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Section 9 of Elmer Gantry. 
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Read by William Jones Bonita Springs Florida

Section 09 CHAPTER 7  

Section 9 CHAPTER 07 Parts 1 to 4

Part 1

The Reverend Jacob Trosper, D.D., Ph.D., LL.D., dean
and chief executive of Mizpah Theological Seminary, and
Professor of Practical Theology and Homiletics, was a hardfaced
active man with a large active voice. His cheeks were
gouged with two deep channels. His eyebrows were heavy.
His hair, now gray and bristly, must once have been rusty, like
Eddie Fislinger’s. He would have made an excellent top-sergeant.
He looked through the students and let them understand
that he knew their sins and idlenesses before they confessed
them.
Elmer was afraid of Dean Trosper. When he was summoned
to the dean’s office, the morning after the spiritual conference
in Frank Shallard’s room, he was uneasy.
He found Frank with the dean.
“God! Frank’s been tattling about my doings with women! u
“Brother Gantry,” said the dean.
“Yes, sir!”
“TI have an appointment which should give you experience
and a little extra money. It’s a country church down at
Schoenheim, eleven miles from here, on the spur line of the
Ontario, Omaha and Pittsburgh. You will hold regular Sunday
morning services and Sunday School; if you are able to work
up afternoon or evening services and prayer meeting, so much
the better. The pay will be ten dollars a Sunday. If there’s
to be anything extra for extra work—that’s up to you and your
flock. I’d suggest that you go down there on a hand-car. I’m
sure you can get the section-gang boss here to lend you one, as
it’s for the Lord’s work, and the boss’ brother does a lot of
gardening here. I’m going to send Brother Shallard with you
to conduct the Sunday School and get some experience. He
has a particularly earnest spirit—which it wouldn’t entirely
hurt you to emulate, Brother Gantry—but he’s somewhat shy
in contact with sin-hardened common people.
“Now, boys, this is just a small church, but never forget
that it’s priceless souls that I’m entrusting to your keeping;
and who knows but that you may kindle there such a fire as
may some day illumine all the world . . . providing, Brother
Gantry, you eliminate the worldly things I suspect you of indulging in!”
Elmer was delighted. It was his first real appointment. In
Kansas, this summer, he had merely filled other people’s
pulpits for two or three weeks at a time.
He’d show.’em! Some of these fellows that thought he was
just a mouth-artist! Show ’em how he could build up church
membership, build up the collections, get ’em all going with his
eloquence—and, of course, carry the message of salvation into
darkened hearts.
It would be mighty handy to have the extra ten a week—
and maybe more if he could kid the Schoenheim deacons
properly.
His first church .. . his own . . . and Frank had to take
his orders!

