a fine young man--so strong--they all admired him--a little too much tempted by the vain gauds of This World, but that
was  because  he  was young. Oh, yes, some day Elmer would settle down and be a fine Christian husband and father and business man. But as to the
ministry--no.  Mrs.  Gantry  must  not  too greatly meddle with these mysteries. It was up to God. A fellow had to have a Call before he felt his
vocation  for  the ministry; a real overwhelming mysterious knock-down Call, such as Eddie himself had ecstatically experienced, one evening in a
cabbage  patch. No, not think of that. Their task now was to get Elmer into a real state of grace and that, Eddie assured her, looked to him like
a good deal of a job.

Undoubtedly, Eddie explained, when Elmer had been baptized, at sixteen, he had felt conviction, he had felt the invitation, and the burden of his
sins  had  been  lifted. But he had not, Eddie doubted, entirely experienced salvation. He was not really in a state of grace. He might almost be
called unconverted.

Eddie  diagnosed  the  case completely, with all the proper pathological terms. Whatever difficulties he may have had with philosophy, Latin, and
calculus, there had never been a time since the age of twelve when Eddie Fislinger had had difficulty in understanding what the Lord God Almighty
wanted, and why, all through history, he had acted thus or thus.

"I  should  be the last to condemn athaletics," said Eddie. "We must have strong bodies to endure the burden and the sweat of carrying the Gospel
to  the  world. But at the same time, it seems to me that football tends to detract from religion. I'm a little afraid that just at PRESENT Elmer
is  not  in a state of grace. But, oh, Sister, don't let us worry and travail! Let us trust the Lord. I'll go to Elmer myself, and see what I can
do."

That  must  have been the time--it certainly was during that vacation between their Sophomore and Junior years--when Eddie walked out to the farm
where Elmer was working, and looked at Elmer, bulky and hayseedy in a sleeveless undershirt, and spoke reasonably of the weather, and walked back
again. . . .

Whenever  Elmer  was at home, though he tried affectionately to live out his mother's plan of life for him, though without very much grumbling he
went  to bed at nine-thirty, whitewashed the hen-house, and accompanied her to church, yet Mrs. Gantry suspected that sometimes he drank beer and
doubted about Jonah, and uneasily Elmer heard her sobbing as she knelt by her high-swelling, white-counterpaned, old-fashioned bed.


3


With  alarmed  evangelistic  zeal,  Jim  Lefferts struggled to keep Elmer true to the faith, after his exposure to religion in defending Eddie at
Cato.

He was, on the whole, rather more zealous and fatiguing than Eddie.

Nights,  when Elmer longed to go to sleep, Jim argued; mornings, when Elmer should have been preparing his history, Jim read aloud from Ingersoll
and Thomas Paine.

"How  you  going  to explain a thing like this--how you going to explain it?" begged Jim. "It says here in Deuteronomy that God chased these Yids
around  in  the  desert  for  forty years and their shoes didn't even wear out. That's what it SAYS, right in the Bible. You believe a thing like
that?  And do you believe that Samson lost all his strength just because his gal cut off his hair? Do you, eh? Think hair had anything to do with
his strength?"

Jim  raced  up  and  down  the  stuffy room, kicking at chairs, his normally bland eyes feverish, his forefinger shaken in wrath, while Elmer sat
humped on the edge of the bed, his forehead in his hands, rather enjoying having his soul fought for.

To  prove that he was still a sound and freethinking stalwart, Elmer went out with Jim one evening and at considerable effort, they carried off a
small outhouse and placed it on the steps of the Administration Building.

Elmer almost forgot to worry after the affair of Eddie and Dr. Lefferts.

Jim's  father  was a medical practitioner in an adjoining village. He was a plump, bearded, bookish, merry man, very proud of his atheism. It was
he  who  had trained Jim in the faith and in his choice of liquor; he had sent Jim to this denominational college partly because it was cheap and
partly  because  it  tickled  his  humor  to  watch  his son stir up the fretful complacency of the saints. He dropped in and found Elmer and Jim
agitatedly awaiting the arrival of Eddie.

"Eddie  said,"  wailed  Elmer, "he said he was coming up to see me, and he'll haul out some more of these proofs that I'm going straight to hell.
Gosh,  Doctor,  I  don't  know what's got into me. You better examine me. I must have anemics or something. Why, one time, if Eddie Fislinger had
smiled  at  me,  damn him, think of HIM daring to smile at me!--if he'd said he was coming to my room, I'd of told him, 'Like hell you will!' and
I'd of kicked him in the shins."

Dr. Lefferts purred in his beard. His eyes were bright.

"I'll give your friend Fislinger a run for his money. And for the inconsequential sake of the non-existent Heaven, Jim, try not to look surprised
when you find your respectable father being pious."

When  Eddie  arrived,  he  was  introduced  to a silkily cordial Dr. Lefferts, who shook his hand with that lengthiness and painfulness common to
politicians, salesmen, and the godly. The doctor rejoiced:

"Brother Fislinger, my boy here and Elmer tell me that you've been trying to help them see the true Bible religion."

"I've been seeking to."

"It  warms  my soul to hear you say that, Brother Fislinger! You can't know what a grief it is to an old man tottering to the grave, to one whose
only solace now is prayer and Bible-reading"--Dr. Lefferts had sat up till four a.m., three nights ago, playing poker and discussing biology with
his  cronies,  the  probate  judge  and  the English stock-breeder--"what a grief it is to him that his only son, James Blaine Lefferts, is not a
believer.  But  perhaps  you  can do more than I can, Brother Fislinger. They think I'm a fanatical old fogy. Now let me see--You're a real Bible
believer?"

"Oh,  yes!"  Eddie  looked triumphantly at Jim, who was leaning against the table, his hands in his pockets, as expressionless as wood. Elmer was
curiously hunched up in the Morris chair, his hands over his mouth. The doctor said approvingly:

"That's splendid. You believe every word of it, I hope, from cover to cover?"

"Oh, yes. What _I_ always say is, 'It's better to have the whole Bible than a Bible full of holes.'"

"Why,  that's  a  real  thought, Brother Fislinger. I must remember that, to tell any of these alleged higher critics, if I ever meet any! 'Bible
whole--not Bible full of holes." Oh, that's a fine thought, and cleverly expressed. You made it up?"

"Well, not exactly."

"I  see,  I  see.  Well, that's splendid. Now of course you believe in the premillennial coming--I mean the real, authentic, genuwine, immediate,
bodily, premillennial coming of Jesus Christ?"

"Oh, yes, sure."

"And the virgin birth?"

"Oh, you bet."

"That's  splendid!  Of course there are doctors who question whether the virgin birth is quite in accordance with their experience of obstetrics,
but  I  tell those fellows, 'Look here! How do I know it's true? Because it says so in the Bible, and if it weren't true, do you suppose it would
say so in the Bible?' That certainly shuts them up! They have precious little to say after that!"

By  this  time  a  really  beautiful,  bounteous  fellowship  was  flowing  between  Eddie and the doctor, and they were looking with pity on the
embarrassed faces of the two heretics left out in the cold. Dr. Lefferts tickled his beard and crooned:

"And of course, Brother Fislinger, you believe in infant damnation."

Eddie explained, "No; that's not a Baptist doctrine."

"You--you--" The good doctor choked, tugged at his collar, panted and wailed:

"It's not a Baptist doctrine? You don't believe in infant damnation?"

"W-why, no--"

"Then  God  help the Baptist church and the Baptist doctrine! God help us all, in these unregenerate days, that we should be contaminated by such
infidelity!" Eddie sweat, while the doctor patted his plump hands and agonized: "Look you here, my brother! It's very simple. Are we not saved by
being washed in the blood of the Lamb, and by that alone, by his blessed sacrifice alone?"

"W-why, yes, but--"

"Then  either  we  ARE  washed white, and saved, or else we are not washed, and we are not saved! That's the simple truth, and all weakenings and
explanations and hemming and hawing about this clear and beautiful truth are simply of the devil, brother! And at what moment does a human being,
in  all  his inevitable sinfulness, become subject to baptism and salvation? At two months? At nine years? At sixteen? At forty-seven? At ninety-
nine?  No!  The moment he is born! And so if he be not baptized, then he must burn in hell forever. What does it say in the Good Book? 'For there
is  none other name under heaven given among men, whereby we must be saved.' It may seem a little hard of God to fry beautiful little babies, but
then  think  of  the  beautiful  women whom he loves to roast there for the edification of the saints! Oh, brother, brother, now I understand why
Jimmy  here,  and  poor  Elmer,  are lost to the faith! It's because professed Christians like you give them this emasculated religion! Why, it's
fellows like you who break down the dike of true belief, and open a channel for higher criticism and sabellianism and nymphomania and agnosticism
and  heresy and Catholicism and Seventh-day Adventism and all those horrible German inventions! Once you begin to doubt, the wicked work is done!
Oh, Jim, Elmer, I told you to listen to our friend here, but now that I find him practically a free-thinker--"

The doctor staggered to a chair. Eddie stood gaping.

It  was  the first time in his life that any one had accused him of feebleness in the faith, of under-strictness. He was smirkingly accustomed to
being  denounced  as over-strict. He had almost as much satisfaction out of denouncing liquor as other collegians had out of drinking it. He had,
partly  from his teachers and partly right out of his own brain, any number of good answers to classmates who protested that he was old-fashioned
in  belaboring  domino-playing,  open communion, listening to waltz music, wearing a gown in the pulpit, taking a walk on Sunday, reading novels,
trans-substantiation,  and  these new devices of the devil called moving-pictures. He could frighten almost any Laodicean. But to be called shaky
himself, to be called heretic and slacker--for that inconceivable attack he had no retort.

He looked at the agonized doctor, he looked at Jim and Elmer, who were obviously distressed at his fall from spiritual leadership, and he fled to
secret prayer.

He took his grief presently to President Quarles, who explained everything perfectly.

"But this doctor quoted Scripture to prove his point!" bleated Eddie.

"Don't forget, Brother Fislinger, that 'the devil can quote Scripture to his purpose.'"

Eddie thought that was a very nice thought and very nicely expressed, and though he was not altogether sure that it was from the Bible, he put it
away for future use in sermons. But before he was sufficiently restored to go after Elmer again, Christmas vacation had arrived.



When  Eddie  had  gone, Elmer laughed far more heartily than Jim or his father. It is true that he hadn't quite understood what it was all about.
Why,  sure; Eddie had said it right; infant damnation WASN'T a Baptist doctrine; it belonged to some of the Presbyterians, and everybody knew the
Presbyterians had a lot of funny beliefs. But the doctor certainly had done something to squelch Eddie, and Elmer felt safer than for many days.

He continued to feel safe up till Christmas vacation. Then--

Some  one,  presumably  Eddie,  had  informed  Elmer's mother of his new and promising Christian status. He himself had been careful to keep such
compromising  rumors  out  of  his weekly letters home. Through all the vacation he was conscious that his mother was hovering closer to him than
usual,  that  she  was waiting to snatch at his soul if he showed weakening. Their home pastor, the Reverend Mr. Aker--known in Paris as Reverend
Aker--shook hands with him at the church door with approval as incriminating as the affection of his instructors at Terwillinger.

Unsupported  by Jim, aware that at any moment Eddie might pop in from his neighboring town and be accepted as an ally by Mrs. Gantry, Elmer spent
a  vacation in which there was but little peace. To keep his morale up, he gave particularly earnest attention to bottle-pool and to the daughter
of a nearby farmer. But he was in dread lest these be the last sad ashen days of his naturalness.

It seemed menacing that Eddie should be on the same train back to college. Eddie was with another exponent of piety, and he said nothing to Elmer
about the delights of hell, but he and his companion secretly giggled with a confidence more than dismaying.

Jim Lefferts did not find in Elmer's face the conscious probity and steadfastness which he had expected.



CHAPTER III


1


Early in January was the Annual College Y.M.C.A. Week of Prayer. It was a countrywide event, but in Terwillinger College it was of especial power
that  year  because  they were privileged to have with them for three days none other than Judson Roberts, State Secretary of the Y.M.C.A., and a
man great personally as well as officially.

He  was  young,  Mr.  Roberts,  only thirty-four, but already known throughout the land. He had always been known. He had been a member of a star
University  of  Chicago  football  team,  he  had  played varsity baseball, he had been captain of the debating team, and at the same time he had
commanded  the  Y.M.C.A.  He  had  been  known as the Praying Fullback. He still kept up his exercise--he was said to have boxed privily with Jim
Jefferies--and  he  had  mightily  increased  his  praying. A very friendly leader he was, and helpful; hundreds of college men throughout Kansas
called him "Old Jud."

Between  prayer-meetings  at Terwillinger, Judson Roberts sat in the Bible History seminar-room, at a long table, under a bilious map of the Holy
Land,  and had private conferences with the men students. A surprising number of them came edging in, trembling, with averted eyes, to ask advice
about a secret practice, and Old Jud seemed amazingly able to guess their trouble before they got going.

"Well,  now,  old  boy, I'll tell you. Terrible thing, all right, but I've met quite a few cases, and you just want to buck up and take it to the
Lord  in  prayer.  Remember  that he is able to help unto the uttermost. Now the first thing you want to do is to get rid of--I'm afraid that you
have some pretty nasty pictures and maybe a juicy book hidden away, now haven't you, old boy?"

How could Old Jud have guessed? What a corker!

"That's  right.  I've  got  a  swell plan, old boy. Make a study of missions, and think how clean and pure and manly you'd want to be if you were
going  to carry the joys of Christianity to a lot of poor gazebos that are under the evil spell of Buddhism and a lot of these heathen religions.
Wouldn't  you want to be able to look 'em in the eye, and shame 'em? Next thing to do is to get a lot of exercise. Get out and run like hell! And
then  cold  baths. Darn' cold. There now!" Rising, with ever so manly a handshake: "Now, skip along and remember"--with a tremendous and fetching
and virile laugh--"just run like hell!"

Jim  and  Elmer  heard  Old  Jud  in chapel. He was tremendous. He told them a jolly joke about a man who kissed a girl, yet he rose to feathered
heights  when he described the beatitude of real ungrudging prayer, in which a man was big enough to be as a child. He made them tearful over the
gentleness  with which he described the Christchild, wandering lost by his parents, yet the next moment he had them stretching with admiration as
he  arched  his  big shoulder-muscles and observed that he would knock the block off any sneering, sneaking, lying, beer-bloated bully who should
dare  to  come  up  to  HIM  in  a  meeting and try to throw a monkey-wrench into the machinery by dragging out a lot of contemptible, quibbling,
atheistic, smart-aleck doubts! (He really did, the young men glowed, use the terms "knock the block off," and "throw a monkey-wrench." Oh, he was
a lulu, a real red-blooded regular fellow!)

Jim  was  coming  down  with  the  grippe. He was unable to pump up even one good sneer. He sat folded up, his chin near his knees, and Elmer was
allowed  to  swell  with  hero-worship. Golly! He'd thought he had some muscle, but that guy Judson Roberts--zowie, he could put Elmer on the mat
seven falls out of five! What a football player he must have been! Wee!

This Homeric worship he tried to explain to Jim, back in their room, but Jim sneezed and went to bed. The rude bard was left without audience and
he was practically glad when Eddie Fislinger scratched at the door and edged in.

"Don't  want  to  bother  you  fellows,  but noticed you were at Old Jud's meeting this afternoon and, say, you gotta come out and hear him again
tomorrow evening. Big evening of the week. Say, honest, Hell-cat, don't you think Jud's a real humdinger?"

"Yes, I gotta admit, he's a dandy fellow."

"Say, he certainly is, isn't he! He certainly is a dandy fellow, isn't he! Isn't he a peach!"

"Yes, he certainly is a peach--for a religious crank!"

"Aw now, Hell-cat, don't go calling him names! You'll admit he looks like some football shark."

"Yes, I guess he does, at that. I'd liked to of played with him."

"Wouldn't you like to meet him?'"

"Well--"

At  this  moment  of  danger,  Jim raised his dizzy head to protest, "He's a holy strikebreaker! One of these thick-necks that was born husky and
tries to make you think he made himself husky by prayer and fasting. I'd hate to take a chance on any poor little orphan nip of Bourbon wandering
into Old Jud's presence! Yeh! Chest-pounder! 'Why can't you hundred-pound shrimps be a big manly Christian like me!'"

Together they protested against this defilement of the hero, and Eddie admitted that he had ventured to praise Elmer to Old Jud; that Old Jud had
seemed enthralled; that Old Jud was more than likely--so friendly a Great Man was HE--to run in on Elmer this afternoon.

Before  Elmer could decide whether to be pleased or indignant, before the enfeebled Jim could get up strength to decide for him, the door was hit
a mighty and heroic wallop, and in strode Judson Roberts, big as a grizzly, jolly as a spaniel pup, radiant as ten suns.

He set upon Elmer immediately. He had six other doubting Thomases or suspected smokers to dispose of before six o'clock.

He  was  a  fair young giant with curly hair and a grin and with a voice like the Bulls of Bashan whenever the strategy called for manliness. But
with erring sisters, unless they were too erring, he could be as lulling as woodland violets shaken in the perfumed breeze.

"Hello, Hell-cat!" he boomed. "Shake hands!"

Elmer  had  a  playful custom of squeezing people's hands till they cracked. For the first time in his life his own paw felt limp and burning. He
rubbed it and looked simple.

"Been  hearing a lot about you, Hell-cat, and you, Jim. Laid out, Jim? Want me to trot out and get a doc?" Old Jud was sitting easily on the edge
of Jim's bed, and in the light of that grin, even Jim Lefferts could not be very sour as he tried to sneer, "No, thanks."

Roberts turned to Elmer again, and gloated:

"Well,  old  son, I've been hearing a lot about you. Gee whillikins, that must have been a great game you played against Thorvilsen College! They
tell me when you hit that line, it gave like a sponge, and when you tackled that big long Swede, he went down like he'd been hit by lightning."

"Well, it was--it was a good game."

"Course I read about it at the time--"

"Did you, honest?"

"--and  course I wanted to hear more about it, and meet you, Hell-cat, so I been asking the boys about you, and say, they certainly do give you a
great hand! Wish I could've had you with me on my team at U of Chi--we needed a tackle like you."

Elmer basked.

"Yes,  sir,  the  boys  all been telling me what a dandy fine fellow you are, and what a corking athlete, and what an A-1 gentleman. They all say
there's just one trouble with you, Elmer lad."

"Eh?"

"They say you're a coward."

"Heh? WHO says I'm a coward?"

Judson Roberts swaggered across from the bed, stood with his hand on Elmer's shoulder. "They all say it, Hell-cat! You see it takes a sure-enough
dyed-in-the-wool  brave  man  to be big enough to give Jesus a shot at him, and admit he's licked when he tries to fight God! It takes a man with
guts  to  kneel  down  and admit his worthlessness when all the world is jeering at him! And you haven't got that kind of courage, Elmer. Oh, you
think you're such a big cuss--"

Old  Jud  swung  him  around;  Old Jud's hand was crushing his shoulder. "You think you're too husky, too good, to associate with the poor little
sniveling gospel-mongers, don't you! You could knock out any of 'em, couldn't you! Well, I'm one of 'em. Want to knock me out?"

With one swift jerk Roberts had his coat off, stood with a striped silk shirt revealing his hogshead torso.

"You  bet,  Hell-cat! I'm willing to fight you for the glory of God! God needs you! Can you think of anything finer for a big husky like you than
to  spend  his life bringing poor, weak, sick, scared folks to happiness? Can't you see how the poor little skinny guys and all the kiddies would
follow you and praise you and admire you, you old son of a gun? Am I a sneaking Christian? Can you lick me? Want to fight it out?"

"No, gee, Mr. Roberts--"

"Judson, you big hunk of cheese, Old Jud!"

"No, gee, Judson, I guess you got me trimmed! I pack a pretty good wallop, but I'm not going to take any chance on you!"

"All right, old son. Still think that all religious folks are crabs?"

"No."

"And weaklings and pikers?"

"No."

"And liars?"

"Oh, no."

"All right, old boy. Going to allow me to be a friend of yours, if I don't butt in on your business?"

"Oh, gee, sure."

"Then  there's  just  one  favor I want to ask. Will you come to our big meeting tomorrow night? You don't have to do a thing. If you think we're
four-flushers--all  right;  that's  your  privilege.  Only  will you come and not decide we're all wrong beforehand, but really use that big fine
incisive brain of yours and study us as we are? Will you come?"

"Oh, yes, sure, you bet."

"Fine,  old  boy.  Mighty  proud to have you let me come butting in here in this informal way. Remember: if you honestly feel I'm using any undue
influence  on  the boys, you come right after me and say so, and I'll be mighty proud of your trusting me to stand the gaff. So long, old Elm! So
long, Jim. God bless you!"

"So long, Jud."

He was gone, a whirlwind that whisked the inconspicuous herb Eddie Fislinger out after it. And THEN Jim Lefferts spoke.

For  a  time after Judson Roberts' curtain, Elmer stood glowing, tasting praise. He was conscious of Jim's eyes on his back, and he turned toward
the bed, defiantly.

They stared, in a tug of war. Elmer gave in with a furious:

"Well, then, why didn't you say something while he was here?"

"To him? Talk to a curly wolf when he smells meat? Besides, he's intelligent, that fellow."

"Well, say, I'm glad to hear you say that, because--well, you see--I'll explain how I feel."

"Oh,  no,  you  won't,  sweetheart! You haven't got to the miracle-pulling stage yet. Sure he's intelligent. I never heard a better exhibition of
bunco-steering  in  my  life.  Sure!  He's just crazy to have you come up and kick him in the ear and tell him you've decided you can't give your
imprimatur--"

"My WHAT?"

"--to  his  show,  and he's to quit and go back to hod-carrying. Sure. He read all about your great game with Thorvilsen. Sent off to New York to
get  the  Review  of  Reviews and read more about it. Eddie Fislinger never told him a word. He read about your tackling in the London Times. You
bet. Didn't he say so? And he's a saved soul--he couldn't lie. And he just couldn't stand it if he didn't become a friend of yours. He can't know
more  than  a  couple of thousand collidge boys to spring that stuff on! . . . You bet I believe in the old bearded Jew God! Nobody but him could
have made all the idiots there are in the world!"

"Gee, Jim, honest, you don't understand Jud."

"No. I don't. When he could be a decent prize-fighter, and not have to go around with angleworms like Eddie Fislinger day after day!"

And thus till midnight, for all Jim's fevers.

But  Elmer  was  at  Judson  Roberts' meeting next evening, unprotected by Jim, who remained at home in so vile a temper that Elmer had sent in a
doctor and sneaked away from the room for the afternoon.


2


It  was undoubtedly Eddie who wrote or telegraphed to Mrs. Gantry that she would do well to be present at the meeting. Paris was only forty miles
from Gritzmacher Springs.

Elmer crept into his room at six, still wistfully hoping to have Jim's sanction, still ready to insist that if he went to the meeting he would be
in  no  danger  of  conversion.  He  had  walked  miles through the slush, worrying. He was ready now to give up the meeting, to give up Judson's
friendship, if Jim should insist.

As he wavered in, Mrs. Gantry stood by Jim's lightning-shot bed.

"Why, Ma! What you doing here? What's gone wrong?" Elmer panted.

It was impossible to think of her taking a journey for anything less than a funeral.

Cozily,  "Can't  I run up and see my two boys if I want to, Elmy? I declare, I believe you'd of killed Jim, with all this nasty tobacco air, if I
hadn't  come  in  and aired the place out. I THOUGHT, Elmer Gantry, you weren't supposed to smoke in Terwillinger! By the rules of the college! I
thought, young man, that you lived up to 'em! But never mind."

Uneasily--for  Jim  had  never  before seen him demoted to childhood, as he always was in his mother's presence--Elmer grumbled, "But honest, Ma,
what did you come up for?"

"Well,  I  read  about  what  a nice week of prayer you were going to have, and I thought I'd just like to hear a real big bug preach. I've got a
vacation  coming, too! Now don't you worry one mite about me. I guess I can take care of myself after all these years! The first traveling I ever
done  with  you,  young man--the time I went to Cousin Adeline's wedding--I just tucked you under one arm--and how you squalled, the whole way!--
mercy,  you  liked  to  hear  the sound of your own voice then just like you do now!--and I tucked my old valise under the other, and off I went!
Don't you worry one mite about me. I'm only going to stay over the night--got a sale on remnants starting--going back on Number Seven tomorrow. I
left my valise at that boarding-house right across from the depot. But there's one thing you might do if 'tain't too much trouble, Elmy. You know
I've  only  been  up  here at the college once before. I'd feel kind of funny, country bumpkin like me, going alone to that big meeting, with all
those smart professors and everybody there, and I'd be glad if you could come along."

"Of course he'll go, Mrs. Gantry," said Jim.

But  before  Elmer  was carried away, Jim had the chance to whisper, "God, do be careful! Remember I won't be there to protect you! Don't let 'em
pick on you! Don't do one single doggone thing they want you to do, and then maybe you'll be safe!"

As he went out, Elmer looked back at Jim. He was shakily sitting up in bed, his eyes imploring.


3


The  climactic  meeting of the Annual Prayer Week, to be addressed by President Quarles, four ministers, and a rich trustee who was in the pearl-
button  business,  with  Judson  Roberts as star soloist, was not held at the Y.M.C.A. but at the largest auditorium in town, the Baptist Church,
with hundreds of town-people joining the collegians.

The church was a welter of brownstone, with Moorish arches and an immense star-shaped window not yet filled with stained glass.

Elmer  hoped  to be late enough to creep in inconspicuously, but as his mother and he straggled up to the Romanesque portico, students were still
outside,  chattering.  He was certain they were whispering, "There he is--Hell-cat Gantry. Say, is it really true he's under conviction of sin? I
thought he cussed out the church more'n anybody in college."

Meek  though  Elmer had been under instruction by Jim and threats by Eddie and yearning by his mother, he was not normally given to humility, and
he looked at his critics defiantly. "I'll show 'em! If they think I'm going to sneak in--"

He  swaggered  down almost to the front pews, to the joy of his mother, who had been afraid that as usual he would hide in the rear, handy to the
door if the preacher should become personal.

There  was  a  great  deal  of decoration in the church, which had been endowed by a zealous alumnus after making his strike in Alaskan boarding-
houses during the gold-rush. There were Egyptian pillars with gilded capitals, on the ceiling were gilt stars and clouds more woolen than woolly,
and  the  walls  were  painted cheerily in three strata--green, watery blue, and khaki. It was an echoing and gaping church, and presently it was
packed,  the  aisles full. Professors with string mustaches and dog-eared Bibles, men students in sweaters or flannel shirts, earnest young women
students  in  homemade  muslin  with modest ribbons, over-smiling old maids of the town, venerable saints from the back-country with beards which
partly  hid  the  fact  that  they  wore collars without ties, old women with billowing shoulders, irritated young married couples with broods of
babies who crawled, slid, bellowed, and stared with embarrassing wonder at bachelors.

Five  minutes  later  Elmer would not have had a seat down front. Now he could not escape. He was packed in between his mother and a wheezing fat
man, and in the aisle beside his pew stood evangelical tailors and ardent school-teachers.

The  congregation  swung  into  "When  the  Roll Is Called Up Yonder" and Elmer gave up his frenzied but impractical plans for escape. His mother
nestled happily beside him, her hand proudly touching his sleeve, and he was stirred by the march and battle of the hymn:


When the trumpet of the Lord shall sound, and time shall be no more, And the morning breaks eternal, bright and far.--


They  stood  for  the  singing  of  "Shall  We Gather at the River?" Elmer inarticulately began to feel his community with these humble, aspiring
people--his  own  prairie  tribe:  this  gaunt  carpenter, a good fellow, full of friendly greetings; this farm-wife, so courageous, channeled by
pioneer labor; this classmate, an admirable basket-ball player, yet now chanting beatifically, his head back, his eyes closed, his voice ringing.
Elmer's own people. Could he be a traitor to them, could he resist the current of their united belief and longing?


Yes, we'll gather at the river, The beautiful, the beautiful river, Gather with the saints at the river That flows by the throne of God.


Could  he endure it to be away from them, in the chill void of Jim Lefferts' rationalizing, on that day when they should be rejoicing in the warm
morning sunshine by the river rolling to the imperishable Throne?

And his voice--he had merely muttered the words of the first hymn--boomed out ungrudgingly:


Soon our pilgrimage will cease; Soon our happy hearts will quiver With the melody of peace.


His  mother  stroked his sleeve. He remembered that she had maintained he was the best singer she had ever heard; that Jim Lefferts had admitted,
"You  certainly  can make that hymn dope sound as if it meant something." He noted that people near by looked about with pleasure when they heard
his Big Ben dominate the cracked jangling.

The  preliminaries  merely  warmed  up  the audience for Judson Roberts. Old Jud was in form. He laughed, he shouted, he knelt and wept with real
tears,  he  loved  everybody,  he raced down into the audience and patted shoulders, and for the moment everybody felt that he was closer to them
than their closest friends.

"Rejoiceth as a strong man to run a race," was his text.

Roberts  was  really a competent athlete, and he really had skill in evoking pictures. He described the Chicago-Michigan game, and Elmer was lost
in him, with him lived the moments of the scrimmage, the long run with the ball, the bleachers rising to him.

Roberts  voice  softened.  He  was pleading. He was not talking, he said, to weak men who needed coddling into the Kingdom, but to strong men, to
rejoicing  men,  to men brave in armor. There was another sort of race more exhilarating than any game, and it led not merely to a score on a big
board  but  to  the making of a new world--it led not to newspaper paragraphs but to glory eternal. Dangerous--calling for strong men! Ecstatic--
brimming with thrills! The team captained by Christ! No timid Jesus did he preach, but the adventurer who had joyed to associate with common men,
with  reckless  fishermen,  with  captains  and rulers, who had dared to face the soldiers in the garden, who had dared the myrmidons of Rome and
death itself! Come! Who was gallant? Who had nerve? Who longed to live abundantly? Let them come!

They  must  confess their sins, they must repent, they must know their own weakness save as they were reborn in Christ. But they must confess not
in  heaven-pilfering  weakness, but in training for the battle under the wind-torn banners of the Mighty Captain. Who would come? Who would come?
Who was for vision and the great adventure?

He  was among them, Judson Roberts, with his arms held out, his voice a bugle. Young men sobbed and knelt; a woman shrieked; people were elbowing
the  standers in the aisles and pushing forward to kneel in agonized happiness, and suddenly they were setting relentlessly on a bewildered Elmer
Gantry, who had been betrayed into forgetting himself, into longing to be one with Judson Roberts.

His  mother  was wringing his hand, begging, "Oh, won't you come? Won't you make your old mother happy? Let yourself know the joy of surrender to
Jesus!"  She  was  weeping, old eyes puckered, and in her weeping was his every recollection of winter dawns when she had let him stay in bed and
brought  porridge  to him across the icy floor; winter evenings when he had awakened to find her still stitching; and that confusing intimidating
hour, in the abyss of his first memories, when he had seen her shaken beside a coffin that contained a cold monster in the shape of his father.

The  basket-ball  player  was  patting  his  other  arm, begging, "Dear old Hell-cat, you've never let yourself be happy! You've been lonely! Let
yourself be happy with us! You know I'm no mollycoddle. Won't you know the happiness of salvation with us?"

A  thread-thin  old man, very dignified, a man with secret eyes that had known battles, and mountain-valleys, was holding out his hands to Elmer,
imploring with a humility utterly disconcerting, "Oh, come, come with us--don't stand there making Jesus beg and beg--don't leave the Christ that
died for us standing out in the cold, begging!"

And,  somehow,  flashing  through the crowd, Judson Roberts was with Elmer, honoring him beyond all the multitude, appealing for his friendship--
Judson Roberts the gorgeous, beseeching:

"Are you going to hurt me, Elmer? Are you going to let me go away miserable and beaten, old man? Are you going to betray me like Judas, when I've
offered  you  my  Jesus  as the most precious gift I can bring you? Are you going to slap me and defile me and hurt me? Come! Think of the joy of
being rid of all those nasty little sins that you've felt so ashamed of! Won't you come kneel with me, won't you?"

His  mother  shrieked,  "Won't  you, Elmer? With him and me? Won't you make us happy? Won't you be big enough to not be afraid? See how we're all
longing for you, praying for you!"

"Yes!" from around him, from strangers; and "Help ME to follow you, Brother--I'll go if you will!" Voices woven, thick, dove-white and terrifying
black of mourning and lightning-colored, flung around him, binding him--His mother's pleading, Judson Roberts' tribute--

An  instant he saw Jim Lefferts, and heard him insist: "Why, sure, course they believe it. They hypnotize themselves. But don't let 'em hypnotize
you!"

He  saw  Jim's  eyes,  that  for  him  alone  veiled their bright harshness and became lonely, asking for comradeship. He struggled; with all the
blubbering  confusion  of  a small boy set on by his elders, frightened and overwhelmed, he longed to be honest, to be true to Jim--to be true to
himself  and his own good honest sins and whatsoever penalties they might carry. Then the visions were driven away by voices that closed over him
like  surf  above  an  exhausted swimmer. Volitionless, marveling at the sight of himself as a pinioned giant, he was being urged forward, forced
forward, his mother on one arm and Judson on the other, a rhapsodic mob following.

Bewildered. Miserable. . . . False to Jim.

But  as he came to the row kneeling in front of the first pew, he had a thought that made everything all right. Yes! He could have both! He could
keep Judson and his mother, yet retain Jim's respect. He had only to bring Jim also to Jesus, then all of them would be together in beatitude!

Freed  from  misery  by  that  revelation,  he  knelt,  and  suddenly  his  voice  was noisy in confession, while the shouts of the audience, the
ejaculations of Judson and his mother, exalted him to hot self-approval and made it seem splendidly right to yield to the mystic fervor.

He  had  but little to do with what he said. The willing was not his but the mob's; the phrases were not his but those of the emotional preachers
and hysterical worshipers whom he had heard since babyhood:

"O  God,  oh, I have sinned! My sins are heavy on me! I am unworthy of compassion! O Jesus, intercede for me! Oh, let thy blood that was shed for
me be my salvation! O God, I do truly repent of my great sinning and I do long for the everlasting peace of thy bosom!"

"Oh,  praise God," from the multitude, and "Praise his holy name! Thank God, thank God, thank God! Oh, hallelujah, Brother, thank the dear loving
God!"

He was certain that he would never again want to guzzle, to follow loose women, to blaspheme; he knew the rapture of salvation--yes, and of being
the center of interest in the crowd.

Others  about  him  were  beating  their  foreheads,  others  were shrieking, "Lord, be merciful," and one woman--he remembered her as a strange,
repressed,  mad-eyed  special  student  who  was  not  known  to  have any friends--was stretched out, oblivious of the crowd, jerking, her limbs
twitching, her hands clenched, panting rhythmically.

But  it  was  Elmer, tallest of the converts, tall as Judson Roberts, whom all the students and most of the townpeople found important, who found
himself important.

His mother was crying, "Oh, this is the happiest hour of my life, dear! This makes up for everything!"

To be able to give her such delight!

Judson  was clawing Elmer's hand, whooping, "Liked to had you on the team at Chicago, but I'm a lot gladder to have you with me on Christ's team!
If you knew how proud I am!"

To be thus linked forever with Judson!

Elmer's embarrassment was gliding into a robust self-satisfaction.

Then  the others were crowding on him, shaking his hand, congratulating him: the football center, the Latin professor, the town grocer. President
Quarles,  his  chin  whisker  vibrant  and  his shaven upper lip wiggling from side to side, was insisting, "Come, Brother Elmer, stand up on the
platform and say a few words to us--you must--we all need it--we're thrilled by your splendid example!"

Elmer  was  not  quite  sure how he got through the converts, up the steps to the platform. He suspected afterward that Judson Roberts had done a
good deal of trained pushing.

He looked down, something of his panic returning. But they were sobbing with affection for him. The Elmer Gantry who had for years pretended that
he  relished defying the whole college had for those same years desired popularity. He had it now--popularity, almost love, almost reverence, and
he felt overpoweringly his rôle as leading man.

He was stirred to more flamboyant confession:

"Oh, for the first time I know the peace of God! Nothing I have ever done has been right, because it didn't lead to the way and the truth! Here I
thought  I  was  a  good  church-member, but all the time I hadn't seen the real light. I'd never been willing to kneel down and confess myself a
miserable sinner. But I'm kneeling now, and, oh, the blessedness of humility!"

He  wasn't, to be quite accurate, kneeling at all; he was standing up, very tall and broad, waving his hands; and though what he was experiencing
may  have  been  the  blessedness  of  humility,  it sounded like his announcements of an ability to lick anybody in any given saloon. But he was
greeted with flaming hallelujahs, and he shouted on till he was rapturous and very sweaty:

"Come!  Come  to  him now! Oh, it's funny that I who've been so great a sinner could dare to give you his invitation, but he's almighty and shall
prevail,  and he giveth his sweet tidings through the mouths of babes and sucklings and the most unworthy, and lo, the strong shall be confounded
and the weak exalted in his sight!"

It  was  all,  the Mithraic phrasing, as familiar as "Good morning" or "How are you?" to the audience, yet he must have put new violence into it,
for instead of smiling at the recency of his ardor they looked at him gravely, and suddenly a miracle was beheld.

Ten minutes after his own experience, Elmer made his first conversion.

A  pimply  youth, long known as a pool-room tout, leaped up, his greasy face working, shrieked, "O God, forgive me!" butted in frenzy through the
crowd, ran to the mourner's bench, lay with his mouth frothing in convulsion.

Then  the  hallelujahs  rose  till they drowned Elmer's accelerated pleading, then Judson Roberts stood with his arm about Elmer's shoulder, then
Elmer's mother knelt with a light of paradise on her face, and they closed the meeting in a maniac pealing of


Draw me nearer, blessed Lord, To thy precious bleeding side.


Elmer felt himself victorious over life and king of righteousness.

But  it  had  been  only  the  devoted, the people who had come early and taken front seats, of whom he had been conscious in his transports. The
students  who  had  remained at the back of the church now loitered outside the door in murmurous knots, and as Elmer and his mother passed them,
they stared, they even chuckled, and he was suddenly cold. . . .

It was hard to give heed to his mother's wails of joy all the way to her boarding-house.

"Now  don't  you  dare  think  of getting up early to see me off on the train," she insisted. "All I have to do is just to carry my little valise
across  the  street.  You'll  need  your sleep, after all this stirrin' up you've had tonight--I was so proud--I've never known anybody to really
wrestle  with  the  Lord  like you did. Oh, Elmy, you'll stay true? You've made your old mother so happy! All my life I've sorrowed, I've waited,
I've prayed and now I shan't ever sorrow again! Oh, you will stay true?"

He threw the last of his emotional reserve into a ringing, "You bet I will, Ma!" and kissed her good-night.

He  had  no  emotion  left  with which to face walking alone, in a cold and realistic night, down a street not of shining columns but of cottages
dumpy amid the bleak snow and unfriendly under the bitter stars.

His  plan  of saving Jim Lefferts, his vision of Jim with reverent and beatific eyes, turned into a vision of Jim with extremely irate eyes and a
lot to say. With that vanishment his own glory vanished.

"Was I," he wondered, "just a plain damn' fool?

"Jim warned me they'd nab me if I lost my head.

"Now I suppose I can't ever even smoke again without going to hell."

But he wanted a smoke. Right now!

He had a smoke.

It comforted him but little as he fretted on:

"There  WASN'T any fake about it! I really did repent all these darn' fool sins. Even smoking--I'm going to cut it out. I did feel the--the peace
of God.

"But can I keep up this speed? Christ! I can't DO it! Never take a drink or anything--

"I  wonder  if  the  Holy  Ghost really was there and getting after me? I did feel different! I did! Or was it just because Judson and Ma and all
those Christers were there whooping it up--

"Jud  Roberts  kidded  me  into it. With all his Big Brother stuff. Prob'ly pulls it everywhere he goes. Jim'll claim I--Oh, damn Jim, too! I got
some rights! None of his business if I come out and do the fair square thing! And they DID look up to me when I gave them the invitation! It went
off  fine  and  dandy! And that kid coming right up and getting saved. Mighty few fellows ever've pulled off a conversion as soon after their own
conversion  as  I  did! Moody or none of 'em. I'll bet it busts the records! Yes, sir, maybe they're right. Maybe the Lord has got some great use
for me, even if I ain't always been all I might of been . . . someways . . . but I was never mean or tough or anything like that . . . just had a
good time.

"Jim--what  right's  he  got  telling  me  where  I head in? Trouble with him is, he thinks he knows it all. I guess these wise old coots that've
written all these books about the Bible, I guess they know more'n one smart-aleck Kansas agnostic!

"Yes, sir! The whole crowd! Turned to me like I was an All-American preacher!

"Wouldn't  be  so  bad  to  be a preacher if you had a big church and--Lot easier than digging out law-cases and having to put it over a jury and
another lawyer maybe smarter'n you are.

"The crowd have to swallow what you tell 'em in a pulpit, and no back-talk or cross-examination allowed!"

For a second he snickered, but:

"Not  nice to talk that way. Even if a fellow don't do what's right himself, no excuse for his sneering at fellows that do, like preachers. . . .
There's where Jim makes his mistake.

