Elmer Gantry (Unabridged). Sinclair Lewis
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curious gathering at the Y.M.C.A. All day the campus had debated, "Did Hell-cat really sure-enough get saved? Is he going to cut out his hell-raising?"
Every man he knew was present, their gaping mouths dripping question-marks, grinning or doubtful. Their leers confused him, and he was angry at being introduced by Eddie Fislinger, president of the Y.M.C.A.
He started coldly, stammering. But Ingersoll had provided the beginning of his discourse, and he warmed to the splendor of his own voice. He saw the audience in the curving Y.M.C.A. auditorium as a radiant cloud, and he began to boom confidently, he began to add to his outline impressive ideas which were altogether his own — except, perhaps, as he had heard them thirty or forty times in sermons.
It sounded very well, considering. Certainly it compared well with the average mystical rhapsody of the pulpit.
For all his slang, his cursing, his mauled plurals and singulars, Elmer had been compelled in college to read certain books, to hear certain lectures, all filled with flushed, florid polysyllables, with juicy sentiments about God, sunsets, the moral improvement inherent in a daily view of mountain scenery, angels, fishing for souls, fishing for fish, ideals, patriotism, democracy, purity, the error of Providence in creating the female leg, courage, humility, justice, the agricultural methods of Palestine circ. 4 A.D., the beauty of domesticity, and preachers' salaries. These blossoming words, these organ-like phrases, these profound notions had been rammed home till they stuck in his brain, ready for use.
But even to the schoolboy-wearied faculty who had done the ramming, who ought to have seen the sources, it was still astonishing that after four years of grunting, Elmer Gantry should come out with these flourishes, which they took perfectly seriously, for they themselves had been nurtured in minute Baptist and Campbellite colleges.
Not one of them considered that there could be anything comic in the spectacle of a large young man, divinely fitted for coal-heaving, standing up and wallowing in thick slippery words about Love and the Soul. They sat — young instructors not long from the farm, professors pale from years of napping in unaired pastoral studies — and looked at Elmer respectfully as he throbbed:
"It's awful' hard for a fellow that's more used to bucking the line than to talking publicly to express how he means, but sometimes I guess maybe you think about a lot of things even if you don't always express how you mean, and I want to — what I want to talk about is how if a fellow looks down deep into things and is really square with God, and lets God fill his heart with higher aspirations, he sees that — he sees that Love is the one thing that can really sure-enough lighten all of life's dark clouds.
"Yes, sir, just Love! It's the morning and evening star. It's — even in the quiet tomb, I mean those that are around the quiet tomb, you find it even there. What is it that inspires all great men, all poets and patriots and philosophers? It's Love, isn't it? What gave the world its first evidences of immortality? Love! It fills the world with melody, for what is music? What is music? Why! Music is the voice of love!"
The great President Quarles leaned back and put on his spectacles, which gave a slight appearance of learning to his chin-whiskered countenance, otherwise that of a small-town banker in 1850. He was the center of a row of a dozen initiates on the platform of the Y.M.C.A. auditorium, a shallow platform under a plaster half-dome. The wall behind them was thick with diagrams, rather like anatomical charts, showing the winning of souls in Egypt, the amount spent on whisky versus the amount spent on hymn-books, and the illustrated progress of a pilgrim from Unclean Speech through Cigarette smoking and Beer Saloons to a lively situation in which he beat his wife, who seemed to dislike it. Above was a large and enlightening motto: "Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good."
The whole place had that damp-straw odor characteristic of places of worship, but President Quarles did not, seemingly, suffer in it. All his life he had lived in tabernacles and in rooms devoted to thin church periodicals and thick volumes of sermons. He had a slight constant snuffle, but his organism was apparently adapted now to existing without air. He beamed and rubbed his hands, and looked with devout joy on Elmer's broad back as Elmer snapped into it, ever surer of himself; as he bellowed at the audience — beating them, breaking through their interference, making a touchdown:
"What is it makes us different from the animals? The passion of Love! Without it, we are — in fact we are nothing; with it, earth is heaven, and we are, I mean to some extent, like God himself! Now that's what I wanted to explain about Love, and here's how it applies. Prob'ly there's a whole lot of you like myself — oh, I been doing it, I'm not going to spare myself — I been going along thinking I was too good, too big, too smart, for the divine love of the Savior! Say! Any of you ever stop and think how much you're handing yourself when you figure you can get along without divine intercession? Say! I suppose prob'ly you're bigger than Moses, bigger than St. Paul, bigger than Pastewer, that great scientist — "
President Quarles was exulting, "It was a genuine conversion! But more than that! Here's a true discovery — my discovery! Elmer is a born preacher, once he lets himself go, and I can make him do it! O Lord, how mysterious are thy ways! Thou hast chosen to train our young brother not so much in prayer as in the mighty struggles of the Olympic field! I — thou, Lord, hast produced a born preacher. Some day he'll be one of our leading prophets!"
The audience clapped when Elmer hammered out his conclusion: " — and you Freshmen will save a lot of time that I wasted if you see right now that until you know God you know — just nothing!"
They clapped, they made their faces to shine upon him. Eddie Fislinger won him by sighing, "Old fellow, you got me beat at my own game like you have at your game!" There was much hand-shaking. None of it was more ardent than that of his recent enemy, the Latin professor, who breathed:
"Where did you get all those fine ideas and metaphors about the Divine Love, Gantry?"
"Oh," modestly, "I can't hardly call them mine, Professor. I guess I just got them by praying."
7
Judson Roberts, ex-football-star, state secretary of the Y.M.C.A., was on the train to Concordia, Kansas. In the vestibule he had three puffs of an illegal cigarette and crushed it out.
"No, really, it wasn't so bad for him, that Elmer what's-his-name, to get converted. Suppose there isn't anything to it. Won't hurt him to cut out some of his bad habits for a while, anyway. And how do we know? Maybe the Holy Ghost does come down. No more improbable than electricity. I do wish I could get over this doubting! I forget it when I've got 'em going in an evangelistic meeting, but when I watch a big butcher like him, with that damn' silly smirk on his jowls — I believe I'll go into the real estate business. I don't think I'm hurting these young fellows any, but I do wish I could be honest. Oh, Lordy, Lordy, Lordy, I wish I had a good job selling real estate!"
8
Elmer walked home firmly. "Just what right has Mr. James B. Lefferts got to tell me I mustn't use my ability to get a crowd going? And I certainly had 'em going! Never knew I could spiel like that. Easy as feetball! And Prexy saying I was a born preacher! Huh!"
Firmly and resentfully he came into their room, and slammed down his hat.
It awoke Jim. "How'd it go over? Hand 'em out the gospel guff?"
"I did!" Elmer trumpeted. "It went over, as you put it, corking. Got any objections?"
He lighted the largest lamp and turned it up full, his back to Jim.
No answer. When he looked about, Jim seemed asleep.
At seven next morning he said forgivingly, rather patronizingly, "I'll be gone till ten — bring you back some breakfast?"
Jim answered, "No, thanks," and those were his only words that morning.
When Elmer came in at ten-thirty, Jim was gone, his possessions gone. (It was no great moving: three suitcases of clothes, an armful of books.) There was a note on the table:
I shall live at the College Inn the rest of this year. You can probably get Eddie Fislinger to live with you. You would enjoy it. It has been stimulating to watch