Elmer Gantry (35 page)

When from his pulpit the Reverend Elmer Gantry announced that the authorities of Zenith were “deliberately conniving in
protected vice,” and that he could give the addresses and ownerships of sixteen brothels, eleven blind tigers, and two
agencies for selling cocaine and heroin, along with an obscene private burlesque show so dreadful that he could only hint at
the nature of its program, when he attacked the chief of police and promised to give more detailed complaints next Sunday,
then the town exploded.

There were front-page newspaper stories, yelping replies by the mayor and chief of police, re-replies from Elmer,
interviews with everybody, and a full-page account of white slavery in Chicago. In clubs and offices, in church societies
and the back-rooms of “soft-drink stands,” there was a blizzard of talk. Elmer had to be protected against hundreds of
callers, telephoners, letter writers. His assistant, Sidney Webster, and Miss Bundle, the secretary, could not keep the mob
from him, and he hid out in T. J. Rigg’s house, accessible to no one, except to newspaper reporters who for any Christian
and brotherly reason might care to see him.

For the second Sunday evening of his jeremiad, the church was full half an hour before opening-time, standing-room was
taken even to the back of the lobby, hundreds clamored at the closed doors.

He gave the exact addresses of eight dives, told what dreadful drinkings of corn whisky went on there, and reported the
number of policemen, in uniform, who had been in the more attractive of these resorts during the past week.

Despite all the police could do to help their friends close up for a time, it was necessary for them to arrest ten or
fifteen of the hundred-odd criminals whom Elmer named. But the chief of police triumphed by announcing that it was
impossible to find any of the others.

“All right,” Elmer murmured to the chief, in the gentleness of a boxed newspaper interview in bold-face type, “if you’ll
make me a temporary lieutenant of police and give me a squad, I’ll find and close five dives in one evening—any evening save
Sunday.”

“I’ll do it—and you can make your raids tomorrow,” said the chief, in the official dignity of headlines.

Mr. Rigg was a little alarmed.

“Think you’re going too far, Elmer,” he said. “If you really antagonize any of the big wholesale bootleggers, they’ll get
us financially, and if you hit any of the tough ones, they’re likely to bump you off. Darn’ dangerous.”

“I know. I’m just going to pick out some of the smaller fellows that make their own booze and haven’t got any police
protection except slipping five or ten to the cop on the beat. The newspapers will make ’em out regular homicidal gangsters,
to get a good story, and we’ll have the credit without being foolish and taking risks.”

At least a thousand people were trying to get near the Central Police Station on the evening when a dozen armed policemen
marched down the steps of the station-house and stood at attention, looking up at the door, awaiting their leader.

He came out, the great Reverend Mr. Gantry, and stood posing on the steps, while the policemen saluted, the crowd cheered
or sneered, and the press cameras went off in a fury of flashlight powder. He wore the gilt-encircled cap of a police
lieutenant, with a lugubrious frock coat and black trousers, and under his arm he carried a Bible.

Two patrol wagons clanged away, and all the women in the crowd, except certain professional ladies, who were grievously
profane, gasped their admiration of this modern Savonarola.

He had promised the mob at least one real house of prostitution.

There were two amiable young females who, tired of working in a rather nasty bread factory and of being unremuneratively
seduced by the large, pale, puffy bakers on Sunday afternoons, had found it easier and much jollier to set up a small flat
in a street near Elmer’s church. They were fond of reading the magazines and dancing to the phonograph and of going to
church—usually Elmer’s church. If their relations to their gentlemen friends were more comforting than a preacher could
expect, after his experience of the sacred and chilly state of matrimony, they entertained only a few of these friends,
often they darned their socks, and almost always they praised Elmer’s oratory.

One of the girls, this evening, was discoursing with a man who was later proved in court not to be her husband; the other
was in the kitchen, making a birthday-cake for her niece and humming “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” She was dazed by a
rumbling, a clanging, a shouting in the street below, then mob-sounds on the stairs. She fluttered into the living-room, to
see their pretty imitation mahogany door smashed in with a rifle butt.

Into the room crowded a dozen grinning policemen, followed, to her modest shame, by her adored family prophet, the
Reverend Gantry. But it was not the cheerful, laughing Mr. Gantry that she knew. He held out his arm in a horrible gesture
of holiness, and bawled, “Scarlet woman! Thy sins be upon thy head! No longer are you going to get away with leading poor
unfortunate young men into the sink and cesspool of iniquity! Sergeant! Draw your revolver! These women are known to be up
to every trick!”

