Elmer Gantry was twenty-eight, and for two years he had been a traveling salesman for the Pequot Company.
Harrows and rakes and corn-planters; red plows and gilt-striped green wagons; catalogues and order-lists; offices glassed off from dim warehouses; shirt-sleeved dealers on high stools at high desks; the bar at the corner; stifling small hotels and lunch-rooms; waiting for trains half the night in foul boxes of junction stations, where the brown slatted benches were an agony to his back; trains, trains, trains; trains and time-tables and joyous return to his headquarters in Denver; a drunk, a theater, and service in a big church.
He wore a checked suit, a brown derby, striped socks, the huge ring of gold serpents and an opal which he had bought long ago, flower-decked ties, and what he called "fancy vests"—garments of yellow with red spots, of green with white stripes, of silk or daring chamois.
He had had a series of little loves, but none of them important enough to continue.
He was not unsuccessful. He was a good talker, a magnificent hand-shaker, his word could often be depended on, and he remembered most of the price-lists and all of the new smutty stories. In the office at Denver he was popular with "the boys." He had one infallible "stunt"—a burlesque sermon. It was known that he had studied to be a preacher but had courageously decided that it was no occupation for a "real two-fisted guy," and that he had "told the profs where they got off." A promising and commendable fellow; conceivably sales-manager some day.
Whatever his dissipations, Elmer continued enough exercise to keep his belly down and his shoulders up. He had been shocked by Deacon Bains' taunt that he was growing soft,
