Elmer Gantry (28 page)

He had them!

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

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

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

“Did you like what I said of Love?”

“Oh . . . LOVE . . . yes!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

And they had cake and homemade ice cream.

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

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

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

He began his “stunts” with that first prayer-meeting.

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

It went over.

“That’s a fine fellow, that new Methodist preacher,” said the villagers that week.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He began with Browning.

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

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

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

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

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

In Dickens Elmer had a revelation.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

and this—just get the dandy swing to it:

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-inlaw—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.

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.