Part 2

In the virginal days of 1905 section gangs went out to work
on the railway line not by gasoline power but on a hand-car,
a platform with two horizontal bars worked up and down like
pump-handles. |
On a hand-car Elmer and Frank Shallard set out for their
first charge. They did not look particularly clerical as they
sawed at the handles; it was a chilly November Sunday morning,
and they wore shabby greatcoats. Elmer had a moth-eaten
plush cap over his ears, Frank exhibited absurd ear-muffs
under a more absurd derby, and both had borrowed red flannel
mittens from the section gang.
The morning was icily brilliant. Apple orchards glistened
in the frost, and among the rattling weed-stalks by the wormfences
quail were whistling.
Elmer felt his lungs free of library dust as he pumped. He
broadened his shoulders, rejoiced in sweating, felt that his
ministry among real men and living life was begun. He pitied
ELMER GANTRY 95
the pale Frank a little, and pumped the harder . . . and made
Frank pump the harder . . . up and down, up and down, up
and down. It was agony to the small of his back and shoulders,
now growing soft, to labor on the up-grade, where the shining
rails toiled round the curves through gravel cuts. But downhill,
swooping toward frosty meadows and the sound of cowbells
in the morning sun, he whooped with exhilaration, and struck
up a boisterous:
There is power, power, wonder-working power
In the blood
Of the Lamb—
The Schoenheim church was a dingy brown box with a toy
steeple, in a settlement consisting of the church, the station, a
blacksmith shop, two stores, and half a dozen houses. But at
least thirty buggies were gathered along the rutty street or in
the carriage-sheds behind the church; at least seventy people
had come to inspect their new pastor; and they stood in gaping
circles, staring between frosty damp mufflers and visored fur
caps.
“T’m scared to death!”? murmured Frank, as they strode up
the one street from the station, but Elmer felt healthy, proud,
expansive. His own church, small but somehow—somehow
different from these ordinary country meeting-houses—quite
a nice-shaped steeple—not one of these shacks with no steeple
at all! And his people, waiting for him, their attention flowing
into him and swelling him—
He threw open his overcoat, held it back with his hand imperially
poised on his left hip, and let them see not only the
black broadcloth suit bought this last summer for his ordination
but something choice he had added since—elegant white
piping at the opening of his vest.
A red-faced mustached man swaggered up to greet them,
“Brother Gantry? And Brother Shallard? I’m Barney Bains,
one of the deacons. Pleased to meet you. The Lord give
power to your message. Some time since we had any
preachin’ here, and I guess we’re all pretty hungry for spiritual
food and the straight gospel. Bein’ from Mizpah, I guess
there’s no danger you boys believe in this open communion!”
Frank had begun to worry, “Well, what I feel is—’ when
96 ELMER GANTRY
Elmer interrupted him with a very painful bunt in the side,
and chanted with holy joy:
“Pleased meet you, Brother Bains. Oh, Brother Shallard
and I are absolutely sound both on immersion and close communion.
We trust you will pray for us, Brother, that the Holy
Ghost may be present in this work today, and that all the
brethren may rejoice in a great reawakening and a bountiful
harvest!”
Deacon Bains and all who heard him muttered, saint to
saint, “He’s pretty young yet, but he’s got the right idee.
I’m sure we're going to have real rousing preaching. Don’t
think much of Brother Shallard, though. Kind of a nicelooking
young fella, but dumm in the head. Stands there like
a bump on a log. Well, he’s good enough to teach the kids in
Sunday School.”
Brother Gantry was shaking hands all round. His sanctifying
ordination, or it might have been his summer of bouncing
from pulpit to pulpit, had so elevated him that he could greet
them as impressively and fraternally as a sewing-machine agent.
He shook hands with a good grip, he looked at all the more
aged sisters as though he were moved to give them a holy kiss,
he said the right things about the weather, and by luck or
inspiration it was to the most acidly devout man in Boone
County that he quoted a homicidal text from Malachi.
As he paraded down the aisle, leading his flock, he panted:
“Got ’em already! I can do something to wake these hicks
up, where gas-bags like Frank or Carp would just chew the
rag. How could I of felt so down in the mouth and so—uh—
so carnal last week? Lemme at that pulpit!”
They faced him in hard straight pews, rugged heads seen
against the brown wall and the pine double doors grained to
mimic oak; they gratifyingly crowded the building, and at the
back stood shuffling young men with unshaven chins and pale
blue neckties.
He felt power over them while he trolled out the chorus
of “The Church in the Wildwood.”
His text was from Proverbs: “Hatred stirreth up strifes: but
love covereth all sins.”
He seized the sides of the pulpit with his powerful hands,
glared at the congregation, decided to look benevolent after
all, and exploded:
“Tn the hustle and bustle of daily life I wonder how many of
us stop to think that in all that is highest and best we are
ruled not by even our most up-and-coming efforts but by Love?
What is Love—the divine Love of which the—the great singer
teaches us in Proverbs? It is the rainbow that comes after the
dark cloud. It is the morning star and it is also the evening
star, those being, as you all so well know, the brightest stars
we know. It shines upon the cradle of the little one and when
life has, alas, departed, to come no more, you find it still
around the quiet tomb. What is it inspires all great men—
be they preachers or patriots or great business men? What is
it, my brethren, but Love? Ah, it fills the world with melody,
with such sacred melodies as we have just indulged in together,
for what is music? What, my friends, is music? Ah, what
indeed is music but the voice of Love!”
He explained that hatred was low.
However, for the benefit of the more leathery and zealous
deacons down front, he permitted them to hate all Catholics,
all persons who failed to believe in hell and immersion, and all
rich mortgage-holders, wantoning in the betraying smiles of
scarlet women, each of whom wore silk and in her jeweled hand
held a ruby glass of perfidious wine.
He closed by lowering his voice to a maternal whisper and
relating a totally imaginary but most improving experience
with a sinful old gentleman who on his bed of pain had
admitted, to Elmer’s urging, that he ought to repent immediately,
but who put it off too long, died amid his virtuous
and grief-stricken daughters, and presumably went straight to
the devil.

