Elmer Gantry by 1885-1951 Sinclair Lewis Page B

much. Don’t hurt even a preacher to face
himself! After all, those two years when I was in the carpet business, before I went to the seminary, I didn’t do very well.
Maybe I wouldn’t have made any more than I do now. But if I could—Suppose I could’ve been a great chemist? Wouldn’t that
(mind you, I’m just speculating, as a student of psychology)—wouldn’t that conceivably be better than year after year of
students with the same confounded problems over and over again—and always so pleased and surprised and important about
them!—or year after year again of standing in the pulpit and knowing your congregation don’t remember what you’ve said seven
minutes after you’ve said it?”
    “Why, Henry, I don’t know what’s gotten into you! I think you better do a little praying yourself instead of picking on
this poor young Gantry! Neither you nor I could ever have been happy except in a Baptist church or a real cover-to-cover
Baptist college.”
    The dean’s wife finished darning the towels and went up to say good-night to her parents.
    They had lived with her since her father’s retirement, at seventy-five, from his country pastorate. He had been a
missionary in Missouri before the Civil War.
    Her lips had been moving, her eyebrows working, as she darned the towels; her eyebrows were still creased as she came
into their room and shrieked at her father’s deafness:
    “Time to go to bed, Papa. And you, Mama.”
    They were nodding on either side of a radiator unheated for months.
    “All right, Emmy,” piped the ancient.
    “Say Papa—Tell me: I’ve been thinking: If you were just a young man today, would you go into the ministry?”
    “Course I would! What an idea! Most glorious vocation young man could have. Idea! G’night, Emmy!”
    But as his ancient wife sighingly removed her corsets, she complained, “Don’t know as you would or not—if
I
was
married to you—which ain’t any too certain, a second time—and if I had anything to say about it.”
    “Which IS certain! Don’t be foolish. Course I would.”
    “I don’t know. Fifty years
I
had of it, and I never did get so I wa’n’t just mad clear through when the ladies
of the church came poking around, criticizing me for every little tidy I put on the chairs, and talking something terrible
if I had a bonnet or a shawl that was the least mite tasty. ‘‘Twa’n’t suitable for a minister’s wife.’ Drat ’em! And I
always did like a bonnet with some nice bright colors. Oh, I’ve done a right smart of thinking about it. You always were a
powerful preacher, but’s I’ve told you—”
    “You have!”
    “—I never could make out how, if when you were in the pulpit you really knew so much about all these high and mighty and
mysterious things, how it was when you got home you never knew enough, and you never could learn enough, to find the hammer
or make a nice piece of corn-bread or add up a column of figures twice alike or find Oberammergau on the map of
Austria!”
    “Germany, woman! I’m sleepy!”
    “And all these years of having to pretend to be so good when we were just common folks all the time! Ain’t you glad you
can just be simple folks now?”
    “Maybe it is restful. But that’s not saying I wouldn’t do it over again.” The old man ruminated a long while. “I think I
would. Anyway, no use discouraging these young people from entering the ministry. Somebody got to preach the gospel truth,
ain’t they?”
    “I suppose so. Oh, dear. Fifty years since I married a preacher! And if I could still only be sure about the virgin
birth! Now don’t you go explaining! Laws, the number of times you’ve explained! I know it’s true—it’s in the Bible. If I
could only BELIEVE it! But—
    “I would of liked to had you try your hand at politics. If I could of been, just once, to a senator’s house, to a banquet
or something, just once, in a nice bright red dress with gold slippers, I’d of been willing to go back