A Thursday in June 1913.
The train wandered through orchard-land and cornfields—two seedy day-coaches and a baggage car. Hurry and efficiency had not yet been discovered on this branch line, and it took five hours to travel the hundred and twenty miles from Zenith to Banjo Crossing.
The Reverend Elmer Gantry was in a state of grace. Having resolved henceforth to be pure and humble and humanitarian, he was benevolent to all his traveling companions. He was mothering the world, whether the world liked it or not.
But he did not insist on any outward distinction as a parson, a Professional Good Man. He wore a quietly modest gray sack suit, a modestly rich maroon tie. Not just as a minister, but as a citizen, he told himself, it was his duty to make life breezier and brighter for his fellow wayfarers.
The aged conductor knew most of his passengers by their first names, and they hailed him as "Uncle Ben," but he resented strangers on their home train. When Elmer shouted, "Lovely day, Brother!" Uncle Ben looked at him as if to say "Well, 'tain't my fault!" But Elmer continued his philadelphian violences till the old man sent in the brakeman to collect the tickets the rest of the way.
At a traveling salesman who tried to borrow a match, Elmer roared, "I don't smoke, Brother, and I don't believe George Washington did either!" His benignancies were received with so little gratitude that he almost wearied of good works, but when he carried an old woman's suit-case off the train, she fluttered at him with the admiration he deserved, and he was moved to pat children upon the head—to their terror—and to explain crop-rotation to an ancient who had been farming for forty-seven years.
