Gantry and most all dese preachers dat try to tell everybody how dey got to live. And if the people laugh—oof!—God help the preachers!"
"Vell, that's how it is. Say, did I tell you, Oscar," said the Swedish tailor, "my grandson Villiam, he got a scholarship in the university!"
"That's fine!" they all agreed, slapping Daddy Sorenson on the back . . . as a dozen policemen, followed by a large and gloomy gentleman armed with a Bible, burst in through the front and back doors, and the gloomy gentleman, pointing at the astounded Oscar, bellowed, "Arrest that man and hold all these other fellows!"
To Oscar then, and to an audience increasing ten a second:
"I've got you! You're the kind that teaches young boys to drink—it's you that start them on the road to every hellish vice, to gambling and murder, with your hellish beverages, with your draught of the devil himself!"
Arrested for the first time in his life, bewildered, broken, feebly leaning on the arms of two policemen, Oscar Hochlauf straightened at this, and screamed:
"Dot's a damned lie! Always when you let me, I handle Eitelbaum's beer, the finest in the state, and since den I make my own beer. It is good! It is honest! 'Hellish beverage!' Dot you should judge of beer—dot a pig should judge poetry! Your Christ dot made vine, he vould like my beer!"
Elmer jumped forward with his great fist doubled. Only the sudden grip of the police sergeant kept him from striking down the blasphemer. He shrieked, "Take that foul-mouthed bum to the wagon! I'll see he gets the limit!"
And Bill Kingdom murmured to himself, "Gallant preacher single-handed faces saloon full of desperate gun-men and rebukes them for taking the name of the Lord in vain. Oh, I'll get a swell story. . . . Then I think I'll commit suicide."
The attendant crowd and the policemen had whispered that, from the careful way in which he followed instead of leading, it might be judged that the Reverend Lieutenant Gantry was afraid of the sinister criminals whom he was attacking. And it is true that Elmer had no large fancy for revolver duels.
