Elmer Gantry (Unabridged). Sinclair Lewis

Lord's guidance. We hadn't ought to interfere with the Lord's guidance, Brother Quarles."

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

      Elmer blundered out into the fresh clean air.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      "By God, I do!"

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

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

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

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

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

      He had won even over old Jim!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       3

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

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

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

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

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

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

      "But there are prophecies in the Book — "

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

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

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

      "How'd it go?" asked his wife.

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

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

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

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

      "Oh, I know. I just get to thinking. Sometimes I wonder if we've given up so much. Don't hurt even a preacher to face himself! After all, those two years when I was in the carpet business, before I went to the