"Not  worthy  to be a preacher. But if Jim Lefferts thinks for one single solitary second that I'm afraid to be a preacher because HE pulls a lot
of  gaff--I  guess  _I_  know  how  I felt when I stood up and had all them folks hollering and rejoicing--I guess _I_ know whether I experienced
salvation or not! And I don't require any James Blaine Lefferts to tell me, neither!"

Thus  for  an  hour of dizzy tramping; now colder with doubt than with the prairie wind, now winning back some of the exaltation of his spiritual
adventure, but always knowing that he had to confess to an inexorable Jim.


4


It was after one. Surely Jim would be asleep, and by next day there might be a miracle. Morning always promises miracles.

He eased the door open, holding it with a restraining hand. There was a light on the washstand beside Jim's bed, but it was a small kerosene lamp
turned low. He tiptoed in, his tremendous feet squeaking.

Jim suddenly sat up, turned up the wick. He was red-nosed, red-eyed, and coughing. He stared, and unmoving, by the table, Elmer stared back.

Jim spoke abruptly:

"You  son  of  a  sea-cook!  You've  gone  and done it! You've been SAVED! You've let them hornswoggle you into being a Baptist witch-doctor! I'm
through! You can go--to heaven!"

"Aw, say now, Jim, lissen!"

"I've listened enough. I've got nothing more to say. And now you listen to me!" said Jim, and he spoke with tongues for three minutes straight.

Most  of  the night they struggled for the freedom of Elmer's soul, with Jim not quite losing yet never winning. As Jim's face had hovered at the
gospel meeting between him and the evangelist, blotting out the vision of the cross, so now the faces of his mother and Judson hung sorrowful and
misty before him, a veil across Jim's pleading.

Elmer  slept  four  hours  and went out, staggering with weariness, to bring cinnamon buns, a wienie sandwich, and a tin pail of coffee for Jim's
breakfast.  They  were  laboring windily into new arguments, Jim a little more stubborn, Elmer ever more irritable, when no less a dignitary than
President  the  Rev.  Dr.  Willoughby  Quarles,  chin  whisker,  glacial shirt, bulbous waistcoat and all, plunged under the fat soft wing of the
landlady.

The  president  shook  hands a number of times with everybody, he eyebrowed the landlady out of the room, and boomed in his throaty pulpit voice,
with belly-rumblings and long-drawn R's and L's, a voice very deep and owlish, most holy and fitting to the temple which he created merely by his
presence, rebuking to flippancy and chuckles and the puerile cynicisms of the Jim Leffertses--a noise somewhere between the evening bells and the
morning jackass:

"Oh,  Brother  Elmer,  that  was  a brave thing you did! I have never seen a braver! For a great strong man of your gladiatorial powers to not be
afraid  to  humble  himself!  And your example will do a great deal of good, a grrrrrreat deal of good! And we must catch and hold it. You are to
speak at the Y.M.C.A. tonight--special meeting to reenforce the results of our wonderful Prayer Week."

"Oh, gee, President, I can't!" Elmer groaned.

"Oh,  yes,  Brother,  you  must.  You  MUST!  It's  already  announced. If you'll go out within the next hour, you'll be gratified to see posters
announcing it all over town!"

"But I can't make a speech!"

"The Lord will give the words if you give the good will! I myself shall call for you at a quarter to seven. God bless you!"

He was gone.

Elmer  was  completely frightened, completely unwilling, and swollen with delight that after long dark hours when Jim, an undergraduate, had used
him dirtily and thrown clods at his intellect, the President of Terwillinger College should have welcomed him to that starched bosom as a fellow-
apostle.

While Elmer was making up his mind to do what he had made up his mind to do, Jim crawled into bed and addressed the Lord in a low poisonous tone.

Elmer went out to see the posters. His name was in lovely large letters.

For an hour, late that afternoon, after various classes in which every one looked at him respectfully, Elmer tried to prepare his address for the
Y.M.C.A. and affiliated lady worshipers. Jim was sleeping, with a snore like the snarl of a leopard.

In  his  class  in  Public Speaking, a course designed to create congressmen, bishops, and sales-managers, Elmer had had to produce discourses on
Taxation,  the  Purpose  of God in History, Our Friend the Dog, and the Glory of the American Constitution. But his monthly orations had not been
too  arduous; no one had grieved if he stole all his ideas and most of his phrasing from the encyclopedia. The most important part of preparation
had  been  the  lubrication of his polished-mahogany voice with throat-lozenges after rather steady and totally forbidden smoking. He had learned
nothing  except  the  placing  of  his  voice.  It  had never seemed momentous to impress the nineteen students of oratory and the instructor, an
unordained  licensed preacher who had formerly been a tax-assessor in Oklahoma. He had, in Public Speaking, never been a failure nor ever for one
second interesting.

Now,  sweating  very  much,  he  perceived  that  he  was  expected to think, to articulate the curious desires whereby Elmer Gantry was slightly
different from any other human being, and to rivet together opinions which would not be floated on any tide of hallelujahs.

He  tried  to remember the sermons he had heard. But the preachers had been so easily convinced of their authority as prelates, so freighted with
ponderous  messages,  while  himself, he was not at the moment certain whether he was a missionary who had to pass his surprising new light on to
the multitude, or just a sinner who--

Just a sinner! For keeps! Nothing else! Damned if he'd welsh on old Jim! No, SIR! Or welsh on Juanita, who'd stood for him and merely kidded him,
no  matter  how  soused and rough and mouthy he might be! . . . Her hug. The way she'd get rid of that buttinsky aunt of Nell's; just wink at him
and give Aunty some song and dance or other and send her out for chow--

God!  If Juanita were only here! She'd give him the real dope. She'd advise him whether he ought to tell Prexy and the Y.M. to go to hell or grab
this chance to show Eddie Fislinger and all those Y.M. highbrows that he wasn't such a bonehead--

No!  Here  Prexy  had  said  he  was  the  whole cheese: gotten up a big meeting for him. Prexy Quarles and Juanita! Aber nit! Never get them two
together! And Prexy had called on him--

Suppose it got into the newspapers! How he'd saved a tough kid, just as good as Judson Roberts could do. Juanita--find skirts like her any place,
but where could they find a guy that could start in and save souls right off the bat?

Chuck  all  these fool thoughts, now that Jim was asleep, and figure out this spiel. What was that about sweating in the vineyard? Something like
that,  anyway. In the Bible. . . . However much they might rub it in--and no gink'd ever had a worse time, with that sneaking Eddie poking him on
one side and Jim lambasting him on the other--whatever happened, he had to show those yahoos he could do just as good--

Hell! This wasn't buying the baby any shoes; this wasn't getting his spiel done. But--

What was the doggone thing to be ABOUT?

Let's  see  now. Gee, there was a bully thought! Tell 'em about how a strong husky guy, the huskier he was the more he could afford to admit that
the power of the Holy Ghost had just laid him out cold--

No. Hell! That was what Old Jud had said. Must have something new--kinda new, anyway.

He shouldn't say "hell." Cut it out. Stay converted, no matter how hard it was. HE wasn't afraid of--Him and Old Jud, they were husky enough to--

No, sir! It wasn't Old Jud; it was his mother. What'd she think if she ever saw him with Juanita? Juanita! That sloppy brat! No modesty!

Had to get down to brass tacks. Now!

Elmer  grasped  the  edge  of  his  work-table.  The top cracked. His strength pleased him. He pulled up his dingy red sweater, smoothed his huge
biceps, and again tackled his apostolic labors:

Let's see now: The fellow at the Y. would expect him to say--

He had it! Nobody ever amounted to a darn except as the--what was it?--as the inscrutable designs of Providence intended him to be.

Elmer  was  very  busy  making vast and unformed scrawls in a ten-cent-note-book hitherto devoted to German. He darted up, looking scholarly, and
gathered  his  library  about  him: his Bible, given to him by his mother; his New Testament, given by a Sunday School teacher; his text-books in
Weekly Bible and Church History; and one-fourteenth of a fourteen-volume set of Great Orations of the World which, in a rare and alcoholic moment
of bibliomania, he had purchased in Cato for seventeen cents. He piled them and repiled them and tapped them with his fountain-pen.

His original stimulus had run out entirely.

Well, he'd get help from the Bible. It was all inspired, every word, no matter what scoffers like Jim said. He'd take the first text he turned to
and talk on that.

He  opened  on:  "Now  THEREFORE,  Tatnai, governor beyond the river, Shethar-boznai, and your companions the Apharsachites, which ARE beyond the
river, be ye far from thence," an injunction spirited but not at present helpful.

He returned to pulling his luxuriant hair and scratching.

Golly. Must be something.

The  only  way  of  putting it all over life was to understand these Forces that the scientists, with their laboratories and everything, couldn't
savvy, but to a real Christian they were just as easy as rolling off a log--

No. He hadn't taken any lab courses except Chemistry I, so he couldn't show where all these physicists and biologists were boobs.

Elmer forlornly began to cross out the lovely scrawls he had made in his note-book.

He was irritably conscious that Jim was awake, and scoffing:

"Having quite a time being holy and informative, Hell-cat? Why don't you pinch your first sermon from the heathen? You won't be the first up-and-
coming young messiah to do it!"

Jim  shied  a  thin  book  at him, and sank again into infidel sleep. Elmer picked up the book. It was a selection from the writings of Robert G.
Ingersoll.

Elmer was indignant.

Take  his  speech  from  Ingersoll, that rotten old atheist that said--well, anyway, he criticized the Bible and everything! Fellow that couldn't
believe  the  Bible, least he could do was not to disturb the faith of others. Darn' rotten thing to do! Fat nerve of Jim to suggest his pinching
anything from Ingersoll! He'd throw the book in the fire!

But--Anything  was  better  than  going on straining his brains. He forgot his woes by drugging himself with heedless reading. He drowsed through
page  on  page  of  Ingersoll's  rhetoric  and  jesting. Suddenly he sat up, looked suspiciously over at the silenced Jim, looked suspiciously at
Heaven. He grunted, hesitated, and began rapidly to copy into the German notebook, from Ingersoll:


Love  is the only bow on life's dark cloud. It is the Morning and the Evening Star. It shines upon the cradle of the babe, and sheds its radiance
upon the quiet tomb. It is the mother of Art, inspirer of poet, patriot and philosopher. It is the air and light of every heart, builder of every
home,  kindler of every fire on every hearth. It was the first to dream of immortality. It fills the world with melody, for Music is the voice of
Love. Love is the magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things to joy, and makes right royal kings and queens of common clay. It is the
perfume  of  the  wondrous  flower--the heart--and without that sacred passion, that divine swoon, we are less than beasts; but with it, earth is
heaven and we are gods.


Only for a moment, while he was copying, did he look doubtful; then:

"Rats! Chances are nobody there tonight has ever read Ingersoll. Agin him. Besides I'll kind of change it around."


5


When  President  Quarles  called for him, Elmer's exhortation was outlined, and he had changed to his Sunday-best blue serge double-breasted suit
and sleeked his hair.

As  they  departed,  Jim  called Elmer back from the hall to whisper, "Say, Hell-cat, you won't forget to give credit to Ingersoll, and to me for
tipping you off, will you?"

"You go to hell!" said Elmer.


6


There  was  a sizable and extremely curious gathering at the Y.M.C.A. All day the campus had debated, "Did Hell-cat really sure-enough get saved?
Is he going to cut out his hell-raising?"

Every  man  he knew was present, their gaping mouths dripping question-marks, grinning or doubtful. Their leers confused him, and he was angry at
being introduced by Eddie Fislinger, president of the Y.M.C.A.

He  started coldly, stammering. But Ingersoll had provided the beginning of his discourse, and he warmed to the splendor of his own voice. He saw
the  audience  in the curving Y.M.C.A. auditorium as a radiant cloud, and he began to boom confidently, he began to add to his outline impressive
ideas which were altogether his own--except, perhaps, as he had heard them thirty or forty times in sermons.

It sounded very well, considering. Certainly it compared well with the average mystical rhapsody of the pulpit.

For  all  his  slang,  his  cursing, his mauled plurals and singulars, Elmer had been compelled in college to read certain books, to hear certain
lectures, all filled with flushed, florid polysyllables, with juicy sentiments about God, sunsets, the moral improvement inherent in a daily view
of  mountain scenery, angels, fishing for souls, fishing for fish, ideals, patriotism, democracy, purity, the error of Providence in creating the
female  leg,  courage, humility, justice, the agricultural methods of Palestine circ. 4 A.D., the beauty of domesticity, and preachers' salaries.
These blossoming words, these organ-like phrases, these profound notions had been rammed home till they stuck in his brain, ready for use.

But  even to the schoolboy-wearied faculty who had done the ramming, who ought to have seen the sources, it was still astonishing that after four
years of grunting, Elmer Gantry should come out with these flourishes, which they took perfectly seriously, for they themselves had been nurtured
in minute Baptist and Campbellite colleges.

Not  one  of them considered that there could be anything comic in the spectacle of a large young man, divinely fitted for coal-heaving, standing
up  and wallowing in thick slippery words about Love and the Soul. They sat--young instructors not long from the farm, professors pale from years
of napping in unaired pastoral studies--and looked at Elmer respectfully as he throbbed:

"It's awful' hard for a fellow that's more used to bucking the line than to talking publicly to express how he means, but sometimes I guess maybe
you  think about a lot of things even if you don't always express how you mean, and I want to--what I want to talk about is how if a fellow looks
down  deep into things and is really square with God, and lets God fill his heart with higher aspirations, he sees that--he sees that Love is the
one thing that can really sure-enough lighten all of life's dark clouds.

"Yes,  sir,  just Love! It's the morning and evening star. It's--even in the quiet tomb, I mean those that are around the quiet tomb, you find it
even  there.  What is it that inspires all great men, all poets and patriots and philosophers? It's Love, isn't it? What gave the world its first
evidences of immortality? Love! It fills the world with melody, for what is music? What is music? Why! MUSIC IS THE VOICE OF LOVE!"

The  great President Quarles leaned back and put on his spectacles, which gave a slight appearance of learning to his chin-whiskered countenance,
otherwise  that  of  a  small-town  banker in 1850. He was the center of a row of a dozen initiates on the platform of the Y.M.C.A. auditorium, a
shallow  platform  under a plaster half-dome. The wall behind them was thick with diagrams, rather like anatomical charts, showing the winning of
souls  in  Egypt, the amount spent on whisky versus the amount spent on hymn-books, and the illustrated progress of a pilgrim from Unclean Speech
through  Cigarette  smoking  and  Beer  Saloons  to a lively situation in which he beat his wife, who seemed to dislike it. Above was a large and
enlightening motto: "Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good."

The  whole  place  had  that damp-straw odor characteristic of places of worship, but President Quarles did not, seemingly, suffer in it. All his
life  he had lived in tabernacles and in rooms devoted to thin church periodicals and thick volumes of sermons. He had a slight constant snuffle,
but  his organism was apparently adapted now to existing without air. He beamed and rubbed his hands, and looked with devout joy on Elmer's broad
back as Elmer snapped into it, ever surer of himself; as he bellowed at the audience--beating them, breaking through their interference, making a
touchdown:

"What  is  it makes us different from the animals? The passion of Love! Without it, we are--in fact we are nothing; with it, earth is heaven, and
we  are,  I  mean  to some extent, like God himself! Now that's what I wanted to explain about Love, and here's how it applies. Prob'ly there's a
whole lot of you like myself--oh, I been doing it, I'm not going to spare myself--I been going along thinking I was too good, too big, too smart,
for the divine love of the Savior! Say! Any of you ever stop and think how much you're handing yourself when you figure you can get along without
divine intercession? Say! I suppose prob'ly you're bigger than Moses, bigger than St. Paul, bigger than Pastewer, that great scientist--"

President  Quarles  was  exulting,  "It  was  a  genuine  conversion!  But more than that! Here's a true discovery--my discovery! Elmer is a born
preacher, once he lets himself go, and I can make him do it! O Lord, how mysterious are thy ways! Thou hast chosen to train our young brother not
so  much  in  prayer  as in the mighty struggles of the Olympic field! I--thou, Lord, hast produced a born preacher. Some day he'll be one of our
leading prophets!"

The  audience clapped when Elmer hammered out his conclusion: "--and you Freshmen will save a lot of time that I wasted if you see right now that
until you know God you know--just nothing!"

They  clapped,  they made their faces to shine upon him. Eddie Fislinger won him by sighing, "Old fellow, you got me beat at my own game like you
have at your game!" There was much hand-shaking. None of it was more ardent than that of his recent enemy, the Latin professor, who breathed:

"Where did you get all those fine ideas and metaphors about the Divine Love, Gantry?"

"Oh," modestly, "I can't hardly call them mine, Professor. I guess I just got them by praying."


7


Judson  Roberts, ex-football-star, state secretary of the Y.M.C.A., was on the train to Concordia, Kansas. In the vestibule he had three puffs of
an illegal cigarette and crushed it out.

"No,  really,  it  wasn't so bad for him, that Elmer what's-his-name, to get converted. Suppose there ISN'T anything to it. Won't hurt him to cut
out  some  of his bad habits for a while, anyway. And how do we know? Maybe the Holy Ghost does come down. No more improbable than electricity. I
do  wish I could get over this doubting! I forget it when I've got 'em going in an evangelistic meeting, but when I watch a big butcher like him,
with that damn' silly smirk on his jowls--I believe I'll go into the real estate business. I don't think I'm hurting these young fellows any, but
I do wish I could be honest. Oh, Lordy, Lordy, Lordy, I wish I had a good job selling real estate!"


8


Elmer  walked  home  firmly.  "Just  what  right  has  Mr.  James B. Lefferts got to tell me I mustn't use my ability to get a crowd going? And I
certainly had 'em going! Never knew I could spiel like that. Easy as feetball! And Prexy saying I was a born preacher! Huh!"

Firmly and resentfully he came into their room, and slammed down his hat.

It awoke Jim. "How'd it go over? Hand 'em out the gospel guff?"

"I did!" Elmer trumpeted. "It went over, as you put it, corking. Got any objections?"

He lighted the largest lamp and turned it up full, his back to Jim.

No answer. When he looked about, Jim seemed asleep.

At seven next morning he said forgivingly, rather patronizingly, "I'll be gone till ten--bring you back some breakfast?"

Jim answered, "No, thanks," and those were his only words that morning.

When  Elmer  came in at ten-thirty, Jim was gone, his possessions gone. (It was no great moving: three suitcases of clothes, an armful of books.)
There was a note on the table:


I  shall  live  at  the College Inn the rest of this year. You can probably get Eddie Fislinger to live with you. You would enjoy it. It has been
stimulating to watch you try to be an honest roughneck, but I think it would be almost too stimulating to watch you become a spiritual leader.

J. B. L.


All of Elmer's raging did not make the room seem less lonely.



CHAPTER IV


1


President Quarles urged him.

Elmer would, perhaps, affect the whole world if he became a minister. What glory for Old Terwillinger and all the shrines of Gritzmacher Springs!

Eddie Fislinger urged him.

"Jiminy!  You'd  go way beyond me! I can see you president of the Baptist convention!" Elmer still did not like Eddie, but he was making much now
of ignoring Jim Lefferts (they met on the street and bowed ferociously), and he had to have some one to play valet to his virtues.

The ex-minister dean of the college urged him.

Where  could  Elmer  find  a  profession  with  a  better  social position than the ministry--thousands listening to him--invited to banquets and
everything. So much easier than--Well, not exactly easier; all ministers worked arduously--great sacrifices--constant demands on their sympathy--
heroic  struggle against vice--but same time, elegant and superior work, surrounded by books, high thoughts, and the finest ladies in the city or
country  as  the  case might be. And cheaper professional training than law. With scholarships and outside preaching, Elmer could get through the
three  years  of  Mizpah  Theological Seminary on almost nothing a year. What other plans HAD he for a career? Nothing definite? Why, looked like
divine intervention; certainly did; let's call it settled. Perhaps he could get Elmer a scholarship the very first year--

His mother urged him.

She wrote, daily, that she was longing, praying, sobbing--

Elmer urged himself.

He  had  no  prospects  except  the  chance  of reading law in the dingy office of a cousin in Toluca, Kansas. The only things he had against the
ministry, now that he was delivered from Jim, were the low salaries and the fact that if ministers were caught drinking or flirting, it was often
very  hard  on  them.  The  salaries  weren't so bad--he'd go to the top, of course, and maybe make eight or ten thousand. But the diversions--He
thought about it so much that he made a hasty trip to Cato, and came back temporarily cured forever of any desire for wickedness.

The  greatest  urge  was  his  memory  of  holding  his  audience, playing on them. To move people--Golly! He wanted to be addressing somebody on
something right now, and being applauded!

By  this time he was so rehearsed in his rôle of candidate for righteousness that it didn't bother him (so long as no snickering Jim was present)
to  use  the most embarrassing theological and moral terms in the presence of Eddie or the president; and without one grin he rolled out dramatic
speeches  about  "the duty of every man to lead every other man to Christ," and "the historic position of the Baptists as the one true Scriptural
Church, practising immersion, as taught by Christ himself."

He  was  persuaded.  He  saw himself as a white-browed and star-eyed young evangel, wearing a new frock coat, standing up in a pulpit and causing
hundreds of beautiful women to weep with conviction and rush down to clasp his hand.

But  there was one barrier, extremely serious. They all informed him that select though he was as sacred material, before he decided he must have
a  mystic  experience  known as a Call. God himself must appear and call him to service, and conscious though Elmer was now of his own powers and
the excellence of the church, he saw no more of God about the place than in his worst days of unregeneracy.

He  asked  the  president and the dean if they had had a Call. Oh, yes, certainly; but they were vague about practical tips as to how to invite a
Call  and  recognize  it  when it came. He was reluctant to ask Eddie--Eddie would be only too profuse with tips, and want to kneel down and pray
with him, and generally be rather damp and excitable and messy.

The Call did not come, not for weeks, with Easter past and no decision as to what he was going to do next year.


2


Spring  on  the prairie, high spring. Lilacs masked the speckled brick and stucco of the college buildings, spiræa made a flashing wall, and from
the Kansas fields came soft airs and the whistle of meadow larks.

Students  loafed  at  their  windows,  calling  down  to friends; they played catch on the campus; they went bareheaded and wrote a great deal of
poetry; and the Terwillinger baseball team defeated Fogelquist College.

Still Elmer did not receive his divine Call.

By  day,  playing  catch,  kicking  up  his  heels,  belaboring  his  acquaintances,  singing  "The  happiest days that ever were, we knew at old
Terwillinger" on a fence fondly believed to resemble the Yale fence, or tramping by himself through the minute forest of cottonwood and willow by
Tunker Creek, he expanded with the expanding year and knew happiness.

The nights were unadulterated hell.

He felt guilty that he had no Call, and he went to the president about it in mid-May.

Dr. Quarles was thoughtful, and announced;

"Brother  Elmer,  the  last  thing  I'd ever want to do, in fairness to the spirit of the ministry, would be to create an illusion of a Call when
there was none present. That would be like the pagan hallucinations worked on the poor suffering followers of Roman Catholicism. Whatever else he
may  be, a Baptist preacher must be free from illusions; he must found his work on good hard scientific FACTS--the proven facts of the Bible, and
substitutionary  atonement,  which even pragmatically we know to be true, because it works. No, no! But at the same time I feel sure the voice of
God  is  calling  you, if you can but hear it, and I want to help you lift the veil of worldliness which still, no doubt, deafens your inner ear.
Will you come to my house tomorrow evening? We'll take the matter to the Lord in prayer."

It was all rather dreadful.

That  kindly spring evening, with a breeze fresh in the branches of the sycamores, President Quarles had shut the windows and drawn the blinds in
his  living-room, an apartment filled with crayon portraits of Baptist worthies, red-plush chairs, and leaded-glass unit bookcases containing the
lay  writings  of  the  more poetic clergy. The president had gathered as assistants in prayer the more aged and fundamentalist ex-pastors on the
faculty and the more milky and elocutionary of the Y.M.C.A. leaders, headed by Eddie Fislinger.

When Elmer entered, they were on their knees, their arms on the seats of reversed chairs, their heads bowed, all praying aloud and together. They
looked  up  at him like old women surveying the bride. He wanted to bolt. Then the president nabbed him, and had him down on his knees, suffering
and embarrassed and wondering what the devil to pray about.

They took turns at telling God what he ought to do in the case of "our so ardently and earnestly seeking brother."

"Now  will  you  lift your voice in prayer, Brother Elmer? Just let yourself go. Remember we're all with you, all loving and helping you," grated
the president.

They  crowded  near  him.  The  president  put  his  stiff  old arm about Elmer's shoulder. It felt like a dry bone, and the president smelled of
kerosene.  Eddie  crowded  up  on the other side and nuzzled against him. The others crept in, patting him. It was horribly hot in that room, and
they  were  so  close--he  felt  as if he were tied down in a hospital ward. He looked up and saw the long shaven face, the thin tight lips, of a
minister . . . whom he was now to emulate.

He prickled with horror, but he tried to pray. He wailed, "O blessed Lord, help me to--help me to--"

He had an enormous idea. He sprang up. He cried, "Say, I think the spirit is beginning to work and maybe if I just went out and took a short walk
and kinda prayed by myself, while you stayed here and prayed for me, it might help."

"I  don't  think  that  would  be  the way," began the president, but the most aged faculty-member suggested, "Maybe it's the Lord's guidance. We
hadn't ought to interfere with the Lord's guidance, Brother Quarles."

"That's so, that's so," the president announced. "You have your walk, Brother Elmer, and pray hard, and we'll stay here and besiege the throne of
grace for you."

Elmer blundered out into the fresh clean air.

Whatever happened, he was never going back! How he hated their soft, crawly, wet hands!

He  had  notions  of catching the last train to Cato and getting solacingly drunk. No. He'd lose his degree, just a month off now, and be cramped
later in appearing as a real, high-class, college-educated lawyer.

Lose it, then! Anything but go back to their crawling creepy hands, their aged breathing by his ear--

He'd  get  hold of somebody and say he felt sick and send him back to tell Prexy and sneak off to bed. Cinch! He just wouldn't get his Call, just
pass it up, by Jiminy, and not have to go into the ministry.

But  to  lose  the chance to stand before thousands and stir them by telling about divine love and the evening and morning star--If he could just
stand  it till he got through theological seminary and was on the job--Then, if any Eddie Fislinger tried to come into his study and breathe down
his neck--throw him out, by golly!

He was conscious that he was leaning against a tree, tearing down twigs, and that facing him under a street-lamp was Jim Lefferts.

"You look sick, Hell-cat," said Jim.

Elmer strove for dignity, then broke, with a moaning, "Oh, I am! What did I ever get into this religious fix for?"

"What they doing to you? Never mind; don't tell me. You need a drink."

"By God, I do!"

"I've  got  a  quart  of  first-rate  corn  whisky from a moonshiner I've dug up out here in the country, and my room's right in this block. Come
along."

Through his first drink, Elmer was quiet, bewildered, vaguely leaning on the Jim who would guide him away from this horror.

But  he  was  out  of  practice  in  drinking,  and  the  whisky  took  hold with speed. By the middle of the second glass he was boasting of his
ecclesiastical  eloquence, he was permitting Jim to know that never in Terwillinger College had there appeared so promising an orator, that right
now they were there praying for him, waiting for him, the president and the whole outfit!

"But," with a slight return of apology, "I suppose prob'ly you think maybe I hadn't ought to go back to 'em."

Jim  was  standing by the open window, saying slowly, "No. I think now--You'd better go back. I've got some peppermints. They'll fix your breath,
more or less. Good-by, Hell-cat."

He had won even over old Jim!

He was master of the world, and only a very little bit drunk.

He  stepped  out  high  and happy. Everything was extremely beautiful. How high the trees were! What a wonderful drugstore window, with all those
glossy new magazine covers! That distant piano--magic. What exquisite young women the co-eds! What lovable and sturdy men the students! He was at
peace  with  everything.  What  a  really  good  fellow  he was! He'd lost all his meannesses. How kind he'd been to that poor lonely sinner, Jim
Lefferts. Others might despair of Jim's soul--he never would.

Poor  old  Jim.  His room had looked terrible--that narrow little room with a cot, all in disorder, a pair of shoes and a corncob pipe lying on a
pile of books. Poor Jim. He'd forgive him. Go around and clean up the room for him.

(Not that Elmer had ever cleaned up their former room.)

Gee, what a lovely spring night! How corking those old boys were, Prexy and everybody, to give up an evening and pray for him!

Why was it he felt so fine? Of course! The Call had come! God had come to him, though just spiritually, not corporeally, so far as he remembered.
It had come! He could go ahead and rule the world!

He  dashed  into  the president's house; he shouted from the door, erect, while they knelt and looked up at him mousily, "It's come! I feel it in
everything! God just opened my eyes and made me feel what a wonderful ole world it is, and it was just like I could hear his voice saying, 'Don't
you  want  to  love  everybody  and  help  them  to  be  happy? Do you want to just go along being selfish, or have you got a longing to--to help
everybody?'"

He stopped. They had listened silently, with interested grunts of "Amen, Brother."

"Honest,  it  was  awful'  impressive. Somehow, something has made me feel so much better than when I went away from here. I'm sure it was a real
Call. Don't you think so, President?"

"Oh, I'm sure of it!" the president ejaculated, getting up hastily and rubbing his knees.

"I feel that all is right with our brother; that he has now, this sacred moment, heard the voice of God, and is entering upon the highest calling
in the sight of God," the president observed to the dean. "Don't you feel so?"

"God be praised," said the dean, and looked at his watch.


3


On  their  way  home,  they two alone, the oldest faculty-member said to the dean, "Yes, it was a fine gratifying moment. And--herumph!--slightly
surprising.  I'd  hardly  thought  that  young  Gantry  would  go  on being content with the mild blisses of salvation. Herumph! Curious smell of
peppermint he had about him."

"I  suppose  he stopped at the drug-store during his walk and had a soft drink of some kind. Don't know, Brother," said the dean, "that I approve
of these soft drinks. Innocent in themselves, but they might lead to carelessness in beverages. A man who drinks ginger ale--how are you going to
impress on him the terrible danger of drinking ALE?"

"Yes,  yes,"  said the oldest faculty-member (he was sixty-eight, to the dean's boyish sixty). "Say, Brother, how do you feel about young Gantry?
About  his  entering the ministry? I know you did well in the pulpit before you came here, as I more or less did myself, but if you were a boy of
twenty-one or -two, do you think you'd become a preacher now, way things are?"

"Why,  Brother!"  grieved  the  dean.  "Certainly  I would! What a question! What would become of all our work at Terwillinger, all our ideals in
opposition to the heathenish large universities, if the ministry weren't the highest ideal--"

"I know. I know. I just wonder sometimes--All the new vocations that are coming up. Medicine. Advertising. World just going it! I tell you, Dean,
in another forty years, by 1943, men will be up in the air in flying machines, going maybe a hundred miles an hour!"

"My dear fellow, if the Lord had meant men to fly, he'd have given us wings."

"But there are prophecies in the Book--"

"Those  refer  purely  to  spiritual  and symbolic flying. No, no! Never does to oppose the clear purpose of the Bible, and I could dig you out a
hundred  texts  that show unquestionably that the Lord intends us to stay right here on earth till that day when we shall be upraised in the body
with him."

"Herumph! Maybe. Well, here's my corner. Good night, Brother."

The dean came into his house. It was a small house.

"How'd it go?" asked his wife.

"Splendid. Young Gantry seemed to feel an unmistakable divine call. Something struck him that just uplifted him. He's got a lot of power. Only--"

The dean irritably sat down in a cane-seated rocker, jerked off his shoes, grunted, drew on his slippers.

"Only, hang it, I simply can't get myself to like him! Emma, tell me: If I were his age now, do you think I'd go into the ministry, as things are
today?"

"Why,  Henry!  What  in  the world ever makes you say a thing like that? Of course you would! Why, if that weren't the case--What would our whole
lives mean, all we've given up and everything?"

"Oh,  I  know. I just get to thinking. Sometimes I wonder if we've given up so much. Don't hurt even a preacher to face himself! After all, those
two  years when I was in the carpet business, before I went to the seminary, I didn't do very well. Maybe I wouldn't have made any more than I do
now.  But  if  I  could--Suppose  I  could've  been a great chemist? Wouldn't that (mind you, I'm just speculating, as a student of psychology)--
wouldn't that conceivably be better than year after year of students with the same confounded problems over and over again--and always so pleased
and  surprised  and  important  about them!--or year after year again of standing in the pulpit and knowing your congregation don't remember what
you've said seven minutes after you've said it?"

"Why,  Henry,  I don't know what's gotten into you! I think you better do a little praying yourself instead of picking on this poor young Gantry!
Neither you nor I could ever have been happy except in a Baptist church or a real cover-to-cover Baptist college."

The dean's wife finished darning the towels and went up to say good-night to her parents.

They  had  lived with her since her father's retirement, at seventy-five, from his country pastorate. He had been a missionary in Missouri before
the Civil War.

Her  lips  had  been  moving,  her  eyebrows  working,  as she darned the towels; her eyebrows were still creased as she came into their room and
shrieked at her father's deafness:

"Time to go to bed, Papa. And you, Mama."

They were nodding on either side of a radiator unheated for months.

"All right, Emmy," piped the ancient.

"Say Papa--Tell me: I've been thinking: If you were just a young man today, would you go into the ministry?"

"Course I would! What an idea! Most glorious vocation young man could have. Idea! G'night, Emmy!"

But  as  his  ancient wife sighingly removed her corsets, she complained, "Don't know as you would or not--if _I_ was married to you--which ain't
any too certain, a second time--and if I had anything to say about it."

"Which IS certain! Don't be foolish. Course I would."

"I  don't  know.  Fifty  years  _I_  had  of it, and I never did get so I wa'n't just mad clear through when the ladies of the church came poking
around,  criticizing me for every little tidy I put on the chairs, and talking something terrible if I had a bonnet or a shawl that was the least
mite  tasty.  ''Twa'n't  suitable  for a minister's wife.' Drat 'em! And I always did like a bonnet with some nice bright colors. Oh, I've done a
right smart of thinking about it. You always were a powerful preacher, but's I've told you--"

"You have!"

"--I  never could make out how, if when you were in the pulpit you really knew so much about all these high and mighty and mysterious things, how
it was when you got home you never knew enough, and you never could learn enough, to find the hammer or make a nice piece of corn-bread or add up
a column of figures twice alike or find Oberammergau on the map of Austria!"

"Germany, woman! I'm sleepy!"

"And  all these years of having to pretend to be so good when we were just common folks all the time! Ain't you glad you can just be simple folks
now?"

"Maybe  it  is  restful. But that's not saying I wouldn't do it over again." The old man ruminated a long while. "I think I would. Anyway, no use
discouraging these young people from entering the ministry. Somebody got to preach the gospel truth, ain't they?"

"I  suppose  so.  Oh,  dear.  Fifty  years since I married a preacher! And if I could still only be sure about the virgin birth! Now don't you go
explaining! Laws, the number of times you've explained! I know it's true--it's in the Bible. If I could only BELIEVE it! But--

"I  would  of  liked  to  had you try your hand at politics. If I could of been, just once, to a senator's house, to a banquet or something, just
once,  in  a  nice  bright  red  dress  with  gold  slippers, I'd of been willing to go back to alpaca and scrubbing floors, and listening to you
rehearsing  your  sermons,  out in the stable, to that old mare we had for so many years--oh, laws, how long is it she's been dead now? Must be--
yes, it's twenty-seven years--

"Why  is  that  it's  only  in  religion  that the things you got to believe are agin all experience? Now drat it, don't you go and quote that 'I
believe because it IS impossible' thing at me again! Believe because it's impossible! Huh! Just like a minister!

"Oh,  dear, I hope I don't live long enough to lose my faith. Seems like the older I get, the less I'm excited over all these preachers that talk
about hell only they never saw it.

"Twenty-seven years! And we had that old hoss so long before that. My how she could kick--Busted that buggy--"

They were both asleep.



CHAPTER V


1


In  the  cottonwood  grove  by the muddy river, three miles west of Paris, Kansas, the godly were gathered with lunch-baskets, linen dusters, and
moist  unhappy  babies  for  the all-day celebration. Brothers Elmer Gantry and Edward Fislinger had been licensed to preach before, but now they
were to be ordained as full-fledged preachers, as Baptist ministers.

They  had  come  home  from  distant  Mizpah  Theological  Seminary  for  ordination by their own council of churches, the Kayooska River Baptist
Association.  Both  of  them  had  another  year  to  go  out  of the three-year seminary course, but by the more devout and rural brethren it is
considered  well  to ordain the clerics early, so that even before they attain infallible wisdom they may fill backwoods pulpits and during week-
ends do good works with divine authority.

His  vacation  after  college Elmer had spent on a farm; during vacation after his first year in seminary he had been supervisor in a boys' camp;
now, after ordination, he was to supply at the smaller churches in his corner of Kansas.

During  his  second  year of seminary, just finished, he had been more voluminously bored than ever at Terwillinger. Constantly he had thought of
quitting,  but  after  his journeys to the city of Monarch, where he was in closer relation to fancy ladies and to bartenders than one would have
desired  in  a holy clerk, he got a second wind in his resolve to lead a pure life, and so managed to keep on toward perfection, as symbolized by
the degree of Bachelor of Divinity.

But if he had been bored, he had acquired professional training.

He  was  able  now  to  face  any  audience  and  to discourse authoritatively on any subject whatever, for any given time to the second, without
trembling  and  without  any errors of speech beyond an infrequent "ain't" or "he don't." He had an elegant vocabulary. He knew eighteen synonyms
for  sin,  half of them very long and impressive, and the others very short and explosive and minatory--minatory being one of his own best words,
constantly useful in terrifying the as yet imaginary horde of sinners gathered before him.

He  was  no longer embarrassed by using the most intimate language about God; without grinning he could ask a seven-year-old-boy, "Don't you want
to  give up your vices?" and without flinching, he could look a tobacco salesman in the eye and demand, "Have you ever knelt before the throne of
grace?"

Whatever  worldly  expressions  he might use in sub rosa conversations with the less sanctified theological students, such as Harry Zenz, who was
the most confirmed atheist in the school, in public he never so much as said "doggone" and he had on tap, for immediate and skilled use, a number
of such phrases as "Brother, I am willing to help you find religion," "My whole life is a testimonial to my faith," "To the inner eye there is no
trouble  in  comprehending  the  threefold  nature  of divinity," "We don't want any long-faced Christians in this church--the fellow that's been
washed  in  the  blood  of  the  Lamb  is  just so happy he goes 'round singing and hollering hallelujah all day long," and "Come on now, all get
together,  and  let's  make  this  the biggest collection this church has ever seen." He could explain foreordination thoroughly, and he used the
words "baptizo" and "Athanasian."

He  would,  perhaps,  be less orchestral, less Palladian, when he had been in practise for a year or two after graduation and discovered that the
hearts  of  men  are vile, their habits low, and that they are unwilling to hand the control of all those habits over to the parson. But he would
recover again, and he was a promise of what he might be in twenty years, as a ten-thousand-dollar seer.

He had grown broader, his glossy hair, longer than at Terwillinger, was brushed back from his heavy white brow, his nails were oftener clean, and
his  speech  was  Jovian.  It  was more sonorous, more measured and pontifical; he could, and did, reveal his interested knowledge of your secret
moral diabetes merely by saying, "How are we today, Brother?"

And  though  he  had  almost  flunked  in  Greek,  his thesis on "Sixteen Ways of Paying a Church Debt" had won the ten-dollar prize in Practical
Theology.


2


He  walked among the Kayooska Valley communicants, beside his mother. She was a small-town business woman; she was not unduly wrinkled or shabby;
indeed  she  wore  a good little black hat and a new brown silk frock with a long gold chain; but she was inconspicuous beside his bulk and sober
magnificence.

He  wore  for the ceremony a new double-breasted suit of black broadcloth, and new black shoes. So did Eddie Fislinger, along with a funereal tie
and  a black wide felt hat, like a Texas congressman's. But Elmer was more daring. Had he not understood that he must show dignity, he would have
indulged  himself in the gaudiness for which he had a talent. He had compromised by buying a beautiful light gray felt hat in Chicago, on his way
home, and he had ventured on a red-bordered gray silk handkerchief, which gave a pleasing touch of color to his sober chest.

But he had left off, for the day, the large opal ring surrounded by almost gold serpents for which he had lusted and to which he had yielded when
in liquor, in the city of Monarch.

He  walked  as an army with banners, he spoke like a trombone, he gestured widely with his large blanched thick hand; and his mother, on his arm,
looked  up  in  ecstasy. He wafted her among the crowd, affable as a candidate for probate judgeship, and she was covered with the fringes of his
glory.

For the ordination, perhaps two hundred Baptist laymen and laywomen and at least two hundred babies had come in from neighboring congregations by
buckboard,  democrat  wagon,  and  buggy.  (It  was 1905; there was as yet no Ford nearer than Fort Scott.) They were honest, kindly, solid folk;
farmers  and blacksmiths and cobblers; men with tanned deep-lined faces, wearing creased "best suits"; the women, deep bosomed or work-shriveled,
in  clean  gingham.  There  was one village banker, very chatty and democratic, in a new crash suit. They milled like cattle, in dust up to their
shoe  laces,  and dust veiled them, in the still heat, under the dusty branches of the cottonwoods from which floated shreds to catch and glisten
on the rough fabric of their clothes.

