To him was brought the card of Loren Larimer Dodd, M.A., D.D., LL.D., president of Abernathy College, an institution of Methodist learning.
“Hm,” Elmer mused. “I bet he’s out raising money. Nothing doing! What the devil does he think we are!” and aloud: “Go out and bring Dr. Dodd right in, Miss Bundle. A great man! A wonderful educator! You know—president of Abernathy College!”
Looking her admiration at a boss who had such distinguished callers, Miss Bundle bundled out.
Dr. Dodd was a florid man with a voice, a Kiwanis pin, and a handshake.
“Well, well, well, Brother Gantry, I’ve heard so much of your magnificent work here that I ventured to drop in and bother you for a minute. What a magnificent church you have created! It must be a satisfaction, a pride! It’s—magnificent!”
“Thanks, Doctor. Mighty pleased to meet you. Uh. Uh. Uh. Visiting Zenith?”
“Well, I’m, as it were, on my rounds.”
(“Not a cent, you old pirate!”) “Visiting the alumni, I presume.”
“In a way. The fact is I—”
(“Not one damn’ cent. My salary gets raised next!”)
“—was wondering if you would consent to my taking a little time at your service Sunday evening to call to the attention of your magnificent congregation the great work and dire needs of Abernathy. We have such a group of earnest young men and women—and no few of the boys going into the Methodist ministry. But our endowment is so low, and what with the cost of the new athletic field—though I am delighted to be able to say our friends have made it possible to create a really magnificent field, with a fine cement stadium—but it has left us up against a heartbreaking deficit. Why, the entire chemistry department is housed in two rooms in what was a cowshed! And—
“Can’t do it, Doctor. Impossible. We haven’t begun to pay for this church. Be as much as my life is worth to go to my people with a plea for one extra cent. But possibly in two years from now—Though frankly,” and Elmer laughed brightly, “I don’t know why the people of Wellspring should contribute to a college which hasn’t thought enough of Wellspring’s pastor to give him a Doctor of Divinity degree!”
The two holy clerks looked squarely at each other, with poker faces.
“Of course, Doctor,” said Elmer, “I’ve been offered the degree a number of times, but by small, unimportant colleges, and I haven’t cared to accept it. So you can see that this is in no way a hint that I would like such a degree. Heaven forbid! But I do know it might please my congregation, make them feel Abernathy was their own college, in a way.”
Dr. Dodd remarked serenely, “Pardon me if I smile! You see I had a double mission in coming to you. The second part was to ask you if you would honor Abernathy by accepting a D.D.!”
They did not wink at each other.
Elmer gloated to himself, “And I’ve heard it cost old Mahlon Potts six hundred bucks for his D.D.! Oh, yes, Prexy, we’ll begin to raise money for Abernathy in two years—we’ll begin!”
II
The chapel of Abernathy College was full. In front were the gowned seniors, looking singularly like a row of armchairs covered with dust-cloths. On the platform, with the president and the senior members of the faculty, were the celebrities whose achievements were to be acknowledged by honorary degrees.
Besides the Reverend Elmer Gantry, these distinguished guests were the Governor of the state—who had started as a divorce lawyer but had reformed and enabled the public service corporations to steal all the waterpower in the state; Mr. B. D. Swenson, the automobile manufacturer, who had given most of the money for the Abernathy football stadium; and the renowned Eva Evaline Murphy, author, lecturer, painter, musician, and authority on floriculture, who was receiving a Litt. D. for having written (gratis) the new Abernathy College Song:
We’ll think of thee where’er we be,
On plain or mountain, town or sea,
Oh, let us sing how round us clings,
Dear Abernathy, thoooooooooughts—of—thee.
President Dodd was facing Elmer, and shouting: “—and now we have the privilege of conferring the degree of Doctor of Divinity upon one than whom no man in our honored neighboring state of Winnemac has done more to inculcate sound religious doctrine, increase the power of the church, uphold high standards of eloquence and scholarship, and in his own life give such an example of earnestness as is an inspiration to all of us!”
They cheered—and Elmer had become the Reverend Dr. Gantry.
III
It was a great relief at the Rotary Club. They had long felt uncomfortable in calling so weighty a presence “Elmer,” and now, with a pride of their own in his new dignity, they called him “Doc.”
The church gave him a reception and raised his salary to seventy-five hundred dollars.
IV
The Rev. Dr. Gantry was the first clergyman in the state of Winnemac, almost the first in the country, to have his services broadcast by radio. He suggested it himself. At that time, the one broadcasting station in Zenith, that of the Celebes Gum and Chicle Company, presented only jazz orchestras and retired sopranos, to advertise the renowned Jolly Jack Gum. For fifty dollars a week Wellspring Church was able to use the radio Sunday mornings from eleven to twelve-thirty. Thus Elmer increased the number of his hearers from two thousand to ten thousand—and in another pair of years it would be a hundred thousand.
Eight thousand radio-owners listening to Elmer Gantry—
A bootlegger in his flat, coat off, exposing his pink silk shirt, his feet up on the table. … The house of a small-town doctor, with the neighbors come in to listen—the drugstore man, his fat wife, the bearded superintendent of schools. … Mrs. Sherman Reeves of Royal Ridge, wife of one of the richest young men in Zenith, listening in a black-and-gold dressing-gown, while she smoked a cigarette. … The captain of a schooner, out on
