“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 Eye-talian 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.