Six preachers had combined to assist the Paris parson in his ceremony, and one of them was no less than the Rev. Dr. Ingle, come all the way from
St.  Joe, where he was said to have a Sunday School of six hundred. As a young man--very thin and eloquent in a frock coat--Dr. Ingle had for six
months  preached  in  Paris, and Mrs. Gantry remembered him as her favorite minister. He had been so kind to her when she was ill; had come in to
read "Ben Hur" aloud, and tell stories to a chunky little Elmer given to hiding behind furniture and heaving vegetables at visitors.

"Well, well, Brother, so this is the little tad I used to know as a shaver! Well, you always were a good little mannie, and they tell me that now
you're a consecrated young man--that you're destined to do a great work for the Lord," Dr. Ingle greeted Elmer.

"Thank you, Doctor. Pray for me. It's an honor to have you come from your great church," said Elmer.

"Not  a  bit  of  trouble.  On  my way to Colorado--I've taken a cabin way up in the mountains there--glorious view--sunsets--painted by the Lord
himself. My congregation have been so good as to give me two months' vacation. Wish you could pop up there for a while, Brother Elmer."

"I wish I could, Doctor, but I have to try in my humble way to keep the fires burning around here."

Mrs.  Gantry was panting. To have her little boy discoursing with Dr. Ingle as though they were equals! To hear him talking like a preacher--just
as  NATURAL! And some day--Elmer with a famous church; with a cottage in Colorado for the summer; married to a dear pious little woman, with half
a  dozen children; and herself invited to join them for the summer; all of them kneeling in family prayers, led by Elmer . . . though it was true
Elmer  declined to hold family prayers just now; said he'd had too much of it in seminary all year . . . too bad, but she'd keep on coaxing . . .
and  if  he  just WOULD stop smoking, as she had begged and besought him to do . . . well, perhaps if he didn't have a few naughtinesses left, he
wouldn't  hardly  be  her little boy any more. . . . How she'd had to scold once upon a time to get him to wash his hands and put on the nice red
woolen wristlets she'd knitted for him!

No  less  satisfying to her was the way in which Elmer impressed all their neighbors. Charley Watley, the house-painter, commander of the Ezra P.
Nickerson  Post  of the G.A.R. of Paris, who had always pulled his white mustache and grunted when she had tried to explain Elmer's hidden powers
of holiness, took her aside to admit: "You were right, Sister; he makes a find upstanding young man of God."

They  encountered  that  town  problem, Hank McVittle, the druggist. Elmer and he had been mates; together they had stolen sugar-corn, drunk hard
cider,  and indulged in haymow venery. Hank was a small red man, with a lascivious and knowing eye. It was certain that he had come today only to
laugh at Elmer.

They met face on, and Hank observed, "Morning, Mrs. Gantry. Well, Elmy, going to be a preacher, eh?"

"I am, Hank."

"Like it?" Hank was grinning and scratching his cheek with a freckled hand; other unsanctified Parisians were listening.

Elmer  boomed,  "I do, Hank. I love it! I love the ways of the Lord, and I don't ever propose to put my foot into any others! Because I've tasted
the  fruit  of evil, Hank--you know that. And there's nothing to it. What fun we had, Hank, was nothing to the peace and joy I feel now. I'm kind
of  sorry  for  you,  my  boy."  He loomed over Hank, dropped his paw heavily on his shoulder. "Why don't you try to get right with God? Or maybe
you're smarter than he is!"

"Never claimed to be anything of the sort!" snapped Hank, and in that testiness Elmer triumphed, his mother exulted.

She  was  sorry  to  see  how few were congratulating Eddie Fislinger, who was also milling, but motherless, inconspicuous, meek to the presiding
clergy.

Old  Jewkins, humble, gentle old farmer, inched up to murmur, "Like to shake your hand, Brother Elmer. Mighty fine to see you chosen thus and put
aside  for  the work of the Lord. Jiggity! T'think I remember you as knee-high to a grasshopper! I suppose you study a lot of awful learned books
now."

"They  make  us work good and hard, Brother Jewkins. They give us pretty deep stuff: hermeneutics, chrestomathy, pericopes, exegesis, homiletics,
liturgies, isagogics, Greek and Hebrew and Aramaic, hymnology, apologetics--oh, a good deal."

"Well!  I  should  SAY  so!"  worshiped  old Jewkins, while Mrs. Gantry marveled to find Elmer even more profound than she had thought, and Elmer
reflected proudly that he really did know what all but a couple of the words meant.

"My!" sighed his mother. "You're getting so educated, I declare t' goodness pretty soon I won't hardly dare to talk to you!"

"Oh,  no.  There'll never come a time when you and I won't be the best of pals, or when I won't need the inspiration of your prayers!" said Elmer
Gantry melodiously, with refined but manly laughter.


3


They were assembling on benches, wagon-seats and boxes for the ceremony of ordination.

The pulpit was a wooden table with a huge Bible and a pitcher of lemonade. Behind it were seven rocking chairs for the clergy, and just in front,
two hard wooden chairs for the candidates.

The  present  local  pastor, Brother Dinger, was a meager man, slow of speech and given to long prayers. He rapped on the table. "We will, uh, we
will now begin."

.  .  .  Elmer, looking handsome on a kitchen chair in front of the rows of flushed hot faces. He stopped fretting that his shiny new black shoes
were  dust-gray.  His  heart pounded. He was in for it! No escape! He was going to be a pastor! Last chance for Jim Lefferts, and Lord knew where
Jim  was.  He  couldn't--His  shoulder muscles were rigid. Then they relaxed wearily, as though he had struggled to satiety, while Brother Dinger
went on:

"Well, we'll start with the usual, uh, examination of our young brothers, and the brethren have, uh, they've been good enough, uh, to let me, uh,
in  whose  charge  one,  uh,  one  of these fine young brothers has always lived and made his home--to let me, uh, let me ask the questions. Now,
Brother Gantry, do you believe fully and whole-heartedly in baptism by immersion?"

Elmer was thinking, "What a rotten pulpit voice the poor duck has," but aloud he was rumbling:

"I believe, Brother, and I've been taught, that possibly a man MIGHT be saved if he'd just been baptized by sprinkling or pouring, but only if he
were  ignorant  of the truth. Of course immersion is the only Scriptural way--if we're really going to be like Christ, we must be buried with him
in baptism."

"That's fine, Brother Gantry. Praise God! Now, Brother Fislinger, do you believe in the final perseverance of the saints?"

Eddie's  eager  but  cracked voice explaining--on--on--somniferous as the locusts in the blazing fields across the Kayooska River. As there is no
hierarchy  in  the  Baptist  Church, but only a free association of like-minded local churches, so are there no canonical forms of procedure, but
only  customs.  The ceremony of ordination is not a definite rite; it may vary as the local associations will, and ordination is conferred not by
any bishop but by the general approval of the churches in an association.

The  questions were followed by the "charge to the candidates," a tremendous discourse by the great Dr. Ingle, in which he commended study, light
meals,  and  helping  the sick by going and reading texts to them. Every one joined then in a tremendous basket-lunch on long plank tables by the
cool  river  .  .  . banana layer cake, doughnuts, fried chicken, chocolate layer cake, scalloped potatoes, hermit cookies, cocoa-nut layer cake,
pickled  tomato  preserves,  on  plates  which  skidded  about the table, with coffee poured into saucerless cups from a vast tin pot, inevitably
scalding  at  least  one  child,  who  howled.  There were hearty shouts of "Pass the lemon pie, Sister Skiff," and "That was a fine discourse of
Brother  Ingle's,"  and  "Oh,  dear, I dropped my spoon and an ant got on it--well, I'll just wipe it on my apron--that was fine, the way Brother
Gantry  explained  how  the  Baptist  Church has existed ever since Bible days." . . . Boys bathing, shrieking, splashing one another. . . . Boys
getting  into  the  poison  ivy.  . . . Boys becoming so infected with the poison ivy that they would turn spotty and begin to swell within seven
hours.  .  .  .  Dr.  Ingle  enthusiastically telling the other clergy of his trip to the Holy Land. . . . Elmer lying about his fondness for the
faculty of his theological seminary.

Reassembled  after  lunch,  Brother  Tusker, minister of the largest congregation in the association, gave the "charge to the churches." This was
always  the  juiciest  and  most  scandalous  and  delightful  part  of the ordination ceremony. In it the clergy had a chance to get back at the
parishioners who, as large contributors, as guaranteed saints, had all year been nagging them.

Here  were  these  fine  young  men  going  into  the  ministry, said Brother Tusker. Well, it was up to them to help. Brother Gantry and Brother
Fislinger  were leaping with the joy of sacrifice and learning. Then let the churches give 'em a chance, and not make' em spend all the time hot-
footing  it around, as some older preachers had to do, raising their own salaries! Let folks quit criticizing; let 'em appreciate godly lives and
the quickening word once in a while, instead of ham-ham-hammering their preachers all day long!

And certain of the parties who criticized the preachers' wives for idleness--funny the way some of THEM seemed to have so much time to gad around
and  notice things and spread scandal! T'wa'n't only the menfolks that the Savior was thinking of when he talked about them that were without sin
being the only folks that were qualified to heave any rocks!

The  other  preachers  leaned  back in their chairs and tried to look casual, and hoped that Brother Tusker was going to bear down even a lee-tle
heavier on that matter of raising salaries.

In  his  sermon  and  the  concluding  ordination  prayer  Brother  Knoblaugh (of Barkinsville) summed up, for the benefit of Elmer Gantry, Eddie
Fislinger, and God, the history of the Baptists, the importance of missions, and the peril of not reading the Bible before breakfast daily.

Through this long prayer, the visiting pastors stood with their hands on the heads of Elmer and Eddie.

There  was a grotesque hitch at first. Most of the ministers were little men who could no more than reach up to Elmer's head. They stood strained
and  awkward  and unecclesiastical, these shabby good men, before the restless audience. There was a giggle. Elmer had a dramatic flash. He knelt
abruptly, and Eddie, peering and awkward, followed him.

In  the powdery gray dust Elmer knelt, ignoring it. On his head were the worn hands of three veteran preachers, and suddenly he was humble, for a
moment he was veritably being ordained to the priestly service of God.

He  had  been  only impatient till this instant. In the chapels at Mizpah and Terwillinger he had heard too many famous visiting pulpiteers to be
impressed  by  the  rustic  eloquence  of  the  Kayooska  Association. But he felt now their diffident tenderness, their unlettered fervor--these
poverty-twisted  parsons  who believed, patient in their bare and baking tabernacles, that they were saving the world, and who wistfully welcomed
the youths that they themselves had been.

For the first time in weeks Elmer prayed not as an exhibition but sincerely, passionately, savoring righteousness:

"Dear God--I'll get down to it--not show off but just think of thee--do good--God help me!"

Coolness  fluttered  the  heavy  dust-caked  leaves,  and  as  the sighing crowd creaked up from their benches, Elmer Gantry stood confident. . .
ordained minister of the gospel.



CHAPTER VI


1


The  state  of  Winnemac lies between Pittsburgh and Chicago, and in Winnemac, perhaps a hundred miles south of the city of Zenith, is Babylon, a
town  which suggests New England more than the Middle West. Large elms shade it, there are white pillars beyond lilac bushes, and round about the
town is a serenity unknown on the gusty prairies.

Here  is  Mizpah Theological Seminary, of the Northern Baptists. (There is a Northern and Southern convention of this distinguished denomination,
because before the Civil War the Northern Baptists proved by the Bible, unanswerably, that slavery was wrong; and the Southern Baptists proved by
the Bible, irrefutably, that slavery was the will of God.)

The  three  buildings of the seminary are attractive; brick with white cupolas, green blinds at the small-paned wide windows. But within they are
bare, with hand-rubbings along the plaster walls, with portraits of missionaries and ragged volumes of sermons.

The large structure is the dormitory, Elizabeth J. Schmutz Hall--known to the less reverent as Smut Hall.

Here  lived  Elmer  Gantry,  now  ordained  but  completing  the  last  year of work for his Bachelor of Divinity degree, a commodity of value in
bargaining with the larger churches.

There  were  only  sixteen  left  now of his original class of thirty-five. The others had dropped out, for rural preaching, life insurance, or a
melancholy  return  to  plowing.  There  was  no  one  with whom he wanted to live, and he dwelt sulkily in a single room, with a cot, a Bible, a
portrait of his mother, and with a copy of "What a Young Man Ought to Know," concealed inside his one starched pulpit shirt.

He  disliked  most  of his class. They were too rustic or too pious, too inquisitive about his monthly trips to the city of Monarch or simply too
dull.  Elmer  liked the company of what he regarded as intellectual people. He never understood what they were saying, but to hear them saying it
made him feel superior.

The  group  which  he  most  frequented gathered in the room of Frank Shallard and Don Pickens, the large corner room on the second floor of Smut
Hall.

It  was  not an esthetic room. Though Frank Shallard might have come to admire pictures, great music, civilized furniture, he had been trained to
regard  them  as  worldly, and to content himself with art which "presented a message," to regard "Les Miserables" as superior because the bishop
was a kind man, and "The Scarlet Letter" as a poor book because the heroine was sinful and the author didn't mind.

The walls were of old plaster, cracked and turned deathly gray, marked with the blood of mosquitoes and bed-bugs slain in portentous battles long
ago  by  theologians  now  gone  forth to bestow their thus uplifted visions on a materialistic world. The bed was a skeleton of rusty iron bars,
sagging  in the center, with a comforter which was not too clean. Trunks were in the corners, and the wardrobe was a row of hooks behind a calico
curtain.  The  grass  matting  was slowly dividing into separate strands, and under the study table it had been scuffed through to the cheap pine
flooring.

The only pictures were Frank's steel engraving of Roger Williams, his framed and pansy-painted copy of "Pippa Passes," and Don Pickens' favorite,
a country church by winter moonlight, with tinsel snow, which sparkled delightfully. The only untheological books were Frank's poets: Wordsworth,
Longfellow,  Tennyson,  Browning,  in  standard  volumes,  fine-printed  and  dismal, and one really dangerous papist document, his "Imitation of
Christ," about which there was argument at least once a week.

In  his  room  squatting  on straight chairs, the trunks, and the bed, on a November evening in 1905, were five young men besides Elmer and Eddie
Fislinger.  Eddie  did  not really belong to the group, but he persisted in following Elmer, feeling that not even yet was everything quite right
with the brother.

"A  preacher  has  got to be just as husky and pack just as good a wallop as a prize-fighter. He ought to be able to throw out any roughneck that
tries  to  interrupt  his  meetings,  and still more, strength makes such a hit with the women in his congregation--of course I don't mean it any
wrong way," said Wallace Umstead.

Wallace  was  a  student-instructor,  head  of  the  minute seminary gymnasium and "director of physical culture"; a young man who had a military
mustache  and  who  did  brisk things on horizontal bars. He was a state university B.A. and graduate of a physical-training school. He was going
into  Y.M.C.A.  work  when  he should have a divinity degree, and he was fond of saying, "Oh, I'm still one of the boys, you know, even if I am a
prof."

"That's  right,"  agreed  Elmer  Gantry. "Say, I had--I was holding a meeting at Grauten, Kansas, last summer, and there was a big boob that kept
interrupting, so I just jumped down from the platform and went up to him, and he says, 'Say, Parson,' he says, 'Can you tell us what the Almighty
wants  us  to do about prohibition, considering he told Paul to take some wine for his stomach's sake?' 'I don't know as I can,' I says, 'but you
want  to  remember  he  also commanded us to cast out devils!' and I yanked that yahoo out of his seat and threw him out on his ear, and say, the
whole  crowd--well, there weren't so awfully many there, but they certainly did give him the ha-ha! You bet. And to be husky makes a hit with the
whole  congregation,  men's  well as women. But there's more'n one high-toned preacher that got his pulpit because the deacons felt he could lick
'em.  Of  course praying and all that is all O.K., but you got to be practical! We're here to do good, but first you have to cinch a job that you
can do good in!"

"You're commercial!" protested Eddie Fislinger, and Frank Shallard: "Good heavens, Gantry, is that all your religion means to you?"

"Besides,"  said  Horace  Carp,  "you  have  the wrong angle. It isn't mere brute force that appeals to women--to congregations. It's a beautiful
voice. I don't envy you your bulk, Elmer--besides, you're going to get fat--"

"I am like hell!"

"--but what I could do with that voice of yours! I'd have 'em all weeping! I'd read 'em poetry from the pulpit!"

Horace  Carp was the one High Churchman in the Seminary. He was a young man who resembled a water spaniel, who concealed Saints' images, incense,
and  a  long  piece  of  scarlet  brocade  in  his  room, and who wore a purple velvet smoking-jacket. He was always raging because his father, a
wholesale plumber and pious, had threatened to kick him out if he went to an Episcopal seminary instead of a Baptist fortress.

"Yes,  you  prob'ly would read 'em poetry!" said Elmer. "That's the trouble with you high-falutin' guys. You think you can get people by a lot of
poetry and junk. What gets 'em and holds 'em and brings 'em to their pews every Sunday is the straight gospel--and it don't hurt one bit to scare
'em into being righteous with the good old-fashioned Hell!"

"You  bet--providing  you encourage 'em to keep their bodies in swell shape, too," condescended Wallace Umstead. "Well, I don't want to talk as a
prof--after  all  I'm  glad  I  can  still  remain just one of the Boys--but you aren't going to develop any very big horse-power in your praying
tomorrow morning if you don't get your sleep. And me to my little downy! G'night!"

At  the  closing  of  the  door,  Harry Zenz, the seminary iconoclast, yawned, "Wallace is probably the finest slice of tripe in my wide clerical
experience. Thank God, he's gone! Now we can be natural and talk dirty!"

"And  yet,"  complained  Frank  Shallard,  "you  encourage him to stay and talk about his pet methods of exercise! Don't you ever tell the truth,
Harry?"

"Never  carelessly. Why, you idiot, I want Wallace to run and let the dean know what an earnest worker in the vineyard I am. Frank, you're a poor
innocent.  I  suspect  you  actually believe some of the dope they teach us here. And yet you're a man of some reading. You're the only person in
Mizpah  except  myself who could appreciate a paragraph of Huxley. Lord, how I pity you when you get into the ministry! Of course, Fislinger here
is a grocery clerk, Elmer is a ward politician, Horace is a dancing master--"

He was drowned beneath a surf of protests, not too jocose and friendly.

Harry  Zenz  was  older  than the others--thirty-two at least. He was plump, almost completely bald, and fond of sitting still; and he could look
profoundly  stupid.  He  was  a  man  of  ill-assorted  but astonishing knowledge; and in the church ten miles from Mizpah which he had regularly
supplied for two years he was considered a man of humorless learning and bloodless piety. He was a complete and cheerful atheist, but he admitted
it  only  to  Elmer  Gantry  and  Horace  Carp. Elmer regarded him as a sort of Jim Lefferts, but he was as different from Jim as pork fat from a
crystal.  He hid his giggling atheism--Jim flourished his; he despised women--Jim had a disillusioned pity for the Juanita Klauzels of the world;
he had an intellect--Jim had only cynical guesses.

Zenz interrupted their protests:

"So  you're  a  bunch  of Erasmuses! You ought to know. And there's no hypocrisy in what we teach and preach! We're a specially selected group of
Parsifals--beautiful  to the eye and stirring to the ear and overflowing with knowledge of what God said to the Holy Ghost in camera at 9:16 last
Wednesday  morning. We're all just rarin' to go out and preach the precious Baptist doctrine of 'Get ducked or duck.' We're wonders. We admit it.
And  people  actually sit and listen to us, and don't choke! I suppose they're overwhelmed by our nerve! And we have to have nerve, or we'd never
dare to stand in a pulpit again. We'd quit, and pray God to forgive us for having stood up there and pretended that we represent God, and that we
can explain what we ourselves say are the unexplainable mysteries! But I still claim that there are preachers who haven't our holiness. Why is it
that the clergy are so given to sex crimes?"

"That's not true!" from Eddie Fislinger.

"Don't  talk  that  way!" Don Pickens begged. Don was Frank's roommate: a slight youth, so gentle, so affectionate, that even that raging lion of
righteousness, Dean Trosper, was moved to spare him.

Harry  Zenz  patted  his  arm. "Oh, you, Don--you'll always be a monk. But if you don't believe it, Fislinger, look at the statistics of the five
thousand  odd  crimes  committed  by  clergymen--that is those who got caught--since the eighties, and note the percentage of sex offenses--rape,
incest, bigamy, enticing young girls--oh, a lovely record!"

Elmer  was  yawning,  "Oh,  God,  I  do get so sick of you fellows yammering and arguing and discussing. All perfectly simple--maybe we preachers
aren't perfect: don't pretend to be; but we do a lot of good."

"That's  right," said Eddie. "But maybe it is true that--The snares of sex are so dreadful that even ministers of the gospel get trapped. And the
perfectly simple solution is continence--just take it out in prayer and good hard exercise."

"Oh, sure, Eddie, you bet; what a help you're going to be to the young men in your church," purred Harry Zenz.

Frank Shallard was meditating unhappily. "Just why are we going to be preachers, anyway? Why are you, Harry, if you think we're all such liars?"

"Oh,  not  liars, Frank--just practical, as Elmer put it. Me, it's easy. I'm not ambitious. I don't want money enough to hustle for it. I like to
sit  and  read. I like intellectual acrobatics and no work. And you can have all that in the ministry--unless you're one of these chumps that get
up big institutional outfits and work themselves to death for publicity."

"You certainly have a fine high view of the ministry!" growled Elmer.

"Well, all right, what's your fine high purpose in becoming a Man of God, Brother Gantry?"

"Well, I--Rats, it's perfectly clear. Preacher can do a lot of good--give help and--And explain religion."

"I wish you'd explain it to me! Especially I want to know to what extent are Christian symbols descended from indecent barbaric symbols?"

"Oh, you make me tired!"

Horace  Carp  fluttered, "Of course none of you consecrated windjammers ever think of the one raison d'être of the church, which is to add beauty
to the barren lives of the common people!"

"Yeh! It certainly must make the common people feel awfully common to hear Brother Gantry spiel about the errors of supralapsarianism!"

"I never preach about any such a doggone thing!" Elmer protested. "I just give 'em a good helpful sermon, with some jokes sprinkled in to make it
interesting  and  some  stuff about the theater or something that'll startle 'em a little and wake 'em up, and help 'em to lead better and fuller
daily lives."

"Oh, do you, dearie!" said Zenz. "My error. I thought you probably gave 'em a lot of helpful hints about the innascibilitas attribute and the res
sacramenti. Well, Frank, why did you become a theologue?"

"I can't tell you when you put it sneeringly. I believe there are mystic experiences which you can follow only if you are truly set apart."

"Well, I know why I came here," said Don Pickens. "My dad sent me!"

"So  did  mine!"  complained Horace Carp. "But what I can't understand is: Why are any of us in an ole Baptist school? Horrible denomination--all
these  moldy  barns of churches, and people coughing illiterate hymns, and long-winded preachers always springing a bright new idea like 'All the
world  needs  to  solve  its  problems is to get back to the gospel of Jesus Christ.' The only church is the Episcopal! Music! Vestments! Stately
prayers! Lovely architecture! Dignity! Authority! Believe me, as soon as I can make the break, I'm going to switch over to the Episcopalians. And
then I'll have a social position, and be able to marry a nice rich girl."

"No, you're wrong," said Zenz. "The Baptist Church is the only denomination worth while, except possibly the Methodist."

"I'm glad to hear you say that," marveled Eddie.

"Because  the Baptists and the Methodists have all the numbskulls--except those that belong to the Catholic Church and the henhouse sects--and so
even you, Horace, can get away with being a prophet. There are some intelligent people in the Episcopal and Congregational Churches, and a few of
the Campbellite flocks, and they check up on you. Of course all Presbyterians are half-wits, too, but they have a standard doctrine, and they can
trap  you into a heresy trial. But in the Baptist and Methodist Churches, man! There's the berth for philosophers like me and hoot-owls like you,
Eddie! All you have to do with Baptists and Methodists, as Father Carp suggests--"

"If you agree with me about anything, I withdraw it," said Horace.

"All  you  have  to do," said Zenz, "is to get some sound and perfectly meaningless doctrine and keep repeating it. You won't bore the laymen--in
fact the only thing they resent is something that IS new, so they have to work their brains. Oh, no, Father Carp--the Episcopal pulpit for actors
that aren't good enough to get on the stage, but the good old Baptist fold for realists!"

"You make me tired, Harry!" complained Eddie. "You just want to show off, that's all. You're a lot better Baptist and a lot better Christian than
you  let  on to be, and I can prove it. Folks wouldn't go on listening to your sermons unless they carried conviction. No sir! You can fool folks
once or twice with a lot of swell-sounding words but in the long run it's sincerity they look for. And one thing that makes me know you're on the
right  side is that you don't practise open communion. Golly, I feel that everything we Baptists stand for is threatened by those darn' so-called
liberals that are beginning to practise open communion."

"Rats!"  grumbled  Harry.  "Of  all the fool Baptist egotisms, close communion is the worst! Nobody but people WE consider saved to be allowed to
take communion with us! Nobody can meet God unless we introduce 'em! Self-appointed guardians of the blood and body of Jesus Christ! Whew!"

"Absolutely," from Horace Carp. "And there is absolutely no Scriptural basis for close communion."

"There certainly is!" shrieked Eddie. "Frank, where's your Bible?"

"Gee, I left it in O.T.E. Where's yours, Don?"

"Well, I'll be switched! I had the darn' thing here just this evening," lamented Don Pickens, after a search.

"Oh, I remember. I was killing a cockroach with it. It's on top of your wardrobe," said Elmer.

"Gee,  honest,  you  hadn't ought to kill cockroaches with a Bible!" mourned Eddie Fislinger. "Now here's the Bible, good and straight, for close
communion,  Harry.  It  says in First Corinthians, 11:27 and 29: 'Whoever shall eat this bread and drink this cup of the Lord unworthily shall be
guilty  of  the body and the blood of the Lord. For he that eateth and drinketh unworthily eateth and drinketh damnation to himself.' And how can
there be a worthy Christian unless he's been baptized by immersion?"

"I do wonder sometimes," mused Frank Shallard, "if we aren't rather impious, we Baptists, to set ourselves up as the keepers of the gates of God,
deciding just who is righteous, who is worthy to commune."

"But there's nothing else we can do," explained Eddie. "The Baptist Church, being the only pure Scriptural church, is the one real church of God,
and we're not setting ourselves up--we're just following God's ordinances."

Horace  Carp  had  also  been  reveling  in  the popular Mizpah sport of looking up Biblical texts to prove a preconceived opinion. "I don't find
anything here about Baptists," he said.

"Nor about your doggoned ole Episcopalians, either--darn' snobs! and the preachers wearing nightshirts!" from Eddie.

"You  bet  your  life  you find something--it talks about bishops, and that means Episcopal bishops--the papes and the Methodists are uncanonical
bishops," rejoiced Horace. "I'll bet you two dollars and sixty-seven cents I wind up as an Episcopal bishop, and, believe me, I'll be high-church
as hell--all the candles I can get on the altar."

Harry  Zenz was speculating, "I suppose it's unscientific to believe that because I happen to be a Baptist practitioner myself and see what word-
splitting, text-twisting, applause-hungry, job-hunting, medieval-minded second-raters even the biggest Baptist leaders are, therefore the Baptist
Church is the worst of the lot. I don't suppose it's really any worse than the Presbyterian or the Congregational or Disciples or Lutheran or any
other.  But--Say,  you,  Fislinger,  ever  occur to you how dangerous it is, this Bible-worship? You and I might have to quit preaching and go to
work. You tell the muttonheads that the Bible contains absolutely everything necessary for salvation, don't you?"

"Of course."

"Then what's the use of having any preachers? Any church? Let people stay home and read the Bible!"

"Well--well--it says--"

The door was dashed open, and Brother Karkis entered.

Brother Karkis was no youthful student. He was forty-three, heavy-handed and big-footed, and his voice was the voice of a Great Dane. Born to the
farm,  he had been ordained a Baptist preacher, for twenty years now, and up and down through the Dakotas, Nebraska, Arkansas, he had bellowed in
up-creek tabernacles.

His  only  formal  education  had been in country schools; and of all books save the Bible, revivalistic hymnals, a concordance handy for finding
sermon-texts, and a manual of poultry-keeping, he was soundly ignorant. He had never met a woman of the world, never drunk a glass of wine, never
heard a bar of great music, and his neck was not free from the dust of cornfields.

But  it  would  have  been  a waste of pity to sigh over Brother Karkis as a plucky poor student. He had no longing for further knowledge; he was
certain that he already had it all. He despised the faculty as book-adulterated wobblers in the faith--he could "out-pray and out-holler and out-
save  the  whole  lot  of  'em."  He  desired  a  Mizpah  degree only because it would get him a better paid job--or, as he put it, with the 1850
vocabulary which he found adequate for 1905, because it would "lead him into a wider field of usefulness."

"Say,  don't  you fellers ever do anything but sit around and argue and discuss and bellyache?" he shouted. "My lands, I can hear your racket way
down  the hall! Be a lot better for you young fellers if you'd forget your smart-aleck arguin' and spend the evening on your knees in prayer! Oh,
you're  a  fine  lot of smart educated swells, but you'll find where that rubbish gets you when you go out and have to wrestle with old Satan for
unregenerate souls! What are you gasbags arguing about, anyway?"

"Harry says," wailed Eddie Fislinger, "that there's nothing in the Bible that says Christians have to have a church or preachers."

"Huh! And him that thinks he's so educated. Where's a Bible?"

It was now in the hands of Elmer, who had been reading his favorite book, "The Song of Solomon."

"Well,  Brother  Gantry, glad see there's one galoot here that's got sense enough to stick by the Old Book and get himself right with God, 'stead
of  shooting off his face like some Pedo-Baptist. Now look here, Brother Zenz: It says here in Hebrews, 'Forsake not the assembling of yourselves
together.' There, I guess that'll hold you!"

"My  dear  brother  in  the Lord," said Harry, "the only thing suggested there is an assembly like the Plymouth Brotherhood, with no regular paid
preachers. As I was explaining to Brother Fislinger: Personally, I'm so ardent an admirer of the Bible that I'm thinking of starting a sect where
we all just sing a hymn together, then sit and read our Bibles all day long, and not have any preachers getting between us and the all-sufficient
Word of God. I expect you to join, Brother Karkis, unless you're one of these dirty higher critics that want to break down the Bible."

"Oh, you make me tired," said Eddie.

"You make me tired--always twisting the plain commands of Scripture," said Brother Karkis, shutting the door--weightily, and from the outside.

"You all make me tired. My God, how you fellows can argue!" said Elmer, chewing his Pittsburgh stogie.

The  room  was  thick  now  with  tobacco  fumes.  Though  in Mizpah Seminary smoking was frowned on, practically forbidden by custom, all of the
consecrated company save Eddie Fislinger were at it.

He  rasped, "This air is something terrible! Why you fellows touch that vile weed--Worms and men are the only animals who indulge in tobacco! I'm
going to get out of here."

There was strangely little complaint.

Rid of Eddie, the others turned to their invariable topic: what they called "sex."

Frank  Shallard  and  Don  Pickens  were  virgins, timid and fascinated, respectful and urgent; Horace Carp had had one fumbling little greensick
experience; and all three listened with nervous eagerness to the experiences of Elmer and Harry Zenz. Tonight Elmer's mind reeked with it, and he
who  had  been  almost  silent  during  the  ecclesiastical wrangling was voluble now. The youngsters panted as he chronicled his meetings with a
willing choir-singer, this summer past.

"Tell  me--tell  me,"  fretted  Don.  "Do girls, oh--nice girls--do they really ever--uh--go with a preacher? And aren't you ashamed to face them
afterwards, in church?"

"Huh!" observed Zenz, and "Ashamed? They worship you!" declared Elmer. "They stand by you the way no wife ever would--as long as they do fall for
you. Why, this girl--Oh, well, she sang something elegant."

He finished vaguely, reminiscently. Suddenly he was bored at treading the mysteries of sex with these mooncalves. He lunged up.

"Going?" said Frank.

Elmer  posed  at  the  door, smirking, his hands on his hips, "Oh, no. Not a-tall." He looked at his watch. (It was a watch which reminded you of
Elmer himself: large, thick, shiny, with a near-gold case.) "I merely have a date with a girl, that's all!"

He  was  lying,  but  he  had  been  roused by his own stories, and he would have given a year of life if his boast were true. He returned to his
solitary  room  in a fever. "God, if Juanita were only here, or Agatha, or even that little chambermaid at Solomon Junction--what the dickens was
her name now?" he longed.

He  sat  motionless  on  the  edge  of his bed. He clenched his fists. He groaned and gripped his knees. He sprang up, to race about the room, to
return and sit dolorously entranced.

"Oh, God, I can't STAND it!" he moaned.

He was inconceivably lonely.

He  had  no  friends.  He had never had a friend since Jim Lefferts. Harry Zenz despised his brains, Frank Shallard despised his manners, and the
rest of them he himself despised. He was bored by the droning seminary professors all day, the school-boyish arguing all evening; and in the rash
of  prayer-meetings  and  chapel-meetings  and special praise-meetings he was bored by hearing the same enthusiasts gambol in the same Scriptural
rejoicings.

"Oh,  yes,  I want to go on and preach. Couldn't go back to just business or the farm. Miss the hymns, the being boss. But--I can't do it! God, I
am so lonely! If Juanita was just here!"



CHAPTER VII


1


The  Reverend  Jacob Trosper, D. D., Ph. D., LL. D., dean and chief executive of Mizpah Theological Seminary, and Professor of Practical Theology
and  Homiletics,  was  a hard-faced active man with a large active voice. His cheeks were gouged with two deep channels. His eyebrows were heavy.
His  hair,  now  gray  and  bristly,  must  once have been rusty, like Eddie Fislinger's. He would have made an excellent top-sergeant. He looked
through the students and let them understand that he knew their sins and idlenesses before they confessed them.

Elmer was afraid of Dean Trosper. When he was summoned to the dean's office, the morning after the spiritual conference in Frank Shallard's room,
he was uneasy.

He found Frank with the dean.

"God! Frank's been tattling about my doings with women!"

"Brother Gantry," said the dean.

"Yes, sir!"

"I  have  an  appointment  which should give you experience and a little extra money. It's a country church down at Schoenheim, eleven miles from
here,  on the spur line of the Ontario, Omaha and Pittsburgh. You will hold regular Sunday morning services and Sunday School; if you are able to
work  up  afternoon  or  evening services and prayer meeting, so much the better. The pay will be ten dollars a Sunday. If there's to be anything
extra  for  extra  work--that's up to you and your flock. I'd suggest that you go down there on a hand-car. I'm sure you can get the section-gang
boss  here  to  lend you one, as it's for the Lord's work, and the boss' brother does a lot of gardening here. I'm going to send Brother Shallard
with  you  to  conduct  the  Sunday  School and get some experience. He has a particularly earnest spirit--which it wouldn't entirely hurt you to
emulate, Brother Gantry--but he's somewhat shy in contact with sin-hardened common people.

"Now,  boys,  this is just a small church, but never forget that it's priceless souls that I'm entrusting to your keeping; and who knows but that
you  may  kindle  there  such  a  fire as may some day illumine all the world . . . providing, Brother Gantry, you eliminate the worldly things I
suspect you of indulging in!"

Elmer  was  delighted.  It  was  his first real appointment. In Kansas, this summer, he had merely filled other people's pulpits for two or three
weeks at a time.

He'd  show  'em!  Some of these fellows that thought he was just a mouth-artist! Show 'em how he could build up a church membership, build up the
collections, get 'em all going with his eloquence--and, of course, carry the message of salvation into darkened hearts.

It would be mighty handy to have the extra ten a week--and maybe more if he could kid the Schoenheim deacons properly.

His first church . . . his own . . . and Frank had to take his orders!


2


In  the  virginal  days  of  1905 section gangs went out to work on the railway line not by gasoline power but on a hand-car, a platform with two
horizontal bars worked up and down like pump-handles.

On  a  hand-car Elmer and Frank Shallard set out for their first charge. They did not look particularly clerical as they sawed at the handles; it
was  a  chilly  November  Sunday morning, and they wore shabby greatcoats. Elmer had a moth-eaten plush cap over his ears, Frank exhibited absurd
ear-muffs under a more absurd derby, and both had borrowed red flannel mittens from the section gang.

The  morning  was  icily  brilliant.  Apple  orchards  glistened  in  the frost, and among the rattling weed-stalks by the worm-fences quail were
whistling.

Elmer  felt  his lungs free of library dust as he pumped. He broadened his shoulders, rejoiced in sweating, felt that his ministry among real men
and  living  life  was begun. He pitied the pale Frank a little, and pumped the harder . . . and made Frank pump the harder . . . up and down, up
and  down,  up and down. It was agony to the small of his back and shoulders, now growing soft, to labor on the up-grade, where the shining rails
toiled  round  the  curves  through  gravel  cuts.  But downhill, swooping toward frosty meadows and the sound of cowbells in the morning sun, he
whooped with exhilaration, and struck up a boisterous:


There is power, power, wonder-working power In the blood Of the Lamb--


The  Schoenheim  church  was  a dingy brown box with a toy steeple, in a settlement consisting of the church, the station, a blacksmith shop, two
stores,  and half a dozen houses. But at least thirty buggies were gathered along the rutty street or in the carriage-sheds behind the church; at
least seventy people had come to inspect their new pastor; and they stood in gaping circles, staring between frosty damp mufflers and visored fur
caps.

"I'm  scared  to  death!"  murmured  Frank,  as they strode up the one street from the station, but Elmer felt healthy, proud, expansive. His own
church,  small  but  somehow--somehow  different from these ordinary country meeting-houses--quite a nice-shaped steeple--not one of those shacks
with no steeple at all! And his people, waiting for him, their attention flowing into him and swelling him--

He  threw  open  his  overcoat, held it back with his hand imperially poised on his left hip, and let them see not only the black broadcloth suit
bought this last summer for his ordination but something choice he had added since--elegant white piping at the opening of his vest.

A  red-faced  moustached  man swaggered up to greet them, "Brother Gantry? And Brother Shallard? I'm Barney Bains, one of the deacons. Pleased to
meet  you. The Lord give power to your message. Some time since we had any preachin' here, and I guess we're all pretty hungry for spiritual food
and the straight gospel. Bein' from Mizpah, I guess there's no danger you boys believe in this open communion!"

Frank had begun to worry, "Well, what I feel is--" when Elmer interrupted him with a very painful bunt in the side, and chanted with holy joy:

"Pleased  meet  you, Brother Bains. Oh, Brother Shallard and I are absolutely sound both on immersion and close communion. We trust you will pray
for  us,  Brother,  that  the  Holy  Ghost  may  be  present in this work today, and that all the brethren may rejoice in a great awakening and a
bountiful harvest!"

Deacon  Bains  and  all who heard him muttered, saint to saint, "He's pretty young yet, but he's got the right idee. I'm sure we're going to have
real rousing preaching. Don't think much of Brother Shallard, though. Kind of a nice-looking young fella, but dumm in the head. Stands there like
a bump on a log. Well, he's good enough to teach the kids in Sunday School."

Brother  Gantry  was shaking hands all round. His sanctifying ordination, or it might have been his summer of bouncing from pulpit to pulpit, had
so elevated him that he could greet them as impressively and fraternally as a sewing-machine agent. He shook hands with a good grip, he looked at
all  the  more  aged  sisters  as  though  he  were  moved  to  give them a holy kiss, he said the right things about the weather, and by luck or
inspiration it was to the most acidly devout man in Boone County that he quoted a homicidal text from Malachi.

As he paraded down the aisle, leading his flock, he panted:

"Got  'em  already!  I can do something to wake these hicks up, where gas-bags like Frank or Carp would just chew the rag. How could I of felt so
down in the mouth and so--uh--so carnal last week? Lemme at that pulpit!"

They  faced him in hard straight pews, rugged heads seen against the brown wall and the pine double doors grained to mimic oak; they gratifyingly
crowded the building, and at the back stood shuffling young men with unshaven chins and pale blue neckties.

He felt power over them while he trolled out the chorus of "The Church in the Wildwood."

His text was from Proverbs: "Hatred stirreth up strifes: but love covereth all sins."

He seized the sides of the pulpit with his powerful hands, glared at the congregation, decided to look benevolent after all, and exploded:

"In  the  hustle and bustle of daily life I wonder how many of us stop to think that in all that is highest and best we are ruled not by even our
most  up-and-coming  efforts  but by Love? What is Love--the divine Love of which the--the great singer teaches us in Proverbs? It is the rainbow
that  comes  after  the  dark  cloud. It is the morning star and it is also the evening star, those being, as you all so well know, the brightest
stars we know. It shines upon the cradle of the little one and when life has, alas, departed, to come no more, you find it still around the quiet
tomb. What is it inspires all great men--be they preachers or patriots or great business men? What is it, my brethren, but Love? Ah, it fills the
world with melody, with such sacred melodies as we have just indulged in together, for what is music? What, my friends, is music? Ah, what indeed
is music but the voice of Love!"

