Brother McConnell grabbed my hand and shook it clammily when I reached the mourners’ bench, and I was shoved into a seat. Immediately a Brother plopped down beside me, an old man whom I had known all my life, and who I knew perfectly well was an old skinflint and a hypocrite, a Sunday Christian. He put his arm around my shoulders and began to pray, crying down my neck and shouting that another soul had been saved, calling on the Lord to witness the good work that he was doing. I half expected him to say: “Give me credit, God; give me credit!” And all the time I was wishing to God that the band would stop playing; my nerves were being shattered by the constant and steady beat of the hymns, and the penetrating wail of the violin and the thunder of the organ.
And at last it did stop. There was silence in the church, except that here and there someone was writhing and moaning. But the shouting had ceased. Brother McConnell had his benches full, all of his workers had each a convert to work upon, and he decided to call it a day and save whatever sinners remained in the congregation for another night. So printed cards were passed around, which we were to sign, indicating the church we would join. Then the evangelist said for all of us who had been baptized to sit down. My brother and I sat down.
With no music to upset me I began to think, and the more I thought, the angrier I got. I was ashamed; I boiled with fury and I wanted to smash the Brothers and Sisters in their smug faces. But I was just a boy and I was afraid. It was at this point that my younger brother came down the aisle and tapped me on the shoulder.
“Hey!” he said. “Mary said to stand up; you haven’t been baptized!”
“You tell her,” I said, “to go to hell!”
Luckily none of the Brothers and Sisters heard me, so I escaped special prayers. I signed my card, agreeing to become a member of the Southern Methodist church, and soon afterward I was released. My sister and my two brothers went home, but I sneaked away and went down to the Post Office, where I found another boy whose influence with a bartender was sufficient to get us a drink. I went with him to a saloon not far from the old Grand Leader building, and there I had my first drink, a gin rickey, and when the bartender would not sell me another I gave a Negro cart-driver a half-dollar and he bought me a bottle of squirrel whisky which I consumed in the vacant lot behind the Odd Fellows’ Hall. I got gloriously drunk, and about three o’clock in the morning I staggered home and up the stairs to the room which I shared with my brother. I awakened him, trying to undress, and he asked:
“What’s the matter with you?”
“Hell’s fire, Emmett!” I replied. “I’ve got religion.”
I went to the preacher’s house the next day so Brother Jenkins could sprinkle holy water upon my head and mumble a prayer, and later, having thus been baptized, I joined the church, but I joined with my tongue in my cheek and a sneer in my heart. I have never seen anything in any church since that would impel me to remove either my tongue or the sneer. And when I admitted publicly that I had been converted and was now a good and faithful servant of the Methodist God, I said to myself: “Over the left.” That was our way of saying: “I am like hell!”