And—just to take Eddie's church and show what he could do with it! By God he'd bring those hicks to time and make 'em pay up!
He flitted across the state to see his mother.
His disgrace at Mizpah had, she said, nearly killed her. With tremulous hope she now heard him promise that maybe, when he'd seen the world and settled down, he might go back into the ministry.
In a religious mood (which fortunately did not prevent his securing some telling credit-information by oiling a bookkeeper with several drinks) he came to Sautersville, Nebraska, an ugly, enterprising, industrial town of 20,000. And in that religious mood he noted the placards of a woman evangelist, one Sharon Falconer, a prophetess of whom he had heard.
The clerk in the hotel, the farmers about the implement warehouse, said that Miss Falconer was holding union meetings in a tent, with the support of most of the Protestant churches in town; they asserted that she was beautiful and eloquent, that she took a number of assistants with her, that she was "the biggest thing that ever hit this burg," that she was comparable to Moody, to Gipsy Smith, to Sam Jones, to J. Wilbur Chapman, to this new baseball evangelist, Billy Sunday.
"That's nonsense. No woman can preach the gospel," declared Elmer, as an expert.
But he went, that evening, to Miss Falconer's meeting.
The tent was enormous; it would seat three thousand people, and another thousand could be packed in standing-room. It was nearly filled when Elmer arrived and elbowed his majestic way forward. At the front of the tent was an extraordinary structure, altogether different from the platform-pulpit-American-flag arrangement of the stock evangelist. It was a pyramidal structure, of white wood with gilded edges, affording three platforms; one for the choir, one higher up for a row of seated local clergy; and at the top a small platform with a pulpit shaped like a shell and painted like a rainbow. Swarming over it all were lilies, roses and vines.
"Great snakes! Regular circus layout! Just what you'd expect from a fool woman evangelist!" decided Elmer.
The top platform was still unoccupied; presumably it was to set off the charms of Miss Sharon Falconer.
The mixed choir, with their gowns and mortar-boards,