He explained that hatred was low.

However,  for the benefit of the more leathery and zealous deacons down front, he permitted them to hate all Catholics, all persons who failed to
believe  in  hell and immersion, and all rich mortgage-holders, wantoning in the betraying smiles of scarlet women, each of whom wore silk and in
her bejeweled hand held a ruby glass of perfidious wine.

He  closed by lowering his voice to a maternal whisper and relating a totally imaginary but most improving experience with a sinful old gentleman
who  on his bed of pain had admitted, to Elmer's urging, that he ought to repent immediately, but who put it off too long, died amid his virtuous
and grief-stricken daughters, and presumably went straight to the devil.

When  Elmer had galloped down to the door to shake hands with such as did not remain for Sabbath School, sixteen several auditors said in effect,
"Brother, that was a most helpful sermon and elegantly expressed," and he wrung their hands with a boyish gratitude beautiful to see.

Deacon Bains patted his shoulder. "I've never heard so young a preacher hand out such fine doctrine, Brother. Meet my daughter Lulu."

And she was there, the girl for whom he had been looking ever since he had come to Mizpah.

Lulu  Bains  was a gray-and-white kitten with a pink ribbon. She had sat at the back of the church, behind the stove, and he had not seen her. He
looked down at her thirstily. His excitement at having played his sermon to such applause was nothing beside his excitement over the fact that he
would  have  her  near  him  in his future clerical labors. Life was a promising and glowing thing as he held her hand and tried not to sound too
insistently affectionate. "Such a pleasure to meet you, Sister Lulu."

Lulu  was  nineteen  or  twenty.  She had a diminutive class of twelve-year-old boys in the Sunday School. Elmer had intended to sneak out during
Sunday  School,  leaving  Frank  Shallard  responsible, and find a place where he could safely smoke a Pittsburgh stogie, but in view of this new
spiritual  revelation  he hung about, beaming with holy approbation of the good work and being manly and fraternal with the little boys in Lulu's
class.

"If  you  want  to  grow up and be big fellows, regular sure-enough huskies, you just listen to what Miss Bains has to tell you about how Solomon
built that wonderful big ole temple," he crooned at them; and if they twisted and giggled in shyness, at least Lulu smiled at him . . . gray-and-
white kitten with sweet kitten eyes. . . small soft kitten, who purred, "Oh, now, Brother Gantry, I'm just so scared I don't hardly dare teach" .
. . big eyes that took him into their depths, till he heard her lisping as the voice of angels, larks, and whole orchestras of flutes.

He could not let her go at the end of Sunday School. He must hold her--

"Oh, Sister Lulu, come see the hand-car Frank and I--Brother Shallard and I--came down on. The FUN-niest! Just laugh your head off!"

As the section gang passed through Schoenheim at least ten times a week, hand-cars could have been no astounding novelty to Lulu, but she trotted
beside him, and stared prettily, and caroled, "Oh, hon-est! Did you come down on THAT? Well, I never!"

She shook hands cheerfully with both of them. He thought jealously that she was as cordial to Frank as to himself.

"He better watch out and not go fooling round MY girl!" Elmer reflected, as they pumped back toward Babylon.

He  did  not  congratulate  Frank  on  having overcome his dread of stolid country audiences (Frank had always lived in cities) or on having made
Solomon's  temple  not  merely  a  depressing  object  composed  of a substance called "cubits" but an actual shrine in which dwelt an active and
terrifying god.


3


For  two  Sundays now Elmer had striven to impress Lulu not only as an efficient young prophet but as a desirable man. There were always too many
people  about.  Only once did he have her alone. They walked half a mile then to call on a sick old woman. On their way Lulu had fluttered at him
(gray-and-white kitten in a close bonnet of soft fuzzy gray, which he wanted to stroke).

"I suppose you're just bored to death by my sermons," he fished.

"Oh, nnnno! I think they're just wonderful!"

"Do you, honest?"

"Honest, I do!"

He looked down at her childish face till he had caught her eyes, then, jocularly:

"My, but this wind is making the little cheeks and the cute lips awful' red! Or I guess maybe some fella must of been kissing 'em before church!"

"Oh, no--"

She looked distressed, almost frightened.

"Whoa  up!"  he  counseled himself. "You've got the wrong track. Golly, I don't believe she's as much of a fusser as I thought she was. Really is
kinda innocent. Poor kid, shame to get her all excited. Oh, thunder, won't hurt her a bit to have a little educated love-making!"

He hastily removed any possible blots on his clerical reputation:

"Oh, I was joking. I just meant--be a shame if as lovely a girl as you weren't engaged. I suppose you are engaged, of course?"

"No. I liked a boy here awfully, but he went to Cleveland to work, and I guess he's kind of forgotten me."

"Oh, that is really too bad!"

Nothing  could be stronger, more dependable, more comforting, than the pressure of his fingers on her arm. She looked grateful; and when she came
to  the sick-room and heard Brother Gantry pray, long, fervently, and with the choicest words about death not really mattering nor really hurting
(the old woman had cancer) then Lulu also looked worshipful.

On their way back he made his final probe:

"But even if you aren't engaged, Sister Lulu, I'll bet there's a lot of the young fellows here that're crazy about you."

"No, honest there aren't. Oh, I go round some with a second cousin of mine--Floyd Naylor--but, my! he's so slow, he's no fun."

The Rev. Mr. Gantry planned to provide fun.


4


Elmer  and  Frank  had gone down on Saturday afternoon to decorate the church for the Thanksgiving service. To save the trip to Babylon and back,
they were to spend Saturday night in the broad farmhouse of Deacon Bains, and Lulu Bains and her spinster cousin, Miss Baldwin, were assisting in
the  decoration--in other words doing it. They were stringing pine boughs across the back of the hall, and arranging a harvest feast of pumpkins,
yellow corn, and velvety sumach in front of the pulpit.

"I want your advice, Lulu--Sister Lulu. Don't you think in my sermon tomorrow it might be helpful to explain--"

(They  stood  side by side. How sweet were her little shoulders, her soft pussy-cat cheeks! He had to kiss them! He had to! He swayed toward her.
Damn Frank and that Baldwin female! Why didn't they get out?)

"--to  explain  that  all  these riches of the harvest, priceless though they are in themselves and necessary for grub--for the festal board, yet
they are but symbols and indications of the--Do sit down, Lulu; you look a little tired.--of the deeper spiritual blessings which he also showers
on us and not just at harvest time, and this is a very important point--"

(Her  hand dropped against his knee; lay, so white, on the drab pew. Her breasts were young and undrained under her plaid blouse. He had to touch
her hand. His fingers crept toward it, touched it by accident, surely by accident, while she looked devotion and he intoned sublimity.)

"--a very important point indeed; all the year round we receive those greater inner blessings, and it is for them more than for any material, uh,
material gains that we should lift our voices in Thanksgiving. Don't you think it might be valuable to all of us if I brought that out?"

"Oh, yes! Indeed I do! I think that's a lovely thought!"

(His arms tingled. He HAD to slip them about her.)

Frank  and  Miss  Baldwin  had  sat  down, and they were in an intolerably long discussion as to what ought to be done about that terrible little
Cutler  boy  who said that he didn't believe that the ravens brought any bread and meat to Elijah, not if he knew anything about these ole crows!
Frank  explained that he did not wish to rebuke honest doubt; but when this boy went and made a regular business of cutting up and asking foolish
questions--

"Lulu!"  Elmer  urged. "Skip back in the other room with me a second. There's something about the church work I want to ask you, and I don't want
them to hear."

There  were  two  rooms  in the Schoenheim church: the auditorium and a large closet for the storage of hymn-books, mops, brooms, folding chairs,
communion cups. It was lighted by a dusty window.

"Sister Bains and I are going to look over the Sunday School lesson-charts," Elmer called largely and brightly.

The  fact that she did not deny it bound them together in secrecy. He sat on an upturned bucket; she perched on a step-ladder. It was pleasant to
be small in her presence and look up to her.

What  the "something about church work" which he was going to ask her was, he had no notion, but Elmer was a very ready talker in the presence of
young women. He launched out:

"I need your advice. I've never met anybody that combined common sense and spiritual values like what you do."

"Oh, my, you're just flattering me, Brother Gantry!"

"No,  I'm not. Honest, I ain't! You don't appreciate yourself. That's because you've always lived in this little burg, but if you were in Chicago
or some place like that, believe me, they'd appreciate your, uh, that wonderful sense of spiritual values and everything."

"Oh--Chicago! My! I'd be scared to death!"

"Well, I'll have to take you there some day and show you the town! Guess folks would talk about their bad old preacher THEN!"

They both laughed heartily.

"But seriously, Lulu, what I want to know is--uh--Oh! What I wanted to ask you: Do you think I ought to come down here and hold Wednesday prayer-
meetings?"

"Why, I think that'd be awfully nice."

"But you see, I'd have to come down on that ole hand-car."

"That's so."

"And you can't know how hard I got to study every evening at the Seminary."

"Oh, yes, I can imagine!"

They both sighed in sympathy, and he laid his hand on hers, and they sighed again, and he removed his hand almost prudishly.

"But of course I wouldn't want to spare myself in any way. It's a pastor's privilege to spend himself for his congregation."

"Yes, that's so."

"But  on the other hand, with the roads the way they are here, especially in winter and all, and most of the congregation living way out on farms
and all--hard for 'em to get in, eh?"

"That's so. The roads do get bad. Yes, I think you're right, Brother Gantry."

"Oh!  Lulu!  And here I've been calling you by your first name! You're going to make me feel I been acting terrible if you rebuke me that way and
don't call me Elmer!"

"But then you're the preacher, and I'm just nobody."

"Oh, yes, you are!"

"Oh, no, I'm not!"

They laughed very much.

"Listen, Lulu, honey. Remember I'm really still a kid--just twenty-five this month--only 'bout five or six years older'n you are. Now try calling
me Elmer, and see how it sounds."

"Oh, my! I wouldn't dare!"

"Well, try it!"

"Oh, I couldn't! Imagine!"

"'Fraid cat!"

"I am not so."

"Yes, you are!"

"No, I'm not!"

"I dare you!"

"Well--Elmer then! So there now!"

They  laughed  intimately,  and in the stress of their merriment he picked up her hand squeezed it, rubbed it against his arm. He did not release
it, but it was only with the friendliest and least emphatic pressure that he held it while he crooned:

"You aren't really scared of poor old Elmer?"

"Yes, I am, a tiny bit!"

"But why?"

"Oh,  you're  big  and  strong  and  dignified, like you were lots older, and you have such a boom-boom voice--my, I love to listen to it, but it
scares me--I feel like you'd turn on me and say, 'You bad little girl,' and then I'd have to 'fess. My! And then you're so terribly educated--you
know  such  long  words,  and you can explain all these things about the Bible that I never can understand. And of course you are a real ordained
Baptist clergyman."

"Um, uh--But does that keep me from being a man, too?"

"Yes, it does! Sort of!"

Then there was no playfulness, but a grim urgency in his voice:

"Then  you  couldn't  imagine  me  kissing  you? . . . Look at me! . . . Look at me, I tell you! . . . There! . . . No, don't look away now. Why,
you're blushing! You dear, poor, darling kid! You CAN imagine me kissing--"

"Well, I oughtn't to!"

"'Shamed?"

"Yes, I am!"

"Listen,  dear.  You  think of me as so awfully grown-up, and of course I have to impress all these folks when I'm in the pulpit, but you can see
through it and--I'm really just a big bashful kid, and I need your help so. Do you know, dear, you remind me of my mother--"


5


Frank  Shallard  turned  on  Elmer in their bedroom, while they were washing for supper--their first moment alone since Lulu and Miss Baldwin had
driven them to the Bains farm to spend the night before the Thanksgiving service.

"Look here, Gantry--Elmer. I don't think it looked well, the way you took Miss Bains in the back room at the church and kept her there--must have
been half an hour--and when I came in you two jumped and looked guilty."

"Uh-huh, so our little friend Franky is a real rubber-necking old woman!"

It  was  a  spacious  dusky  cavern  under  the  eaves, the room where they were to stay the night. The pitcher on the black walnut washstand was
stippled in gold, riotous with nameless buds. Elmer stood glaring, his big forearms bare and dripping, shaking his fingers over the carpet before
he reached for the towel.

"I  am not a 'rubber-neck,' and you know it, Gantry. But you're the preacher here, and it's our duty, for the effect on others, to avoid even the
appearance of evil."

"Evil to him that evil thinks. Maybe you've heard that, too!"

"Oh, yes, Elmer, I think perhaps I have!"

"Suspicious, dirty-minded Puritan, that's what you are, seeing evil where there ain't any meant."

"People don't hate Puritans because they suspect unjustly, but because they suspect only too darned justly. Look here now, Elmer. I don't want to
be disagreeable--"

"Well, you are!"

"--but  Miss  Bains--she looks sort of cuddlesome and flirtatious, but I'm dead certain she's straight as can be, and I'm not going to stand back
and watch you try to, uh, to make love to her."

"Well, smarty, suppose I wanted to marry her?"

"Do you?"

"You know so blame' much, you ought to know without asking!"

"Do you?"

"I haven't said I didn't."

"Your rhetoric is too complicated for me. I'll take it that you do mean to. That's fine! I'll announce your intentions to Deacon Bains."

"You  will  like  hell! Now you look here, Shallard! I'm not going to have you poking your long nose into my business, and that's all there is to
it, see?"

"Yes,  it  would  be if you were a layman and I had no official connection with this outfit. I don't believe too much in going around being moral
for other people. But you're the preacher here--you're an ordained minister--and I'm responsible with you for the welfare of this church, and I'm
damned  if  I'm  going  to watch you seducing the first girl you get your big sweaty hands on--Oh, don't go doubling up your fists. Of course you
could  lick  me.  But you won't. Especially here in the deacon's house. Ruin you in the ministry. . . . Great God, and you're the kind we affably
let into the Baptist ministry! I was saying: I don't propose to see you trying to seduce--"

"Now, by God, if you think I'm going to stand--Let me tell you right now, you've got the filthiest mind I ever heard of, Shallard! Why you should
think  I  intend  for  one  single second to be anything but friendly and open and aboveboard with Lulu--with Miss Bains--Why, you fool, I was in
there listening about how she was in love with a fellow and he's gone off to Chicago and chucked her, and that was all, and why you should think-
-"

"Oh, don't be so fat-headed, Gantry! You can't get away with sitting in my room at the Sem boasting, you and Zenz boasting about how many affairs
you've had--"

"Well, it's the last time I'll sit in your damned room!"

"Splendid!"

"Think what you want to. And go to the devil! And be sure and run tattling to Pop Trosper and the rest of the faculty!"

"Well,  that's a good come-back, Gantry. I may do just that. But this evening I'll just watch Lulu--watch Miss Bains for you. Poor sweet kid that
she is! Nice eyes!"

"Uh-huh, young Shallard, so you've been smelling around, too!"

"My God, Gantry, what a perfect specimen you are!"


6


Deacon  and  Mrs.  Bains--an  angry-faced,  generous, grasping, horsy, black-mustached man he was, and she a dumpling--managed to treat Frank and
Elmer  simultaneously  as  professors  of  the  sacred mysteries and as two hungry boys who were starved at Mizpah and who were going to catch up
tonight.  Fried  chicken,  creamed chipped beef, homemade sausages, pickles and mince pie in which Elmer suspected, and gratefully suspected, the
presence of unrighteous brandy, were only part of the stout trencher-work required of the young prophets. Mr. Bains roared every three minutes at
the  swollen  and suffering Frank, "Nonsense, nonsense, Brother, you haven't begun to eat yet! What's the matter with you? Pass up your plate for
another helpin'."

Miss Baldwin, the spinster, two other deacons and their wives and a young man from a near-by farm, one Floyd Naylor, were present, and the clergy
were  also  expected  to be instructive. The theories were that they cared to talk of nothing save theology and the church and, second, that such
talk was somehow beneficial in the tricky business of enjoying your sleep and buggy-riding and vittles, and still getting into heaven.

"Say,  Brother  Gantry,"  said  Mr.  Bains, "what Baptist paper do you like best for home reading? I tried the Watchman Examiner for a while, but
don't  seem  to me it lambastes the Campbellites like it ought to, or gives the Catholics what-for, like a real earnest Christian sheet ought to.
I've started taking the Word and Way. Now there's a mighty sound paper that don't mince matters none, and written real elegant--just suits me. It
tells  you  straight  out from the shoulder that if you don't believe in the virgin birth and the resurrection, atonement, and immersion, then it
don't  make  no  difference about your so-called good works and charity and all that, because you're doomed and bound to go straight to hell, and
not no make-believe hell, either, but a real gosh-awful turble bed of sure-enough coals! Yes, sir!"

"Oh, look here now, Brother Bains!" Frank Shallard protested. "You don't mean to say you think that the Lord Jesus isn't going to save one single
solitary person who isn't an orthodox Baptist?"

"Well, I don't perfess to know all these things myself, like I was a high-toned preacher. But way I see it: Oh, yes, maybe if a fellow ain't ever
had  a  chance  to  see  the  light--say  he  was brought up a Methodist or a Mormon, and never HEARD a real dyed-in-the-wool Baptist explain the
complete  truth,  then  maybe  God might forgive him 'cause he was ignorant. But one thing I do know, absolute: All these 'advanced thinkers' and
'higher critics' are going to the hottest pit of hell! What do you think about it, Brother Gantry?"

"Personally,  I'm  much  inclined  to  agree  with  you," Elmer gloated. "But, anyway, we can safely leave it to the mercy of God to take care of
wobblers and cowards and gas-bags like these alleged advanced thinkers. When they treacherously weaken our efforts at soul-saving out here in the
field,  and  go in for a lot of cussing and discussing and fussing around with a lot of fool speculation that don't do anybody any practical good
in  the  great work of bringing poor sufferin' souls to peace, why then I'm too busy to waste MY time on 'em, that's all, and I wouldn't care one
bit  if  they heard me and knew it! Fact, that's the only trouble with Brother Shallard here--I know he has the grace of God in his heart, but he
will  waste time worrying over a lot of doctrines when everything's set down in Baptist tradition, and that's all you need to know. I want you to
think about that, Frank--"

Elmer had recovered. He enjoyed defying lightning, provided it was lightning no more dynamic than Frank was likely to furnish. He looked at Frank
squarely. . . . It was perhaps half an hour since their talk in the bedroom.

Frank opened his mouth twice, and closed it. Then it was too late. Deacon Bains was already overwhelming him with regeneration and mince pie.


7


Lulu  was  at  the  other  end  of  the  table  from Elmer. He was rather relieved. He despised Frank's weakness, but he was never, as with Eddie
Fislinger,  sure  what  Frank would do or say, and he determined to be cautious. Once or twice he glanced at Lulu intimately, but he kept all his
conversation (which, for Lulu's admiration, he tried to make learned yet virile) for Mr. Bains and the other deacons.

"There!"  he  reflected. "Now Shallard, the damned fool, ought to see that I'm not trying to grab off the kid. . . . If he makes any breaks about
'what are my intentions' to her, I'll just be astonished, and get Mr. Frank Shallard in bad, curse him and his dirty sneaking suspicions!"

But:  "God,  I've  GOT  to  have  her!"  said  all the tumultuous smoky beings in the lowest layer of his mind, and he answered them only with an
apprehensive, "Watch out! Be careful! Dean Trosper would bust you! Old Bains would grab his shotgun. . . . Be careful! . . . WAIT!"

Not till an hour after supper, when the others were bending over the corn-popper, did he have the chance to whisper to her:

"Don't trust Shallard! Pretends to be a friend of mine--couldn't trust him with a plugged nickel! Got to tell you about him. Got to! Listen! Slip
down after the others go up t' bed. I'll be down here. Must!"

"Oh, I can't! Cousin Adeline Baldwin is sleeping with me."

"Well! Pretend to get ready to go to bed--start and do your hair or something--and then come down to see if the fire is all right. Will you?"

"Maybe."

"You must! Please! Dear!"

"Maybe. But I can't stay but just a second."

Most virtuously, most ministerially: "Oh, of course."

They  all  sat, after supper, in the sitting-room. The Bainses prided themselves on having advanced so far socially that they did not spend their
evenings in the kitchen-dining room--always. The sitting-room had the homeliness of a New England farm-house, with hectically striped rag carpet,
an  amazing  patent  rocker  with  Corinthian knobs and brass dragon's feet, crayon enlargements, a table piled with Farm and Fireside and Modern
Priscilla,  and the enormous volume of pictures of the Chicago World's Fair. There was no fireplace, but the stove was a cheery monster of nickel
and  mica, with a jolly brass crown more golden than gold, and around the glaring belly a chain of glass sapphires, glass emeralds, and hot glass
rubies.

Beside the stove's gorgeous cheerfulness, Elmer turned on his spiritual faucet and worked at being charming.

"Now  don't  you  folks dare say one word about church affairs this evening! I'm not going to be a preacher--I'm just going to be a youngster and
kick  up  my heels in the pasture, after that lovely supper, and I declare to goodness if I didn't know she was a strict Mother in Zion, I'd make
Mother Bains dance with me--bet she could shake a pretty pair of heels as any of these art dancers in the theater!"

And  encircling  that  squashy and billowing waist, he thrice whirled her round, while she blushed, and giggled, "Why, the very idee!" The others
applauded with unsparing plow-hardened hands, cracking the shy ears of Frank Shallard.

Always Frank had been known as an uncommonly amiable youth, but tonight he was sour as alum.

It was Elmer who told them stories of the pioneer Kansas he knew so well, from reading. It was Elmer who started them popping corn in the parlor-
stove  after  their  first  uneasiness  at  being  human in the presence of Men of God. During this festivity, when even the most decorous deacon
chuckled and admonished Mr. Bains, "Hey, who you shovin' there, Barney?" Elmer was able to evade publicity and make his rendezvous with Lulu.

More  jolly  than ever, then, and slightly shiny from buttered pop-corn, he herded them to the parlor-organ, on which Lulu operated with innocent
glee  and  not much knowledge. Out of duty to the cloth, they had to begin with singing "Blessed Assurance," but presently he had them basking in
"Seeing Nelly Home," and "Old Black Joe."

All the while he was quivering with the promise of soft adventure to come.

It  only  added  to  his rapture that the young neighboring farmer, Floyd Naylor--kin of the Bains family, a tall young man but awkward--was also
mooning at Lulu, longing but shy.

They wound up with "Beulah Land," played by Lulu, and his voice was very soothing, very touching and tender:


O  Beulah  Land,  sweet  Beulah Land, (You little darling!) As on thy highest mount I stand, (I wonder if I kinda looked pathetic, would she baby
me?)  I  look away across the sea, (Oh, I'll be good--won't go too far.) Where mansions are prepared for me, (Her wrists while she plays--like to
kiss 'em!) And view the shining glory shore, (Going to, by thunder! Tonight!) My heav'n, my home for evermore. (Wonder if she'll come down-stairs
in a wrapper?)


"I  just  wish  I  knew,"  said  the wife of one of the deacons, a sentimental and lively lady, "what you were thinking of while we sang, Brother
Gantry?"

"Why--I was thinking how happy we'll all be when we are purified and at rest in Beulah Land."

"My,  I  knew  it  was something religious--you sang so sorta happy and inspired. Well! We must be going. It's been SUCH a lovely evening, Sister
Bains.  We  just  don't know how to thank you and Brother Bains, yes, and Brother Gantry, too, for such a fine time. Oh, and Brother Shallard, of
course. Come, Charley."

Charley,  as well as the other deacons, had vanished into the kitchen after Brother Bains. There was a hollow noise, as of a jug mouth, while the
ladies and the clergy talked loudly and looked tolerant. The men appeared at the door wiping their mouths with the hairy backs of their paws.


8


After  the  tremendous  leave-taking, to a yawning host Elmer suggested, "If it won't bother you and Sister Bains, I'm going to stay down here by
the fire a few minutes and complete my notes for my sermon tomorrow. And then I won't keep Brother Shallard awake."

"Fine, fine--eaaaaah--'scuse me--so sleepy. The house is yours, my boy--Brother. G'night."

"Good night! Good night, Brother Bains. Good night, Sister Bains. Good night, Sister Lulu. . . . Night, Frank."

The  room  was  far  more boisterous when he was left alone in it. It reeled and clamored. He paced, nervously smiting the palm of his left hand,
stopping in fever to listen. . . . Time crawling forever. . . . She would not come.

Creep-mouse rustle on the stairs, reluctant tip-toe in the hall.

His whole torso swelled with longing. He threw back his arms, fists down by his side, chin up, like the statue of Nathan Hale. But when she edged
in  he  was  enacting  the  kindly  burly pastor, an elbow on the corner of the parlor-organ, two fingers playing with his massy watch-chain, his
expression benevolent and amused.

She  was  not in a dressing-gown; she wore her blue frock unaltered. But she had let down her hair and its pale silkiness shone round her throat.
She looked at him beseechingly.

Instantly he changed his pose and dashed at her with a little boyish cry:

"Oh, Lu! I can't tell you how Frank hurt me!"

"What? What?"

Very naturally, as with unquestioning intimacy, he put his arm about her shoulder, and his finger-tips rejoiced in her hair.

"It's  terrible!  Frank  ought  to know me, but what do you think he said? Oh, he didn't dare come right out and say it--not to ME--but he hinted
around  and  insinuated  and  suggested  that  you and I were misbehaving there in the church when we were talking. And you remember what we were
talking about--about my moth-er! And how beautiful and lovely she used to be and how much you're like her! Don't you think that's rotten of him?"

"Oh, I do! I think it's just dreadful. I never did like him!"

In her sympathy she had neglected to slip out from under his arm.

"Come sit down beside me on the couch, dear."

"Oh, I mustn't." Moving with him toward the couch. "I've got to go right back up-stairs. Cousin Adeline, she's suspicious."

"We'll both go up, right away. But this thing upset me so! Wouldn't think a big clumsy like me could be such a sensitive chump, would you!"

He drew her close. She snuggled beside him, unstruggling, sighing:

"Oh,  I  do  understand, Elmer, and I think it's dandy, I mean it's lovely when a man can be so big and strong and still have fine feelings. But,
honest, I MUST go."

"Must go, DEAR."

"No."

"Yes. Won't let you, 'less you say it."

"Must go, dear!"

She had sprung up, but he held her hand, kissed her fingertips, looked up at her with plaintive affection.

"Poor boy! Did I make it all well?"

She  had  snatched  away  her  hand,  she  had swiftly kissed his temple and fled. He tramped the floor quite daft, now soaringly triumphant, now
blackly longing.


9


During their hand-car return to Babylon and the Seminary, Elmer and Frank had little to say.

"Don't  be  such a grouch. Honest, I'm not trying to get funny with little Lulu," Elmer grumbled, panting as he pumped the hand-car, grotesque in
cap and muffler.

"All right. Forget it," said Frank.

Elmer  endured  it till Wednesday. For two days he had been hag-ridden by plans to capture Lulu. They became so plain to him that he seemed to be
living  them, as he slumped on the edge of his cot, his fists clenched, his eyes absent. . . . In his dream he squandered a whole two dollars and
a  half for a "livery rig" for the evening, and drove to Schoenheim. He hitched it at that big oak, a quarter of a mile from the Bains farmhouse.
In  the moonlight he could see the rounded and cratered lump on the oak trunk where a limb had been cut off. He crept to the farmyard, hid by the
corncrib,  cold  but  excited.  She  came to the door with a dish-pan of water--stood sidewise in the light, her gingham work-dress molded to the
curve from shoulder to breast. He whistled to her; she started; came toward him with doubtful feet, cried with gladness when she saw who it was.

She  could  not  stay with him till the work was done, but she insisted that he wait in the stable. There was the warmth of the cows, their sweet
odor,  and  a  scent of hay. He sat on a manger-edge in the darkness, enraptured yet so ardent that he trembled as with fear. The barn door edged
open  with  a flash of moonlight; she came toward him, reluctant, fascinated. He did not stir. She moved, entranced, straight into his arms; they
sat  together  on  a pile of hay, taut with passion, unspeaking, and his hand smoothed her ankle. And again, in his fancies, it was at the church
that she yielded; for some reason not quite planned, he was there without Frank, on a week-day evening, and she sat beside him on a pew. He could
hear himself arguing that she was to trust him, that their love partook of the divine, even while he was fondling her.

But--Suppose  it  were  Deacon Bains who came to his whistle, and found him sneaking in the barnyard? Suppose she declined to be romantic in cow-
barns? And just what excuse had he for spending an evening with her at the church?

But--Over  and over, sitting on his cot, lying half-asleep with the covers clutched desperately, he lived his imaginings till he could not endure
it.

Not till Wednesday morning did it occur to the Reverend Elmer Gantry that he need not sneak and prowl, not necessarily, no matter what his custom
had been, and that there was nothing to prevent his openly calling on her.

Nor  did  he  spend any two dollars and a half for a carriage. Despite his florid magnificence, he was really a very poor young man. He walked to
Schoenheim  (not  in  vision now, but in reality), starting at five in the afternoon, carrying a ham sandwich for his supper; walked the railroad
track, the cold ties echoing under his heavy tread.

He arrived at eight. He was certain that, coming so very late, her parents would not stay up to annoy him for more than an hour. They were likely
to ask him to remain for the night, and there would be no snooping Cousin Adeline Baldwin about.

Mr. Bains opened to his knock.

"Well, well, well, Brother Gantry! What brings you down to this part of the world this time of night? Come in! Come in!"

"I sort of thought I needed a good long walk--been studying too hard--and I took a chance on your letting me stop in and warm myself."

"Well, sir, by golly, Brother, I'd of been mad's a wet hen if you HADN'T stopped! This is your house and there's always an extra plate to slap on
the  table. Yes, sir! Had your supper? Sandwich? Enough? Foolishness! We'll have the womenfolks fix you up something in two shakes. The woman and
Lulu, they're still out in the kitchen. LU-lu!"

"Oh, I mustn't stop--so terribly far back to town, and so late--shouldn't have walked so far."

"You don't step your foot out of this house tonight, Brother! You stay right here!"

When Lulu saw him, her tranced eyes said, "And did you come all this way for me?"

She was more softly desirable than he had fancied.

Warmed  and swollen with fried eggs and admiration, he sat with them in the parlor narrating more or less possible incidents of his campaigns for
righteousness in Kansas, till Mr. Bains began to yawn.

"By golly, ten minutes after nine! Don't know how it got to be so late. Ma, guess it's about time to turn in."

Elmer lunged gallantly:

"Well,  you  can go to bed, but we young folks are going to sit up and tell each other our middle names! I'm no preacher on week days--I'm just a
student, by Jiminy!"

"Well--If you call this a week day. Looks like a week night to me, Brother!"

Everybody laughed.

She  was  in his arms, on the couch, before her father had yawned and coughed up the stairs; she was in his arms, limp, unreasoning, at midnight;
after a long stillness in the chilling room, she sat up hastily at two, and fingered her rumpled hair.

"Oh, I'm frightened!" she whimpered.

He tried to pat her comfortingly, but there was not much heat in him now.

"But it doesn't matter. When shall we be married?" she fluttered.

And then there was no heart in him at all, but only a lump of terror.

Once  or twice in his visions he had considered that there might be danger of having to many her. He had determined that marriage now would cramp
his advancement in the church and that, anyway, he didn't want to marry this brainless little fluffy chick, who would be of no help in impressing
rich  parishioners. But that caution he had utterly forgotten in emotion, and her question was authentically a surprise, abominably a shock. Thus
in whirling thought, even while he mumbled:

"Well--well--Don't  think  we  can  decide  yet.  Ought  to  wait  till I have time to look around after I graduate, and get settled in some good
pastorate."

"Yes,  perhaps  we  ought," she said meekly to her man, the best and most learned and strongest and much the most interesting person she had ever
known.

"So  you  mustn't mention it to anybody, Lu. Not ever to your folks. They might not understand, like you do, how hard it is for a preacher to get
his first real church."

"Yes, dear. Oh, kiss me!"

And he had to kiss her any number of times, in that ghastly cold room, before he could escape to his chamber.

He  sat  on  his  bed  with  an expression of sickness, complaining, "Hell, I oughtn't to have gone so far! I thought she'd resist more. Aaah! It
wasn't  worth  all  this  risk. Aaaaah! She's dumm as a cow. Poor little thing!" His charity made him feel beneficent again. "Sorry for her. But,
good  God, she is wishy-washy. Her fault, really, but--Aaah! I was a fool! Well, fellow has to stand right up and face his faults honestly. I do.
I don't excuse myself. I'm not afraid to admit my faults and repent."

So he was able to go to bed admiring his own virtue and almost forgiving her.



CHAPTER VIII


1


The ardor of Lulu, the pride of having his own church at Schoenheim, the pleasure of watching Frank Shallard puff in agony over the hand-car, all
these  did  not  make up to Elmer for his boredom in seminary classes from Monday to Friday--that boredom which all preachers save a few sporting
country parsons, a few managers of factory-like institutional churches, must endure throughout their lives.

Often  he  thought  of  resigning and going into business. Since buttery words and an important manner would be as valuable in business as in the
church,  the  class  to  which  he  gave  the  most reverent attention was that of Mr. Ben T. Bohnsock, "Professor of Oratory and Literature, and
Instructor  in  Voice  Culture."  Under  him, Elmer had been learning an ever more golden (yet steel-strong) pulpit manner, learning not to split
infinitives in public, learning that references to Dickens, Victor Hugo, James Whitcomb Riley, Josh Billings, and Michelangelo give to a sermon a
very toney Chicago air.

Elmer's  eloquence increased like an August pumpkin. He went into the woods to practise. Once a small boy came up behind him, standing on a stump
in  a  clearing,  and upon being greeted with "I denounce the abominations of your lascivious and voluptuous, uh, abominations," he fled yelping,
and never again was the same care-free youth.

In  moments  when  he  was  certain  that he really could continue with the easy but dull life of the ministry, Elmer gave heed to Dean Trosper's
lectures  in  Practical  Theology  and  in Homiletics. Dr. Trosper told the aspiring holy clerks what to say when they called on the sick, how to
avoid  being  compromised by choir-singers, how to remember edifying or laugh-trapping anecdotes by cataloguing them, how to prepare sermons when
they had nothing to say, in what books they could find the best predigested sermon-outlines, and, most useful of all, how to raise money.

Eddie  Fislinger's  note-book  on the Practical Theology lectures (which Elmer viewed as Elmer's note-book also, before examinations) was crammed
with such practical theology as:


Pastoral  visiting: No partiality. Don't neglect hired girls, be cordial. Guard conversation, pleasing manner and laugh and maybe one funny story
but  no  scandal or crit. of others. Stay only 15-30 minutes. Ask if like to pray with, not insist. Rem gt opportunities during sickness, sorrow,
marriage. Ask jokingly why husband not oftener to church.


The  course  in Hymnology Elmer found tolerable; the courses in New Testament Interpretation, Church History, Theology, Missions, and Comparative
Religions  he  stolidly  endured  and  warmly  cursed.  Who  the  dickens cared whether Adoniram Judson became a Baptist by reading his Greek New
Testament?  Why  all this fuss about a lot of prophecies in Revelation--he wasn't going to preach that highbrow stuff! And expecting them to make
something out of this filioque argument in theology! Foolish!

The  teachers of New Testament and Church History were ministers whom admiring but bored metropolitan congregations had kicked up-stairs. To both
of  them  polite  deacons had said, "We consider you essentially scholarly, Brother, rather than pastoral. Very scholarly. We're pulling wires to
get  you the high honor that's your due--election to a chair in one of the Baptist seminaries. While they may pay a little less, you'll have much
more of the honor you so richly deserve, and lots easier work, as you might say."

The  grateful  savants  had  accepted,  and they were spending the rest of their lives reading fifteenth-hand opinions, taking pleasant naps, and
drooling out to yawning students the anemic and wordy bookishness which they called learning.

But the worst of Elmer's annoyances were the courses given by Dr. Bruno Zechlin, Professor of Greek, Hebrew, and Old Testament Exegesis.

Bruno  Zechlin  was  a  Ph. D. of Bonn, an S.T.D. of Edinburgh. He was one of the dozen authentic scholars in all the theological institutions of
America,  and  incidentally  he was a thorough failure. He lectured haltingly, he wrote obscurely, he could not talk to God as though he knew him
personally, and he could not be friendly with numbskulls.

Mizpah  Seminary  belonged  to the right-wing of the Baptists; it represented what was twenty years later to be known as "fundamentalism"; and in
Mizpah Dr. Zechlin had been suspected of heresy.

He also had a heathenish tawny German beard, and he had been born not in Kansas or Ohio but in a city ridiculously named Frankfort.

Elmer  despised  him,  because  of  the beard, because he was enthusiastic about Hebrew syntax, because he had no useful tips for ambitious young
professional  prophets, and because he had seemed singularly to enjoy flunking Elmer in Greek, which Elmer was making up with a flinching courage
piteous to behold.

But Frank Shallard loved Dr. Zechlin, him alone among the members of the faculty.


2


Frank  Shallard's  father was a Baptist minister, sweet-tempered, bookish, mildy liberal, not unsuccessful; his mother was of a Main Line family,
slightly run to seed. He was born in Harrisburg and reared in Pittsburgh, always under the shadow of the spires--in his case, a kindly shadow and
serene,  though  his  father  did labor long at family prayers and instruct his young to avoid all worldly pollution, which included dancing, the
theater, and the libidinous works of Balzac.

There  was  talk  of  sending  Frank  to  Brown  University  or  Pennsylvania, but when he was fifteen his father had a call to a large church in
Cleveland,  and  it  was  the  faculty of Oberlin College, in Ohio, who interpreted and enriched for Frank the Christian testimony to be found in
Plautus, Homer, calculus, basket-ball, and the history of the French Revolution.

There  was  a good deal of the natural poet in him and, as is not too rarely the case with poets, something of the reasoning and scientific mind.
But  both  imagination  and  reason  had been submerged in a religion in which doubt was not only sinful but, much worse, in bad taste. The flair
which  might  have  turned  to  roses  and  singing, or to banners and bravado, or to pity of hopeless toilers, had been absorbed in the terrible
majesty  of  the Jew Jehovah, the brooding mercy of Our Lord, the tales of his birth--jeweled kings and the shepherds' campfire, the looming star
and  the  babe  in  the  manger; myths bright as enamel buds--and he was bemused by the mysteries of Revelation, an Alice in Wonderland wearing a
dragon mask.

Not  only  had he been swathed in theology, but all his experience had been in books instead of the speech of toiling men. He had been a solitary
in college, generous but fastidious, jarred by his classmates' belching and sudden laughter.

His  reasoning had been introverted, turned from an examination of men as mammals and devoted to a sorrow that sinful and aching souls should not
more  readily seek the security of a mystic process known as Conviction, Repentance, and Salvation, which, he was assured by the noblest and most
literate  men he had ever known, was guaranteed to cure all woe. His own experience did not absolutely confirm this. Even after he had been quite
ecstatically saved, he found himself falling into deep, still furies at the familiarities of hobbledehoys, still peeping at the arching bodies of
girls. But that, he assured himself, was merely because he hadn't "gone on to perfection."

There  were  doubts.  The  Old  Testament  God's habit of desiring the reeking slaughter of every one who did not flatter him seemed rather anti-
social, and he wondered whether all the wantoning in the Song of Solomon did really refer to the loyalty between Christ and the Church. It seemed
unlike  the  sessions  of  Oberlin Chapel and the Miller Avenue Baptist Church of Cleveland, Ohio. Could Solomon just possibly refer to relations
between beings more mundane and frisky?

Such  qualities  of reason as he had, Frank devoted not to examining and banishing the doubt itself. He had it as an axiom that doubt was wicked,
and  he  was  able  to  enjoy  considerable ingenuity in exorcising it. He had a good deal of self-esteem and pleasure among the purple-broidered
ambiguities of religion.

That  he  should  become a minister had always been assumed. He had no such definite and ecstatic Call as came to Elmer Gantry, but he had always
known  that  he  would  go  on  nibbling  at  theories  about the eucharist, and pointing men the way to uncharted plateaus called Righteousness,
Idealism, Honesty, Sacrifice, Beauty, Salvation.

Curly  flaxen hair, clear skin, fine nose, setter eyes, straight back, Frank was a pleasant-looking young man at twenty-three, in his senior year
at Mizpah Seminary.

He  was  a  favorite  of  Dean  Trosper, of the Professor of New Testament Interpretation; his marks were high, his manner was respectful and his
attendance  was perfect. But his master among the faculty was the stammering and stumbling Bruno Zechlin, that bearded advocate of Hebrew syntax,
that  suspected  victim  of  German  beer  and  German  rationalism,  and  Frank was the only student of his generation whom Dr. Zechlin chose as
confidant.

During  Frank's  first  year  in  Mizpah,  Zechlin  and he were merely polite to each other; they watched each other and respected each other and
remained  aloof. Frank was diffident before Dr. Zechlin's learning, and in the end it was Zechlin who offered friendship. He was a lonely man. He
was  a  bachelor and he despised all of his colleagues whom he did not fear. Particularly did he dislike being called "Brother Zechlin" by active
long-legged braying preachers from the bush.

