Page:Elmer Gantry (1927).djvu/318

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own righteousness, bringing a tear to the eye as one remembers their brooding tenderness? Would you like to see your own dear mammy indulging in mixed bathing or dancing that Hell's own fool monkeyshine, the one-step?

Reverend Elmer Gantry

will answer these questions and others next Sunday morning. Gantry shoots straight from the shoulder.

POPLAR AVENUE METHODIST CHURCH

Follow the crowd to the beautiful times
At the beautiful church with the beautiful chimes.

III

While he was in Sparta, national prohibition arrived, with its high-colored opportunities for pulpit-orators, and in Sparta he was inspired to his greatest political campaign.

The obviously respectable candidate for mayor of Sparta was a Christian Business Man, a Presbyterian who was a manufacturer of rubber overshoes. It is true that he was accused of owning the buildings in which were several of the worst brothels and blind tigers in the city, but it had amply been explained that the unfortunate gentleman had not been able to kick out his tenants, and that he gave practically all his receipts from the property to missionary work in China.

His opponent was a man in every way objectionable to Elmer's principles: a Jew, a radical who criticized the churches for not paying taxes, a sensational and publicity-seeking lawyer who took the cases of labor unions and negroes without fee. When he consulted them, Elmer's Official Board agreed that the Presbyterian was the only man to support. They pointed out that the trouble with the radical Jew was that he was not only a radical but a Jew.

Yet Elmer was not satisfied. He had, possibly, less objection to houses of ill fame than one would have judged from his pulpit utterances, and he certainly approved the Presbyterian's position that "we must not try dangerous experiments