The newspapers admitted that he was affecting the campaign, and one of them swung to his support. He was so strong on virtue and the purity of womanhood and the evils of liquor that to oppose him was to admit one’s self a debauchee.
At the business meeting of his church there was a stirring squabble over his activities. When the leading trustee, a friend of the Presbyterian candidate, declared that he was going to resign unless Elmer stopped, an aged janitor shrieked, “And all the rest of us will resign unless the Reverend keeps it up!” There was gleeful and unseemly applause, and Elmer beamed.
The campaign grew so bellicose that reporters came up from the Zenith newspapers; one of them the renowned Bill Kingdom of the Zenith Advocate-Times. Elmer loved reporters. They quoted him on everything from the Bible in the schools to the Armenian mandate. He was careful not to call them “boys” but “gentlemen,” not to slap them too often on the back; he kept excellent cigars for them; and he always said, “I’m afraid I can’t talk to you as a preacher. I get too much of that on Sunday. I’m just speaking as an ordinary citizen who longs to have a clean city in which to bring up his kiddies.”
Bill Kingdom almost liked him, and the story about “the crusading parson” which he sent up to the Zenith Advocate-Times—the Thunderer of the whole state of Winnemac—was run on the third page, with a photograph of Elmer thrusting out his fist as if to crush all the sensualists and malefactors in the world.
Sparta papers reprinted the story and spoke of it with reverence.
The Jew won the campaign.
And immediately after this—six months before the Annual Conference of 1920—Bishop Toomis sent for Elmer.
IV
“At first I was afraid,” said the bishop, “you were making a great mistake in soiling yourself in this Sparta campaign. After all, it’s our mission to preach the pure gospel and the saving blood of Jesus, and not to monkey with politics. But you’ve been so successful that I can forgive you, and the time has come—— At the next Conference I shall be able to offer you at last a church here in Zenith, and a very large one, but with problems that call for heroic energy. It’s the old Wellspring Church, down here on Stanley Avenue, corner of Dodsworth, in what we call ‘Old Town.’ It used to be the most fashionable and useful Methodist church in town, but the section has run down, and the membership has declined from something like fourteen hundred to about eight hundred, and under the present pastor—you know him—old Seriere, fine noble Christian gentleman, great soul, but a pretty rotten speaker—I don’t guess they have more than a hundred or so at morning service. Shame, Elmer, wicked shame to see this great institution, meant for the quickening of such vast multitudes of souls, declining and, by thunder, not hardly giving a cent for missions! I wonder if you could revive it? Go look it over, and the neighborhood, and let me know what you think. Or whether you’d rather stay on in Sparta. You’ll get less salary at Wellspring than you’re getting in Sparta—four thousand, isn’t it?—but if you build up the church, guess the Official Board will properly remunerate your labors.”
A church in Zenith! Elmer would—almost—have taken it with no salary whatever. He could see his Doctor of Divinity degree at hand, his bishopric or college presidency or fabulous pulpit in New York.