At  the  beginning  of Frank's second year in Mizpah he worried once in Old Testament Exegesis class, "Professor Zechlin, I wish you'd explain an
apparent  Biblical  inconsistency to me. It says in John--some place in the first chapter I think it is--that 'No man hath seen God at any time,'
and  then  in  Timothy  it states definitely, about God, 'Whom no man hath seen nor can see,' and yet in Exodus xxiv, Moses and more than seventy
others did see him, with pavement under his feet, and Isaiah and Amos say they saw him, and God especially arranged for Moses to see part of him.
And there too--God told Moses that nobody could stand seeing his face and live, but Jacob actually wrestled with God and saw him face to face and
did  live.  Honestly,  Professor,  I'm  not trying to raise doubts, but there does seem to be an inconsistency there, and I wish I could find the
proper explanation."

Dr. Zechlin looked at him with a curious fuzzy brightness. "What do you mean by a proper explanation, Shallard?"

"So we can explain these things to young people that might be bothered by them."

"Well, it's rather complicated. If you'll come to my rooms after supper tonight, I'll try to make it clear."

But when Frank shyly came calling (and Dr. Zechlin exaggerated when he spoke of his "rooms," for he had only a book-littered study with an alcove
bedroom,  in the house of an osteopath), he did not at all try to make it clear. He hinted about to discover Frank's opinion of smoking, and gave
him a cigar; he encased himself in a musty arm-chair and queried:

"Do you ever feel a little doubt about the literal interpretation of our Old Testament, Shallard?"

He sounded kind, very understanding.

"I don't know. Yes, I guess I do. I don't like to call them doubts--"

"Why  not  call  'em  doubts?  Doubting  is a very healthy sign, especially in the young. Don't you see that otherwise you'd simply be swallowing
instruction whole, and no fallible human instructor can always be right, do you think?"

That  began  it--began  a talk, always cautious, increasingly frank, which lasted till midnight. Dr. Zechlin lent him (with the adjuration not to
let any one else see them) Renan's "Jesus," and Coe's "The Religion of a Mature Mind."

Frank  came  again  to  his  room, and they walked, strolled together through sweet apple orchards, unconscious even of Indian summer pastures in
their concentration on the destiny of man and the grasping gods.

Not  for  three  months did Zechlin admit that he was an agnostic, and not for another month that atheist would perhaps be a sounder name for him
than agnostic.

Before  ever he had taken his theological doctorate, Zechlin had felt that it was as impossible to take literally the myths of Christianity as to
take  literally  the  myths  of  Buddhism.  But  for  many years he had rationalized his heresies. These myths, he comforted himself, are symbols
embodying the glory of God and the leadership of Christ's genius. He had worked out a satisfactory parable: The literalist, said he, asserts that
a  flag  is  something holy, something to die for, not symbolically but in itself. The infidel, at the other end of the scale, maintains that the
flag  is  a  strip of wool or silk or cotton with rather unesthetic marks printed on it, and of considerably less use, therefore of less holiness
and  less  romance,  than a shirt or a blanket. But to the unprejudiced thinker, like himself, it was a symbol, sacred only by suggestion but not
the less sacred.

After  nearly  two decades he knew that he had been fooling himself; that he did not actually admire Jesus as the sole leader; that the teachings
of  Jesus  were  contradictory  and  borrowed  from  earlier  rabbis;  and  that  if  the teachings of Christianity were adequate flags, symbols,
philosophies  for  most  of  the  bellowing preachers whom he met and detested, then perforce they must for him be the flags, the symbols, of the
enemy.

Yet he went on as a Baptist preacher, as a teacher of ministerial cubs.

He tried to explain it to Frank Shallard without seeming too shameful.

First,  he suggested, it was hard for any man, it was especially hard for a teacher of sixty-five, to go back on the philosophy he had taught all
his life. It made that life seem too pitifully futile.

And he did love to tread theological labyrinths.

And, he admitted, as they plodded back through a winter twilight, he was afraid to come out with the truth lest he plain lose his job.

Man  of  learning  he  was,  but  too  sorry a preacher to be accepted by a liberal religious society, too lumbering a writer for journalism; and
outside the world of religious parasitism (his own phrase) he had no way of earning his living. If he were kicked out of Mizpah, he would starve.

"So!" he said grimly. "I would hate to see you go through all this, Frank."

"But--but--but--What am I to do, Dr. Zechlin? Do you think I ought to get out of the church? Now? While there's time?"

"You have lived the church. You would probably be lonely without it. Maybe you should stay in it . . . to destroy it!"

"But  you  wouldn't  want  it destroyed? Even if some details of dogma aren't true--or even all of 'em--think what a consolation religion and the
church are to weak humanity!"

"Are  they? I wonder! Don't cheerful agnostics, who know they're going to die dead, worry much less than good Baptists, who worry lest their sons
and cousins and sweethearts fail to get into the Baptist heaven--or what is even worse, who wonder if they may not have guessed wrong--if God may
not  be  a Catholic, maybe, or a Mormon or a Seventh-day Adventist instead of a Baptist, and then they'll go to hell themselves! Consolation? No!
But--Stay in the church. Till YOU want to get out."

Frank stayed.


3


By  Senior year he had read many of Dr. Zechlin's bootlegged books: Davenport's "Primitive Traits in Religious Revivals," which asserted that the
shoutings and foamings and twitchings at revival meetings were no more sanctified than any other barbaric religious frenzies, Dods and Sunderland
on  the origin of the Bible, which indicated that the Bible was no more holy and infallible than Homer; Nathaniel Schmidt's revolutionary life of
Jesus,  "The  Prophet  of  Nazareth," and White's "History of the Warfare of Science with Theology," which painted religion as the enemy, not the
promoter,  of  human  progress. He was indeed--in a Baptist seminary!--a specimen of the "young man ruined by godless education" whom the Baptist
periodicals loved to paint.

But he stayed.

He  clung to the church. It was his land, his patriotism. Nebulously and quite unpractically and altogether miserably he planned to give his life
to a project called "liberalizing the church from within."

It was a relief after his sophistries to have so lively an emotion as his sweet, clear, resounding hatred for Brother Elmer Gantry.


4


Frank had always disliked Elmer's thickness, his glossiness, his smut, and his inability to understand the most elementary abstraction. But Frank
was  ordinarily  no  great  hater,  and  when  they  went  off  together  to guard the flock at Schoenheim, he almost liked Elmer in his vigorous
excitement--beautiful earthy excitement of an athlete.

Frank considered Lulu Bains a bisque doll, and he would have cherished her like any ten-year-old in his Sunday School class. He saw Elmer's whole
body stiffen as he looked at Lulu. And there was nothing he could do.

He  was  afraid  that  if  he spoke to Mr. Bains, or even to Lulu, in the explosion Elmer might have to marry her, and suddenly the Frank who had
always  accepted  "the  holy institution of matrimony" felt that for a colt like Lulu any wild kicking up of the heels would be better than being
harnessed to Elmer's muddy plow.

Frank's  minister  father  and  his  mother went to California for Christmas time, and he spent the holiday with Dr. Zechlin. They two celebrated
Christmas  Eve,  and  a  very  radiant,  well-contented,  extremely  German  Weinachtsabend  that  was. Zechlin had procured a goose, bullied the
osteopath's wife into cooking it, with sausages for stuffing and cranberry pancake to flank it. He brewed a punch not at all Baptist; it frothed,
and smelled divinely, and to Frank it brought visions.

They sat in old chairs on either side of the round stove, gently waving their punch glasses, and sang:


Stille  Nacht,  heilige  Nacht, Alles schläft, einsam wacht Nur das traute hochheilige Paar, Holder Knabe im lokkigen Haar Schlaf in himm'lischer
Ruh, Schlaf in himm'lischer Ruh.


"Ah,  yes," the old man meditated, "that is the Christ I still dream of--the Child with shining hair, the dear German Christ Child--the beautiful
fairy  tale--and your Dean Trospers make Jesus into a monster that hates youth and laughter--Wein, Weib und Gesang. Der arme! How unlucky he was,
that  Christ, not to have the good Trosper with him at the wedding feast to explain that he must not turn the water into wine. Chk! Chk! I wonder
if I am too old to start a leetle farm with a big vineyard and seven books?"


5


Elmer Gantry was always very witty about Dr. Bruno Zechlin. Sometimes he called him "Old Fuzzy." Sometimes he said, "That old coot OUGHT to teach
Hebrew--he  looks  like  a  page of Yid himself." Elmer could toss off things like that. The applause of Eddie Fislinger, who was heard to say in
hallways and lavatories that Zechlin lacked spirituality, encouraged Elmer to create his masterpiece.

Before Exegesis class, he printed on the blackboard in a disguised hand:


"I  am Fuzzy Zechlin, the gazabo that knows more than God. If Jake Trosper got onto what I really think about inspiration of the Scriptures, he'd
fire me out on my dirty Dutch neck."


The assembling students guffawed, even ponderous Brother Karkis, the up-creek Calvin.

Dr.  Zechlin  trotted  into the classroom, smiling. He read the blackboard inscription. He looked incredulous, then frightened, and peered at his
class like an old dog stoned by hoodlums. He turned and walked out, to the laughter of Brother Gantry and Brother Karkis.

It is not recorded how the incident came to Dean Trosper.

He summoned Elmer. "I suspect it was you who wrote that on the blackboard."

Elmer  considered  lying,  then  blurted,  "Yes,  I  did,  Dean.  I  tell you, it's a shame--I don't pretend to have reached a state of Christian
perfection,  but I'm trying hard, and I think it's a shame when a man on the faculty is trying to take away our faith by hints and sneers, that's
how I feel."

Dean  Trosper spoke snappishly: "I don't think you need worry about anybody suggesting new possibilities of sin to YOU, Brother Gantry. But there
is  some justification to what you say. Now go and sin no more. I still believe that some day you may grow up and turn your vitality into a means
of grace for many, possibly including yourself. Thaddeldo."

Dr.  Bruno Zechlin was abruptly retired at Easter. He went to live with his niece. She was poor and liked bridge, and did not want him. He made a
little money by translating from the German. He died within two years.

Elmer Gantry never knew who sent him thirty dimes, wrapped in a tract about holiness, nor why. But he found the sentiments in the tract useful in
a sermon, and the thirty dimes he spent for lively photographs of burlesque ladies.



CHAPTER IX


1


The relations of Brother Gantry and Brother Shallard were not ardent, toward Chrismastide, even in the intimacy of pumping a hand-car.

Frank complained while they were laboring along the track after church at Schoenheim:

"Look here, Gantry, something's got to be done. I'm not satisfied about you and Lulu. I've caught you looking at each other. And I suspect you've
been talking to the dean about Dr. Zechlin. I'm afraid I've got to go to the dean myself. You're not fit to have a pastorate."

Elmer stopped pumping, glared, rubbed his mittened hands on his thighs, and spoke steadily:

"I've  been  waiting  for  this!  I'm  impulsive--sure; I make bad mistakes--every red-blooded man does. But what about you? I don't know how far
you've  gone  with  your  hellish  doubts,  but  I've  been listening to the hedging way you answer questions in Sunday School, and I know you're
beginning  to  wabble.  Pretty  soon  you'll  be  an out-and-out liberal. God! Plotting to weaken the Christian religion, to steal away from weak
groping souls their only hope of salvation! The worst murderer that ever lived isn't a criminal like you!"

"That isn't true! I'd die before I'd weaken the faith of any one who needed it!"

"Then  you simply haven't got brains enough to see what you're doing, and there's no place for you in any Christian pulpit! It's me that ought to
go to Pop Trosper complaining! Just today, when that girl came to you worrying about her pa's giving up family-prayers, you let on like it didn't
matter much. You may have started that poor young lady on the doubt-paved road that leads to everlasting Hell!"

And all the way to Mizpah Frank worried and explained.

And  at  Mizpah  Elmer  graciously  permitted him to resign his place at Schoenheim, and advised him to repent and seek the direction of the Holy
Spirit before he should ever attempt another pastorate.

Elmer  sat in his rooms flaming with his evangelistic triumph. He was so sincere about it that not for minutes did he reflect that Frank would no
longer be an obstacle to his relations with Lulu Bains.


2


A  score  of  times  before  March, in her own house, in an abandoned log barn, at the church, Elmer contrived to have meetings with Lulu. But he
wearied  of  her  trusting babble. Even her admiration, since she always gushed the same things in the same way, began to irritate him. Her love-
making  was  equally unimaginative. She always kissed and expected to be kissed in the same way. Even before March he had had enough, but she was
so completely devoted to him that he wondered if he might not have to give up the Schoenheim church to get rid of her. He felt injured.

Nobody  could ever say he was unkind to girls or despised 'em, the way Jim Lefferts used to. He'd taught Lulu an awful lot; got her over her hick
ideas;  showed  her  how  a  person could be religious and still have a good time, if you just looked at it right and saw that while you ought to
teach  the highest ideals, nobody could be expected to always and exactly live up to 'em every day. Especially when you were young. And hadn't he
given her a bracelet that cost five good bucks?

But  she  was  such  a darned fool. Never could understand that after a certain point a man wanted to quit love-making and plan his next Sunday's
sermon  or  bone  up  on his confounded Greek. Practically, he felt resentfully, she'd deceived him. Here he'd thought that she was a nice, safe,
unemotional  little  thing,  whom  it  might be pleasant to tease but who'd let him alone when he had more serious matters to attend to, and then
she'd turned out passionate. She wanted to go on being kissed and kissed and kissed when he was sick of it. Her lips were always creeping around,
touching his hand or his cheek when he wanted to talk.

She  sent him whining little notes at Mizpah. Suppose somebody found one of 'em! Golly! She wrote to him that she was just living till their next
meeting--trying  to  bother  him and distract his attention when he had a man's work to do. She mooned up at him with her foolish soft mushy eyes
all through his sermons--absolutely spoiled his style. She was wearing him out, and he'd have to get rid of her.

Hated to do it. Always HAD been nice to girls--to everybody. But it was for her sake just as much as his--

He'd have to be mean to her and make her sore.


3


They were alone in the Schoenheim church after morning meeting. She had whispered to him at the door, "I've got something I have to tell you."

He was frightened; he grumbled, "Well, we oughtn't to be seen together so much but--Slip back when the other folks are gone."

He  was  sitting  in  the  front  pew  in the deserted church, reading hymns for want of better, when she crept behind him and kissed his ear. He
jumped.

"Good Lord, don't go startling people like that!" he snarled. "Well, what's all this you have to tell me?"

She was faltering, near to tears. "I thought you'd like it! I just wanted to creep close and say I loved you!"

"Well, good heavens, you needn't of acted as though you were pregnant or something!"

"Elmer!" Too hurt in her gay affection, too shocked in her rustic sense of propriety, for resentment.

"Well, that's just about how you acted! Making me wait here when I've got to be back in town--important meeting--and me having to pump that hand-
car all alone! I do wish you wouldn't act like a ten-year-old kid ALL the time!"

"Elmer!"

"Oh,  Elmer,  Elmer,  Elmer!  That's  all very well. I like to play around and be foolish jus' as well's anybody, but all this--all this--All the
TIME!"

She  fled  round to the front of the pew and knelt by him, her childish hand on his knee, prattling in an imitation of baby-talk which infuriated
him:

"Oh, issums such cwoss old bear! Issums bad old bear! So cwoss with Lulukins!"

"Lulukins! Great John God!"

"Why, Elmer Gantry!" It was the Sunday School teacher who was shocked now. She sat up on her knees.

"Lulukins!  Of  all  the damned fool baby-talk I ever heard that takes the cake! That's got 'em all beat! For God's sake try to talk like a human
being! And don't go squatting there. Suppose somebody came in. Are you deliberately going to work to ruin me? . . . LULUKINS!"

She  stood  up,  fists  tight.  "What have I done? I didn't mean to hurt you! Oh, I didn't, dearest! Please forgive me! I just came in to s'prise
you!"

"Huh! You S'PRISED me all right!"

"Dear! Please! I'm so sorry. Why, you called me Lulukins yourself!"

"I never did!"

She was silent.

"Besides, if I did, I was kidding."

Patiently, trying to puzzle it out, she sat beside him and pleaded, "I don't know what I've done. I just don't know. Won't you please--oh, PLEASE
explain, and give me a chance to make up for it!"

"Oh,  hell!"  He  sprang  up,  hat  in hand, groping for his overcoat. "If you can't understand, I can't waste my time explaining!" And was gone,
relieved but not altogether proud.

But by Tuesday he admired himself for his resolution.

Tuesday  evening  came her apology; not a very good note, blurry, doubtful of spelling, and, as she had no notion what she was apologizing about,
not very lucid.

He did not answer it.

During his sermon the next Sunday she looked up at him waiting to smile, but he took care not to catch her eye.

While he was voluminously explaining the crime of Nadab and Abihu in putting strange fire in their censors, he was thinking with self-admiration,
"Poor little thing. I'm sorry for her. I really am."

He  saw  that she was loitering at the door, behind her parents, after the service, but he left half his congregation unhandshaken and unshriven,
muttered to Deacon Bains, "Sorry gotta hurry 'way," and fled toward the railroad tracks.

"If you're going to act this way and deliberately PERSECUTE me," he raged, "I'll just have to have a good talk with you, my fine young lady!"

He  waited,  this  new  Tuesday, for another note of apology. There was none, but on Thursday, when he was most innocently having a vanilla milk-
shake  at  Bombery's  Drug Store, near the seminary, when he felt ever so good and benign and manly, with his Missions theme all finished and two
fine five-cent cigars in his pocket, he saw her standing outside peering in at him.

He was alarmed. She looked not quite sane.

"Suppose she's told her father!" he groaned.

He hated her.

He swaggered out gallantly, and he did most magniloquently the proper delight at encountering her here in town.

"Well, well, well, Lulu, this IS a pleasant surprise! And where's Papa?"

"He  and  Ma  are  up in the doctor's office--about Ma's earache. I said I'd meet them at the Boston Bazaar. Elmer!" Her voice was like stretched
quivering wire. "I've GOT to talk to you! You've got to--Walk down the street with me."

He saw that she had tried to rouge her cheeks. It was not customary in rural Midwest in 1906. She had done it badly.

The spring was early. These first days of March were soft with buds, and Elmer sighed that if she weren't such a tyrannical nagger, he might have
felt romantic about her as they walked toward the court-house lawn and the statue of General Sherman.

He  had  expanded  her  education  in  boldness as well as vocabulary; and with only a little hesitation, a little of peering up at him, a little
trying to hook her fingers over his arm till he shook it free, she blurted:

"We've got to do something. Because I think I'm going to have a baby."

"Oh, good God Almighty! Hell!" said the Reverend Elmer Gantry. "And I suppose you've gone squealing to your old man and the old woman!"

"No, I haven't." She was quiet, and dignified--dignified as a bedraggled gray kitten could be.

"Well, that's good, anyway. Well, I suppose I'll have to do something about it. Damn!"

He thought rapidly. From the ladies of joy whom he knew in the city of Monarch he could obtain information--But--

"You  look  here now!" he snarled. "It isn't possible!" He faced her, on the brick walk through the court-house lawn, under the castiron wings of
the  rusty  Justice.  "What  are  you  trying  to  pull? God knows I most certainly intend to stand by you in every way. But I don't intend to be
bamboozled, not by anybody! What makes you think you're pregnant?"

"Please, dear! Don't use that word!"

"Huh! Say, that's pretty good, that is! Come across now. What makes you think so?"

She  could  not look at him; she looked only at the ground; and his virtuous indignation swooped down on her as she stammered her reasons. Now no
one  had  taught  Lulu Bains much physiology; and it was evident that she was making up what she considered sound symptoms. She could only mumble
again  and  again,  while tears mucked her clumsy rouge, while her bent fingers trembled at her chin, "Oh, it's--I feel so bad--oh, please, dear,
don't make me go on explaining."

He had enough of it. He gripped her shoulder, not tenderly.

"Lulu,  you're  lying! You have a dirty, lying, deceitful heart! I wondered what it was about you that bothered me and kept me from marrying you.
Now I know! Thank God I've found out in time! You're lying!"

"Oh, dear, I'm not. Oh, please!"

"Look here. I'm going to take you to a doctor's. Right now. We'll get the truth."

"Oh, no, no, no! Please, no! I can't."

"Why can't you?"

"Oh, please!"

"Uh-huh! And that's all you've got to say for yourself! Come here! Look up at me!"

They  must  have hurt, his meaty fingers digging into her shoulder, but then, he felt righteous, he felt like the Old Testament prophets whom his
sect admired. And he had found something about which he really could quarrel with her.

She did not look at him, for all his pinching. She merely wept, hopelessly.

"Then you were lying?"

"Oh,  I  was! Oh, dearest, how can you hurt me like you do?" He released his grip, and looked polite. "Oh, I don't mean hurting my shoulder. That
doesn't  matter.  I  mean hurting ME! So cold to me! And I thought maybe if we were married--I'd do everything to make you happy. I'd go wherever
you did. I wouldn't mind if we had the tiniest little small house--"

"And  you--YOU--expect  a  minister  of  the gospel to share ANY house with a liar! Oh, you viper that--Oh, hell, I won't talk like a preacher. I
don't  suppose  I  have  done altogether right, maybe. Though I noticed you were glad enough to sneak out and meet me places! But when a woman, a
Christian,  deliberately  lies  and  tries to deceive a man in his deepest feelings--That's too much no matter what I did! Don't you ever dare to
speak to me again! And if you tell your father about this, and force me into marriage, I'll--I'll--I'll kill myself!"

"Oh, I won't! Honest, I won't!"

"I'll repent my own fault in bitter tears and as for you, young woman--Go and sin no more."

He  swung  round,  walked away from her, deaf to her whimperings. She desperately trotted after his giant stride for a while, then leaned against
the trunk of a sycamore, while a passing grocery clerk snickered.

She did not appear at church the next Sunday. Elmer was so pleased that he thought of having another rendezvous with her.


4


Deacon Bains and his good wife had noticed how pale and absent-minded was their normally bouncing daughter.

"Guess  she's  in  love  with that new preacher. Well, let's keep our hands off. Be a nice match for her. Never knew a young preacher that was so
filled with the power. Talks like a house afire, by golly," said the deacon, as they yawned and stretched in the vast billowy old bed.

Then Floyd Naylor came fretting to the deacon.

Floyd  was  a  kinsman of the family; a gangling man of twenty-five, immensely strong, rather stupid, a poor farmer, very loyal. For years he had
buzzed about Lulu. It would be over-romantic to say that he had eaten his faithful heart out in lone reverence. But he had always considered Lulu
the  most beautiful, sparkling, and profound girl in the universe. Lulu considered him a stick, and Deacon Bains held in aversion his opinions on
alfalfa. He was a familiar of the household; rather like a neighbor's dog.

Floyd found Deacon Bains in the barnyard mending a whiffletree, and grunted, "Say, Cousin Barney, I'm kind of worried about Lulu."

"Oh, guess she's in love with this new preacher. Can't tell; they might get hitched."

"Yeh, but is Brother Gantry in love with her? Somehow I don't like that fella."

"Rats, you don't appreciate preachers. You never was in a real state of grace. Never did get reborn of the spirit proper."

"Like hell I didn't! Got just as reborn as you did! Preachers are all right, most of 'em. But this fella Gantry--Say, here 'long about two months
ago  I  seen  him  and  Lulu  walking  down the brick schoolhouse road, and they was hugging and kissing like all get-out, and he was calling her
Sweetheart."

"Heh? Sure it was them?"

"Dead certain. I was, uh--Well, fact is, another fella and me--"

"Who was she?"

"Now  that  don't  make  no  difference.  Anyway, we was sitting right under the big maple this side of the schoolhouse, in the shade, but it was
bright  moonlight and Lulu and this preacher come by, near's I am to you, prett' near. Well, thinks I, guess they're going to get engaged. Then I
hung  around the church, once-twice after meeting, and one time I kinda peeked in the window and I seen 'em right there in the front pew, hugging
like  they  sure  ought  to  get  married  whether or no. I didn't say anything--wanted to wait and see if he'd marry her. Now it ain't any of my
business, Barney, but you know I always liked Lulu, and strikes me we ought to know if this Bible-walloper is going to play straight with her."

"Guess maybe that's right. I'll have a talk with her."

Bains had never been very observant of his daughter, but Floyd Naylor was not a liar, and it was with sharpened eyes that the deacon stumped into
the house and found her standing by the churn, her arms hanging limp.

"Say, uh, say, uh, Lu, how's things going with you and Brother Gantry?"

"Why, what do you mean?"

"You two engaged? Going to be engaged? He going to marry you?"

"Of course not."

"Been making love to you, ain't he?"

"Oh, never!"

"Never hugged you or kissed you?"

"Never!"

"How far'd he go?"

"Oh, he didn't!"

"Why you been looking so kind of peeked lately?"

"Oh, I just don't feel very well. Oh, I feel fine. It's just the spring coming on, I guess--" She dropped to the floor and, with her head against
the churn, her thin fingers beating an hysterical tattoo on the floor, she choked with weeping.

"There, there, Lu! Your dad'll do something about it."

Floyd was waiting in the farmyard.

There were, in those parts and those days, not infrequent ceremonies known as "shotgun weddings."


5


The  Reverend  Elmer  Gantry  was  reading  an illustrated pink periodical devoted to prize-fighters and chorus girls in his room at Elizabeth J.
Schmutz Hall late of an afternoon when two large men walked in without knocking.

"Why,  good evening, Brother Bains--Brother Naylor! This is a pleasant surprise. I was, uh--Did you ever see this horrible rag? About actoresses.
An  invention  of  the devil himself. I was thinking of denouncing it next Sunday. I hope you never read it--won't you sit down, gentlemen?--take
this chair--I hope you never read it, Brother Floyd, because the footsteps of--"

"Gantry," exploded Deacon Bains, "I want you to take your footsteps right now and turn 'em toward my house! You've been fooling with my daughter,
and  either  you're  going to marry her, or Floyd and me are going to take it out of your hide, and way I feel just now, don't much care which it
is."

"You mean to say that Lulu has been pretending--"

"Naw,  Lulu  ain't  said nothing. God, I wonder if I ought to LET the girl marry a fellow like you? But I got to protect her good name, and guess
Floyd and me can see to it you give her a square deal after the marriage. Now I've sent out word to invite all the neighbors to the house tonight
for  a  little  sociable  to tell 'em Lulu and you are engaged, and you're going to put on your Sunday-go-to-meeting suit and come with us, right
now."

"You can't bully me into anything--"

"Take that side of him, Floyd, but I get the first lick. You get what's left."

They ranged up beside him. They were shorter, less broad, but their faces were like tanned hard leather, their eyes were hard--

"You're a big cuss, Brother Gantry, but guess you don't get enough exercise no more. Pretty soft," considered Deacon Bains.

His fist was dropping down, down to his knee; his shoulder sloped down; his fist was coming up--and Floyd had suddenly pinioned Elmer's arms.

"I'll do it! All right! All right!" Elmer shrieked.

He'd find a way to break the engagement. Already he was recovering his poise.

"Now  you fellows listen to me! I'm in love with Lulu, and I intended to ask her the moment I finish here--less than three months now--and get my
first church. And then you two butt in and try to spoil this romance!"

"Hum,  yes, I guess so," Bains droned, inexpressible contempt in his dragging voice. "You save all them pretty words for Lulu. You're going to be
married  the  middle  of  May--that'll give time enough after the engagement so's the neighbors won't think there's anything wrong. Now into them
clothes.  Buggy  waiting outside. We'll treat you right. If you use Lulu like you ought to, and honey her up and make her feel happy again, maybe
Floyd  and  me  won't kill you the night of your wedding. We'll see. And we'll always treat you fine in public--won't even laugh when we hear you
preaching. Now git, hear me?"

While  he  dressed,  Elmer  was able to keep his face turned from them, able to compose himself, so that he could suddenly whirl on them with his
handsomest, his most manly and winning smile.

"Brother  Bains,  I  want to thank Cousin Floyd and you. You're dead wrong about thinking I wouldn't have done right by Lulu. But I rejoice, sir,
REJOICE, that she is blessed by having such loyal relatives!" That puzzled rather than captured them, but he fetched them complete with a jovial,
"And such husky ones! I'm pretty strong myself--keep up my exercise lot more'n you think--but I guess I wouldn't be one-two-three with you folks!
Good  thing  for  ole Elmer you never let loose that darn' mule-kick of yours, Brother Bains! And you're right. No sense putting off the wedding.
May  fifteenth  will  be  fine.  Now  I  want to ask one thing: Let me have ten minutes alone with Lu before you make the announcement. I want to
console her--make her happy. Oh, you can tell if I keep faith--the eagle eye of a father will know."

"Well, my father's eagle eye ain't been working none too good lately, but I guess it'll be all right for you to see her."

"Now, will you shake hands? Please!"

He was so big, so radiant, so confident. They looked sheepish, grinned like farmers flattered by a politician, and shook hands.

There was a multitude at the Bainses', also fried chicken and watermelon pickles.

The deacon brought Lulu to Elmer in the spare room and left her.

Elmer was at ease on the sofa; she stood before him, trembling, red-eyed.

"Come, you poor child," he condescended.

She approached, sobbing, "Honestly, dear, I didn't tell Pa anything--I didn't ask him to do it--oh, I don't want to if you don't."

"There, there, child. It's all right. I'm sure you'll make a fine wife. Sit down." And he permitted her to kiss his hand, so that she became very
happy and wept tremendously, and went out to her father rejoicing.

He considered, meanwhile, "That ought to hold you, damn you! Now I'll figure out some way of getting out of this mess."

At the announcement of Lulu's engagement to a Man of God, the crowd gave hoarse and holy cheers.

Elmer  made  quite  a  long  speech  into  which  he brought all that Holy Writ had to say about the relations of the sexes--that is, all that he
remembered and that could be quoted in mixed company.

"Go on, Brother! Kiss her!" they clamored.

He did, heartily; so heartily that he felt curious stirrings.

He  spent  the  night  there, and was so full of holy affection that when the family was asleep, he crept into Lulu's bedroom. She stirred on the
pillow and whispered, "Oh, my darling! And you forgave me! Oh I do love you so!" as he kissed her fragrant hair.


6


It  was  usual  for  the  students  of  Mizpah  to let Dean Trosper know if they should become engaged. The dean recommended them for ministerial
appointments,  and the status of marriage made a difference. Bachelors were more likely to become assistants in large city churches; married men,
particularly those whose wives had lively piety and a knowledge of cooking, were usually sent to small churches of their own.

The dean summoned Elmer to his gloomy house on the edge of the campus--it was a house which smelled of cabbage and wet ashes--and demanded:

"Gantry, just what is this business about you and some girl at Schoenheim?"

"Why, Dean," in hurt rectitude, "I'm engaged to a fine young lady there--daughter of one of my deacons."

"Well,  that's good. It's better to marry than to burn--or at least so it is stated in the Scriptures. Now I don't want any monkey-business about
this. A preacher must walk circumspectly. You must shun the very appearance of evil. I hope you'll love and cherish her, and seems to me it would
be well not only to be engaged to her but even to marry her. Thaddeldo."

"Now what the devil did he mean by that?" protested Parsifal as he went home.


7


He had to work quickly. He had less than two months before the threatened marriage.

If he could entangle Lulu with some one? What about Floyd Naylor? The fool loved her.

He  spent  as  much  time in Schoenheim as possible, not only with Lulu but with Floyd. He played all his warm incandescence on Floyd, and turned
that trusting drudge from enemy into admiring friend. One day when Floyd and he were walking together to the hand-car Elmer purred:

"Say,  Floydy,  some  ways  it's kind of a shame Lu's going to marry me and not you. You're so steady and hard-working and patient. I fly off the
handle too easy."

"Oh,  gosh,  no, I ain't smart enough for her, Elmer. She ought to marry a fella with a lot of book-learning like you, and that dresses swell, so
she can be in society and everything."

"But I guess you liked her pretty well yourself, eh? You ought to! Sweetest girl in the whole world. You kind of liked her?"

"Yuh, I guess I did. I--Oh, well rats, I ain't good enough for her, God bless her!"

Elmer  spoke  of  Floyd as a future cousin and professed his fondness for him, his admiration of the young man's qualities and remarkable singing
(Floyd Naylor sang about as Floyd Naylor would have sung.) Elmer spoke of him as a future cousin, and wanted to see a deal of him.

He  praised  Lulu  and Floyd to each other, and left them together as often as he could contrive, slipping back to watch them through the window.
But to his indignation they merely sat and talked.

Then he had a week in Schoenheim, the whole week before Easter. The Baptists of Schoenheim, with their abhorrence of popery, did not make much of
Easter  as  Easter; they called it "The Festival of Christ's Resurrection," but they did like daily meetings during what the heretical world knew
as  Holy  Week.  Elmer stayed with the Bainses and labored mightily both against sin and against getting married. Indeed he was so stirred and so
eloquent that he led two sixteen-year-old girls out of their sins, and converted the neighborhood object-lesson, a patriarch who drank hard cider
and had not been converted for two years.

Elmer knew by now that though Floyd Naylor was not exactly a virgin, his achievements and his resolution were considerably less than his desires,
and he set to work to improve that resolution. He took Floyd off to the pasture and, after benignly admitting that perhaps a preacher oughtn't to
talk  of  such things, he narrated his amorous conquests till Floyd's eyes were hungrily bulging. Then, with giggling apologies, Elmer showed his
collection of what he called Art Photographs.

Floyd almost ate them, Elmer lent them to him. That was on a Thursday.

At the same time Elmer deprived Lulu all week of the caresses which she craved, till she was desperate.

On  Friday  Elmer  held  morning  meeting  instead  of  evening meeting, and arranged that Lulu and Floyd and he should have picnic supper in the
sycamore  grove  near the Bains house. He suggested it in a jocund idyllic way, and Lulu brightened. On their way to the grove with their baskets
she sighed to him, as they walked behind Floyd, "Oh, why have you been so cold to me? Have I offended you again, dear?"

He let her have it, brutally: "Oh, don't be such a damned whiner! Can't you act as if you had SOME brains, just for once?"

When they spread the picnic supper, she was barely keeping hold of her sobs.

They finished supper in the dusk. They sat quietly, Floyd looking at her, wondering at her distress, peeping nervously at her pretty ankles.

"Say,  I've  got  to go in and make some notes for my sermon tomorrow. No, you two wait for me here. Nicer out in the fresh air. Be back in about
half an hour," said Elmer.

He  made  much of noisily swaggering away through the brush; he crept back softly, stood behind a sycamore near them. He was proud of himself. It
was working. Already Lulu was sobbing openly, while Floyd comforted her with "What is it, pretty? What is it, dear? Tell me."

Floyd had moved nearer to her (Elmer could just see them) and she rested her head on his cousinly shoulder.

Presently Floyd was kissing her tears away, and she seemed to be snuggling close to him. Elmer heard her muffled, "Oh, you oughtn't to kiss me!"

"Elmer said I should think of you as a sister, and I could kiss you--Oh, my God, Lulu, I do love you so terrible!"

"Oh, we oughtn't--" Then silence.

Elmer  fled  into  the  barnyard, found Deacon Bains, and demanded harshly, "Come here! I want you to see what Floyd and Lulu are doing! Put that
lantern down. I've got one of these electric dinguses here."

He had. He had bought it for this purpose. He also had a revolver in his pocket.

When  Elmer  and  the  bewildered  Mr.  Bains burst upon them, saw them in the circle from the electric flashlight, Lulu and Floyd were deep in a
devastating kiss.

"There!"  bellowed  the  outraged Elmer. "Now you see why I hesitated to be engaged to that woman! I've suspected it all along! Oh, abomination--
abomination, and she that committeth it shall be cut off!"

Floyd  sprang  up, a fighting hound. Elmer could doubtless have handled him, but it was Deacon Bains who with one maniac blow knocked Floyd down.
The deacon turned to Elmer then, with the first tears he had known since boyhood: "Forgive me and mine, Brother! We have sinned against you. This
woman  shall  suffer for it, always. She'll never enter my house again. She'll by God marry Floyd. And he's the shiftlessest damn' fool farmer in
ten counties!"

"I'm going. I can't stand this. I'll send you another preacher. I'll never see any of you again!" said Elmer.

"I don't blame you. Try to forgive us, Brother." The deacon was sobbing now, dusty painful sobbing, bewildered sobs of anger.

The last thing Elmer saw in the light of his electric torch was Lulu huddled, with shrunk shoulders, her face insane with fear.



CHAPTER X


1


As  he  tramped back to Babylon that evening, Elmer did not enjoy his deliverance so much as he had expected. But he worked manfully at recalling
Lulu's repetitious chatter, her humorless ignorance, her pawing, her unambitious rusticity, and all that he had escaped.

.  .  .  To  have  her  around--gumming his life--never could jolly the congregation and help him--and suppose he were in a big town with a swell
church--Gee! Maybe he wasn't glad to be out of it! Besides! Really better for her. She and Floyd much better suited . . .

He  knew  that  Dean Trosper's one sin was reading till late, and he came bursting into the dean's house at the scandalous hour of eleven. In the
last  mile  he  had heroically put by his exhilaration; he had thrown himself into the state of a betrayed and desolate young man so successfully
that he had made himself believe it.

"Oh,  how  wise you were about women, Dean!" he lamented. "A terrible thing has happened! Her father and I have just found my girl in the arms of
another man--a regular roué down there. I can never go back, not even for Easter service. And her father agrees with me. . . . You can ask him!"

"Well,  I  am most awfully sorry to hear this, Brother Gantry. I didn't know you could feel so deeply. Shall we kneel in prayer, and ask the Lord
to comfort you? I'll send Brother Shallard down there for the Easter service--he knows the field."

On his knees, Elmer told the Lord that he had been dealt with as no man before or since. The dean approved his agonies very much.

"There,  there,  my boy. The Lord will lighten your burden in his own good time. Perhaps this will be a blessing in disguise--you're lucky to get
rid  of such a woman, and this will give you that humility, that deeper thirsting after righteousness, which I've always felt you lacked, despite
your  splendid pulpit voice. Now I've got something to take your mind off your sorrows. There's quite a nice little chapel on the edge of Monarch
where  they're  lacking  an  incumbent.  I'd intended to send Brother Hudkins--you know him; he's that old retired preacher that lives out by the
brick-yard--comes into classes now and then--I'd intended to send him down for the Easter service. But I'll send you instead, and in fact, if you
see  the committee, I imagine you can fix it to have this as a regular charge, at least till graduation. They pay fifteen a Sunday and your fare.
And being there in a city like Monarch, you can go to the ministerial association and so on--stay over till Monday noon every week--and make fine
contacts,  and maybe you'll be in line for assistant in one of the big churches next summer. There's a morning train to Monarch--10:21, isn't it?
You take that train tomorrow morning, and go look up a lawyer named Eversley. He's got an office--where's his letter?--his office is in the Royal
Trust  Company  Building.  He's  a  deacon.  I'll  wire  him  to  be  there  tomorrow  afternoon, or anyway leave word, and you can make your own
arrangements.  The  Flowerdale  Baptist  Church, that's the name, and it's a real nice little modern plant, with lovely folks. Now you go to your
room and pray, and I'm sure you'll feel better."


2


It  was an hilarious Elmer Gantry who took the 10:21 train to Monarch, a city of perhaps three hundred thousand. He sat in the day-coach planning
his  Easter  discourse.  Jiminy!  His first sermon in a real city! Might lead to anything. Better give 'em something red-hot and startling. Let's
see:  He'd  get  away from this Christ is Risen stuff--mention it of course, just bring it in, but have some other theme. Let's see: Faith. Hope.
Repentance--no,  better  go  slow  on  that  repentance  idea;  this  Deacon Eversley, the lawyer, might be pretty well-to-do and get sore if you
suggested he had anything to repent of. Let's see: Courage. Chastity. Love--that was it--love!

And he was making notes rapidly, right out of his own head, on the back of an envelope:


Love: a rainbow AM & PM star from cradle to tomb inspires art etc. music voice of love slam atheists etc. who not appreciate love


"Guess you must be a newspaperman, Brother," a voice assailed him.

Elmer  looked  at  his  seatmate,  a little man with a whisky nose and asterisks of laughter-wrinkles round his eyes, a rather sportingly dressed
little man with the red tie which in 1906 was still thought rather the thing for socialists and drinkers.

He  could  have a good time with such a little man, Elmer considered. A drummer. Would it be more fun to be natural with him, or to ask him if he
was saved, and watch him squirm? Hell, he'd have enough holy business in Monarch. So he turned on his best good-fellow smile, and answered:

"Well, not exactly. Pretty warm for so early, eh?"

"Yuh, it certainly is. Been in Babylon long?"

"No, not very long."

"Fine town. Lots of business."

"You betcha. And some nice little dames there, too."

The  little  man  snickered.  "There  are, eh? Well, say, you better give me some addresses. I make that town once a month and, by golly, I ain't
picked me out a skirt yet. But it's a good town. Lots of money there."

"Yes-sir, that's a fact. Good hustling town. Quick turnover there all right. Lots of money in Babylon."

"Though they do tell me," said the little man, "there's one of these preacher-factories there."

"Is that a fact!"

"Yump.  Say,  Brother,  this'll make you laugh. Juh know what I thought when I seen you first--wearing that black suit and writing things down? I
thought maybe you was a preacher yourself!"

