A year he spent in Rudd Center, three years in Vulcan, and two years in Sparta. As there were 4,100 people in Rudd Center, 47,000 in Vulcan, and 129,000 in Sparta, it may be seen that the Reverend Elmer Gantry was climbing swiftly in Christian influence and character.
In Rudd Center he passed his Mizpah final examinations and received his Bachelor of Divinity degree from the seminary; in Rudd Center he discovered the art of joining, which was later to enable him to meet the more enterprising and solid men of affairs—oculists and editors and manufacturers of bathtubs—and enlist their practical genius in his crusades for spirituality.
He joined the Masons, the Odd Fellows, and the Maccabees. He made the Memorial Day address to the G. A. R., and he made the speech welcoming the local representative home from Congress after having won the poker championship of the House.
Vulcan was marked, aside from his labors for perfection, by the birth of his two children—Nat, in 1916, and Bernice, whom they called Bunny, in 1917—and by his ceasing to educate his wife in his ideals of amour.
It all blew up a month after the birth of Bunny.
Elmer had, that evening, been addressing the Rod and Gun Club dinner. He had pointed out that our Lord must have been in favor of Rods and Guns for, he said, "I want you boys to notice that the Master, when he picked out his first disciples, didn't select a couple of stoop-shouldered, pigeon-toed mollycoddles but a pair of first-class fishermen!"
He was excited to intoxication by their laughter.
Since Bunny's birth he had been sleeping in the guest-room, but now, walking airily, he tiptoed into Cleo's room at eleven,
