"Cecil Aylston, don't you quarrel with me tonight! I feel—vulgar! That's your favorite word! I do wish I could save some of the members of my own crew! . . . Elmer, do you think God went to Oxford?"
"Sure!"
"And you did, of course!"
"I did not, by golly! I went to a hick college in Kansas! And I was born in a hick town in Kansas!"
"Me too, practically! Oh, I did come from a frightfully old Virginia family, and I was born in what they called a mansion, but still, we were so poor that our pride was ridiculous. Tell me: did you split wood and pull mustard when you were a boy?"
"Did I? Say! You bet I did!"
They sat with their elbows on the table, swapping boasts of provincial poverty, proclaiming kinship, while Cecil looked frosty.
Elmer's speech at the evangelistic meeting was a cloudburst.
It had structure as well as barytone melody, choice words, fascinating anecdotes, select sentiment, chaste point of view, and resolute piety.
Elmer was later to explain to admirers of his public utterances that nothing was more important than structure. What, he put it to them, would they think of an architect who was fancy about paint and clapboards but didn't plan the house? And tonight's euphuisms were full of structure.
In part one he admitted that despite his commercial success he had fallen into sin before the hour when, restless in his hotel room, he had idly fingered o'er a Gideon Bible and been struck by the parable of the talents.
In part two he revealed by stimulating examples from his own experience the cash value of Christianity. He pointed out that merchants often preferred a dependable man to a known crook.
Hitherto he had, perhaps, been a shade too realistic. He felt that Sharon would never take him on in place of Cecil Aylston unless she perceived the poetry with which his soul was gushing. So in part three he explained that what made