When Elmer had galloped down to the door to shake hands
with such as did not remain for Sabbath School, sixteen several
auditors said in effect, “Brother, that was a most helpful sermon
and elegantly expressed,” and he wrung their hands with
a boyish gratitude beautiful to see.
Deacon Bains patted his shoulder. “I’ve never heard so
young a preacher hand out such fine doctrine, Brother. Meet
my daughter Lulu.”
And she was there, the girl for whom he had been looking
ever since he had come to Mizpah.
Lulu Bains was a gray-and-white kitten with a pink ribbon.
She had sat at the back of the church, behind the stove, and
he had not seen her. He looked down at her thirstily. His
excitement at having played his sermon to such applause was
nothing beside his excitement over the fact that he would have
her near him in his future clerical labors. Life was a promising
and glowing thing as he held her hand and tried not to
sound too insistently affectionate. “Such a pleasure to meet
you, Sister Lulu.”

Lulu was nineteen or twenty. She had a diminutive class of
twelve-year-old boys in the Sunday School. Elmer had intended
to sneak out during Sunday School, leaving Frank
Shallard responsible, and find a place where he could safely
smoke a Pittsburgh stogie, but in view of this new spiritual
revelation he hung about, beaming with holy approbation of the
good work and being manly and fraternal with the little boys in
Lulu’s class.

“Tf you want to grow up and be big fellows, regular sureenough
huskies, you just listen to what Miss Bains has to tell
you about how Solomon built that wonderful big ole temple,”
he crooned at them; and if they twisted and giggled in shyness,
at least Lulu smiled at him . . . gray-and-white kitten with
sweet kitten eyes . . . small soft kitten who purred, “‘Oh, now,
Brother Gantry, I’m just so scared I don’t hardly dare
teach” ... big eyes that took him into their depths, till
he heard her lisping as the voice of angels, larks, and whole
orchestras of flutes.
He could not let her go at the end of Sunday School. He
must hold her—
“Oh, Sister Lulu, come see the hand-car Frank and I—
Brother Shallard and I—came down on. The fum-niest! Just
laugh your head off!”
As the section gang passed through Schoenheim at least ten
times a week, hand-cars could have been no astounding novelty
to Lulu, but she trotted beside him, and stared prettily, and
caroled, “Oh, hon-est! Did you come down on that? Well,
I never!”
She shook hands cheerfully with both of them. He thought
jealously that she was as cordial to Frank as to himself.
“He better watch out and not go fooling round my girl!”
Elmer refiected, as they pumped back toward Babylon.
He did not congratulate Frank on having overcome his
dread of stolid country audiences (Frank had always lived in
cities) or on having made Solomon’s temple not merely a depressing
object composed of a substance called “cubits” but
an actual shrine in which dwelt an active and terrifying god.