"Well--"

God,  he  couldn't  stand  it! Having to be so righteous every Sunday at Schoenheim--Deacon Bains everlastingly asking these fool questions about
predestination  or  some doggone thing. Cer'nly had a vacation coming! And a sport like this fellow, he'd look down on you if you said you were a
preacher.

The train was noisy. If any neighboring cock crowed three times, Elmer did not hear it as he rumbled:

"Well, for the love of Mike! Though--" In his most austere manner: "This black suit happens to be mourning for one very dear to me."

"Oh, say, Brother, now you gotta excuse me! I'm always shooting my mouth off!"

"Oh, that's all right."

"Well, let's shake, and I'll know you don't hold it against me."

"You bet."

From  the  little  man came an odor of whisky which stirred Elmer powerfully. So long since he'd had a drink! Nothing for two months except a few
nips of hard cider which Lulu had dutifully stolen for him from her father's cask.

"Well, what is your line, Brother?" said the little man.

"I'm in the shoe game."

"Well,  that's  a fine game. Yes-sir, people do have to have shoes, no matter if they're hard up or not. My name's Ad Locust--Jesus, think of it,
the folks named me Adney--can you beat that--ain't that one hell of a name for a fellow that likes to get out with the boys and have a good time!
But  you  can just call me Ad. I'm traveling for the Pequot Farm Implement Company. Great organization! Great bunch! Yes-sir, they're great folks
to  work  for,  and hit it up, say! the sales-manager can drink more good liquor than any fellow that's working for him, and, believe me, there's
some  of us that ain't so slow ourselves! Yes-sir, this fool idea that a lot of those fly-by-night firms are hollering about now, in the long run
you don't get no more by drinking with the dealers--All damn' foolishness. They say this fellow Ford that makes these automobiles talks that way.
Well, you mark my words: By 1910 he'll be out of business, that's what'll happen to him; you mark my words! Yes-sir, they're a great concern, the
Pequot bunch. Matter of fact, we're holding a sales-conference in Monarch next week."

"Is that a fact!"

"Yes-sir,  by golly, that's what we're doing. You know--read papers about how to get money out of a machinery dealer when he ain't got any money.
Heh!  Hell  of a lot of attention most of us boys'll pay to that junk! We're going to have a good time and get in a little good earnest drinking,
and you bet the sales-manager will be right there with us! Say, Brother--I didn't quite catch the name--"

"Elmer Gantry is my name. Mightly glad to meet you."

"Mighty  glad  to  know you, Elmer. Say, Elmer, I've got some of the best Bourbon you or anybody else ever laid your face to right here in my hip
pocket.  I  suppose  you  being in a highbrow business like the shoe business, you'd just about faint if I was to offer you a little something to
cure that cough!"

"I guess I would, all right; yes-sir, I'd just about faint."

"Well, you're a pretty big fellow, and you ought to try to control yourself."

"I'll do my best, Ad, if you'll hold my hand."

"You betcha I will." Ad brought out from his permanently sagging pocket a pint of Green River, and they drank together, reverently.

"Say, jever hear the toast about the sailor?" inquired Elmer. He felt very happy, at home with the loved ones after long and desolate wanderings.

"Dunno's I ever did. Shoot!"


"Here's  to  the  lass  in  every  port,  And here's to the port-wine in every lass, But those tall thoughts don't matter, sport, For God's sake,
waiter, fill my glass!"


The little man wriggled. "Well, sir, I never did hear that one! Say, that's a knock-out! By golly, that certainly is a knockout! Say, Elm, whacha
doing  in  Monarch?  Wancha meet some of the boys. The Pequot conference don't really start till Monday, but some of us boys thought we'd kind of
get  together  today and hold a little service of prayer and fasting before the rest of the galoots assemble. Like you to meet 'em. Best bunch of
sports  YOU  ever  saw, lemme tell you that! I'd like for you to meet 'em. And I'd like 'em to hear that toast. 'Here's to the port-wine in every
lass.' That's pretty cute, all right! Whacha doing in Monarch? Can't you come around to the Ishawonga Hotel and meet some of the boys when we get
in?"

Mr. Ad Locust was not drunk; not exactly drunk; but he had earnestly applied himself to the Bourbon and he was in a state of superb philanthropy.
Elmer had taken enough to feel reasonable. He was hungry, too, not only for alcohol but for unsanctimonious companionship.

"I'll  tell  you, Ad," he said. "Nothing I'd like better, but I've got to meet a guy--important dealer--this afternoon, and he's dead against all
drinking. Fact--I certainly do appreciate your booze, but don't know's I ought to have taken a single drop."

"Oh,  hell,  Elm,  I've got some throat pastilles that are absolutely guaranteed to knock out the smell--absolutely. One lil drink wouldn't do us
any harm. Certainly would like to have the boys hear that toast of yours!"

"Well, I'll sneak in for a second, and maybe I can foregather with you for a while late Sunday evening or Monday morning, but--"

"Aw, you ain't going to let me down, Elm?"

"Well, I'll telephone this guy, and fix it so's I don't have to see him till long 'bout three o'clock."

"That's great!"


3


From  the  Ishawonga  Hotel, at noon, Elmer telephoned to the office of Mr. Eversley, the brightest light of the Flowerdale Baptist Church. There
was no answer.

"Everybody  in  his  office  out  to  dinner.  Well,  I've done all I can till this afternoon," Elmer reflected virtuously, and joined the Pequot
crusaders  in the Ishawonga bar. . . . Eleven men in a booth for eight. Every one talking at once. Every one shouting, "Say, waiter, you ask that
damn' bartender if he's MAKING the booze!"

Within  seventeen  minutes  Elmer  was calling all of the eleven by their first names--frequently by the wrong first names--and he contributed to
their  literary  lore  by thrice reciting his toast and by telling the best stories he knew. They liked him. In his joy of release from piety and
the threat of life with Lulu he flowered into vigor. Six several times the Pequot salesmen said one to another, "Now there's a fellow we ought to
have with us in the firm," and the others nodded.

He was inspired to give a burlesque sermon.

"I've got a great joke on Ad!" he thundered. "Know what he thought I was first? A preacher!"

"Say, that's a good one!" they cackled.

"Well,  at that, he ain't so far off. When I was a kid, I did think some about being a preacher. Well, say now, listen, and see if I wouldn't 've
made a swell preacher!"

While they gaped and giggled and admired, he rose solemnly, looked at them solemnly, and boomed:

"Brethren  and  Sistern,  in  the  hustle  and bustle of daily life you guys certainly do forget the higher and finer things. In what, in all the
higher and finer things, in what and by what are we ruled excepting by Love? What is Love?"

"You stick around tonight and I'll show you!" shrieked Ad Locust.

"Shut up now, Ad! Honest--listen. See if I couldn't 've been a preacher--a knock-out--bet I could handle a big crowd well's any of 'em. Listen. .
.  . What is Love? What is the divine Love? It is the rainbow, repainting with its spangled colors those dreary wastes where of late the terrible
tempest  has wreaked its utmost fury--the rainbow with its tender promise of surcease from the toils and travails and terrors of the awful storm!
What is Love--the divine Love, I mean, not the carnal but the divine Love, as exemplified in the church? What is--"

"Say!"  protested  the most profane of the eleven, "I don't think you ought to make fun of the church. I never go to church myself, but maybe I'd
be a better fella if I did, and I certainly do respect folks that go to church, and I send my kids to Sunday School. You God damn betcha!"

"Hell, I ain't making fun of the church!" protested Elmer.

"Hell,  he  ain't  making  fun of the church. Just kidding the preachers," asserted Ad Locust. "Preachers are just ordinary guys like the rest of
us."

"Sure;  preachers  can  cuss  and  make  love  just  like  anybody else. I know! What they get away with, pretending to be different," said Elmer
lugubriously, "would make you gentlemen tired if you knew."

"Well, I don't think you had ought to make fun of the church."

"Hell, he ain't making fun of the church."

"Sure, I ain't making fun of the church. But lemme finish my sermon."

"Sure, let him finish his sermon."

"Where  was I? . . . What is Love? It is the evening and the morning star--those vast luminaries that as they ride the purple abysms of the vasty
firmament  vouchsafe in their golden splendor, the promise of higher and better things that--that--Well, say, you wise guys, would I make a great
preacher or wouldn't I?"

The applause was such that the bartender came and looked at them funereally; and Elmer had to drink with each of them.

But he was out of practise. And he had had no lunch.

He turned veal-white; sweat stood on his forehead and in a double line of drops along his upper lip, while his eyes were suddenly vacant.

Ad Locust squealed, "Say, look out! Elm's passing out!"

They  got  him  up  to  Ad's  room, one man supporting him on either side and one pushing behind, just before he dropped insensible, and all that
afternoon,  when  he  should have met the Flowerdale Baptist committee, he snored on Ad's bed, dressed save for his shoes and coat. He came to at
six, with Ad bending over him, solicitous.

"God I feel awful!" Elmer groaned.

"Here. What you need's a drink."

"Oh,  Lord,  I  mustn't  take any more," said Elmer, taking it. His hand trembled so that Ad had to hold the glass to his mouth. He was conscious
that he must call up Deacon Eversley at once. Two drinks later he felt better, and his hand was steady. The Pequot bunch began to come in, with a
view  to  dinner.  He  postponed  his telephone call to Eversley till after dinner; he kept postponing it; and he found himself, at ten on Easter
morning, with a perfectly strange young woman in a perfectly strange flat, and heard Ad Locust, in the next room, singing "How Dry I Am."

Elmer did a good deal of repenting and groaning before his first drink of the morning, after which he comforted himself, "Golly, I never will get
to that church now. Well, I'll tell the committee I was taken sick. Hey, Ad! How'd we ever get here? Can we get any breakfast in this dump?"

He had two bottles of beer, spoke graciously to the young lady in the kimono and red slippers, and felt himself altogether a fine fellow. With Ad
and  such  of the eleven as were still alive, and a scattering of shrieking young ladies, he drove out to a dance-hall on the lake, Easter Sunday
afternoon, and they returned to Monarch for lobster and jocundity.

"But this ends it. Tomorrow morning I'll get busy and see Eversley and fix things up," Elmer vowed.


4


In  that  era  long-distance  telephoning  was  an  uncommon event, but Eversley, deacon and lawyer, was a bustler. When the new preacher had not
appeared  by  six  on Saturday afternoon, Eversley telephoned to Babylon, waited while Dean Trosper was fetched to the Babylon central, and spoke
with considerable irritation about the absence of the ecclesiastical hired hand.

"I'll send you Brother Hudkins--a very fine preacher, living here now, retired. He'll take the midnight train," said Dean Trosper.

To  the  Mr.  Hudkins the dean said, "And look around and see if you can find anything of Brother Gantry. I'm worried about him. The poor boy was
simply in agony over a most unfortunate private matter. . . apparently."

Now  Mr.  Hudkins  had for several years conducted a mission on South Clark Street in Chicago, and he knew a good many unholy things. He had seen
Elmer  Gantry  in classes at Mizpah. When he had finished Easter morning services in Monarch, he not only went to the police and to the hospitals
but  began  a  round of the hotels, restaurants, and bars. Thus it came to pass that while Elmer was merrily washing lobster down with California
claret,  stopping  now  and then to kiss the blonde beside him and (by request) to repeat his toast, that evening, he was being observed from the
café door by the Reverend Mr. Hudkins in the enjoyable rô1e of avenging angel.


5


When Elmer telephoned Eversley, Monday morning, to explain his sickness, the deacon snapped, "All right. Got somebody else."

"But, well, say, Dean Trosper thought you and the committee might like to talk over a semi-permanent arrangement--"

"Nope, nope, nope."

Returned to Babylon, Elmer went at once to the office of the dean.

One look at his expression was enough.

The dean concluded two minutes of the most fluent descriptions with:

"--the  faculty  committee  met  this morning, and you are fired from Mizpah. Of course you remain an ordained Baptist minister. I could get your
home  association  to  cancel  your credentials, but it would grieve them to know what sort of a lying monster they sponsored. Also, I don't want
Mizpah  mixed up in such a scandal. But if I ever hear of you in any Baptist pulpit, I'll expose you. Now I don't suppose you're bright enough to
become a saloon-keeper, but you ought to make a pretty good bartender. I'll leave your punishment to your midnight thoughts."

Elmer whined, "You hadn't ought--you ought not to talk to me like that! Doesn't it say in the Bible you ought to forgive seventy times seven--"

"This is eighty times seven. Get out!"

So the Reverend Mr. Gantry surprisingly ceased to be, for practical purposes, a Reverend at all.

He thought of fleeing to his mother, but he was ashamed; of fleeing to Lulu, but he did not dare.

He heard that Eddie Fislinger had been yanked to Schoenheim to marry Lulu and Floyd Naylor . . . a lonely grim affair by lamplight.

"They might have AST me, anyway," grumbled Elmer, as he packed.

He  went back to Monarch and the friendliness of Ad Locust. He confessed that he had been a minister, and was forgiven. By Friday that week Elmer
had become a traveling salesman for the Pequot Farm Implement Company.



CHAPTER XI


1


Elmer gantry was twenty-eight and for two years he had been a traveling salesman for the Pequot Company.

Harrows  and  rakes  and  corn-planters;  red  plows  and  gilt-striped  green  wagons;  catalogues and order-lists; offices glassed off from dim
warehouses;  shirt-sleeved dealers on high stools at high desks; the bar at the corner; stifling small hotels and lunch-rooms; waiting for trains
half  the night in foul boxes of junction stations, where the brown slatted benches were an agony to his back; trains, trains, trains; trains and
time-tables and joyous return to his headquarters in Denver; a drunk, a theater, and service in a big church.

He  wore  a  checked  suit,  a brown derby, striped socks, the huge ring of gold serpents and an opal which he had bought long ago, flower-decked
ties, and what he called "fancy vests"--garments of yellow with red spots, of green with white stripes, of silk or daring chamois.

He had had a series of little loves, but none of them important enough to continue.

He  was  not  unsuccessful.  He  was a good talker, a magnificent hand-shaker, his word could often be depended on, and he remembered most of the
price-lists and all of the new smutty stories. In the office at Denver he was popular with "the boys." He had one infallible "stunt"--a burlesque
sermon.  It  was  known that he had studied to be a preacher, but had courageously decided that it was no occupation for a "real two-fisted guy,"
and that he had "told the profs where they got off." A promising and commendable fellow; conceivably sales-manager some day.

Whatever  his  dissipations,  Elmer  continued  enough exercise to keep his belly down and his shoulders up. He had been shocked by Deacon Bains'
taunt  that  he was growing soft, and every morning in his hotel room he unhumorously did calisthenics for fifteen minutes; evenings he bowled or
boxed  in  Y.M.C.A. gymnasiums, or, in towns large enough, solemnly swam up and down tanks like a white porpoise. He felt lusty, and as strong as
in Terwillinger days.

Yet Elmer was not altogether happy.

He  appreciated  being  free  of  faculty  rules,  free  of  the  guilt  which  in  seminary days had followed his sprees at Monarch, free of the
incomprehensible  debates of Harry Zenz and Frank Shallard, yet he missed leading the old hymns, and the sound of his own voice, the sense of his
own power, as he held an audience by his sermon. Always on Sunday evenings (except when he had an engagement with a waitress or a chambermaid) he
went to the evangelical church nearest his hotel. He enjoyed criticizing the sermon professionally.

"Golly,  I  could  put  it  all over that poor boob! The straight gospel is all right, but if he'd only stuck in a couple literary allusions, and
lambasted the saloon-keepers more, he'd 've had 'em all het up."

He sang so powerfully that despite a certain tobacco and whisky odor the parsons always shook hands with extra warmth, and said they were glad to
see you with us this evening, Brother.

When  he  encountered really successful churches, his devotion to the business became a definite longing to return to preaching: he ached to step
up,  push  the  minister out of his pulpit, and take charge, instead of sitting back there unnoticed and unadmired, as though he were an ordinary
layman.

"These chumps would be astonished if they knew what I am!" he reflected.

After  such  an experience it was vexatious on Monday morning to talk with a droning implement-dealer about discounts on manure-spreaders; it was
sickening  to  wait for train-time in a cuspidor-filled hotel lobby when he might have been in a church office superior with books, giving orders
to  pretty  secretaries  and  being  expansive  and helpful to consulting sinners. He was only partly solaced by being able to walk openly into a
saloon and shout, "Straight rye, Bill."

On Sunday evening in a Western Kansas town he ambled to a shabby little church and read on the placard outside:


This Morning: The Meaning of Redemption This Evening: Is Dancing of the Devil? FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH Pastor: The Rev. Edward Fislinger, B.A., B.D.


"Oh,  Gawd!"  protested  Elmer.  "Eddie Fislinger! About the kind of burg he would land in! A lot he knows about the meaning of redemption or any
other dogma, that human wood-chuck! Or about dancing! If he'd ever been with me in Denver and shaken a hoof at Billy Portifero's place, he'd have
something to hand out. Fislinger--must be the same guy. I'll sit down front and put his show on the fritz!"

Eddie Fislinger's church was an octagonal affair, with the pulpit in one angle, an arrangement which produced a fascinating, rather dizzy effect,
reminiscent  of the doctrine of predestination. The interior was of bright yellow, hung with many placards: "Get Right With God," and "Where Will
You  Spend  Eternity?"  and  "The  Wisdom  of  This World is Foolishness with God." The Sunday School Register behind the pulpit communicated the
tidings  that  the  attendance  today had been forty-one, as against only thirty-nine last week, and the collection eighty-nine cents, as against
only seventy-seven.

The usher, a brick-layer in a clean collar, was impressed by Elmer's checked suit and starched red-speckled shirt and took him to the front row.

Eddie  flushed  most satisfactorily when he saw Elmer from the pulpit, started to bow, checked it, looked in the general direction of Heaven, and
tried  to  smile  condescendingly.  He  was  nervous  at  the beginning of his sermon, but apparently he determined that his attack on sin--which
hitherto  had  been  an academic routine with no relation to any of his appallingly virtuous flock--might be made real. With his squirrel-toothed
and  touching  earnestness  he  looked  down at Elmer and as good as told him to go to hell and be done with it. But he thought better of it, and
concluded  that  God  might be able to give even Elmer Gantry another chance if Elmer stopped drinking, smoking, blaspheming, and wearing checked
suits. (If he did not refer to Elmer by name, he certainly did by poisonous glances.)

Elmer  was  angry,  then impressively innocent, then bored. He examined the church and counted the audience--twenty-seven excluding Eddie and his
wife.  (There was no question but that the young woman looking adoringly up from the front pew was Eddie's consort. She had the pitifully starved
and home-tailored look of a preacher's wife.) By the end of the sermon, Elmer was being sorry for Eddie. He sang the closing hymn, "He's the Lily
of  the  Valley,"  with  a  fine  unctuous  grace,  coming  down  powerfully  on  the jubilant "Hallelujah," and waited to shake hands with Eddie
forgivingly.

"Well,  well,  well,"  they  both  said;  and  "What are you doing in these parts?" and Eddie: "Wait till everybody's gone--must have a good old-
fashioned chin with you, old fellow!"

As  he walked with the Fislingers to the parsonage, a block away, and sat with them in the living-room, Elmer wanted to be a preacher again, take
the  job  away  from Eddie and do it expertly; yet he was repulsed by the depressing stinginess of Eddie's life. His own hotel bedrooms were drab
enough,  but  they  were  free  of nosey parishioners, and they were as luxurious as this parlor with its rain-blotched ceiling, bare pine floor,
sloping  chairs,  and  perpetual  odor  of diapers. There were already, in two years of Eddie's marriage, two babies, looking as though they were
next-door to having been conceived without sin; and there was a perfectly blank-faced sister-in-law who cared for the children during services.

Elmer  wanted to smoke, and for all his training in the eternal mysteries he could not decide whether it would be more interesting to annoy Eddie
by smoking or to win him by refraining.

He smoked, and wished he hadn't.

Eddie noticed it, and his reedy wife noticed it, and the sister-in-law gaped at it, and they labored at pretending they hadn't.

Elmer felt large and sophisticated and prosperous in their presence, like a city broker visiting a farmer cousin and wondering which of his tales
of gilded towers would be simple enough for belief.

Eddie  gave  him  the news of Mizpah. Frank Shallard had a small church in a town called Catawba, the other end of the state of Winnemac from the
seminary.  There  had  been some difficulty over his ordination, for he had been shaky about even so clear and proven a fact as the virgin birth.
But  his  father and Dean Trosper had vouched for him, and Frank had been ordained. Harry Zenz had a large church in a West Virginia mining town.
Wallace Umstead, the physical instructor, was "doing fine" in the Y.M.C.A. Professor Bruno Zechlin was dead, poor fellow.

"Whatever became of Horace Carp?" asked Elmer.

"Well, that's the strangest thing of all. Horace's gone into the Episcopal Church, like he always said he would."

"Well, well, zatta fact!"

"Yes-sir,  his  father  died  just  after he graduated, and he up and turned Episcopalian and took a year in General, and now they say he's doing
pretty good, and he's high-church as all get-out."

"Well, you seem to have a good thing of it here, Eddie. Nice church."

"Well,  it  isn't  so  big, but they're awful' fine people. And everything's going fine. I haven't increased the membership so much, but what I'm
trying  to  do  is strengthen the present membership in the faith, and then when I feel each of them is a center of inspiration, I'll be ready to
start  an  evangelistic  campaign,  and you'll see that ole church boom--yes-sir--just double overnight. . . . If they only weren't so slow about
paying my salary and the mortgage. . . . Fine solid people, really saved, but they are just the least little bit tight with the money."

"If you could see the way my cook-stove's broken and the sink needs painting," said Mrs. Fislinger--her chief utterance of the evening.

Elmer  felt  choked  and imprisoned. He escaped. At the door Eddie held both his hands and begged, "Oh, Elm, I'll never give up till I've brought
you back! I'm going to pray. I've seen you under conviction. I know what you can do!"

Fresh  air,  a  defiant  drink  of rye, loud laughter, taking a train--Elmer enjoyed it after this stuffiness. Already Eddie had lost such devout
fires as he had once shown in the Y.M.C.A: Already he was old, settled down, without conceivable adventure, waiting for death.

Yet Eddie had said--

Startled,  he  recalled  that  he  was  still  a  Baptist  minister! For all of Trosper's opposition, he could preach. He felt with superstitious
discomfort, Eddie's incantation, "I'll never give up till I've brought you back."

And--just to take Eddie's church and show what he could do with it! By God HE'D bring those hicks to time and make 'em pay up!

He flitted across the state to see his mother.

His  disgrace  at  Mizpah had, she said, nearly killed her. With tremulous hope she now heard him promise that maybe when he'd seen the world and
settled down, he might go back into the ministry.

In  a  religious mood (which fortunately did not prevent his securing some telling credit-information by oiling a bookkeeper with several drinks)
he  came to Sautersville, Nebraska, an ugly, enterprising, industrial town of 20,000. And in that religious mood he noted the placards of a woman
evangelist, one Sharon Falconer, a prophetess of whom he had heard.

The clerk in the hotel, the farmers about the implement warehouse, said that Miss Falconer was holding union meetings in a tent, with the support
of  most  of  the  Protestant churches in town; they asserted that she was beautiful and eloquent, that she took a number of assistants with her,
that  she  was "the biggest thing that ever hit this burg," that she was comparable to Moody, to Gipsy Smith, to Sam Jones, to J. Wilbur Chapman,
to this new baseball evangelist, Billy Sunday.

"That's nonsense. No woman can preach the gospel," declared Elmer, as an expert.

But he went, that evening, to Miss Falconer's meeting.

The  tent  was  enormous;  it  would seat three thousand people, and another thousand could be packed in standing-room. It was nearly filled when
Elmer  arrived  and  elbowed  his  majestic  way  forward. At the front of the tent was an extraordinary structure, altogether different from the
platform-pulpit-American-flag  arrangement of the stock evangelist. It was a pyramidal structure, of white wood with gilded legs, affording three
platforms;  one  for the choir, one higher up for a row of seated local clergy; and at the top a small platform with a pulpit shaped like a shell
and painted like a rainbow. Swarming over it all were lilies, roses and vines.

"Great snakes! Regular circus lay-out! Just what you'd expect from a fool woman evangelist!" decided Elmer.

The top platform was still unoccupied; presumably it was to set off the charms of Miss Sharon Falconer.

The mixed choir, with their gowns and mortar-boards, chanted "Shall We Gather at the River?" A young man, slight, too good-looking, too arched of
lip, wearing a priest's waistcoat and collar turned round, read from Acts at a stand on the second platform. He was an Oxonian, and it was almost
the first time that Elmer had heard an Englishman read.

"Huh!  Willy-boy,  that's  what  he  is!  This  outfit  won't  get  very far. Too much skirts. No punch. No good old-fashioned gospel to draw the
customers," scoffed Elmer.

A  pause.  Every  one  waited,  a  little uneasy. Their eyes went to the top platform. Elmer gasped. Coming from some refuge behind the platform,
coming slowly, her beautiful arms outstretched to them, appeared a saint. She was young, Sharon Falconer, surely not thirty, stately, slender and
tall;  and  in  her long slim face, her black eyes, her splendor of black hair, was rapture or boiling passion. The sleeves of her straight white
robe, with its ruby girdle, were slashed, and fell away from her arms as she drew every one to her.

"God!" prayed Elmer Gantry, and that instant his planless life took on plan and resolute purpose. He was going to have Sharon Falconer.

Her voice was warm, a little husky, desperately alive.

"Oh, my dear people, my dear people, I am not going to preach tonight--we are all so weary of nagging sermons about being nice and good! I am not
going  to  tell that you're sinners, for which of us is not a sinner? I am not going to explain the Scriptures. We are all bored by tired old men
explaining  the  Bible  through  their  noses!  No!  We  are  going to find the golden Scriptures written in our own hearts, we are going to sing
together, laugh together, rejoice together like a gathering of April brooks, rejoice that in us is living the veritable spirit of the Everlasting
and Redeeming Christ Jesus!"

Elmer  never knew what the words were, or the sense--if indeed any one knew. It was all caressing music to him, and at the end, when she ran down
curving  flower-wreathed stairs to the lowest platform and held out her arms, pleading with them to find peace in salvation, he was aroused to go
forward with the converts, to kneel in the writhing row under the blessing of her extended hands.

But he was lost in no mystical ecstasy. He was the critic, moved by the play but aware that he must get his copy in to the newspaper.

"This  is  the  outfit  I've been looking for! Here's where I could go over great! I could beat that English preacher both ways from the ace. And
Sharon--Oh, the darling!"

She  was  coming along the line of converts and near-converts, laying her shining hands on their heads. His shoulders quivered with consciousness
of  her  nearness.  When  she  reached him and invited him, in that thrilling voice, "Brother, won't you find happiness in Jesus?" he did not bow
lower,  like  the others, he did not sob, but looked straight up at her jauntily, seeking to hold her eyes, while he crowed, "It's happiness just
to have had your wondrous message, Sister Falconer!"

She glanced at him sharply, she turned blank, and instantly passed on.

He felt slapped. "I'll show her yet!"

He  stood  aside  as  the  crowd  wavered out. He got into talk with the crisp young Englishman who had read the Scripture lesson--Cecil Aylston,
Sharon's first assistant.

"Mighty  pleased  to  be  here  tonight,  Brother," bumbled Elmer. "I happen to be a Baptist preacher myself. Bountiful meeting! And you read the
lesson most inspiringly."

Cecil  Aylston rapidly took in Elmer's checked suit, his fancy vest, and "Oh. Really? Splendid. So good of you, I'm sure. If you will excuse me?"
Nor  did  it increase Elmer's affection to have Aylston leave him for one of the humblest of the adherents, an old woman in a broken and flapping
straw hat.

Elmer  disposed of Cecil Aylston: "To hell with him! There's a fellow we'll get rid of! A man like me, he gives me the icy mitt, and then he goes
to  the  other extreme and slops all over some old dame that's probably saved already, that you, by golly, couldn't unsave with a carload of gin!
That'll do you, my young friend! And you don't like my check suit, either. Well, I certainly do buy my clothes just to please you, all right!"

He  waited, hoping for a chance at Sharon Falconer. And others were waiting. She waved her hand at all of them, waved her flaunting smile, rubbed
her  eyes,  and  begged,  "Will  you  forgive  me? I'm blind-tired. I must rest." She vanished into the mysteries behind the gaudy gold-and-white
pyramid.

Even in her staggering weariness, her voice was not drab; it was filled with that twilight passion which had captured Elmer more than her beauty.
. . . "Never did see a lady just like her," he reflected, as he plowed back to his hotel. "Face kinda thin. Usually I like 'em plumper. And yet--
golly!  I  could  fall  for  her  as  I never have for anybody in my life. . . . So this darn' Englishman didn't like my clothes! Looked as if he
thought they were too sporty. Well, he can stick 'em in his ear! Anybody got any objection to my clothes?"

The  slumbering  universe  did  not  answer,  and  he was almost content. And at eight next morning--Sautersville had an excellent clothing shop,
conducted  by  Messrs. Erbsen and Goldfarb--and at eight Elmer was there, purchasing a chaste double-breasted brown suit and three rich but sober
ties. By hounding Mr. Goldfarb he had the alterations done by half-past nine, and at ten he was grandly snooping about the revival tent. . . . He
should have gone on to the next town this morning.

Sharon  did  not  appear  till  eleven,  to  lecture  the personal workers, but meanwhile Elmer had thrust himself into acquaintanceship with Art
Nichols, a gaunt Yankee, once a barber, who played the cornet and the French horn in the three-piece orchestra which Sharon carried with her.

"Yes, pretty good game, this is," droned Nichols. "Better'n barberin' and better'n one-night stands--oh, I'm a real trouper, too; play characters
in  tent  shows--I was out three seasons with Tom shows. This is easier. No street parades, and I guess prob'ly we do a lot of good, saving souls
and so on. Only these religious folks do seem to scrap amongst themselves more'n the professionals."

"Where do you go from here?"

"We  close in five days, then we grab the collection and pull out of here and make a jump to Lincoln, Nebraska; open there in three days. Regular
troupers' jump, too--don't even get a Pullman--leave here on the day coach at eleven P.M. and get into Lincoln at one."

"Sunday night you leave, eh? That's funny. I'll be on that train. Going to Lincoln myself."

"Well,  you  can come hear us there. I always do 'Jerusalem the Golden' on the cornet, first meeting. Knocks 'em cold. They say it's all this gab
that  gets  'em  going  and drags in the sinners, but don't you believe it--it's the music. Say, I can get more damn' sinners weeping on a E-flat
cornet than nine gospel-artists all shooting off their faces at once!"

"I'll  bet you can, Art. Say, Art--Of course I'm a preacher myself, just in business temporarily, making arrangements for a new appointment." Art
looked  like  one  who was about to not lend money. "But I don't believe all this bull about never having a good time; and of course Paul said to
'take  a  little wine for your stomach's sake' and this town is dry, but I'm going to a wet one between now and Saturday, and if I were to have a
pint of rye in my jeans--heh?"

"Well, I'm awful' fond of my stomach--like to do something for its sake!"

"What kind of a fellow is this Englishman? Seems to be Miss Falconer's right-hand man."

"Oh, he's a pretty bright fellow, but he don't seem to get along with us boys."

"She like him? Wha' does he call himself?"

"Cecil Aylston, his name is. Oh, Sharon liked him first-rate for a while, but wouldn't wonder if she was tired of his highbrow stuff now, and the
way he never gets chummy."

"Well, I got to go speak to Miss Falconer a second. Glad met you, Art. See you on the train Sunday evening."

They  had  been  talking  at  one of the dozen entrances of the gospel tent. Elmer had been watching Sharon Falconer as she came briskly into the
tent.  She  was  no high priestess now in Grecian robe, but a business-woman, in straw hat, gray suit, white shirt-waist, linen cuffs and collar.
Only  her  blue bow and the jeweled cross on her watch-fob distinguished her from the women in offices. But Elmer, collecting every detail of her
as a miner scoops up nuggets, knew now that she was not flat-breasted, as in the loose robe she might have been.

She  spoke  to  the "personal workers," the young women who volunteered to hold cottage prayer-meetings and to go from house to house stirring up
spiritual prospects:

"My dear friends, I'm very glad you're all praying, but there comes a time when you've got to add a little shoe-leather. While you're longing for
the  Kingdom--the devil does his longing nights, and daytimes he hustles around SEEING people, TALKING to 'em! Are you ashamed to go right in and
ask  folks  to come to Christ--to come to our meetings, anyway? I'm not at all pleased. Not at all, my dear young friends. My charts show that in
the Southeast district only one house in three has been visited. This won't do! You've got to get over the idea that the service of the Lord is a
nice  game,  like  putting Easter lilies on the altar. Here there's only five days left, and you haven't yet waked up and got busy. And let's not
have  any  silly  nonsense  about  hesitating  to hit people for money-pledges, and hitting 'em hard! We can't pay rent for this lot, and pay for
lights  and transportation and the wages of all this big crew I carry, on hot air! Now you--you pretty girl there with the red hair--my! I wish I
had such hair!--what have you done, sure-enough DONE, this past week?"

In ten minutes she had them all crying, all aching to dash out and bring in souls and dollars.

She was leaving the tent when Elmer pounced on her, swaggering, his hand out.

"Sister Falconer, I want to congratulate you on your wonderful meetings. I'm a Baptist preacher--the Reverend Gantry."

"Yes?" sharply. "Where is your church?"

"Why, uh, just at present I haven't exactly got a church."

She inspected his ruddiness, his glossiness, the odor of tobacco; her brilliant eyes had played all over him, and she demanded:

"What's the trouble this time? Booze or women?"

"Why,  that's absolutely untrue! I'm surprised you should speak like that, Sister Falconer! I'm in perfectly good standing! It's just--I'm taking
a little time off to engage in business, in order to understand the working of the lay mind, before going on with my ministry."

"Um. That's splendid. Well, you have my blessing, Brother! Now if you will excuse me? I must go and meet the committee."

She  tossed him an unsmiling smile and raced away. He felt soggy, lumbering, unspeakably stupid, but he swore, "Damn you, I'll catch you when you
aren't all wrapped up in business and your own darn-fool self-importance, and then I'll make you wake up, my girl!"


2


He  had  to  do  nine  days' work, to visit nine towns, in five days, but he was back in Sautersville on Sunday evening and he was on the eleven-
o'clock train for Lincoln--in the new brown suit.

His fancy for Sharon Falconer had grown into a trembling passion, the first authentic passion of his life.

It was too late in the evening for a great farewell, but at least a hundred of the brethren and sisters were at the station, singing "God Be With
You  Till  We  Meet Again" and shaking hands with Sharon Falconer. Elmer saw his cornet-wielding Yankee friend, Art Nichols, with the rest of the
evangelistic  crew--the  aide,  Cecil Aylston, the fat and sentimental tenor soloist, the girl pianist, the violinist, the children's evangelist,
the  director  of personal work. (That important assistant, the press agent, was in Lincoln making ready for the coming of the Lord.) They looked
like  a  sleepy  theatrical  troupe  as  they  sat on their suit-cases waiting for the train to come in, and like troupers, they were dismayingly
different  from  their  stage rôles. The anemically pretty pianist, who for public uses dressed in seraphic silver robes, was now merely a small-
town  girl  in  wrinkled  blue  serge;  the  director  of  personal work, who had been nun-like in linen, was bold in black-trimmed red, and more
attentive to the amorous looks of the German violinist than to the farewell hymns. The Reverend Cecil Aylston gave orders to the hotel baggageman
regarding their trunks more like a quartermaster sergeant than like an Oxonian mystic.

Sharon herself was imperial in white, and the magnet for all of them. A fat Presbyterian pastor, with whiskers, buzzed about her, holding her arm
with more than pious zeal. She smiled on him (to Elmer's rage), she smiled equally on the long thin Disciples-of-Christ preacher, she shook hands
fervently,  and  she  was  tender  to  each  shout  of "Praise God, Sister!" But her eyes were weary, and Elmer saw that when she turned from her
worshipers, her mouth drooped. Young she seemed then, tired and defenseless.

"Poor kid!" thought Elmer.

The train flared and shrieked its way in, and the troupe bustled with suit-cases. "Good-by--God bless you--God speed the work!" shouted every one
.  .  . every one save the Congregational minister, who stood sulkily at the edge of the crowd explaining to a parishioner, "And so she goes away
with enough cash for herself, after six weeks' work, to have run our whole church for two years!"

Elmer  ranged up beside his musical friend, Art Nichols, and as they humped up the steps of a day-coach he muttered, "Art! Art! Got your stomach-
medicine here!"

"Great!"

"Say. Look. Fix it so you sit with Sharon. Then pretty soon go out for a smoke--"

"She don't like smoking."

"You  don't need to tell her what for! Go out so I can sit down and talk to her for a while. Important business. Here: stick this in your pocket.
And I'll dig up s'more for you at Lincoln. Now hustle and get in with her."

"Well, I'll try."

So, in the dark malodorous car, hot with late spring, filled with women whose corsets creaked to their doleful breathing, with farmers who snored
in  shirt-sleeves,  Elmer  stood  behind the seat in which a blur marked the shoulders of Art Nichols and a radiance showed the white presence of
Sharon Falconer. To Elmer she seemed to kindle the universe. She was so precious, every inch of her; he had not known that a human being could be
precious like this and magical. To be near her was ecstasy enough . . . almost enough.

She  was  silent.  He  heard  only Art Nichols' twanging, "What do you think about us using some of these nigger songs--hand 'em a jolt?" and her
drowsy, "Oh, let's not talk about it tonight." Presently, from Art, "Guess I'll skip out on the platform and get a breath of air," and the sacred
haunt beside her was free to the exalted Elmer.

He slipped in, very nervous.

She  was  slumped low in the seat, but she sat up, peered at him in the dimness, and said, with a grave courtesy which shut him out more than any
rudeness, "I'm so sorry, but this place is taken."

"Yes,  I  know,  Sister Falconer. But the car's crowded, and I'll just sit down and rest myself while Brother Nichols is away--that is, if you'll
let me. Don't know if you remember me. I'm--I met you at the tent in Sautersville. Reverend Gantry."

"Oh," indifferently. Then quickly: "Oh, yes, you're the Presbyterian preacher who was fired for drinking."

"That's  absolutely--!"  He  saw  that she was watching him, and he realized that she was not being her saintly self nor her efficient self but a
quite  new,  private,  mocking  self. Delightedly he went on, "--absolutely incorrect. I'm the Christian Scientist that was fired for kissing the
choir-leader on Saturday."

"Oh, that was careless of you!"

"So you're really human?"

"Me? Good Heavens, yes! Too human."

"And you get tired of it?"

"Of what?"

"Of  being  the great Miss Falconer, of not being able to go into a drug-store to buy a tooth-brush without having the clerk holler, 'Praise God,
we have some dandy two-bit brushes, hallelujah!'"

Sharon giggled.

"Tired,"  and  his  voice  was lulling now, "of never daring to be tired, which same is what you are tonight, and of never having anybody to lean
on!"

"I suppose, my dear reverend Brother, that this is a generous offer to let me lean on you!"

"No.  I  wouldn't  have the nerve! I'm scared to death of you. You haven't only got your beauty--no! please let me tell you how a fellow preacher
looks at you--and your wonderful platform-presence, but I kind of guess you've got brains."

"No, I haven't. Not a brain. All emotion. That's the trouble with me." She sounded awake now, and friendly.

"But think of all the souls you've brought to repentance. That makes up for everything, doesn't it?"

"Oh, yes, I suppose it--Oh, of course it does. It's the only thing that counts. Only--Tell me: What really did happen to you? Why did you get out
of the church?"

Gravely, "I was a senior in Mizpah Theological Seminary, but I had a church of my own. I fell for a girl. I won't say she lured me on. After all,
a  man  ought  to face the consequences of his own foolishness. But she certainly did--Oh, it amused her to see a young preacher go mad over her.
And  she  was  so  lovely!  Quite a lot like you, only not so beautiful, not near, and she let on like she was mad about church work--that's what
fooled  me.  Well! Make a long story short: We were engaged to be married, and I thought of nothing but her and our life together, doing the work
of  the  Lord,  when one evening I walked in and there she was in the arms of another fellow! It broke me up so that I--Oh, I tried, but I simply
couldn't  go  on  preaching,  so  I quit for a while. And I've done well in business. But now I'm ready to go back to the one job I've ever cared
about. That's why I wanted to talk to you there at the tent. I needed your woman's sympathy as well as your experience--and you turned me down!"

"Oh, I am so, so sorry!" Her hand caressed his arm.

Cecil Aylston came up and looked at them with a lack of sanctity.

When  they  reached  Lincoln, he was holding her hand and saying, "You poor, dear, tired child!" and, "Will you have breakfast with me? Where are
you staying in Lincoln?"

"Now see here, Brother Gantry--"

"Elmer!"

