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.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal,
and this—just get the dandy swing to it:
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.
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-in-law—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.
Ah, nothing is too late
Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.
Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles
Wrote his grand Oedipus, and Simonides
Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers,
When each had numbered more than fourscore years.
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.
XI
Bishop Wesley R. Toomis had suggested to Elmer that he ought to read philosophy, and he had recommended Royce. He himself, he said, hadn’t been able to give so much time to Royce as he would have liked, but he knew that here was a splendid field for any intellectual adventurer. So Elmer came back from Sparta with the two volumes of Royce’s The World and the Individual, and two new detective stories.
He would skip pleasantly but beneficially through Royce, then pick up whatever ideas he might find in all these other philosophers he had heard mentioned: James and Kant and Bergson and who was that fellow with the funny name—Spinoza?
He opened the first volume of Royce confidently, and drew back in horror.
He had a nice, long, free afternoon in which to become wise. He labored on. He read each sentence six times. His mouth drooped pathetically. It did not seem fair that a Christian knight who was willing to give his time to listening to people’s ideas should be treated like this. He sighed, and read the first paragraph again. He sighed, and the book dropped into his lap.
He looked about. On the stand beside him was one of the detective stores. He reached for it. It began as all proper detective stories should begin—with the taproom of the Cat and Fiddle Inn, on a stormy night when gusts of rain beat against the small ancient casement, but within all was bright and warm; the Turkey-red curtains shone in the firelight, and the burnished handles of the beer-pump—
An hour later Elmer had reached the place where the Scotland Yard Inspector was attacked from the furze-bush by the maniac. He excitedly crossed his legs, and Royce fell to the floor and lay there.
But he kept at
