Set in the rugged chimney of the fireplace was a plaque of smooth marble on which was carved in artistic and curly and gilded letters: “The Virtue of the Home is Peace, the Glory of the Home is Reverence.”
The books were, as the bishop said, “worth browsing over.” There were, naturally, the Methodist Discipline and the Methodist Hymnal, both handsomely bound, Roycrofty in limp blue calfskin with leather ties; there was an impressive collection of Bibles, including a very ancient one, dated 1740, and one extra-illustrated with all the Hoffmann pictures and one hundred and sixty other Biblical scenes; and there were the necessary works of theological scholarship befitting a bishop—Moody’s Sermons, Farrar’s “Life of Christ,” “Flowers and Beasties of the Holy Land,” and “In His Steps,” by Charles Sheldon. The more workaday ministerial books were kept in the study.
But the bishop was a man of the world and his books fairly represented his tastes. He had a complete Dickens, a complete Walter Scott, Tennyson in the red-line edition bound in polished tree calf with polished gilt edges, many of the better works of Macaulay and Ruskin and, for lighter moments, novels by Mrs. Humphry Ward, Winston Churchill, and Elizabeth of the German Garden. It was in travel and nature-study that he really triumphed. These were represented by not less than fifty volumes with such titles as “How to Study the Birds,” “Through Madagascar with Camp and Camera,” “My Summer in the Rockies,” “My Mission in Darkest Africa,” “Pansies for Thoughts,” and “London from a Bus.”
Nor had the bishop neglected history and economics: he possessed the Rev. Dr. Hockett’s “Complete History of the World: Illustrated,” in eleven handsome volumes, a secondhand copy of Hadley’s “Economics,” and “The Solution of Capitalism vs. Labor—Brotherly Love.”
Yet not the fireplace, not the library, so much as the souvenirs of foreign travel gave to the bishop’s residence a flair beyond that of most houses in Devon Woods. The bishop and his lady were fond of travel. They had made a six months’ inspection of missions in Japan, Korea, China, India, Borneo, Java, and the Philippines, which gave the bishop an authoritative knowledge of all Oriental governments, religions, psychology, commerce, and hotels. But besides that, six several summers they had gone to Europe, and usually on the more refined and exclusive tours. Once they had spent three solid weeks seeing nothing but London—with side-trips to Oxford, Canterbury, and Stratford—once they had taken a four-day walking trip in the Tyrol, and once on a channel steamer they had met a man who, a steward said, was a Lord.
The living-room reeked with these adventures. There weren’t exactly so many curios—the bishop said he didn’t believe in getting a lot of foreign furniture and stuff when we made the best in the world right here at home—but as to pictures—— The Toomises were devotees of photography, and they had brought back the whole world in shadow.
Here was the Temple of Heaven at Peking, with the bishop standing in front of it. Here was the Great Pyramid, with Mrs. Toomis in front of it. Here was the cathedral at Milan, with both of them in front of it—this had been snapped for them by an Italian guide, an obliging gentleman who had assured the bishop that he believed in prohibition.
III
Into this room Elmer Gantry came with overpowering politeness. He bent, almost as though he were going to kiss it, over the hand of Mrs. Toomis, who was a large lady with eye-glasses and modest sprightliness, and he murmured, “If you could only know what a privilege this is!”
She blushed, and looked at the bishop as if to say, “This, my beloved, is a good egg.”