“All right, sure, loot!” giggled the brick-faced police sergeant.

“Oh, rats! This girl looks as dangerous as a goldfish, Gantry,” remarked Bill Kingdom, of the Advocate–Times . . . he who
was two hours later to do an epic of the heroism of the Great Crusader.

“Let’s see what the other girl’s up to,” snickered one of the policemen.

They all laughed very much as they looked into the bedroom, where a half-dressed girl and a man shrank by the window,
their faces sick with shame.

It was with her—ignoring Bill Kingdom’s mutters of “Oh, drop it! Pick on somebody your size!”—that Elmer the vice-slayer
became really Biblical.

Only the insistence of Bill Kingdom kept Lieutenant Gantry from making his men load the erring one into the patrol wagon
in her chemise.

Then Elmer led them to a secret den where, it was securely reported, men were ruining their bodies and souls by guzzling
the devil’s brew of alcohol.

Mr. Oscar Hochlauf had been a saloon-keeper in the days before prohibition, but when prohibition came, he was a
saloon-keeper. A very sound, old-fashioned, drowsy, agreeable resort was Oscar’s Place; none of the grander public houses
had more artistic soap scrawls on the mirror behind the bar; none had spicier pickled herring.

Tonight there were three men before the bar: Emil Fischer, the carpenter, who had a mustache like an ear-muff; his son
Ben, whom Emil was training to drink wholesome beer instead of the whisky and gin which America was forcing on the people;
and old Daddy Sorenson, the Swedish tailor.

They were discussing jazz.

“I came to America for liberty—I think Ben’s son will go back to Germany for liberty,” said Emil. “When I was a young man
here, four of us used to play every Saturday evening—Bach we played, and Brahms—Gott weiss we played terrible, but we liked
it, and we never made others listen. Now, wherever you go, this jazz, like a St. Vitus’s. Jazz iss to music what this
Reverend Gantry you read about is to an old-time Prediger. I guess maybe he was never born, that Gantry fellow—he was blowed
out of a saxophone.”

“Aw, this country’s all right, Pa,” said Ben.

“Sure, dot’s right,” said Oscar Hochlauf contentedly, while he sliced the foam off a glass of beer. “The Americans, like
when I knew dem first, when dere was Bill Nye and Eugene Field, dey used to laugh. Now dey get solemn. When dey start
laughing again, dey roar dere heads off at fellows like Gantry and most all dese preachers dat try to tell everybody how dey
got to live. And if the people laugh—oof!—God help the preachers!”

“Vell, that’s how it is. Say, did I tell you, Oscar,” said the Swedish tailor, “my grandson Villiam, he got a scholarship
in the university!”

“That’s fine!” they all agreed, slapping Daddy Sorenson on the back . . . as a dozen policemen, followed by a large and
gloomy gentleman armed with a Bible, burst in through the front and back doors, and the gloomy gentleman, pointing at the
astounded Oscar, bellowed, “Arrest that man and hold all these other fellows!”

To Oscar then, and to an audience increasing ten a second:

“I’ve got you! You’re the kind that teaches young boys to drink— it’s you that start them on the road to every hellish
vice, to gambling and murder, with your hellish beverages, with your draught of the devil himself!”

Arrested for the first time in his life, bewildered, broken, feebly leaning on the arms of two policemen, Oscar Hochlauf
straightened at this, and screamed:

“Dot’s a damned lie! Always when you let me, I handle Eitelbaum’s beer, the finest in the state, and since den I make my
own beer. It is good! It is honest! ‘Hellish beverage!’ Dot YOU should judge of beer—dot a pig should judge poetry! Your
Christ dot made vine, HE vould like my beer!”

Elmer jumped forward with his great fist doubled. Only the sudden grip of the police sergeant kept him from striking down
the blasphemer. He shrieked, “Take that foul-mouthed bum to the wagon! I’ll see he gets the limit!”

And Bill Kingdom murmured to himself, “Gallant preacher single-handed faces saloon full of desperate gun-men and rebukes
them for taking the name of the Lord in vain. Oh, I’ll get a swell story. . . . Then I think I’ll commit suicide.”

The attendant crowd and the policemen had whispered that, from the careful way in which he followed instead of leading,
it might be judged that the Reverend Lieutenant Gantry was afraid of the sinister criminals whom he was attacking. And it is
true that Elmer had no large fancy for revolver duels. But he had not lost his delight in conflict; he was physically no
coward; and they were all edified to see this when the raiders dashed into the resort of Nick Spoletti.

