And she was gone. Jimmy gazed after her despairingly. Gloom entered his soul and made preparations to settle down for the night.
A strident voiced newsboy turned the corner just then shrilly crying the early or “bull-dog” edition of one of the Sunday papers.
“Hi, Journal,” he called, “Sunday Morning Journal—full account of “Billy” Williams’ sermon on booze and tobacco—hi, Journal—all about “Billy” Williams’ campaign—full account of both meetings—box score world’s champion games—hi, Journal.”
Jimmy mechanically bought a paper. A screaming headline caught his glance:
Only that and nothing more did Jimmy read. The strained look slowly left his face and was replaced by an expression indicative of profound satisfaction. Even Lolita was forgotten for the nonce. The Big Idea had just loomed up in the offing and was heading straight for port.
Chapter Twenty-Three
The Rev. “Billy” Williams at that particular moment occupied the center of the stage in Boston, and there was no immediate prospect of anyone else usurping that place inasmuch as his local engagement had six weeks more to run. He was a sensational evangelist whose campaigns on behalf of old-fashioned religion and of old-fashioned morals had stirred up the profoundest depths of human feeling in dozens of communities in all parts of the country and had brought tens of thousands of men and women in all stations of life to an emotional crisis in which they pledged themselves anew or for the first time to a faithful adherence to the fundamental tenets of Christianity.
His methods were so bizarre and so baroque and he was such a past-master of the art of publicity that he always afforded first-page “copy” whenever he arrived in a city. His meetings were held in great specially constructed tabernacles seating ten thousand or more persons and were conducted with a splendid sense of dramatic values for he was a keen psychologist and he knew the things best calculated to move and sway great groups of people. The judicious and the ultra-dignified who came to grieve or to sneer were usually carried away in a tumult of emotional excitement and were literally swept off their feet by the cumulative appeal of all his cunningly devised plans to “get to their innards,” as “Billy” himself was wont to phrase it in his own inelegant, but singularly effective style.