You know, booze and immorality—like short skirts—by golly, girls' skirts getting shorter every year!"
"Now that's what I'd vote for," said Rigg. "That's what gets 'em. Nothing like a good juicy vice sermon to bring in the crowds. Yes, sir! Fearless attack on all this drinking and this awful sex immorality that's getting so prevalent." Mr. Rigg meditatively mixed a highball, keeping it light because next morning in court he had to defend a lady accused of running a badger game. "You bet. Some folks say sermons like that are just sensational, but I always tell 'em: once the preacher gets the folks into the church that way—and mighty few appreciate how hard it is to do a good vice sermon; jolt 'em enough and yet not make it too dirty—once you get in the folks, then you can give 'em some good, solid, old-time religion and show 'em salvation and teach 'em to observe the laws and do an honest day's work for an honest day's pay, 'stead of clock-watching like my doggone clerks do! Yep, if you ask me, try the vice. . . . Oh, say, Ma, do you think the Reverend would be shocked by that story about the chambermaid and the traveling man that Mark was telling us?"
Elmer was not shocked. In fact he had another droll tale himself.
He went home at one.
"I'll have a good time with those folks," he reflected, in the luxury of a taxicab. "Only, better be careful with old Rigg. He's a shrewd bird, and he's onto me. . . . Now what do you mean?" indignantly. "What do you mean by 'onto me'? There's nothing to be onto! I refused a drink and a cigar, didn't I? I never cuss except when I lose my temper, do I? I'm leading an absolutely Christian life. And I'm bringing a whale of a lot more souls into churches than any of these pussy-footing tin saints that're afraid to laugh and jolly people. 'Onto me' nothing!"
On Saturday morning, on the page of religious advertisements in the Zenith newspapers, Elmer's first sermon was announced in a two-column spread as dealing with the promising problem: "Can Strangers Find Haunts of Vice in Zenith?"
They could, and with gratifying ease, said Elmer in his