Nick, who conducted a bar in a basement, had been a prizefighter; he was cool and quick. He heard the crusaders coming
and shouted to his customers, “Beat it! Side door! I’ll hold ’em back!”

He met the first of the policemen at the bottom of the steps, and dropped him with the crack of a bottle over his head.
The next tripped over the body, and the others halted, peering, looking embarrassed, drawing revolvers. But Elmer smelled
battle. He forgot holiness. He dropped his Bible, thrust aside two policemen, and swung on Nick from the bottom step. Nick
slashed at his head, but with a boxer’s jerk of the neck Elmer slid away from the punch, and knocked out Nick with a
deliberately murderous left.

“Golly, the parson’s got an awful wallop!” grunted the sergeant, and Bill Kingdom sighed, “Not so bad!” and Elmer knew
that he had won . . . that he would be the hero of Zenith . . . that he was now the Sir Lancelot as well as the William
Jennings Bryan of the Methodist Church.

After two more raids he was delivered at his home by patrol wagon, and left with not entirely sardonic cheers by the
policemen.

Cleo rushed to meet him, crying, “Oh, you’re safe! Oh, my dear, you’re hurt!”

His cheek was slightly bleeding.

In a passion of admiration for himself so hot that it extended even to her, he clasped her, kissed her wetly, and roared,
“It’s nothing! Oh, it went great! We raided five places—arrested twenty-seven criminals—took them in every sort of horrible
debauchery—things I never dreamed could exist!”

“You poor dear!”

There was not enough audience, with merely Cleo, and the maid peering from the back of the hall.

“Let’s go and tell the kids. Maybe they’ll be proud of their dad!” he interrupted her.

“Dear, they’re asleep—”

“Oh! I see! Sleep is more important to ’em than to know their father is a man who isn’t afraid to back up his gospel with
his very life!”

“Oh, I didn’t mean—I meant—Yes, of course, you’re right. It’ll be a wonderful example and inspiration. But let me put
some stickum plaster on your cheek first.”

By the time she had washed the cut, and bound it and fussed over it, he had forgotten the children and their need of an
heroic exemplar, as she had expected, and he sat on the edge of the bath-tub telling her that he was an entire Trojan army.
She was so worshipful that he became almost amorous, until it seemed to him from her anxious patting of his arm that she was
trying to make him so. It angered him—that she, so unappealing, should have the egotism to try to attract a man like
himself. He went off to his own room, wishing that Lulu were here to rejoice in his splendor, the beginning of his fame as
the up-to-date John Wesley.

Elmer, in court, got convictions of sixteen out of the twenty-seven fiends whom he had arrested, with an extra six months
for Oscar Hochlauf for resisting arrest and the use of abusive and profane language. The judge praised him; the mayor
forgave him; the chief of police shook his hand and invited him to use a police squad at any time; and some of the younger
reporters did not cover their mouths with their hands.

Vice was ended in Zenith. It was thirty days before any of the gay ladies were really back at work—though the gentlemanly
jailers at the workhouse did let some of them out for an occasional night.

Every Sunday evening now people were turned from the door of Elmer’s church. If they did not always have a sermon about
vice, at least they enjoyed the saxophone solos, and singing “There’ll be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight.” And once they
were entertained by a professional juggler who wore (it was Elmer’s own idea) a placard proclaiming that he stood for “God’s
Word” and who showed how easy it was to pick up weights symbolically labeled “Sin” and “Sorrow” and “Ignorance” and
“Papistry.”

The trustees were discussing the erection of a new and much larger church, a project for which Elmer himself had begun to
prepare a year before, by reminding the trustees how many new apartment-houses were replacing the run-down residences in Old
Town.

The trustees raised his salary to five thousand, and they increased the budget for institutional work. Elmer did not
institute so many clubs for students of chiropractic and the art of motion-picture acting as did Dr. Otto Hickenlooper of
Central Methodist, but there was scarcely an hour from nine in the morning till ten at night when some circle was not trying
to do good to somebody . . . and even after ten there were often Elmer and Lulu Bains Naylor, conferring on cooking
classes.

Elmer had seen the danger of his crusading publicity and his Lively Sunday Evenings—the danger of being considered a
clown instead of a great moral leader.

“I’ve got to figure out some way so’s I keep dignified and yet keep folks interested,” he meditated. “The thing is sort
of to have other people do the monkey-business, but me, I got to be up-stage and not smile as much as I’ve been doing. And
just when the poor chumps think my Sunday evening is nothing but a vaudeville show, I’ll suddenly soak ’em with a regular
old-time hell-fire and damnation sermon, or be poetic and that stuff.”