"Oh, don't be ridiculous! Just because I'm so fagged out that it's nice to play at being a human being, don't try to take advantage--"

"Sharon  Falconer,  will  you quit being a chump? I admire your genius, your wonderful work for God, but it's because you're too big to just be a
professional  gospel-shouter  every minute that I most admire you. You know mighty good and well that you like to be simple and even slangy for a
while.  And  you're too sleepy just now to know whether you like me or not. That's why I want us to meet at breakfast, when the sleepiness is out
of the wonderful eyes--"

"Um. It all sounds pretty honest except that last stuff--you've certainly used that before. Do you know, I like you! You're so completely brazen,
so  completely  unscrupulous,  and so beatifically ignorant! I've been with sanctimonious folks too much lately. And it's interesting to see that
you  honestly  think you can captivate me. You funny thing! I'm staying at the Antlers Hotel in Lincoln--no use, by the way, your trying to get a
room near my suite, because I have practically the whole floor engaged--and I'll meet you at breakfast there at nine-thirty."


3


Though  he did not sleep well, he was up early and at his toilet; he shaved, he touched up his bluff handsomeness with lilac water and talcum, he
did  his  nails,  sitting  in athletic underwear, awaiting his new suit, sent down for pressing. The new purpose in a life recently so dispirited
gave  vitality  to  his bold eyes and spring to his thick muscles as he strode through the gold-and-marble lobby of the Antlers Hotel and awaited
Sharon  at  the restaurant door. She came down fresh in white crash bordered with blue. As they met they laughed, admitting comradeship in folly.
He took her arm gaily, led her through a flutter of waitresses excited over the coming of the celebrated lady of God, and ordered competently.

"I've got a great idea," said he. "I've got to beat it this afternoon, but I'll be back in Lincoln on Friday, and how'd it be if you billed me to
address your meeting as a saved business man, and I talked for half an hour or so on Friday evening about the good, hard, practical, dollars-and-
cents value of Christ in Commerce?"

"Are you a good talker?"

"I'm the crack salesman of the Pequot Farm Implement Company, Sharon, and if you don't believe it--"

"Oh,  I  do.  (She shouldn't have.) I'm sure you tell the truth often. Of course we won't need to mention the fact that you're a preacher, unless
somebody insists on asking. How would this be as a topic--'Getting the Goods with a Gideon Bible?'"

"Say,  that  would  be  elegant!  How I was in some hick town, horrible weather, slush and rain and everything--dark skies, seemed like sun never
would  shine  again--feet  all soaked from tramping the streets--no sales, plumb discouraged--sat in my room, forgotten to buy one of the worldly
magazines  I'd been accustomed to read--idly picked up a Gideon Bible and read the parable of the talents--found that same day YOU were in town--
went  and  got  converted--saw  now it wasn't just for money but for the Kingdom of Christ, to heighten my influence as a Christian business man,
that  I  had  to  increase  sales. That bucked up my self-confidence so that I increased sales to beat the band! And how I owe everything to your
inspired  powers,  so  it's a privilege to be able to testify. And about how it isn't the weak skinny failure that's the fellow to get saved, but
takes a really strong man to not be ashamed to surrender all for Jesus."

"Why,  I  think  that's  fine,  Brother  Elmer, I really do. And dwell a lot on being in your hotel room there--you took off your shoes and threw
yourself  down  on  the  bed,  feeling  completely beaten, but you were so restless you got up and poked around the room and picked up the Gideon
Bible.  I'll feature it big. And you'll make it strong, Elmer? You won't let me down? Because I really will headline it in my announcements. I've
persuaded  you to come clear from Omaha--no, that's not far--clear from Denver for it. And if you do throw yourself into it and tear loose, it'll
add greatly to the glory of God, and the success of the meeting in winning souls. You will?"

"Dear, I'll slam into 'em so hard you'll want me in every town you go to. You bet."

"Um, that's as may be, Elmer. Here comes Cecil Aylston--you know my assistant? He looks so cross. He is a dear, but he's so terribly highbrow and
refined and everything and he's always trying to nag me into being refined. But you'll love him."

"I will not! Anyway, I'll struggle against it!"

They laughed.

The  Rev.  Cecil  Aylston,  of  the flaxen hair and the superior British complexion, glided to their table, looked at Elmer with a blankness more
infuriating than a scowl, and sat down, observing:

"I don't want to intrude, Miss Falconer, but you know the committee of clergy are awaiting you in the parlor."

"Oh, dear," sighed Sharon. "Are they as terrible as usual here? Can't you go up and get the kneeling and praying done while I finish my scrambled
eggs?  Have  you told them they've got to double the amount of the pledges before this week is over or the souls in Lincoln can go right on being
damned?" Cecil was indicating Elmer with an alarmed jerk of his head. "Oh, don't worry about Elmer. He's one of us--going to speak for us Friday-
-used  to  be  a terribly famous preacher, but he's found a wider field in business--Reverend Aylston, Reverend Gantry. Now run along, Cecil, and
keep 'em pious and busy. Any nice-looking young preachers in the committee or are they all old stiffs?"

Aylston answered with a tight-lipped glare, and flowed away.

"Dear Cecil, he is so useful to me--he's actually made me take to reading poetry and everything. If he just wouldn't be polite at breakfast-time!
I wouldn't mind facing the wild beasts of Ephesus, but I can't stand starch with my eggs. Now I must go up and join him."

"You'll have lunch with me?"

"I  will not! My dear young man, this endeth my being silly for this week. From this moment on I'll be one of the anointed, and if you want me to
like  you--God help you if you come around looking pussy-catty while I'm manhandling these stiff-necked brethren in Christ! I'll see you Friday--
I'll have dinner with you, here, before the meeting. And I can depend on you? Good!"


4


Cecil  Aylston  was  a  good  deal of a mystic, a good deal of a ritualist, a bit of a rogue, something of a scholar, frequently a drunkard, more
frequently  an ascetic, always a gentleman, and always an adventurer. He was thirty-two now. At Winchester and New College, he had been known for
sprinting,  snobbishness, and Greek versification. He had taken orders, served as a curate in a peculiarly muddy and ancient and unlighted church
in  the  East  End,  and  become  fanatically  Anglo-Catholic.  While  he  was considering taking the three vows and entering a Church of England
monastery,  his vicar kicked him out, and no one was ever quite certain whether it was because of his "Romish tendencies" or the navvy's daughter
whom he had got with child.

He  was  ordered  down  to a bleak, square, stone church in Cornwall, but he resigned and joined the Plymouth Brethren, among whom, in resounding
galvanized-iron  chapels  in  the  Black  Country,  he had renown for denunciation of all the pleasant sins. He came to Liverpool for a series of
meetings;  he  wandered  by  the Huskinson docks, saw a liner ready for sea, bought a steerage ticket, took the passport which he had ready for a
promised  flight  to  Rio  with the wife of an evangelical merchant in coals and, without a word to the brethren or the ardent lady of the coals,
sailed sulkily off to America.

In New York he sold neckties in a department store, he preached in a mission, he tutored the daughter of a great wholesale fish-dealer, and wrote
nimble  and  thoroughly  irritating  book-reviews.  He  left  town two hours ahead of the fish-dealer's eldest son, and turned up in Waco, Texas,
teaching  in  a  business  college,  in  Winona, Minnesota, preaching in a Nazarene Chapel, in Carmel, California, writing poetry and real-estate
brochures,  and  in  Miles City, Montana, as the summer supply in a Congregational pulpit. He was so quiet, so studious, here that the widow of a
rancher  picked  him  up and married him. She died. He lost the entire fortune in two days at Tia Juana. He became extra pious after that and was
converted  from  time to time by Billy Sunday, Gipsy Smith, Biederwolf, and several other embarrassed evangelists who did not expect a convert so
early in the campaign and had made no plans to utilize him.

It  was  in  Ishpeming, Michigan, where he was conducting a shooting-gallery while he sought by mail a mastership in Groton School, that he heard
and was more than usually converted by Sharon Falconer. He fell in love with her, and with contemptuous steady resolution he told her so.

At  the  moment  she  was  without  a permanent man first assistant. She had just discharged a really useful loud-voiced United Brethren D.D. for
hinting to delighted sons of Belial that his relations to her were at least brotherly. She took on the Reverend Cecil Aylston.

He loved her, terrifyingly. He was so devoted to her that he dropped his drinking, his smoking, and a tendency to forgery which had recently been
creeping on him. And he did wonders for her.

She  had been too emotional. He taught her to store it up and fling it all out in one overpowering catastrophic evening. She had been careless of
grammar,  and  given to vulgar barnyard illustrations. He taught her to endure sitting still and reading--reading Swinburne and Jowett, Pater and
Jonathan Edwards, Newman and Sir Thomas Browne. He taught her to use her voice, to use her eyes, and in more private relations, to use her soul.

She  had  been  puzzled by him, annoyed by him, led meekly by him, and now she was weary of his supercilious devotion. He was more devoted to her
than  to  life,  and for her he refused a really desirable widow who could have got him back into the Episcopal fold and acquired for him the dim
rich sort of church for which he longed after these months of sawdust and sweaty converts.


5


When  Elmer  descended  from  the  train in Lincoln Friday afternoon, he stopped before a red-and-black poster announcing that Elmer Gantry was a
power  in the machinery world, that he was an eloquent and entertaining speaker, and that his address "Increasing Sales with God and the Gideons"
would be a "revelation of the new world of better business."

"Jiminy!" said the power in the machinery world. "I'd rather see a sermon of mine advertised like that than sell steen million plows!"

He  had  a  vision of Sharon Falconer in her suite in late afternoon, lonely and clinging in the faded golden light, clinging to him. But when he
reached her room by telephone she was curt. "No, no, sorry, can't see you 'safternoon--see you at dinner, quarter to six."

He was so chastened that he was restrained and uncommenting when she came swooping into the dining-room, a knot-browed, efficient, raging Sharon,
and when he found that she had brought Cecil Aylston.

"Good evening, Sister--Brother Aylston," he boomed sedately.

"Evening. Ready to speak?"

"Absolutely."

She  lighted  a little. "That's good. Everything else's gone wrong, and these preachers here think I can travel an evangelistic crew on air. Give
'em  fits about tight-wad Christian business men will you, Elmer? How they hate to loosen up! Cecil! Kindly don't look as if I'd bitten somebody.
I haven't . . . not yet."

Aylston  ignored  her, and the two men watched each other like a panther and a buffalo (but a buffalo with a clean shave and ever so much scented
hair-tonic).

"Brother  Aylston,"  said Elmer, "I noticed in the account of last evening's meeting that you spoke of Mary and the anointing with spikenard, and
you quoted these 'Idylls of the King,' by Tennyson. Or that's what the newspaper said."

"That's right."

"But  do  you  think  that's  good stuff for evangelism? All right for a regular church, especially with a high-class rich congregation, but in a
soul-saving campaign--"

"My dear Mr. Gantry, Miss Falconer and I have decided that even in the most aggressive campaign there is no need of vulgarizing our followers."

"Well, that isn't what I'd give 'em!"

"And what, pray, would you give them?"

"The  good  old-fashioned  hell,  that's  what!" Elmer peeped at Sharon and felt that she was smiling with encouragement. "Yes-sir, like the hymn
says, the hell of our fathers is good enough for me."

"Quite so! I'm afraid it isn't good enough for me, and I don't know that Jesus fancied it particularly!"

"Well, you can be dead sure of one thing: When he stayed with Mary and Martha and Lazarus, he didn't loaf around drinking tea with 'em!"

"Why not, my dear man! Don't you know that tea was first imported by caravan train from Ceylon to Syria in 627 B.C.?"

"No-o, didn't know just when--"

"Why, of course. You've merely forgotten it--you must have read in your university days of the great epicurean expedition of Phthaltazar--when he
took the eleven hundred camels? Psaltazar? You remember!"

"Oh, yes, I remember his expedition, but I didn't know he brought in tea."

"Why,  naturally!  Rather!  Uh,  Miss  Falconer,  the  impetuous Mr. Shoop wants to sing 'Just As I Am' for his solo tonight. Is there any way of
preventing it? Adelbert is a good saved soul, but just as he is, he is too fat. Won't you speak to him?"

"Oh, I don't know. Let him sing it. He's brought in lots of souls on that," yawned Sharon.

"Mangy little souls."

"Oh,  stop  being so supercilious! When you get to heaven, Cecil, you'll complain of the way the seraphims--oh, do shut up; I KNOW it's seraphim,
my tongue just slipped--you'll complain of the kind of corsets they wear."

"I'm not at all sure but that you really do picture that sort of heaven, with corseted angels and yourself with a golden mansion on the celestial
Park Lane!"

"Cecil  Aylston,  don't  you quarrel with me tonight! I feel--vulgar. That's your favorite word! I do wish I could save some of the members of my
own crew! . . . Elmer, do you think God went to Oxford?"

"Sure!"

"And you did, of course!"

"I did not, by golly! I went to a hick college in Kansas! And I was born in a hick town in Kansas!"

"Me  too, practically! Oh, I did come from a frightfully old Virginia family, and I was born in what they called a mansion, but still, we were so
poor that our pride was ridiculous. Tell me: did you split wood and pull mustard when you were a boy?"

"Did I? Say! You bet I did!"

They sat with their elbows on the table, swapping boasts of provincial poverty, proclaiming kinship, while Cecil looked frosty.


6


Elmer's speech at the evangelistic meeting was a cloudburst.

It had structure as well as barytone melody, choice words, fascinating anecdotes, select sentiment, chaste point of view, and resolute piety.

Elmer  was  later  to explain to admirers of his public utterances that nothing was more important than structure. What, he put it to them, would
they think of an architect who was fancy about paint and clapboards but didn't plan the house? And tonight's euphuisms were full of structure.

In  part one he admitted that despite his commercial success he had fallen into sin before the hour when, restless in his hotel room, he had idly
fingered o'er a Gideon Bible and been struck by the parable of the talents.

In  part  two  he  revealed  by  stimulating examples from his own experience the cash value of Christianity. He pointed out that merchants often
preferred a dependable man to a known crook.

Hitherto  he had, perhaps, been a shade too realistic. He felt that Sharon would never take him on in place of Cecil Aylston unless she perceived
the  poetry  with  which his soul was gushing. So in part three he explained that what made Christianity no mere dream and ideal, but a practical
human  solvent,  was  Love.  He  spoke very nicely of Love. He said that Love was the Morning Star, the Evening Star, the Radiance upon the Quiet
Tomb, the Inspirer equally of Patriots and Bank Presidents, and as for Music, what was it but the very voice of Love?

He  had  elevated his audience (thirteen hundred they were, and respectful) to a height of idealism from which he made them swoop now like eagles
to a pool of tears:

"For, oh, my brothers and sisters, important though it is to be prudent in this world's affairs, it is the world to come that is alone important,
and  this  reminds  me,  in  closing,  of a very sad incident which I recently witnessed. In business affairs I had often had to deal with a very
prominent  man  named  Jim  Leff--Leffingwell.  I can give his name now because he has passed to his eternal reward. Old Jim was the best of good
fellows,  but  he  had fatal defects. He drank liquor, he smoked tobacco, he gambled, and I'm sorry to say that he did not always keep his tongue
clean--he took the name of God in vain. But Jim was very fond of his family, particularly of his little daughter. Well, she took sick. Oh, what a
sad  time  that  was  to  that  household!  How the stricken mother tiptoed into and out of the sick-room; how the worried doctors came and went,
speeding  to  aid her! As for the father, poor old Jim, he was bowed with anguish as he leaned over that pathetic little bed, and his hair turned
gray in a single night. There came the great crisis, and before the very eyes of the weeping father that little form was stilled, and that sweet,
pure young soul passed to its Maker.

"He  came  to me sobbing, and I put my arms round him as I would round a little child. 'Oh, God,' he sobbed, 'that I should have spent my life in
wicked  vices,  and  that the little one should have passed away knowing her dad was a sinner!' Thinking to comfort him, I said, 'Old man, it was
God's will that she be taken. You have done all that mortal man could do. The best of medical attention. The best of care.'

"I  shall  never forget how scornfully he turned upon me. 'And you call yourself a Christian!' he cried. 'Yes, she had medical attention, but one
thing was lacking--the one thing that would have saved her--I could not pray!'

"And  that  strong  man  knelt  in  anguish and for all my training in--in trying to explain the ways of God to my fellow business men, there was
nothing to say. IT WAS TOO LATE!

"Oh, my brothers, my fellow business men, are YOU going to put off repentance till it's too late? That's YOUR affair, you say. Is it? Is it? Have
you  a  right  to  inflict  upon  all that you hold nearest and dearest the sore burden of your sins? Do you love your sins better than that dear
little  son,  that  bonnie  daughter, that loving brother, that fine old father? Do you want to punish them? Do you? Don't you love some one more
than  you  do your sins? If you do, stand up. Isn't there some one here who wants to stand up and help a fellow business man carry this gospel of
great joy to the world? Won't you come? Won't you HELP me? Oh, come! Come down and let me shake your hand!"

And they came, dozens of them, weeping, while he wept at his own goodness.

They stood afterward in the secluded space behind the white-and-gold platforms, Sharon and Elmer, and she cried, "Oh, it was beautiful! Honestly,
I almost cried myself! Elmer, it was just fine!"

"Didn't  I  get  'em?  Didn't I get 'em? Didn't I? Say, Sharon, I'm so glad it went over, because it was your show and I wanted to give you all I
could!"

He  moved  toward  her,  his  arms  out, and for once he was not producing the false ardor of amorous diplomacy. He was the small boy seeking the
praise of his mother. But she moved away from him, begging, not sardonically:

"No! Please!"

"But you do like me?"

"Yes. I do."

"How much?"

"Not  very  much. I can't like any one very much. But I do like you. Some day I might fall in love with you. A tiny bit. If you don't rush me too
much. But only physically. No one," proudly, "can touch my soul!"

"Do you think that's decent? Isn't that sin?"

She  flamed  at  him.  "I can't sin! I am above sin! I am really and truly sanctified! Whatever I may choose to do, though it might be sin in one
unsanctified,  with  me God will turn it to his glory. I can kiss you like this--" Quickly she touched his cheek, "yes, or passionately, terribly
passionately,  and  it  would only symbolize my complete union with Jesus! I have told you a mystery. You can never understand. But you can serve
me. Would you like to?"

"Yes, I would. . . . And I've never served anybody yet! Can I? Oh, kick out this tea-drinking mollycoddle, Cecil, and let me work with you. Don't
you need arms like these about you, just now and then, defending you?"

"Perhaps. But I'm not to be hurried. I am I! It is I who choose!"

"Yes. I guess prob'ly it is, Sharon. I think you've plumb hypnotized me or something."

"No,  but  perhaps  I  shall if I ever care to. . . . I can do anything I want to! God chose me to do his work. I am the reincarnation of Joan of
Arc,  of Catherine of Sienna! I have visions! God talks to me! I told you once that I hadn't the brains to rival the men evangelists. Lies! False
modesty! They are God's message, but I am God's right hand!"

She  chanted  it  with  her head back, her eyes closed, and even while he quaked, "My God, she's crazy!" he did not care. He would give up all to
follow her. Mumblingly he told her so, but she sent him away, and he crept off in a humility he had never known.



CHAPTER XII


1


Two  more  series  of meetings Sharon Falconer held that summer, and at each of them the power in the machinery world appeared and chronicled his
conversion by the Gideon Bible and the eloquence of Sister Falconer.

Sometimes he seemed very near her; the next time she would regard him with bleak china eyes. Once she turned on him with: "You smoke, don't you?"

"Why, yes."

"I smelled it. I hate it. Will you stop it? Entirely? And drinking?"

"Yes. I will."

And  he did. It was an agony of restlessness and craving, but he never touched alcohol or tobacco again, and he really regretted that in evenings
thus made vacuous he could not keep from an interest in waitresses.

It  was late in August, in a small Colorado city, after the second of his appearances as a saved financial Titan, that he implored Sharon as they
entered the hotel together, "Oh, let me come up to your room. Please! I never have a chance to just sit and talk to you."

"Very well. Come in half an hour. Don't 'phone. Just come right up to Suite B."

It was a half-hour of palpitating, of almost timorous, expectancy.

In every city where she held meetings Sharon was invited to stay at the home of one of the elect, but she always refused. She had a long standard
explanation  that "she could devote herself more fully to the prayer life if she had her own place, and day by day filled it more richly with the
aura  of  spirituality."  Elmer wondered whether it wasn't the aura of Cecil Aylston for which she had her suite, but he tried to keep his aching
imagination away from that.

The half-hour was over.

He swayed up-stairs to Suite B and knocked. A distant "Come in."

She was in the bedroom beyond. He inched into the stale hotel parlor--wall-paper with two-foot roses, a table with an atrocious knobby gilt vase,
two stiff chairs and a grudging settee ranged round the wall. The lilies which her disciples had sent her were decaying in boxes, in a wash-bowl,
in a heap in the corner. Round a china cuspidor lay faint rose petals.

He  sat awkwardly on the edge of one of the chairs. He dared not venture beyond the dusty brocade curtains which separated the two rooms, but his
fancy ventured fast enough.

She  threw  open  the  curtains  and  stood  there, a flame blasting the faded apartment. She had discarded her white robe for a dressing-gown of
scarlet with sleeves of cloth of gold--gold and scarlet; riotous black hair; long, pale, white face. She slipped over to the settee, and summoned
him, "Come!"

He  diffidently  dropped his arm about her, and her head was on his shoulder. His arm drew tighter. But, "Oh, don't make love to me," she sighed,
not moving. "You'll know it all right when I want you to! Just be nice and comforting tonight."

"But I can't always--"

"I  know.  Perhaps  you won't always have to. Perhaps! Oh, I need--What I need tonight is some salve for my vanity. Have I ever said that I was a
reincarnated  Joan of Arc? I really do half believe that sometimes. Of course it's just insanity. Actually I'm a very ignorant young woman with a
lot  of  misdirected  energy and some tiny idealism. I preach elegant sermons for six weeks, but if I stayed in a town six weeks and one day, I'd
have  to  start  the  music box over again. I can talk my sermons beautifully . . . but Cecil wrote most of 'em for me, and the rest I cheerfully
stole."

"Do you like Cecil?"

"Oh, is a nice, jealous, big, fat man!" She who that evening had been a disturbing organ note was lisping baby-talk now.

"Damn it, Sharon, don't try to be a baby when I'm serious!"

"Damn  it,  Elmer, don't say 'damn it'! Oh, I hate the little vices--smoking, swearing, scandal, drinking just enough to be silly. I love the big
ones--murder, lust, cruelty, ambition!"

"And Cecil? Is he one of the big vices that you love?"

"Oh, he's a dear boy. So sweet, the way he takes himself seriously."

"Yes, he must make love like an ice-cream cone."

"You  might  be surprised! There, there! The poor man is just longing to have me say something about Cecil! I'll be obliging. He's done a lot for
me. He really knows something; he isn't a splendid cast-iron statue of ignorance like you or me."

"Now you look here, Sharon! After all, I AM a college graduate and practically a B.D. too."

"That's  what  I  said.  Cecil  really  knows  how  to  read. And he taught me to quit acting like a hired girl, bless him. But--Oh, I've learned
everything  he  can teach me, and if I get any more of the highbrow in me I'll lose touch with the common people--bless their dear, sweet, honest
souls!"

"Chuck  him.  Take me on. Oh, it isn't the money. You must know that, dear. In ten years, at thirty-eight, I can be sales-manager of the Pequot--
prob'ly  ten  thousand  a year--and maybe some day the president, at thirty thou. I'm not looking for a job. But--Oh, I'm crazy about you! Except
for  my  mother,  you're the only person I've ever adored. I love you! Hear me? Damn it--yes, damn it, I said--I worship you! Oh, Sharon, Sharon,
Sharon! It wasn't really bunk when I told 'em all tonight how you'd converted me, because you DID convert me. Will you let me serve you? And will
you maybe marry me?"

"No. I don't think I'll ever marry--exactly. Perhaps I'll chuck Cecil--poor sweet lad!--and take you on. I'll see. Anyhow--Let me think."

She shook off his encircling arm and sat brooding, chin on hand. He sat at her feet--spiritually as well as physically.

She beatified him with:

"In  September  I'll  have only four weeks of meetings, at Vincennes. I'm going to take off all October, before my winter work (you won't know me
then--I'm  DANDY, speaking indoors, in big halls!), and I'm going down to our home, the old Falconer family place, in Virginia. Pappy and Mam are
dead now, and I own it. Old plantation. Would you like to come down there with me, just us two, for a fortnight in October?"

"Would I? My God!"

"Could you get away?"

"If it cost me my job!"

"Then--I'll wire you when to come after I get there: Hanning Hall, Broughton, Virginia. Now I think I'd better go to bed, dear. Sweet dreams."

"Can't I tuck you into bed?"

"No, dear. I might forget to be Sister Falconer! Good night!"

Her  kiss was like a swallow's flight, and he went out obediently, marveling that Elmer Gantry could for once love so much that he did not insist
on loving.


2


In  New  York he had bought a suit of Irish homespun and a heather cap. He looked bulky but pleasantly pastoral as he gaped romantically from the
Pullman  window  at  the  fields  of Virginia. "Ole Virginny--ole Virginny" he hummed happily. Worm fences, negro cabins, gallant horses in rocky
pastures,  a  longing  to  see the gentry who rode such horses, and ever the blue hills. It was an older world than his baking Kansas, older than
Mizpah  Seminary,  and he felt a desire to be part of this traditional age to which Sharon belonged. Then, as the miles which still separated him
from the town of Broughton crept back of him, he forgot the warm-tinted land in anticipation of her.

He  was  recalling that she was the aristocrat, the more formidable here in the company of F. F. V. friends. He was more than usually timid . . .
and more than usually proud of his conquest.

For a moment, at the station, he thought that she had not come to meet him. Then he saw a girl standing by an old country buggy.

She was young, veritably a girl, in middy blouse deep cut at the throat, pleated white skirt, white shoes. Her red tam-o'-shanter was rakish, her
smile was a country grin as she waved to him. And the girl was Sister Falconer.

"God, you're adorable!" he murmured to her, as he plumped down his suit-case, and she was fragrant and soft in his arms as he kissed her.

"No more," she whispered. "You're supposed to be my cousin, and even very nice cousins don't kiss quite so intelligently!"

As the carriage jerked across the hills, as the harness creaked and the white horse grunted, he held her hand lightly in butterfly ecstasy.

He cried out at the sight of Hanning Hall as they drove through the dark pines, among shabby grass plots, to the bare sloping lawn. It was out of
a  story-book:  a  brick  house,  not  very large, with tall white pillars, white cupola, and dormer windows with tiny panes; and across the lawn
paraded a peacock in the sun. Out of a story-book, too, was the pair of old negroes who bowed to them from the porch and hastened down the steps-
-the  butler  with  green  tail-coat  and  white mustache almost encircling his mouth, and the mammy in green calico, with an enormous grin and a
histrionic curtsy.

"They've always cared for me since I was a tiny baby," Sharon whispered. "I do love them--I do love this dear old place. That's--" She hesitated,
then defiantly: "That's why I brought you here!"

The  butler  took  his  bag  up  and unpacked, while Elmer wandered about the old bedroom, impressed, softly happy. The wall was a series of pale
landscapes:  manor  houses  beyond avenues of elms. The bed was a four-poster; the fireplace of white-enameled posts and mantel; and on the broad
oak boards of the floor, polished by generations of forgotten feet, were hooked rugs of the days of crinoline.

"Golly, I'm so happy! I've come home!" sighed Elmer.

When  the  butler  was  gone,  Elmer drifted to the window, and "Golly!" he said again. He had not realized that in the buggy they had climbed so
high. Beyond rolling pasture and woods was the Shenandoah glowing with afternoon.

"Shen-an-doah!" he crooned.

Suddenly  he was kneeling at the window, and for the first time since he had forsaken Jim Lefferts and football and joyous ribaldry, his soul was
free of all the wickedness which had daubed it--oratorical ambitions, emotional orgasm, dead sayings of dull seers, dogmas, and piety. The golden
winding river drew him, the sky uplifted him, and with outflung arms he prayed for deliverance from prayer.

"I've  found  her. Sharon. Oh, I'm not going on with this evangelistic bunk. Trapping idiots into holy monkey-shines! No, by God, I'll be honest!
I'll  tuck her under my arms and go out and fight. Business. Put it over. Build something big. And laugh, not snivel and shake hands with church-
members! I'll do it!"

Then and there ended his rebellion.

The vision of the beautiful river was hidden from him by a fog of compromises. . . . How could he keep away from evangelistic melodrama if he was
to have Sharon? And to have Sharon was the one purpose of life. She loved her meetings, she would never leave them, and she would rule him. And--
he was exalted by his own oratory.

"BESIDES! There is a lot to all this religious stuff. We do do good. Maybe we jolly 'em into emotions too much, but don't that wake folks up from
their ruts? Course it does!"

So he put on a white turtle-necked sweater and with a firm complacent tread he went down to join Sharon.

She was waiting in the hall, so light and young in her middy blouse and red tam.

"Let's  not talk seriously. I'm not Sister Falconer--I'm Sharon today. Gee, to think I've ever spoken to five thousand people! Come on! I'll race
you up the hill!"

The  wide  lower  hall,  traditionally  hung  with  steel  engravings  and a Chickamauga sword, led from the front door, under the balcony of the
staircase, to the garden at the back, still bold with purple asters and golden zinnias.

Through  the  hall  she  fled,  through  the  garden,  past the stone sundial, and over the long rough grass to the orchard on the sunny hill: no
ceremonious  Juno now but a nymph; and he followed, heavy, graceless, but pounding on inescapable, thinking less of her fleeting slenderness than
of the fact that since he had stopped smoking his wind cer'nly was a lot better--cer'nly was.

"You CAN run!" she said, as she stopped, panting, by a walled garden with espalier pears.

"You bet I can! And I'm a grand footballer, a bearcat at tackling my young friend!"

He picked her up, while she kicked and grudgingly admired, "You're terribly strong!"

But  the  day  of halcyon October sun was too serene even for his coltishness and sedately they tramped up the hill, swinging their joined hands;
sedately they talked (ever so hard he tried to live up to the Falconer Family, an Old Mansion, and Darky Mammies) of the world-menacing perils of
Higher Criticism and the genius of E. O. Excell as a composer of sacred but snappy melodies.


3


While  he  dressed, that is, while he put on the brown suit and a superior new tie, Elmer worried. This sure intimacy was too perfect. Sharon had
spoken  vaguely  of  brothers, of high-nosed aunts and cousins, of a cloud of Falconer witnesses, and the house was large enough to secrete along
its corridors a horde of relatives. Would he, at dinner, have to meet hostile relics who would stare at him and make him talk and put him down as
a  piece  of  Terwillinger  provinciality? He could see the implications in their level faded eyes; he could see Sharon swayed by their scorn and
delivered from such uncertain fascination as his lustiness and boldness had cast over her.

"Damn!" he said. "I'm just as good as they are!"

He  came  reluctantly  down-stairs  to  the shabby, endearing drawing-room, with its whatnot of curios--a Chinese slipper, a stag carved of black
walnut,  a shell from Madagascar--with its jar of dried cattails, its escritoire and gate-legged table, and a friendly old couch before the white
fireplace.  The room, the whole spreading house was full of whispers and creakings and dead suspicious eyes. . . . There had been no whispers and
no  memories  in  the  cottage  at Paris, Kansas. . . . Elmer stood wistful, a little beaten boy, his runaway hour with the daughter of the manor
house ended, too worshiping to resent losing the one thing he wanted.

Then  she was at the door, extremely unevangelistic, pleasantly worldly in an evening frock of black satin and gold lace. He had not known people
who wore evening frocks. She held out her hand gaily to him, but it was not gaily that he went to her--meekly, rather, resolved that he would not
disgrace her before the suspicious family.

They came hand in hand into the dining-room and he saw that the table was set for two only.

He almost giggled, "Thought maybe there'd be a lot of folks," but he was saved, and he did not bustle about her chair.

He said grace, at length.

Candles and mahogany, silver and old lace, roses and Wedgwood, canvasback and the butler in bottle-green. He sank into a stilled happiness as she
told  riotous  stories of evangelism--of her tenor soloist, the plump Adelbert Shoop, who loved crème de cocoa; of the Swedish farmer's wife, who
got  her  husband  prayed out of the drinking, cursing, and snuff habits, then tried to get him prayed out of playing checkers, whereupon he went
out and got marvelously pickled on raw alcohol.

"I've never seen you so quiet before," she said. "You really can be nice. Happy?"

"Terribly!"

The  roof  of  the  front porch had been turned into an outdoor terrace, and here, wrapped up against the cool evening, they had their coffee and
peppermints  in long deck chairs. They were above the tree-tops; and as their eyes widened in the darkness they could see the river by starlight.
The hoot of a wandering owl; then the kind air, the whispering air, crept round them.

"Oh,  my  God,  it is so sweet--so sweet!" he sighed, as he fumbled for her hand and felt it slip confidently into his. Suddenly he was ruthless,
tearing it all down:

"Too  darn'  sweet for me, I guess. Sharon, I'm a bum. I'm not so bad as a preacher, or I wouldn't be if I had the chance, but ME--I'm no good. I
have  cut out the booze and tobacco--for you--I really have! But I used to drink like a fish, and till I met you I never thought any woman except
my  mother was any good. I'm just a second-rate traveling man. I came from Paris, Kansas, and I'm not even up to that hick burg, because they are
hard-working and decent there, and I'm not even that. And you--you're not only a prophetess, which you sure are, the real big thing, but you're a
Falconer. Family! Old Servants! This old house! Oh, it's no use! You're too big for me. Just because I do love you. Terribly. Because I can't lie
to you!"

He had put away her slim hand, but it came creeping back over his, her fingers tracing the valleys between his knuckles while she murmured:

"You  will  be  big! I'll make you! And perhaps I'm a prophetess, a little bit, but I'm also a good liar. You see I'm not a Falconer. There ain't
any! My name is Katie Jonas. I was born in Utica. My dad worked on a brickyard. I picked out the name Sharon Falconer while I was a stenographer.
I  never  saw this house till two years ago; I never saw these old family servants till then--they worked for the folks that owned the place--and
even they weren't Falconers--they had the aristocratic name of Sprugg! Incidentally, this place isn't a quarter paid for. And yet I'm not a liar!
I'm  not! I AM Sharon Falconer now! I've made her--by prayer and by having a right to be her! And you're going to stop being poor Elmer Gantry of
Paris,  Kansas.  You're going to be the Reverend Dr. Gantry, the great captain of souls! Oh, I'm glad you don't come from anywhere in particular!
Cecil Aylston--oh, I guess he does love me, but I always feel he's laughing at me. Hang him, he notices the infinitives I split and not the souls
I save! But you--Oh, you will serve me--won't you?"

"Forever!"

And  there was little said then. Even the agreement that she was to get rid of Cecil, to make Elmer her permanent assistant, was reached in a few
casual assents. He was certain that the steely film of her dominance was withdrawn.

Yet when they went in, she said gaily that they must be early abed; up early tomorrow; and that she would take ten pounds off him at tennis.

When he whispered, "Where is your room, sweet?" she laughed with a chilling impersonality, "You'll never know, poor lamb!"

Elmer  the  bold,  Elmer  the  enterprising, went clumping off to his room, and solemnly he undressed, wistfully he stood by the window, his soul
riding  out on the darkness to incomprehensible destinations. He humped into bed and dropped toward sleep, too weary with fighting her resistance
to lie thinking of possible tomorrows.

He  heard  a  tiny  scratching noise. It seemed to him that it was the doorknob turning. He sat up, throbbing. The sound was frightened away, but
began  again, a faint grating, and the bottom of the door swished slowly on the carpet. The fan of pale light from the hall widened and, craning,
he could see her, but only as a ghost, a white film.

He held out his arms, desperately, and presently she stumbled against them.

"No!  Please!" Hers was the voice of a sleep-walker. "I just came in to say good-night and tuck you into bed. Such a bothered unhappy child! Into
bed. I'll kiss you good-night and run."

His  head  burrowed  into the pillow. Her hand touched his cheek lightly, yet through her fingers, he believed, flowed a current which lulled him
into slumber, a slumber momentary but deep with contentment.

With effort he said, "You too--you need comforting, maybe you need bossing, when I get over being scared of you."

"No. I must take my loneliness alone. I'm different, whether it's cursed or blessed. But--lonely--yes--lonely."

He was sharply awake as her fingers slipped up his cheek, across his temple, into his swart hair.

"Your hair is so thick," she said drowsily.

"Your heart beats so. Dear Sharon--"

Suddenly, clutching his arm, she cried, "Come! It is the call!"

He  was  bewildered  as  he followed her, white in her nightgown trimmed at the throat with white fur, out of his room, down the hall, up a steep
little  stairway  to  her  own  apartments;  the  more  bewildered  to  go from that genteel corridor, with its forget-me-not wallpaper and stiff
engravings of Virginia worthies, into a furnace of scarlet.

Her  bedroom  was as insane as an Oriental cozy corner of 1895--a couch high on carven ivory posts, covered with a mandarin coat; unlighted brass
lamps  in  the  likeness  of  mosques  and  pagodas; gilt papier-mâché armor on the walls; a wide dressing-table with a score of cosmetics in odd
Parisian bottles; tall candlesticks, the twisted and flowered candles lighted; and over everything a hint of incense.

She  opened a closet, tossed a robe to him, cried, "For the service of the altar!" and vanished into a dressing-room beyond. Diffidently, feeling
rather like a fool, he put on the robe. It was of purple velvet embroidered with black symbols unknown to him, the collar heavy with gold thread.
He was not quite sure what he was to do, and he waited obediently.

She  stood  in  the doorway, posing, while he gaped. She was so tall and her hands, at her sides, the backs up and the fingers arched, moved like
lilies  on the bosom of a stream. She was fantastic in a robe of deep crimson adorned with golden stars and crescents, swastikas and tau crosses;
her  feet  were in silver sandals, and round her hair was a tiara of silver moons set with steel points that flickered in the candlelight. A mist
of  incense  floated  about  her, seemed to rise from her, and as she slowly raised her arms he felt in schoolboyish awe that she was veritably a
priestess.

Her voice was under the spell of the sleep-walker once more as she sighed "Come! It is the chapel."

She marched to a door part-hidden by the couch, and led him into a room--

Now he was no longer part amorous, part inquisitive, but all uneasy.

What hanky-panky of construction had been performed he never knew; perhaps it was merely that the floor above this small room had been removed so
that  it  stretched up two stories; but in any case there it was--a shrine bright as bedlam at the bottom but seeming to rise through darkness to
the  sky.  The  walls were hung with black velvet; there were no chairs; and the whole room focused on a wide altar. It was an altar of grotesque
humor  or of madness, draped with Chinese fabrics, crimson, apricot, emerald, gold. There were two stages of pink marble. Above the altar hung an
immense  crucifix with the Christ bleeding at nail-wounds and pierced side; and on the upper stage were plaster busts of the Virgin, St. Theresa,
St.  Catherine,  a  garish  Sacred Heart, a dolorous simulacrum of the dying St. Stephen. But crowded on the lower stage was a crazy rout of what
Elmer called "heathen idols": ape-headed gods, crocodile-headed gods, a god with three heads and a god with six arms, a jade-and-ivory Buddha, an
alabaster  naked Venus, and in the center of them all a beautiful, hideous, intimidating and alluring statuette of a silver goddess with a triple
crown  and  a  face  as thin and long and passionate as that of Sharon Falconer. Before the altar was a long velvet cushion, very thick and soft.
Here Sharon suddenly knelt, waving him to his knees, as she cried:

"It  is  the  hour!  Blessed  Virgin, Mother Hera, Mother Frigga, Mother Ishtar, Mother Isis, dread Mother Astarte of the weaving arms, it is thy
priestess,  it is she who after the blind centuries and the groping years shall make it known to the world that ye are one, and that in me are ye
all  revealed,  and that in this revelation shall come peace and wisdom universal, the secret of the spheres and the pit of understanding. Ye who
have  leaned  over  me  and  on  my  lips pressed your immortal fingers, take this my brother to your bosoms, open his eyes, release his pinioned
spirit, make him as the gods, that with me he may carry the revelation for which a thousand thousand grievous years the world has panted.

"O rosy cross and mystic tower of ivory--

"Hear my prayer.

"O sublime April crescent--

"Hear my prayer.

"O sword of undaunted steel most excellent--

"Hear thou my prayer.

"O serpent with unfathomable eyes--

"Hear my prayer.

"Ye  veiled  ones and ye bright ones--from caves forgotten, the peaks of the future, the clanging today--join in me, lift up, receive him, dread,
nameless ones; yea, lift us then, mystery on mystery, sphere above sphere, dominion on dominion, to the very throne!"

She  picked  up  a  Bible which lay by her on the long velvet cushion at the foot of the altar, she crammed it into his hands, and cried, "Read--
read--quickly!"

It was open at the Song of Solomon, and bewildered he chanted:

"How  beautiful  are  thy  feet  with  shoes,  O  prince's daughter! The joints of thy thighs are like jewels, the work of the hands of a cunning
workman.  Thy  two  breasts are like two young roes. Thy neck is as a tower of ivory. The hair of thine head like purple; the king is held in the
galleries. How fair and how pleasant art thou, O love, for delights!"

She  interrupted  him,  her  voice  high  and  a  little  shrill:  "O  mystical rose, O lily most admirable, O wondrous union; O St. Anna, Mother
Immaculate, Demeter, Mother Beneficent, Lakshmi, Mother Most Shining; behold, I am his and he is yours and ye are mine!"