Part 3

For two Sundays now Elmer had striven to impress Lulu
not only as an efficient young prophet but as a desirable man.
There were always too many people about. Only once did he
have her alone. They walked half a mile then to call on a
sick old woman. On their way Lulu had fluttered at him
(gray-and-white kitten in a close bonnet of soft fuzzy gray,
which he wanted to stroke).
“I suppose you’re just bored to death by my sermons,” he
fished.
“Oh, nnnno! I think they’re just wonderful!”
“Do you, honest?”
“Honest, I do!”
He looked down at her childish face till he had caught her
eyes, then, jocularly:
“My, but this wind is making the little cheeks and the cute
lips awful’ red! Or I guess maybe some fella must of been
kissing ’em before church!”
EO. no—_”
She looked distressed, almost frightened.
“Whoa up!” he counseled himself. “You’ve got the wrong
track. Golly, I don’t believe she’s as much of a fusser as I
thought she was. Really is kinda innocent. Poor kid, shame
to get her all excited. Oh, thunder, won’t hurt her a bit to
have a little educated love-making!”
He hastily removed any possible blots on his clerical reputation:
“Oh, I was joking. I just meant—be a shame if as lovely
a girl as you weren’t engaged. I suppose you are engaged, of
course?”
“No. I liked a boy here awfully, but he went to Cleveland
to work, and I guess he’s kind of forgotten me.”
“Oh, that is really too bad!”
Nothing could be stronger, more dependable, more comforting,
than the pressure of his fingers on her arm. She looked
grateful; and when she came to the sick-room and heard
100 ELMER GANTRY
Brother Gantry pray, long, fervently, and with the choicest
words about death not really mattering nor really hurting (the
old woman had cancer) then Lulu also looked worshipful.
On their way back he made his final probe:
“But even if you aren’t engaged, Sister Lulu, I’ll bet there’s
a lot of the young fellows here that’re crazy about you.”
“No, honest there aren’t. Oh, I go round some with a second
cousin of mine—Floyd Naylor—but, my! he’s so slow, he’s
no fun.”
The Rev. Mr. Gantry planned to provide fun.