It worked, reasonably. Though many of his rival preachers in Zenith went on calling him “clown” and “charlatan” and
“sensationalist,” no one could fail to appreciate his lofty soul and his weighty scholarship, once they had seen him stand
in agonized silent prayer, then level his long forefinger and intone:

“You have laughed now. You have sung. You have been merry. But what came ye forth into the wilderness for to see? Merely
laughter? I want you to stop a moment now and think just how long it is since you have realized that any night death may
demand your souls, and that then, laughter or no laughter, unless you have found the peace of God, unless you have accepted
Christ Jesus as your savior, you may with no chance of last-minute repentance be hurled into horrible and shrieking and
appalling eternal torture!”

Elmer had become so distinguished that the Rotary Club elected him to membership with zeal.

The Rotary Club was an assemblage of accountants, tailors, osteopaths, university-presidents, carpet-manufacturers,
advertising men, millinery-dealers, ice-dealers, piano salesmen, laundrymen, and like leaders of public thought, who met
weekly for the purposes of lunching together, listening to addresses by visiting actors and by lobbyists against the
recognition of Russia, beholding vaudeville teams in eccentric dances, and indulging in passionate rhapsodies about Service
and Business Ethics. They asserted that their one desire in their several callings was not to make money but only to serve
and benefit a thing called the Public. They were as earnest about this as was the Reverend Elmer Gantry about vice.

He was extraordinarily at home among the Rotarians; equally happy in being a good fellow with such good fellows as these
and in making short speeches to the effect that “Jesus Christ would be a Rotarian if he lived today—Lincoln would be a
Rotarian today— William McKinley would be a Rotarian today. All these men preached the principles of Rotary: one for all and
all for one; helpfulness towards one’s community, and respect for God.”

It was a rule of this organization, which was merry and full of greetings in between inspirational addresses, that every
one should, at lunch, be called by his first name. They shouted at the Reverend Mr. Gantry as “Elmer” or “Elm,” while he
called his haberdasher “Ike” and beamed on his shoe-seller as “Rudy.” A few years before, this intimacy might have led him
into indiscretions, into speaking vulgarly, or even desiring a drink. But he had learned his rôle of dignity now, and though
he observed, “Dandy day, Shorty!” he was quick to follow it up unhesitatingly with an orotund, “I trust that you have been
able to enjoy the beauty of the vernal foliage in the country this week.” So Shorty and his pals went up and down informing
the citizenry that Reverend Gantry was a “good scout, a prince of a good fellow, but a mighty deep thinker, and a real
honest-to-God orator.”

When Elmer informed T. J. Rigg of the joys of Rotary, the lawyer scratched his chin and suggested, “Fine. But look here,
Brother Elmer. There’s one thing you’re neglecting: the really big boys with the long pockets. Got to know ’em. Not many of
’em Methodists—they go out for Episcopalianism or Presbyterianism or Congregationalism or Christian Science, or stay out of
the church altogether. But that’s no reason why we can’t turn their MONEY Methodist. You wouldn’t find but mighty few of
these Rotarians in the Tonawanda Country Club—into which I bought my way by blackmailing, you might say, a wheat
speculator.”

“But—but—why, T. J., those Rotarians—why there’s fellows in there like Ira Runyon, the managing editor of the Advocate,
and Win Grant, the realtor—”

“Yeh, but the owner of the Advocate, and the banker that’s letting Win Grant run on till he bankrupts, and the
corporation counsel that keeps ’em all out of jail, you don’t find THOSE malefactors going to no lunch club and yipping
about Service! You find ’em sitting at small tables at the old Union Club, and laughing themselves sick about Service. And
for golf, they go to Tonawanda. I couldn’t get you into the Union Club. They wouldn’t have any preacher that talks about
vice—the kind of preacher that belongs to the Union talks about the new model Cadillac and how hard it is to get genuwine
Eyetalian vermouth. But the Tonawanda—They might let you in. For respectability. To prove that they couldn’t have the gin
they’ve got in their lockers in their lockers.”

It was done, though it took six months and a deal of secret politics conducted by T. J. Rigg.

Wellspring Church, including the pastor of Wellspring, bloomed with pride that Elmer had been so elevated socially as to
be allowed to play golf with bankers.

Only he couldn’t play golf.

From April to July, while he never appeared on the links with other players, Elmer took lessons from the Tonawanda
professional, three mornings a week, driving out in the smart new Buick which he had bought and almost paid for.

