Elmer Gantry by 1885-1951 Sinclair Lewis

prayed for me, it might help.”
    “I don’t think that would be the way,” began the president, but the most aged faculty-member suggested, “Maybe it’s the
Lord’s guidance. We hadn’t ought to interfere with the Lord’s guidance, Brother Quarles.”
    “That’s so, that’s so,” the president announced. “You have your walk, Brother Elmer, and pray hard, and we’ll stay here
and besiege the throne of grace for you.”
    Elmer blundered out into the fresh clean air.
    Whatever happened, he was never going back! How he hated their soft, crawly, wet hands!
    He had notions of catching the last train to Cato and getting solacingly drunk. No. He’d lose his degree, just a month
off now, and be cramped later in appearing as a real, high-class, college-educated lawyer.
    Lose it, then! Anything but go back to their crawling creepy hands, their aged breathing by his ear—
    He’d get hold of somebody and say he felt sick and send him back to tell Prexy and sneak off to bed. Cinch! He just
wouldn’t get his Call, just pass it up, by Jiminy, and not have to go into the ministry.
    But to lose the chance to stand before thousands and stir them by telling about divine love and the evening and morning
star—If he could just stand it till he got through theological seminary and was on the job—Then, if any Eddie Fislinger
tried to come into his study and breathe down his neck—throw him out, by golly!
    He was conscious that he was leaning against a tree, tearing down twigs, and that facing him under a street-lamp was Jim
Lefferts.
    “You look sick, Hell-cat,” said Jim.
    Elmer strove for dignity, then broke, with a moaning, “Oh, I am! What did I ever get into this religious fix for?”
    “What they doing to you? Never mind; don’t tell me. You need a drink.”
    “By God, I do!”
    “I’ve got a quart of first-rate corn whisky from a moonshiner I’ve dug up out here in the country, and my room’s right in
this block. Come along.”
    Through his first drink, Elmer was quiet, bewildered, vaguely leaning on the Jim who would guide him away from this
horror.
    But he was out of practice in drinking, and the whisky took hold with speed. By the middle of the second glass he was
boasting of his ecclesiastical eloquence, he was permitting Jim to know that never in Terwillinger College had there
appeared so promising an orator, that right now they were there praying for him, waiting for him, the president and the
whole outfit!
    “But,” with a slight return of apology, “I suppose prob’ly you think maybe I hadn’t ought to go back to ’em.”
    Jim was standing by the open window, saying slowly, “No. I think now—You’d better go back. I’ve got some peppermints.
They’ll fix your breath, more or less. Good-by, Hell-cat.”
    He had won even over old Jim!
    He was master of the world, and only a very little bit drunk.
    He stepped out high and happy. Everything was extremely beautiful. How high the trees were! What a wonderful drugstore
window, with all those glossy new magazine covers! That distant piano—magic. What exquisite young women the co-eds! What
lovable and sturdy men the students! He was at peace with everything. What a really good fellow he was! He’d lost all his
meannesses. How kind he’d been to that poor lonely sinner, Jim Lefferts. Others might despair of Jim’s soul—he never
would.
    Poor old Jim. His room had looked terrible—that narrow little room with a cot, all in disorder, a pair of shoes and a
corncob pipe lying on a pile of books. Poor Jim. He’d forgive him. Go around and clean up the room for him.
    (Not that Elmer had ever cleaned up their former room.)
    Gee, what a lovely spring night! How corking those old boys were, Prexy and everybody, to give up an evening and pray for
him!
    Why was it he felt so fine? Of course! The Call had come! God had come to him, though just spiritually, not corporeally,
so far as he remembered. It had come! He could go ahead and rule the world!
    He