Let’s see now: The fellow at the Y. would expect him to say—
He had it! Nobody ever amounted to a darn except as the—what was it?—as the inscrutable designs of Providence intended him to be.
Elmer was very busy making vast and unformed scrawls in a ten-cent-notebook hitherto devoted to German. He darted up, looking scholarly, and gathered his library about him: his Bible, given to him by his mother; his New Testament, given by a Sunday School teacher; his textbooks in Weekly Bible and Church History; and one-fourteenth of a fourteen-volume set of Great Orations of the World which, in a rare and alcoholic moment of bibliomania, he had purchased in Cato for seventeen cents. He piled them and repiled them and tapped them with his fountain-pen.
His original stimulus had run out entirely.
Well, he’d get help from the Bible. It was all inspired, every word, no matter what scoffers like Jim said. He’d take the first text he turned to and talk on that.
He opened on: “Now therefore, Tatnai, governor beyond the river, Shethar-boznai, and your companions the Apharsachites, which are beyond the river, be ye far from thence,” an injunction spirited but not at present helpful.
He returned to pulling his luxuriant hair and scratching.
Golly. Must be something.
The only way of putting it all over life was to understand these Forces that the scientists, with their laboratories and everything, couldn’t savvy, but to a real Christian they were just as easy as rolling off a log—
No. He hadn’t taken any lab courses except Chemistry I, so he couldn’t show where all these physicists and biologists were boobs.
Elmer forlornly began to cross out the lovely scrawls he had made in his notebook.
He was irritably conscious that Jim was awake, and scoffing:
“Having quite a time being holy and informative, Hellcat? Why don’t you pinch your first sermon from the heathen? You won’t be the first up-and-coming young messiah to do it!”
Jim shied a thin book at him, and sank again into infidel sleep. Elmer picked up the book. It was a selection from the writings of Robert G. Ingersoll.
Elmer was indignant.
Take his speech from Ingersoll, that rotten old atheist that said—well, anyway, he criticized the Bible and everything! Fellow that couldn’t believe the Bible, least he could do was not to disturb the faith of others. Darn’ rotten thing to do! Fat nerve of Jim to suggest his pinching anything from Ingersoll! He’d throw the book in the fire!
But—Anything was better than going on straining his brains. He forgot his woes by drugging himself with heedless reading. He drowsed through page on page of Ingersoll’s rhetoric and jesting. Suddenly he sat up, looked suspiciously over at the silenced Jim, looked suspiciously at Heaven. He grunted, hesitated, and began rapidly to copy into the German notebook, from Ingersoll:
Love is the only bow on life’s dark cloud. It is the Morning and the Evening Star. It shines upon the cradle of the babe, and sheds its radiance upon the quiet tomb. It is the mother of Art, inspirer of poet, patriot and philosopher. It is the air and light of every heart, builder of every home, kindler of every fire on every hearth. It was the first to dream of immortality. It fills the world with melody, for Music is the voice of Love. Love is the magician, the enchanter, that changes worthless things to joy, and makes right royal kings and queens of common clay. It is the perfume of the wondrous flower—the heart—and without that sacred passion, that divine swoon, we are less than beasts; but with it, earth is heaven and we are gods.
Only for a moment, while he was copying, did he look doubtful; then:
“Rats! Chances are nobody there tonight has ever read Ingersoll. Agin him. Besides I’ll kind of change it around.”
V
When President Quarles called for him, Elmer’s exhortation was outlined, and he had changed to his Sunday-best blue serge double-breasted suit and sleeked his hair.
As they departed, Jim called Elmer back from the hall to whisper, “Say, Hellcat, you won’t forget to give credit to Ingersoll, and to me for tipping you off, will you?”
“You go to hell!” said Elmer.
VI
There was a sizable and extremely curious gathering at the Y.M.C.A. All day the campus had debated, “Did Hellcat 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 AD, 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
