Elmer Gantry (Unabridged). Sinclair Lewis

recover again, and he was a promise of what he might be in twenty years, as a ten-thousand-dollar seer.

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

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

       2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

      "I am, Hank."

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

       3

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

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

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

      ...Elmer, looking handsome on a kitchen chair in front of the rows of flushed hot faces. He stopped fretting that his shiny new black shoes were dust-gray. His heart pounded. He was in for it! No escape! He was going to be a pastor! Last chance for Jim Lefferts, and Lord knew where Jim was. He couldn't