Entranced, he gave heed to the magnates—a bond broker, a mine-owner, a lawyer, a millionaire lumberman:
“Yes, sir, what the country at large doesn’t understand is that the stabilization of sterling has a good effect on our trade with Britain—”
“I told them that far from refusing to recognize the rights of labor, I had myself come up from the ranks, to some extent, and I was doing all in my power to benefit them, but I certainly did refuse to listen to the caterwauling of a lot of hired agitators from the so-called unions, and that if they didn’t like the way I did things—”
“Yes, it opened at 73½, but knowing what had happened to Saracen Common—”
“Yes, sir, you can depend on a Pierce-Arrow, you certainly can—”
Elmer drew a youthful, passionate, shuddering breath at being so nearly in communion with the powers that governed Zenith and thought for Zenith, that governed America and thought for it. He longed to stay, but he had the task, unworthy of his powers of social decoration, of preparing a short clever talk on missions among the Digger Indians.
As he drove home he rejoiced, “Some day, I’ll be able to put it over with the best of ’em socially. When I get to be a bishop, believe me I’m not going to hang around jawing about Sunday School methods! I’ll be entertaining the bon ton, senators and everybody. … Cleo would look fine at a big dinner, with the right dress. … If she wasn’t so darn’ priggish. Oh, maybe she’ll die before then. … I think I’ll marry an Episcopalian. … I wonder if I could get an Episcopal bishopric if I switched to that nightshirt crowd? More class. No; Methodist bigger church; and don’t guess the Episcopalopians would stand any good red-blooded sermons on vice and all that.”
II
The Gilfeather Chautauqua Corporation, which conducts week-long Chautauquas in small towns, had not been interested when Elmer had hinted, three years ago, that he had a Message to the Youth of America, one worth at least a hundred a week, and that he would be glad to go right out to the Youth and deliver it. But when Elmer’s demolition of all vice in Zenith had made him celebrated, and even gained him a paragraph or two as the Crusading Parson, in New York and Chicago, the Gilfeather Corporation had a new appreciation. They came to him, besieged him, offered him two hundred a week and headlines in the posters, for a three-months tour.
But Elmer did not want to ask the trustees for a three-months leave. He had a notion of a summer in Europe a year or two from now. That extended study of European culture, first hand, would be just the finishing polish to enable him to hold any pulpit in the country.
He did, however, fill in during late August and early September as substitute for a Gilfeather headliner—the renowned J. Thurston Wallett, M.D., D.O., D.N., who had delighted thousands with his witty and instructive lecture, “Diet or Die, Nature or Nix,” until he had unfortunately been taken ill at Powassie, Iowa, from eating too many green cantaloupes.
Elmer had planned to spend August with his family in Northern Michigan—planned it most uncomfortably, for while it was conceivable to endure Cleo in the city, with his work, his clubs, and Lulu, a month with no relief from her solemn drooping face and crybaby voice would be trying even to a Professional Good Man.
He explained to her that duty called, and departed with speed, stopping only long enough to get several books of inspirational essays from the public library for aid in preparing his Chautauqua lecture.
He was delighted with his coming adventure—money, fame in new quarters, crowds for whom he would not have to think up fresh personal experiences. And he might find a woman friend who would understand him and give to his own solid genius that lighter touch of the feminine. He was, he admitted, almost as tired of Lulu as of Cleo. He pictured a Chautauqua lady pianist or soprano or ventriloquist or soloist on the musical saw—he pictured a surprised, thrilled meeting in the amber light under the canvas roof—recognition between kindred fine and lonely souls—
And he found it of course.
III
Elmer’s metaphysical lecture, entitled “Whoa Up, Youth!” with its counsel about abstinence, chastity, industry, and honesty, its heaven-vaulting poetic passage about Love (the only bow on life’s dark cloud, the morning and the evening star), and its anecdote of his fight to save a college-mate named Jim from drink and atheism, became one of the classics among Chautauqua masterpieces.
And Elmer better than anyone else among the Talent (except perhaps the gentleman who played national anthems on water glasses, a Lettish gentleman innocent of English) sidestepped on the question of the K.K.K.
The new Ku Klux Klan, an organization of the fathers, younger brothers, and employees of the men who had succeeded and became Rotarians, had just become a political difficulty. Many of the most worthy Methodist and Baptist clergymen supported it and were supported by it; and personally Elmer admired its principle—to keep all foreigners, Jews, Catholics, and negroes in their place, which was no place at all, and let the country be led by native Protestants, like Elmer Gantry.
But he perceived that in the cities there were prominent people, nice people, rich people, even among the Methodists and Baptists, who felt that a man could be a Jew and still an American citizen. It seemed to him more truly American, also a lot safer, to avoid the problem. So everywhere he took a message of reconciliation to the effect:
“Regarding religious, political, and social organizations, I defend the right of every man in our free America to organize with his fellows when and as he pleases, for any purpose he pleases, but I also defend the right of any other free American
