Elmer Gantry (21 page)

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”—

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.

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.

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!”

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.

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.

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!”