X

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He had much edification from these “Rules for a Preacher’s Conduct” in the Discipline:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He began with Browning.

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

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

incinerate—burn up

Merovingian—French tribe bouta. d.500

rem Golgotha was scene crucifixn

Leigh Hunt—poet—1840—n. g.

lupin—blue flower

defeasance—making nix

chanson (pro. Shan-song)—French kind of song

Rem: Man worth while is m. who can smile when ev thing goes dead wrong

Sermon on man that says other planets inhabited—nix. cause Bible says o of Xt trying to save THEM.

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

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

Myself when young did eagerly frequentDoctor and Saint, and heard great argumentAbout it and about: but evermoreCame out by the same door wherein I went,

Myself when young did eagerly frequentDoctor and Saint, and heard great argumentAbout it and about: but evermoreCame out by the same door wherein I went,

Myself when young did eagerly frequentDoctor and Saint, and heard great argumentAbout it and about: but evermoreCame out by the same door wherein I went,

Myself when young did eagerly frequent

Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument

About it and about: but evermore

Came out by the same door wherein I went,

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

In Dickens Elmer had a revelation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Isthere! Say, listen to this! From Longfellow. The poet.

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

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

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

Life is real! Life is earnest!

And the grave is not its goal,

and this—just get the dandy swing to it:

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

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

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

Lives of great men all remind us

We can make our lives sublime,

And, departing, leave behind us

Footprints on the sands of time.

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

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

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

“ ‘David Copperfield.’ I’ve heard the name. It’s mighty nice of you to come and tell me about it, brother.”

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

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

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

Ah, nothing is too lateTill the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.Cato learned Greek at eighty; SophoclesWrote his grand Å’dipus, and SimonidesBore off the prize of verse from his compeers,When each had numbered more than fourscore years.

Ah, nothing is too lateTill the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.Cato learned Greek at eighty; SophoclesWrote his grand Å’dipus, and SimonidesBore off the prize of verse from his compeers,When each had numbered more than fourscore years.

Ah, nothing is too lateTill the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.Cato learned Greek at eighty; SophoclesWrote his grand Å’dipus, and SimonidesBore off the prize of verse from his compeers,When each had numbered more than fourscore years.

Ah, nothing is too late

Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.

Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles

Wrote his grand Å’dipus, and Simonides

Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers,

When each had numbered more than fourscore years.

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

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

Then he collided with Josiah Royce.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Reverend Elmer Gantry drew his breath, quietly closed the book, and shouted, “Oh, shut up!”

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

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

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

But the focus of his life now was Cleo Benham.

CHAPTER XXI

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh, it’s nothing—”

“Come on now! Tell me! I’ll pray for you, or beat somebody up, whichever you prefer!”

“Oh, I don’t think you ought to joke about——  Anyway, it’s really nothing.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Well, you might pay alittleattention to me, anyway!” he snarled.

“Oh, I’m sorry! I really was paying attention. I’m just tired—all the preparations for the wedding and everything.” She looked at him beseechingly. “Oh, Elmer, you must take care of me! I’m giving myself to you entirely—oh, completely.”

“Huh! So you look at it as asacrificeto marry me, do you!”

“Oh, no, Ididn’tmean it that way—”

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

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

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

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

And with all this, she still seemed distressed.

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

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

“That’s damned nonsense!” he raged, stalking her as she backed away.

“Oh, no, please!”

“Say, what the devil do you think marriage is?”

“Oh, I’ve never heard you curse before!”

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

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

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

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

“Fellowoughtto be brutal, for her own sake,” he told himself, and seized her shoulders.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

WAKE UP, MR. DEVIL!If old Satan were as lazy as some would-be Christians in this burg, we’d all be safe. But he isn’t! Come out next Sunday, 10:30a. m.and hear a red-blooded sermon by Rev. Gantry onWOULD JESUS PLAY POKER?M. E. Church

WAKE UP, MR. DEVIL!

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

WOULD JESUS PLAY POKER?

M. E. Church

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And he would not see Ishuah again, ever.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Don’t you think God’s in Banjo Crossing as much as in a city?”

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

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

“I think I’ll take a little walk,” he muttered when they reached home.

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

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

She fluttered toward him.

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

“We miss you awfully!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Cleo’s graciousness added to his prestige.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are you going on to perfection?

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

Are you earnestly striving after it?

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

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

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

*      *      *      *      *      *      *

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

*      *      *      *      *      *      *

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

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

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

The bishop’s snappy voice popped:

Sparta District:

Albee Center, W. A. Vance

Ardmore, Abraham Mundon—

And Elmer listened with them, suddenly terrified.

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

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

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

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