Part 4

Elmer and Frank had gone down on Saturday afternoon to
decorate the church for the Thanksgiving service. To save
the trip to Babylon and back, they were to spend Saturday
night in the broad farmhouse of Deacon Bains, and Lulu Bains
and her spinster cousin, Miss Baldwin, were assisting in the
decoration—in other words doing it. They were stringing pine
boughs across the back of the hall, and arranging a harvest
feast of pumpkins, yellow corn, and velvety sumach in front
of the pulpit.
While Frank and the spinster cousin of the Bainses discussed
the artistic values of the pumpkins, Elmer hinted to Lulu:
“T want your advice, Lulu—Sister Lulu. Don’t you think
in my sermon tomorrow it might be helpful to explain—”
(They stood side by side. How sweet were her little
shoulders, her soft pussy-cat cheeks! He had to kiss them!
He had to! He swayed toward her. Damn Frank and that
Baldwin female! Why didn’t they get out?)
“to explain that all these riches of the harvest, priceless
though they are in themselves and necessary for grub—for
the festal board, yet they are but symbols and indications of
the— Do sit down, Lulu; you look a little tired. —of the
deeper spiritual blessings which he also showers on us and not
just at harvest time, and this is a very important point—”
(Her hand dropped against his knee; lay, so white, on the
drab pew. Her breasts were young and undrained under her
plaid blouse. He had to touch her hand. His fingers crept
toward it, touched it by accident, surely by accident, while
she looked devotion and he intoned sublimity.)
ELMER GANTRY 101
“__a very important point indeed; all the year round we
receive those greater inner blessings, and it is for them more
than for any material, uh, material gains that we should lift
our voices in Thanksgiving. Don’t you think it might be
valuable to all of us if I brought that out?”
“Oh, yes! Indeed I do! I think that’s a lovely thought!”
(His arms tingled. He fad to slip them about her.)
Frank and Miss Baldwin had sat down, and they were in an
intolerably long discussion as to what ought to be done about
that terrible little Cutler boy who said that he didn’t believe
that the ravens brought any bread and meat to Elijah, not if
he knew anything about these ole crows! Frank explained
that he did not wish to rebuke honest doubt; but when this
boy went and made a regular business of cutting up and asking
foolish questions—
“Tulu!” Elmer urged. “Skip back in the other room with
me a second. There’s something about the church work I
want to ask you, and I don’t want them to hear.”
There were two rooms in the Schoenheim church: the auditorium
and a large closet for the storage of hymn-books, mops,
brooms, folding chairs, communion cups. It was lighted by a
dusty window.
“Sister Bains and I are going to look over the Sunday School
jesson-charts,” Elmer called largely and brightly.
The fact that she did not deny it bound them together in
secrecy. He sat on an upturned bucket; she perched on a
step-ladder. It was pleasant to be small in her presence and
look up to her.
What the “something about church work” which he was
going to ask her was, he had no notion, but Elmer was a very
ready talker in the presence of young women. He launched
out:
“T need your advice. I’ve never met anybody that combined
common sense and spiritual values like what you do.”
“Oh, my, you’re just flattering me, Brother Gantry!”
“No, I’m not. Honest, I ain't! You don’t appreciate yourself,
‘That’s because you’ve always lived in this little burg,
but if you were in Chicago or some place like that, believe me,
they’d appreciate your, uh, that wonderful sense of spiritual
values and everything.”
“Qh—Chicago! My! Id be scared to death!”
102 ELMER GANTRY
“Well, I’ll have to take you there some day and show you
the town! Guess folks would talk about their bad old preacher
then!”
They both laughed heartily.
“But seriously, Lulu, what I want to know is—uh— Oh!
What I wanted to ask you: Do you think I ought to come
down here and hold Wednesday prayer-meetings?”
“Why, I think that’d be awfully nice.”
“But, you see, I’d have to come down on that ole hand-car.”
“That’s so.”
“And you can’t know how hard I got to study every evening
at the Seminary.”
“Oh, yes, I can imagine!”
They both sighed in sympathy, and he laid his hand on hers,
and they sighed again, and he removed his hand almost prudishly.
“But of course I wouldn’t want to spare myself in any way.
It’s a pastor’s privilege to spend himself for his congregation.”
“Yes, that’s so.”
“But on the other hand, with the roads the way they are
here, especially in winter and all, and most of the congregation
living way out on farms and all—hard for ’em to get
in, eh?”
“That’s so. The roads do get bad. Yes, I think you’re right,
Brother Gantry.”
“Oh! Lulu! And here I’ve been calling you by your first
name! You're going to make me feel I been acting terrible
if you rebuke me that way and don’t call me Elmer!”
“But then you’re the preacher, and I’m just nobody.”
“Oh, yes, you are!”
“Oh, no, I’m not!”
They laughed very much.
“Listen, Lulu, honey. Remember I’m really still a kid—just
twenty-five this month—only ’bout five or six years older’n
you are. Now try calling me Elmer, and see how it sounds.”
“Oh, my! I wouldn’t dare!”
“Well, try it!”
“Oh, I couldn’t! Imagine!”
“ Fraid cat!”
“T am not so.”
“Yes, you are!”
ELMER GANTRY 103
“No, I’m not!”
“TJ dare you!”
“Well—Elmer, then! So there now!”
They laughed intimately, and in the stress of their merriment
he picked up her hand, squeezed it, rubbed it against his arm.
He did not release it, but it was only with the friendliest and
least emphatic pressure that he held it while he crooned:
“Vou aren’t really scared of poor old Elmer?”
“Yes, I am, a tiny bit!”
“But why?”
“Qh, you're big and strong and dignified, like you were lots
older, and you have such a boom-boom voice—my, I love to
listen to it, but it scares me—I feel like you’d turn on me and
say, ‘You bad little girl,’ and then I’d have to fess. My! And
then you’re so terribly educated—you know such long words,
and you can explain all these things about the Bible that I
never can understand. And of course you are a real ordained
Baptist clergyman.”
“Um, uh— But does that keep me from being a man, too?”
“Ves, it does! Sort of!”
Then there was no playfulness, but a grim urgency in his
voice:
“Then you couldn’t imagine me kissing you? .. . Look at
me! ... Look at me, I tell you! ... There! . . . No, don’t
look away now. Why, you’re blushing! You dear, poor, darling
kid! You cam imagine me kissing—”
“Well, I oughtn’t to!”
“ *Shamed?”
“Ves, I am!”
“Listen, dear. You think of me as so awfully grown-up, and
of course I have to impress all these folks when I’m in the
pulpit, but you can see through it and— I’m really just a
big bashful kid, and I need your help so. Do you know, dear,
you remind me of my mother—”

End of Section 09