Free Elmer Gantry by 1885-1951 Sinclair Lewis

have you
with me on Christ’s team! If you knew how proud I am!”
    To be thus linked forever with Judson!
    Elmer’s embarrassment was gliding into a robust self-satisfaction.
    Then the others were crowding on him, shaking his hand, congratulating him: the football center, the Latin professor, the
town grocer. President Quarles, his chin whisker vibrant and his shaven upper lip wiggling from side to side, was insisting,
“Come, Brother Elmer, stand up on the platform and say a few words to us— you must—we all need it—we’re thrilled by your
splendid example!”
    Elmer was not quite sure how he got through the converts, up the steps to the platform. He suspected afterward that
Judson Roberts had done a good deal of trained pushing.
    He looked down, something of his panic returning. But they were sobbing with affection for him. The Elmer Gantry who had
for years pretended that he relished defying the whole college had for those same years desired popularity. He had it
now—popularity, almost love, almost reverence, and he felt overpoweringly his rôle as leading man.
    He was stirred to more flamboyant confession:
    “Oh, for the first time I know the peace of God! Nothing I have ever done has been right, because it didn’t lead to the
way and the truth! Here I thought I was a good church-member, but all the time I hadn’t seen the real light. I’d never been
willing to kneel down and confess myself a miserable sinner. But I’m kneeling now, and, oh, the blessedness of
humility!”
    He wasn’t, to be quite accurate, kneeling at all; he was standing up, very tall and broad, waving his hands; and though
what he was experiencing may have been the blessedness of humility, it sounded like his announcements of an ability to lick
anybody in any given saloon. But he was greeted with flaming hallelujahs, and he shouted on till he was rapturous and very
sweaty:
    “Come! Come to him now! Oh, it’s funny that I who’ve been so great a sinner could dare to give you his invitation, but
he’s almighty and shall prevail, and he giveth his sweet tidings through the mouths of babes and sucklings and the most
unworthy, and lo, the strong shall be confounded and the weak exalted in his sight!”
    It was all, the Mithraic phrasing, as familiar as “Good morning” or “How are you?” to the audience, yet he must have put
new violence into it, for instead of smiling at the recency of his ardor they looked at him gravely, and suddenly a miracle
was beheld.
    Ten minutes after his own experience, Elmer made his first conversion.
    A pimply youth, long known as a pool-room tout, leaped up, his greasy face working, shrieked, “O God, forgive me!” butted
in frenzy through the crowd, ran to the mourner’s bench, lay with his mouth frothing in convulsion.
    Then the hallelujahs rose till they drowned Elmer’s accelerated pleading, then Judson Roberts stood with his arm about
Elmer’s shoulder, then Elmer’s mother knelt with a light of paradise on her face, and they closed the meeting in a maniac
pealing of
    Draw me nearer, blessed Lord,
To thy precious bleeding side.
    Elmer felt himself victorious over life and king of righteousness.
    But it had been only the devoted, the people who had come early and taken front seats, of whom he had been conscious in
his transports. The students who had remained at the back of the church now loitered outside the door in murmurous knots,
and as Elmer and his mother passed them, they stared, they even chuckled, and he was suddenly cold. . . .
    It was hard to give heed to his mother’s wails of joy all the way to her boarding-house.
    “Now don’t you dare think of getting up early to see me off on the train,” she insisted. “All I have to do is just to
carry my little valise across the street. You’ll need your sleep, after all this stirrin’ up you’ve had tonight—I was so
proud—I’ve never known anybody to really wrestle with the Lord like you did. Oh, Elmy, you’ll stay true?