As he read on, his voice rose like a triumphant priest's:

"I said, I will go up to the palm tree, I will take hold of the boughs thereof--"

That verse he never finished, for she swayed sideways as she knelt before the altar, and sank into his arms, her lips parted.


4


They sat on the hilltop, looking down on noon in the valley, sleepily talking till he roused with: "Why won't you marry me?"

"No. Not for years, anyway. I'm too old--thirty-two to your--what is it, twenty-eight or -nine? And I must be free for the service of Our Lord. .
. . You do know I mean that? I am really consecrated, no matter what I may seem to do!"

"Sweet, of course I do! Oh, yes."

"But  not  marry.  It's  good  at  times to be just human, but mostly I have to live like a saint. . . . Besides, I do think men converts come in
better if they know I'm not married."

"Damn it, listen! Do you love me a little?"

"Yes. A little! Oh, I'm as fond of you as I can be of any one except Katie Jonas. Dear child!"

She dropped her head on his shoulder, casually now, in the bee-thrumming orchard aisle, and his arm tightened.

That evening they sang gospel hymns together, to the edification of the Old Family Servants, who began to call him Doctor.



CHAPTER XIII


1


Not till December did Sharon Falconer take Elmer on as assistant.

When  she discharged Cecil Aylston, he said, in a small cold voice, "This is the last time, my dear prophet and peddler, that I shall ever try to
be  decent." But it is known that for several months he tried to conduct a rescue mission in Buffalo, and if he was examined for insanity, it was
because  he  was  seen  to  sit for hours staring. He was killed in a gambling den in Juarez, and when she heard of it Sharon was very sorry--she
spoke of going to fetch his body, but she was too busy with holy work.

Elmer  joined  her  at  the  beginning of the meetings in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. He opened the meetings for her, made announcements, offered prayer,
preached  when  she  was  too  weary,  and  led the singing when Adelbert Shoop, the musical director, was indisposed. He developed a dozen sound
sermons out of encyclopedias of exegesis, handbooks for evangelists, and manuals of sermon outlines. He had a powerful discourse, used in the For
Men  Only  service,  on  the strength and joy of complete chastity; he told how Jim Leffingwell saw the folly of pleasure at the death-bed of his
daughter; and he had an uplifting address, suitable to all occasions, on Love as the Morning and the Evening Star.

He  helped  Sharon  where  Cecil  had held her back--or so she said. While she kept her vocabulary of poetic terms, Elmer managed her in just the
soap-box  denunciation of sin which had made Cecil shudder. Also he spoke of Cecil as "Osric," which she found very funny indeed, and as "Percy,"
and  "Algernon."  He  urged  her  to tackle the biggest towns, the most polite or rowdy audiences, and to advertise herself not in the wet-kitten
high-church phrases approved by Cecil but in a manner befitting a circus, an Elks' convention, or a new messiah.

Under  Elmer's  urging  she  ventured  for the first time into the larger cities. She descended on Minneapolis and, with the support only of such
sects  as the Full Gospel Assembly, the Nazarenes, the Church of God, and the Wesleyan Methodists, she risked her savings in hiring an armory and
inserting two-column six-inch advertisements of herself.

Minneapolis was quite as enlivened as smaller places by Sharon's voice and eyes, by her Grecian robes, by her gold-and-white pyramidal altar, and
the  profits  were  gratifying.  Thereafter  she  sandwiched Indianapolis, Rochester, Atlanta, Seattle, the two Portlands, Pittsburgh, in between
smaller cities.

For two years life was a whirlwind to Elmer Gantry.

It  was  so  frantic  that  he  could  never  remember which town was which. Everything was a blur of hot sermons, writhing converts, appeals for
contributions, trains, denunciation of lazy personal workers, denunciations of Adelbert Shoop for getting drunk, firing of Adelbert Shoop, taking
back of Adelbert Shoop when no other tenor so unctuously pious was to be found.

Of one duty he was never weary: of standing around and being impressive and very male for the benefit of lady seekers. How tenderly he would take
their  hands  and  moan,  "Won't  you  hear the dear Savior's voice calling, Sister?" and all of them, spinsters with pathetic dried girlishness,
misunderstood wives, held fast to his hand and were added to the carefully kept total of saved souls. Sharon saw to it that he dressed the part--
double-breasted dark blue with a dashing tie in winter, and in summer white suits with white shoes.

But however loudly the skirts rustled about him, so great was Sharon's intimidating charm that he was true to her.

If  he  was  a  dervish figure those two years, she was a shooting star; inspired in her preaching, passionate with him, then a naughty child who
laughed  and  refused to be serious even at the sermon hour; gallantly generous, then a tight-fisted virago squabbling over ten cents for stamps.
Always, in every high-colored mood, she was his religion and his reason for being.


2


When  she  attacked  the  larger towns and asked for the support of the richer churches, Sharon had to create several new methods in the trade of
evangelism.  The  churches  were  suspicious  of  women evangelists--women might do very well in visiting the sick, knitting for the heathen, and
giving  strawberry  festivals, but they couldn't shout loud enough to scare the devil out of sinners. Indeed all evangelists, men and women, were
under  attack.  Sound  churchmen  here  and there were asking whether there was any peculiar spiritual value in frightening people into groveling
maniacs.  They  were  publishing  statistics  which asserted that not ten per cent of the converts at emotional revival meetings remained church-
members.  They  were  even  so commercial as to inquire why a pastor with a salary of two thousand dollars a year--when he got it--should agonize
over helping an evangelist to make ten thousand, forty thousand.

All  these  doubters  had to be answered. Elmer persuaded Sharon to discharge her former advance-agent--he had been a minister and contributor to
the  religious  press,  till the unfortunate affair of the oil stock--and hire a real press-agent, trained in newspaper work, circus advertising,
and real-estate promoting. It was Elmer and the press-agent who worked up the new technique of risky but impressive defiance.

Where  the  former  advance-man  had  begged  the  ministers  and wealthy laymen of a town to which Sharon wanted to be invited to appreciate her
spirituality, and had sat nervously about hotels, the new salesman of salvation was brusque:

"I  can't  waste  my time and the Lord's time waiting for you people to make up your minds. Sister Falconer is especially interested in this city
because she has been informed that there is a subterranean quickening here such as would simply jam your churches, with a grand new outpouring of
the  spirit,  provided  some real expert like her came to set the fuse alight. But there are so many other towns begging for her services that if
you  can't  make  up  your  minds  immediately,  we'll have to accept their appeals and pass you up. Sorry. Can only wait till midnight. Tonight.
Reserved my Pullman already."

There  were  ever  so  many  ecclesiastical  bodies  who  answered  that  they didn't see why he waited even till midnight, but if they were thus
intimidated  into  signing  the contract (an excellent contract, drawn up by a devout Christian Scientist lawyer named Finkelstein) they were the
more prepared to give spiritual and financial support to Sharon's labors when she did arrive.

The  new  press-agent was finally so impressed by the beauties of evangelism, as contrasted with his former circuses and real estate, that he was
himself  converted, and sometimes when he was in town with the troupe, he sang in the choir and spoke to Y.M.C.A. classes in journalism. But even
Elmer's arguments could never get him to give up a sturdy, plodding devotion to poker.


3


The contract signed, the advance-man remembered his former newspaper labors, and for a few days became touchingly friendly with all the reporters
in  town.  There  were late parties at his hotel; there was much sending of bell-boys for more bottles of Wilson and White Horse and Green River.
The  press-agent  admitted  that  he  really  did think that Miss Falconer was the greatest woman since Sarah Bernhardt, and he let the boys have
stories, guaranteed held exclusive, of her beauty, the glories of her family, her miraculous power of fetching sinners or rain by prayer, and the
rather vaguely dated time when, as a young girl, she had been recognized by Dwight Moody as his successor.

South  of  the  Mason  and  Dixon  line  her  grandfather was merely Mr. Falconer, a bellicose and pious man, but far enough north he was General
Falconer  of  Ole Virginny--preferably spelled that way--who had been the adviser and solace of General Robert E. Lee. The press-agent also wrote
the posters for the Ministerial Alliance, giving Satan a generous warning as to what was to happen to him.

So  when  Sharon  and  the  troupe  arrived,  the  newspapers were eager, the walls and shop-windows were scarlet with placards, and the town was
breathless. Sometimes a thousand people gathered at the station for her arrival.

There were always a few infidels, particularly among the reporters, who had doubted her talents, but when they saw her in the train vestibule, in
a  long  white  coat, when she had stood there a second with her eyes closed, lost in prayer for this new community, when slowly she held out her
white nervous hands in greeting--then the advance-agent's work was two-thirds done here and he could go on to whiten new fields for the harvest.

But there was still plenty of discussion before Sharon was rid of the forces of selfishness and able to get down to the job of spreading light.

Local  committees were always stubborn, local committees were always jealous, local committees were always lazy, and local committees were always
told these facts, with vigor. The heat of the arguments was money.

Sharon  was  one  of  the first evangelists to depend for all her profit not on a share of the contributions nor on a weekly offering, but on one
night  devoted  entirely  to a voluntary "thank offering," for her and her crew alone. It sounded unselfish and it brought in more; every devotee
saved  up  for  that  occasion;  and  it  proved  easier to get one fifty-dollar donation than a dozen of a dollar each. But to work up this lone
offering  to  suitably  thankful  proportions, a great deal of loving and efficient preparation was needed--reminders given by the chief pastors,
bankers,  and other holy persons of the town, the distribution of envelopes over which devotees were supposed to brood for the whole six weeks of
the meetings, and innumerable newspaper paragraphs about the self-sacrifice and heavy expenses of the evangelists.

It  was  over  these  innocent  necessary  precautions  that  the  local committees always showed their meanness. They liked giving over only one
contribution  to  the evangelist, but they wanted nothing said about it till they themselves had been taken care of--till the rent of the hall or
the cost of building a tabernacle, the heat, the lights, the advertising, and other expenses had been paid.

Sharon  would meet the committee--a score of clergymen, a score of their most respectable deacons, a few angular Sunday School superintendents, a
few  disapproving  wives--in a church parlor, and for the occasion she always wore the gray suit and an air of metropolitan firmness, and swung a
pair  of  pince-nez  with  lenses made of window-glass. While in familiar words the local chairman was explaining to her that their expenses were
heavy, she would smile as though she knew something they could not guess, then let fly at them breathlessly:

"I'm  afraid  there  is some error here! I wonder if you are quite in the mood to forget all material things and really throw yourselves into the
self-abnegating glory of a hot campaign for souls? I know all you have to say--as a matter of fact, you've forgotten to mention your expenses for
watchmen, extra hymn books, and hiring camp-chairs!

"But  you haven't the experience to appreciate MY expenses! I have to maintain almost as great a staff--not only workers and musicians but all my
other  representatives,  whom you never see--as though I had a factory. Besides them, I have my charities. There is, for example, the Old Ladies'
Home,  which  I  keep up entirely--oh, I shan't say anything about it, but if you could see those poor aged women turning to me with such anxious
faces--!"

(Where that Old Ladies' Home was, Elmer never learned.)

"We  come  here  without  any  guarantee, we depend wholly upon the free-will offering of the last day; and I'm afraid you're going to stress the
local  expenses so that people will not feel like giving on the last day even enough to pay the salaries of my assistants. I'm taking--if it were
not  that I abominate the pitiful and character-destroying vice of gambling, I'd say that I'm taking such a terrible gamble that it frightens me!
But there it is, and--"

While  she  was  talking,  Sharon  was sizing up this new assortment of clergy: the cranks, the testy male old maids, the advertising and pushing
demagogues,  the  commonplace pulpit-job-holders, the straddling young liberals; the real mystics, the kindly fathers of their flocks, the lovers
of righteousness. She had picked out as her advocate the most sympathetic, and she launched her peroration straight at him:

"Do  you want to ruin me, so that never again shall I be able to carry the message, to carry salvation, to the desperate souls who are everywhere
waiting  for  me,  crying  for  my help? Is that your purpose--you, the elect, the people chosen to help me in the service of the dear Lord Jesus
himself? Is that your purpose? Is it? Is it?"

She began sobbing, which was Elmer's cue to jump up and have a wonderful idea.

He  knew,  did  Elmer,  that the dear brethren and sisters had no such purpose. They just wanted to be practical. Well, why wouldn't it be a good
notion  for the committee to go to the well-to-do church members and explain the unparalleled situation; tell them that this was the Lord's work,
and  that  aside  from the unquestioned spiritual benefits, the revival would do so much good that crime would cease, and taxes thus be lessened;
that  workmen  would  turn from agitation to higher things, and work more loyally at the same wages. If they got enough pledges from the rich for
current  expenses,  those  expenses  would  not have to be stressed at the meetings, and people could properly be coaxed to save up for the final
"thank offering"; not have to be nagged to give more than small coins at the nightly collections.

There  were  other  annoyances  to  discuss  with the local committee. Why, Elmer would demand, hadn't they provided enough dressing-rooms in the
tabernacle?  Sister  Falconer  needed  privacy.  Sometimes  just before the meeting she and he had to have important conferences. Why hadn't they
provided more volunteer ushers? He must have them at once, to train them, for it was the ushers, when properly coached, who would ease struggling
souls up to the altar for the skilled finishing touches by the experts.

Had they planned to invite big delegations from the local institutions--from Smith Brothers' Catsup Factory, from the car-shops, from the packing
house?  Oh, yes, they must plan to stir up these institutions; an evening would be dedicated to each of them, the representatives would be seated
together, and they'd have such a happy time singing their favorite hymns.

By  this  time,  a  little dazed, the local committee were granting everything; and they looked almost convinced when Sharon wound up with a glad
ringing:

"All  of  you must look forward, and joyfully, to a sacrifice of time and money in these meetings. We have come here at a great sacrifice, and we
are here only to help you."


4


The  afternoon  and evening sermons--those were the high points of the meetings, when Sharon cried in a loud voice, her arms out to them, "Surely
the  Lord  is in this place and I knew it not," and "All our righteousness is as filthy rags," and "We have sinned and come short of the glory of
God,"  and  "Oh, for the man to arise in me, that the man I am may cease to be," and "Get right with God," and "I am not ashamed of the gospel of
Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation."

But before even these guaranteed appeals could reach wicked hearts, the audience had to be prepared for emotion, and to accomplish this there was
as  much  labor  behind Sharon's eloquence as there is of wardrobes and scene-shifters and box offices behind the frenzy of Lady Macbeth. Of this
preparation Elmer had a great part.

He  took  charge,  as soon as she had trained him, of the men personal workers, leaving the girls to the Director of Personal Work, a young woman
who  liked  dancing  and  glass  jewelry  but  who  was  admirable  at  listening to the confessions of spinsters. His workers were bank-tellers,
bookkeepers in wholesale groceries, shoe clerks, teachers of manual training. They canvassed shops, wholesale warehouses, and factories, and held
noon meetings in offices, where they explained that the most proficient use of shorthand did not save one from the probability of hell. For Elmer
explained that prospects were more likely to be converted if they came to the meetings with a fair amount of fear.

When  they  were  permitted, the workers were to go from desk to desk, talking to each victim about the secret sins he was comfortably certain to
have.  And both men and women workers were to visit the humbler homes and offer to kneel and pray with the floury and embarrassed wife, the pipe-
wreathed and shoeless husband.

All the statistics of the personal work--so many souls invited to come to the altar, so many addresses to workmen over their lunch-pails, so many
cottage prayers, with the length of each--were rather imaginatively entered by Elmer and the Director of Personal Work on the balance-sheet which
Sharon used as a report after the meetings and as a talking-point for the sale of future meetings.

Elmer  met  daily  with  Adelbert  Shoop, that yearning and innocent tenor who was in charge of music, to select hymns. There were times when the
audiences had to be lulled into confidence by "Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling," times when they were made to feel brotherly and rustic with
"It's the Old-time Religion"--


It was good for Paul and Silas And it's good enough for me--


and  times  when  they  had  to be stirred by "At the Cross" or "Onward, Christian Soldiers." Adelbert had ideas about what he called "worship by
melody," but Elmer saw that the real purpose of singing was to lead the audience to a state of mind where they would do as they were told.

He  learned  to pick out letters on the typewriter with two fingers, and he answered Sharon's mail--all of it that she let him see. He kept books
for  her, in a ragged sufficient manner, on check-book stubs. He wrote the nightly story of her sermons, which the newspapers cut down and tucked
in  among  stories of remarkable conversions. He talked to local church-pillars so rich and moral that their own pastors were afraid of them. And
he invented an aid to salvation which to this day is used in the more evangelistic meetings, though it is credited to Adelbert Shoop.

Adelbert was up to most of the current diversions. He urged the men and the women to sing against each other. At the tense moment when Sharon was
calling  for  converts,  Adelbert  would  skip  down the aisle, fat but nimble, pink with coy smiles, tapping people on the shoulder, singing the
chorus  of  a  song  right  among  them,  and  often returning with three or four prisoners of the sword of the Lord, flapping his plump arms and
caroling "They're coming--they're coming," which somehow started a stampede to the altar.

Adelbert  was,  in his girlish enthusiasm, almost as good as Sharon or Elmer at announcing, "Tonight, you are all of you to be evangelists. Every
one of you now! Shake hands with the person to your right and ask 'em if they're saved."

He gloated over their embarrassment.

He really was a man of parts. Nevertheless, it was Elmer, not Adelbert, who invented the "Hallelujah Yell."

Remembering  his college cheers, remembering how greatly it had encouraged him in kneeing the opposing tackle or jabbing the rival center's knee,
Elmer observed to himself, "Why shouldn't we have yells in this game, too?"

He himself wrote the first one known in history.


Hallelujah,  praise  God,  hal, hal, hal! Hallelujah, praise God, hal, hal, hal! All together, I feel better, Hal, hal, hal, For salvation of the
nation--Aaaaaaaaaaa--MEN!


That  was  a  thing to hear, when Elmer led them; when he danced before them, swinging his big arms and bellowing, "Now again! Two yards to gain!
Two yards for the Savior! Come on, boys and girls, it's our team! Going to let 'em down? Not on your life! Come on then, you chipmunks, and lemme
hear you knock the ole roof off! Hal, hal, hal!"

Many  a  hesitating  boy,  a  little sickened by the intense brooding femininity of Sharon's appeal, was thus brought up to the platform to shake
hands with Elmer and learn the benefits of religion.


5


The  gospel  crew  could  never  consider  their  converts  as human beings, like waiters or manicurists or brakemen, but they had in them such a
professional interest as surgeons take in patients, critics in an author, fishermen in trout.

They were obsessed by the gaffer in Terre Haute who got converted every single night during the meetings. He may have been insane and he may have
been  a  plain drunk, but every evening he came in looking adenoidal and thoroughly backslidden; every evening he slowly woke to his higher needs
during  the  sermon;  and when the call for converts came, he leaped up, shouted "Hallelujah, I've found it!" and galloped forward, elbowing real
and valuable prospects out of the aisle. The crew waited for him as campers for a mosquito.

In  Scranton,  they  had  unusually exasperating patients. Scranton had been saved by a number of other evangelists before their arrival, and had
become almost anesthetic. Ten nights they sweated over the audience without a single sinner coming forward, and Elmer had to go out and hire half
a dozen convincing converts.

He  found them in a mission near the river, and explained that by giving a good example to the slothful, they would be doing the work of God, and
that  if  the example was good enough, he would give them five dollars apiece. The missioner himself came in during the conference and offered to
get converted for ten, but he was so well known that Elmer had to give him the ten to stay away.

His  gang of converts was very impressive, but thereafter no member of the evangelistic troupe was safe. The professional Christians besieged the
tent  night  and  day.  They wanted to be saved again. When they were refused, they offered to produce new converts at five dollars apiece--three
dollars  apiece--fifty  cents and a square meal. By this time enough authentic and free enthusiasts were appearing, and though they were fervent,
they  did  not  relish  being  saved  in  company  with hoboes who smelled. When the half dozen cappers were thrown out, bodily, by Elmer and Art
Nichols, they took to coming to the meetings and catcalling, so that for the rest of the series they had to be paid a dollar a night each to stay
away.

No,  Elmer  could  not  consider the converts human. Sometimes when he was out in the audience, playing the bullying hero that Judson Roberts had
once  played  with  him,  he looked up at the platform, where a row of men under conviction knelt with their arms on chairs and their broad butts
toward  the  crowd, and he wanted to snicker and wield a small plank. But five minutes after he would be up there, kneeling with a sewing-machine
agent  with  the  day-after  shakes,  his arm round the client's shoulder, pleading in the tones of a mother cow, "Can't you surrender to Christ,
Brother?  Don't  you  want  to  give up all the dreadful habits that are ruining you--keeping you back from success? Listen! God'll help you make
good! And when you're lonely, old man, remember he's there, waiting to talk to you!"


6


They  generally, before the end of the meetings, worked up gratifying feeling. Often young women knelt panting, their eyes blank, their lips wide
with  ecstasy.  Sometimes, when Sharon was particularly fired, they actually had the phenomena of the great revivals of 1800. People twitched and
jumped with the holy jerks, old people under pentecostal inspiration spoke in unknown tongues--completely unknown; women stretched out senseless,
their  tongues  dripping;  and  once  occurred  what  connoisseurs regard as the highest example of religious inspiration. Four men and two women
crawled about a pillar, barking like dogs, "barking the devil out of the tree."

Sharon relished these miracles. They showed her talent; they were sound manifestations of Divine Power. But sometimes they got the meetings a bad
name,  and  cynics  prostrated  her  by talking of "Holy Rollers." Because of this maliciousness and because of the excitement which she found in
meetings so favored by the Holy Ghost, Elmer had particularly to comfort her after them.


7


All the members of the evangelistic crew planned effects to throw a brighter limelight on Sharon. There was feverish discussions of her costumes.
Adelbert  had planned the girdled white robe in which she appeared as priestess, and he wanted her to wear it always. "You are so queeeeenly," he
whimpered.  But  Elmer  insisted  on changes, on keeping the robe for crucial meetings, and Sharon went out for embroidered golden velvet frocks,
and, at meetings for business women, smart white flannel suits.

They assisted her also in the preparation of new sermons.

Her  "message"  was  delivered under a hypnotism of emotion, without connection with her actual life. Now Portia, now Ophelia, now Francesca, she
drew  men  to  her,  did  with them as she would. Or again she saw herself as veritably the scourge of God. But however richly she could pour out
passion, however flamingly she used the most exotic words and the most complex sentiments when some one had taught them to her, it was impossible
for her to originate any sentiment more profound than "I'm unhappy."

She  read  nothing,  after  Cecil  Aylston's  going, but the Bible and the advertisements of rival evangelists in the bulletin of the Moody Bible
Institute.

Lacking  Cecil, it was a desperate and cooperative affair to furnish Sharon with fresh sermons as she grew tired of acting the old ones. Adelbert
Shoop  provided  the poetry. He was fond of poetry. He read Ella Wheeler Wilcox, James Whitcomb Riley, and Thomas Moore. He was also a student of
philosophy:  he could understand Ralph Waldo Trine perfectly, and he furnished for Sharon's sermons both the couplets about Home and Little Ones,
and the philosophical points about will-power, Thoughts are Things, and Love is Beauty, Beauty is Love, Love is All.

The  Lady  Director of Personal Work had unexpected talent in making up anecdotes about the death-beds of drunkards and agnostics; Lily Anderson,
the pretty though anemic pianist, had once been a school teacher and had read a couple of books about scientists, so she was able to furnish data
with  which  Sharon absolutely confuted the rising fad of evolution; and Art Nichols, the cornetist, provided rude but moral Maine humor, stories
about  horse-trading,  cabbages,  and  hard cider, very handy for cajoling skeptical business men. But Elmer, being trained theologically, had to
weave  all  the  elements--dogma,  poetry  to the effect that God's palette held the sunsets or ever the world began, confessions of the dismally
damned, and stories of Maine barn-dances--into one ringing whole.

And  meanwhile,  besides  the  Reverend  Sister Falconer and the Reverend Mr. Gantry, thus cooperative, there were Sharon and Elmer and a crew of
quite human people with grievances, traveling together, living together, not always in a state of happy innocence.



CHAPTER XIV


1


Sedate  as  a  long  married  couple,  intimate  and secure, were Elmer and Sharon on most days, and always he was devoted. It was Sharon who was
incalculable.  Sometimes  she  was a priestess and a looming disaster, sometimes she was intimidating in grasping passion, sometimes she was thin
and  writhing  and  anguished with chagrined doubt of herself, sometimes she was pale and nun-like and still, sometimes she was a chilly business
woman, and sometimes she was a little girl. In the last, quite authentic rôle, Elmer loved her fondly--except when she assumed it just as she was
due to go out and hypnotize three thousand people.

He would beg her, "Oh, come on now, Shara, please be good! Please stop pouting, and go out and lambaste 'em."

She  would stamp her foot, while her face changed to a round childishness. "No! Don't want to evangel. Want to be bad. Bad! Want to throw things.
Want to go out and spank a bald man on the head. Tired of souls. Want to tell 'em all to go to hell!"

"Oh, gee, please, Shara! Gosh all fishhooks! They're waiting for you! Adelbert has sung that verse twice now."

"I  don't  care!  Sing  it  again!  Sing  songs, losh songs! Going to be bad! Going out and and drop mice down Adelbert's fat neck--fat neck--fat
hooooooly neck!"

But suddenly: "I wish I could. I wish they'd let me BE bad. Oh, I get so tired--all of them reaching for me, sucking my blood, wanting me to give
them the courage they're too flabby to get for themselves!"

And a minute later she was standing before the audience, rejoicing, "Oh, my beloved, the dear Lord has a message for you tonight!"

And in two hours, as they rode in a taxi to the hotel, she was sobbing on his breast: "Hold me close! I'm so lonely and afraid and cold."


2


Among  his  various  relations  to her, Elmer was Sharon's employee. And he resented the fact that she was making five times more than he of that
money for which he had a reverent admiration.

When they had first made plans, she had suggested:

"Dear, if it all works out properly, in three or four years I want you to share the offerings with me. But first I must save a lot. I've got some
vague  plans to build a big center for our work, maybe with a magazine and a training-school for evangelists. When that's paid for, you and I can
make an agreement. But just now--How much have you been making as a traveling man?"

"Oh, about three hundred a month--about thirty-five hundred a year." He was really fond of her; he was lying to the extent of only five hundred.

"Then I'll start you in at thirty-eight hundred, and in four or five years I hope it'll be ten thousand, and maybe twice as much."

And  she  never,  month  after month, discussed salary again. It irritated him. He knew that she was making more than twenty thousand a year, and
that  before  long she would probably make fifty thousand. But he loved her so completely that he scarce thought of it oftener than three or four
times a month.


3


Sharon continued to house her troupe in hotels, for independence. But an unfortunate misunderstanding came up. Elmer had stayed late in her room,
engaged  in  a  business conference, so late that he accidentally fell asleep across the foot of her bed. So tired were they both that neither of
them awoke till nine in the morning, when they were aroused by Adelbert Shoop knocking and innocently skipping in.

Sharon raised her head, to see Adelbert giggling.

"How DARE you come into my room without knocking, you sausage!" she raged. "Have you no sense of modesty or decency? Beat it! Potato!"

When Adelbert had gone simpering out, cheeping, "HONEST, I won't say ANYTHING," then Elmer fretted, "Golly, do you think he'll blackmail us?"

"Oh,  no,  Adelbert  adores  me.  Us  girls  must  stick together. But it does bother me. Suppose it'd been some other guest of the hotel! People
misunderstand  and criticize so. Tell you what let's do. Hereafter, in each town, let's hire a big house, furnished, for the whole crew. Still be
independent,  but nobody around to talk about us. And prob'ly we can get a dandy house quite cheap from some church-member. That would be lovely!
When  we  get  sick of working so hard all the time, we could have a party just for ourselves, and have a dance. I love to dance. Oh, of course I
roast  dancing  in my sermons, but I mean--when it's with people like us, that understand, it's not like with worldly people, where it would lead
to  evil.  A  party!  Though  Art  Nichols  WOULD  get drunk. Oh, let him! He works so hard. Now you skip. Wait! Aren't you going to kiss me good
morning?"

They  made  sure  of Adelbert's loyalty by flattering him, and the press-agent had orders to find a spacious furnished house in the city to which
they were going next.


4


The  renting  of furnished houses for the Falconer Evangelistic Party was a ripe cause for new quarrels with local committees, particularly after
the party had left town.

There  were  protests  by the infuriated owners that the sacred workers must have been, as one deacon-undertaker put it, "simply raising the very
devil."  He  asserted that the furniture had been burned with cigarette stubs, that whisky had been spilled on rugs, that chairs had been broken.
He  claimed  damages  from the local committee; the local committee sent the claims on to Sharon; there was a deal of fervent correspondence; and
the claims were never paid.

Though  usually  it  did  not  come  out till the series of meetings was finished, so that there was no interference with saving the world, these
arguments about the private affairs of the evangelistic crew started most regrettable rumors. The ungodly emitted loud scoffings. Sweet repressed
old maids wondered and wondered what might really have happened, and speculated together in delightful horror as to whether--uh--there could have
been anything--uh--worse than drinking going on.

But  always  a  majority  of  the  faithful  argued logically that Sister Falconer and Brother Gantry were righteous, therefore they could not do
anything  unrighteous, therefore the rumors were inspired by the devil and spread by saloon-keepers and infidels, and in face of this persecution
of the godly, the adherents were the more lyric in support of the Falconer Party.

Elmer learned from the discussions of damages a pleasant way of reducing expenses. At the end of their stay, they simply did not pay the rent for
their house. They informed the local committee, after they had gone, that the committee had promised to provide living quarters, and that was all
there was to it. . . . There was a lot of correspondence.


5


One of Sharon's chief troubles was getting her crew to bed. Like most actors, they were high-strung after the show. Some of them were too nervous
to  sleep  till they had read the Saturday Evening Post; others never could eat till after the meetings, and till one o'clock they fried eggs and
scrambled  eggs  and  burnt  toast and quarreled over the dish-washing. Despite their enlightened public stand against the Demon Rum, some of the
performers had to brace up their nerves with an occasional quart of whisky, and there was dancing and assorted glee.

Though  sometimes  she exploded all over them, usually Sharon was amiably blind, and she had too many conferences with Elmer to give much heed to
the parties.

Lily  Anderson,  the pale pianist, protested. They ought all, she said, to go to bed early so they could be up early. They ought, she said, to go
oftener  to  the  cottage prayer meetings. The others insisted that this was too much to expect of people exhausted by their daily three hours of
work,  but she reminded them that they were doing the work of the Lord, and they ought to be willing to wear themselves out in such service. They
were, said they; but not tonight.

After  days when Art Nichols, the cornetist, and Adolph Klebs, the violinist, had such heads at ten in the morning that they had to take pick-me-
ups,  would  come  days  when  all  of them, even Art and Adolph, were hysterically religious; when quite privately they prayed and repented, and
raised  their voices in ululating quavers of divine rapture, till Sharon said furiously that she didn't know whether she preferred to be waked up
by hell-raising or hallelujahs. Yet once she bought a traveling phonograph for them, and many records, half hectic dances and half hymns.


6


Though her presence nearly took away his need of other stimulants, of tobacco and alcohol and most of his cursing, it was a year before Elmer was
altogether secure from the thought of them. But gradually he saw himself certain of future power and applause as a clergyman. His ambition became
more important than the titillation of alcohol, and he felt very virtuous and pleased.

Those  were big days, rejoicing days, sunny days. He had everything: his girl, his work, his fame, his power over people. When they held meetings
in  Topeka,  his  mother  came from Paris to hear them, and as she watched her son addressing two thousand people, all the heavy graveyard doubts
which had rotted her after his exit from Mizpah Seminary vanished.

He  felt  now  that  he  belonged. The gospel crew had accepted him as their assistant foreman, as bolder and stronger and trickier than any save
Sharon, and they followed him like family dogs. He imagined a day when he would marry Sharon, supersede her as leader--letting her preach now and
then  as  a  feature--and  become  one  of  the great evangelists of the land. He belonged. When he encountered fellow evangelists, no matter how
celebrated, he was pleased, but not awed.

Didn't  Sharon  and  he meet no less an evangelist than Dr. Howard Bancock Binch, the great Baptist defender of the literal interpretation of the
Bible,  president  of the True Gospel Training School for Religious Workers, editor of The Keeper of the Vineyard, and author of "Fools Errors of
So-Called Science"? Didn't Dr. Binch treat Elmer like a son?

Dr.  Binch happened to be in Joliet, on his way to receive his sixth D. D. degree (from Abner College) during Sharon's meetings there. He lunched
with Sharon and Elmer.

"Which hymns do you find the most effective when you make your appeal for converts, Dr. Binch?" asked Elmer.

"Well,  I'll  tell  you,  Brother  Gantry," said the authority. "I think 'Just as I Am' and 'Jesus, I Am Coming Home' hit real folksy hearts like
nothing else."

"Oh, I'm afraid I don't agree with you," protested Sharon. "It seems to me--of course you have far more experience and talent than I, Dr. Binch--
"

"Not  at  all,  my  dear  sister,"  said  Dr. Binch, with a leer which sickened Elmer with jealousy. "You are young, but all of us recognize your
genius."

"Thank you very much. But I mean: They're not lively enough. I feel we ought to use hymns with a swing to 'em, hymns that make you dance right up
to the mourners' bench."

Dr.  Binch  stopped  gulping  his  fried pork chops and held up a flabby, white, holy hand. "Oh, Sister Falconer, I hate to have you use the word
'dance' regarding an evangelistic meeting! What is the dance? It is the gateway to hell! How many innocent girls have found in the dance-hall the
allurement which leads to every nameless vice!"

Two minutes of information about dancing--given in the same words that Sharon herself often used--and Dr. Binch wound up with a hearty: "So I beg
of you not to speak of 'dancing to the mourners' bench!'"

"I know, Dr. Binch, I know, but I mean in its sacred sense, as of David dancing before the Lord."

"But  I  feel  there  was  a different meaning to that. If you only knew the original Hebrew--the word should not be translated 'danced' but 'was
moved by the spirit.'"

"Really? I didn't know that. I'll use that."

They all looked learned.

"What methods, Dr. Binch," asked Elmer, "do you find the most successful in forcing people to come to the altar when they resist the Holy Ghost?"

"I always begin by asking those interested in being prayed for to hold up their hands."

"Oh, I believe in having them stand up if they want prayer. Once you get a fellow to his feet, it's so much easier to coax him out into the aisle
and  down  to the front. If he just holds up his hand, he may pull it down before you can spot him. We've trained our ushers to jump right in the
minute anybody gets up, and say 'Now Brother, won't you come down front and shake hands with Sister Falconer and make your stand for Jesus?'"

"No," said Dr. Binch, "my experience is that there are many timid people who have to be led gradually. To ask them to stand up is too big a step.
But actually, we're probably both right. My motto as a soul-saver, if I may venture to apply such a lofty title to myself, is that one should use
every method that, in the vernacular, will sell the goods."

"I guess that's right," said Elmer. "Say, tell me, Dr. Binch, what do you do with converts after they come to the altar?"

"I  always try to have a separate room for 'em. That gives you a real chance to deepen and richen their new experience. They can't escape, if you
close the door. And there's no crowd to stare and embarrass them."

"I  can't  see that," said Sharon. "I believe that if the people who come forward are making a stand for Christ, they ought to be willing to face
the  crowd.  And  it  makes  such an impression on the whole bunch of the unsaved to see a lot of seekers at the mourners' bench. You must admit,
Brother  Binch--Dr.  Binch, I should say--that lots of people who just come to a revival for a good time are moved to conviction epidemically, by
seeing others shaken."

"No, I can't agree that that's so important as making a deeper impression on each convert, so that each goes out as an agent for you, as it were.
But every one to his own methods. I mean so long as the Lord is with us and behind us."

"Say,  Dr.  Binch," said Elmer, "how do you count your converts? Some of the preachers in this last town accused us of lying about the number. On
what basis do you count them?"

"Why,  I  count every one (and we use a recording machine) that comes down to the front and shakes hands with me. What if some of them ARE merely
old church members warmed over? Isn't it worth just as much to give new spiritual life to those who've had it and lost it?"

"Of  course  it  is.  That's  what we think. And then we got criticized there in that fool town! We tried--that is, Sister Falconer here tried--a
stunt  that  was  new for us. We opened up on some of the worst dives and blind tigers by name. We even gave street numbers. The attack created a
howling  sensation; people just jammed in, hoping we'd attack other places. I believe that's a good policy. We're going to try it here next week.
It puts the fear of God into the wicked, and slams over the revival."

"There's danger in that sort of thing, though," said Dr. Binch. "I don't advise it. Trouble is, in such an attack you're liable to offend some of
the  leading  church  members--the  very folks that contribute the most cash to a revival. They're often the owners of buildings that get used by
unscrupulous  persons  for immoral purposes, and while they of course regret such unfortunate use of their property, if you attack such places by
name,  you're likely to lose their support. Why, you might lose thousands of dollars! It seems to me wiser and more Christian to just attack vice
in general."

"How much orchestra do you use, Dr. Binch?" asked Sharon.

"All I can get hold of. I'm carrying a pianist, a violinist, a drummer, and a cornetist, besides my soloist."

"But don't you find some people objecting to fiddling?"

"Oh,  yes, but I jolly 'em out of it by saying I don't believe in letting the devil monopolize all these art things," said Dr. Binch. "Besides, I
find that a good tune, sort of a nice, artistic, slow, sad one, puts folks into a mood where they'll come across both with their hearts and their
contributions. By the way, speaking of that, what luck have you folks had recently in raising money? And what method do you use?"

"It's been pretty good with us--and I need a lot, because I'm supporting an orphanage," said Sharon. "We're sticking to the idea of the free-will
offering  the last day. We can get more money than any town would be willing to guarantee beforehand. If the appeal for the free-will offering is
made strong enough, we usually have pretty fair results."

"Yes,  I  use  the  same method. But I don't like the term 'freewill offering,' or 'thank offering.' It's been used so much by merely second-rate
evangelists,  who,  and  I  grieve to say there are such people, put their own gain before the service of the Kingdom, that it's got a commercial
sound. In making my own appeal for contributions, I use 'love offering.'"

"That's  worth  thinking over, Dr. Binch," sighed Sharon, "but, oh, how tragic it is that we, with our message of salvation--if the sad old world
would  but  listen,  we  could  solve  all sorrows and difficulties--yet with this message ready, we have to be practical and raise money for our
expenses  and  charities.  Oh,  the  world doesn't appreciate evangelists. Think what we can do for a resident minister! These preachers who talk
about conducting their own revivals make me sick! They don't know the right technique. Conducting revivals is a profession. One must know all the
tricks. With all modesty, I figure that I know just what will bring in the converts."

"I'm sure you do, Sister Falconer," from Binch. "Say, do you and Brother Gantry like union revivals?"

"You  bet  your  life  we  do,"  said  Brother  Gantry.  "We won't conduct a revival unless we can have the united support of all the evangelical
preachers in town."

"I think you are mistaken, Brother Gantry," said Dr. Binch. "I find that I have the most successful meetings with only a few churches, but all of
them  genuinely O. K. With all the preachers joined together, you have to deal with a lot of these two-by-four hick preachers with churches about
the  size of woodsheds and getting maybe eleven hundred a year, and yet they think they have the right to make suggestions! No, sir! I want to do
business  with  the  big  down-town  preachers  that  are used to doing things in a high-grade way and that don't kick if you take a decent-sized
offering out of town!"

"Yuh, there's something to be said for that," said Elmer. "That's what the Happy Sing Evangelist--you know, Bill Buttle--said to us one time."

"But I hope you don't LIKE Brother Buttle!" protested Dr. Binch.

"Oh, no! Anyway _I_ didn't like him," said Sharon, which was a wifely slap at Elmer.

Dr.  Binch  snorted,  "He's  a scoundrel! There's rumors about his wife's leaving him. Why is it that in such a high calling as ours there are so
many  rascals?  Take  Dr.  Mortonby!  Calling himself a cover-to-cover literalist, and then his relations to the young woman who sings for him--I
would shock you, Sister Falconer, if I told you what I suspect."

"Oh,  I  know.  I haven't met him, but I hear dreadful things," wailed Sharon. "And Wesley Zigler! They say he drinks! And an evangelist! Why, if
any person connected with me were so much as to take one drink, out he goes!"

"That's  right,  that's  right.  Isn't  it  dreadful!" mourned Dr. Binch. "And take this charlatan Edgar Edgars--this obscene ex-gambler with his
disgusting slang! Uh! The hypocrite!"

Joyously  they  pointed  out  that  this rival artist in evangelism was an ignoramus, that a passer of bogus checks, the other doubtful about the
doctrine  of  the premillennial coming; joyously they concluded that the only intelligent and moral evangelists in America were Dr. Binch, Sister
Falconer, and Brother Gantry, and the lunch broke up in an orgy of thanksgiving.

"There's  the  worst  swell-head  and  four-flusher  in  America,  that Binch, and he's shaky on Jonah, and I've heard he chews tobacco--and then
pretending to be so swell and citified. Be careful of him," said Sharon to Elmer afterward, and "Oh, my dear, my dear!"

Read Part Two of Elmer Gantry.