The professional was a traditionally small and gnarled and sandy Scotchman, from Indiana, and he was so traditionally
rude that Elmer put on meekness.

“Put back your divots! D’you think this is a church?” snapped the professional.

“Damn it, I always forget, Scotty,” whined Elmer. “Guess it must be hard on you to have to train these preachers.”

“Preachers is nothing to me, and millionaires is nothing to me, but gawf grounds is a lot,” grunted Scotty. (He was a
zealous Presbyterian and to be picturesquely rude to Christian customers was as hard for him as it was to keep up the Scotch
accent which he had learned from a real Liverpool Irishman.)

Elmer was strong, he was placid when he was out-of-doors, and his eye was quick. When he first appeared publicly at
Tonawanda, in a foursome with T. J. Rigg and two most respectable doctors, he and his game were watched and commended. When
he dressed in the locker-room and did not appear to note the square bottle in use ten feet away, he was accepted as a man of
the world.

William Dollinger Styles, member of the Tonawanda house committee, president of the fabulous W. D. Styles Wholesale
Hardware Company— the man who had introduced the Bite Edge Ax through all the land from Louisville to Detroit, and
introduced white knickers to the Tonawanda Club—this baron, this bishop, of business actually introduced himself to Elmer
and made him welcome.

“Glad to see you here, dominie. Played much golf?”

“No, I’ve only taken it up recently, but you bet I’m going to be a real fan from now on.”

“That’s fine. Tell you how I feel about it, Reverend. We fellows that have to stick to our desks and make decisions that
guide the common people, you religiously and me commercially, it’s a good thing for us, and through us for them, to go out
and get next to Nature, and put ourselves in shape to tackle our complicated problems (as I said recently in an after-dinner
speech at the Chamber of Commerce banquet) and keep a good sane outlook so’s we won’t be swept away by every breeze of
fickle and changing public opinion and so inevitably—”

In fact, said Mr. William Dollinger Styles, he liked golf.

Elmer tenderly agreed with “Yes, that’s certainly a fact; certainly is a fact. Be a good thing for a whole lot of
preachers if they got out and exercised more instead of always reading.”

“Yes, I wish you’d tell my dominie that—not that I go to church such a whole lot, but I’m church treasurer and take kind
of an interest—Dorchester Congregational—Reverend Shallard.”

“Oh! Frank Shallard! Why, I knew him in theological seminary! Fine, straight, intelligent fellow, Frank.”

“Well, yes, but I don’t like the way he’s always carrying on and almost coming right out and defending a lot of these
crooked labor unions. That’s why I don’t hardly ever hear his sermons, but I can’t get the deacons to see it. And as I say,
be better for him if he got outdoors more. Well, glad to met you, Reverend. You must join one of our foursomes some day—if
you can stand a little cussing, maybe!”

“Well, I’ll try to, sir! Been mighty fine to have met you!”

“H’m!” reflected Elmer. “So Frank, the belly-aching highbrow, has got as rich a man as Styles in his fold, and Styles
doesn’t like him. Wonder if Styles could turn Methodist—wonder if he could be pinched off Frank? I’ll ask Rigg.”

But the charm of the place, the day, the implied social position, was such that Elmer turned from these purely religious
breedings to more esthetic thoughts.

Rigg had driven home. Elmer sat by himself on the huge porch of the Tonawanda Club, a long gray countryhouse on a hill
sloping to the Appleseed River, with tawny fields of barley among orchards on the bank beyond. The golf-course was scattered
with men in Harris tweeds, girls in short skirts which fluttered about their legs. A man in white flannels drove up in a
Rolls–Royce roadster—the only one in Zenith as yet—and Elmer felt ennobled by belonging to the same club with a Rolls–Royce.
On the lawn before the porch, men with English-officer mustaches and pretty women in pale frocks were taking tea at tables
under striped garden-umbrellas.

Elmer knew none of them actually, but a few by sight.

“Golly, I’ll be right in with all these swells some day! Must work it careful, and be snooty, and not try to pick ’em up
too quick.”

A group of weighty-looking men of fifty, near him, were conversing on the arts and public policy. As he listened, Elmer
decided, “Yep, Rigg was right. Those are fine fellows at the Rotary Club; fine, high-class, educated gentlemen, and
certainly raking in the money; mighty cute in business but upholding the highest ideals. But they haven’t got the class of
these really Big Boys.”

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 73 1/2, 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.”

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 cry-baby 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.