Page:Elmer Gantry (1927).djvu/159

 He was inspired to give a burlesque sermon.

"I've got a great joke on Ad!" he thundered. "Know what he thought I was first? A preacher!"

"Say, that's a good one!" they cackled.

"Well, at that, he ain't so far off. When I was a kid, I did think some about being a preacher. Well, say now, listen, and see if I wouldn't've made a swell preacher!"

While they gaped and giggled and admired, he rose solemnly, looked at them solemnly, and boomed:

"Brethren and Sistern, in the hustle and bustle of daily life you guys certainly do forget the higher and finer things. In what, in all the higher and finer things, in what and by what are we ruled excepting by Love? What is Love?"

"You stick around tonight and I'll show you!" shrieked Ad Locust.

"Shut up now, Ad! Honest—listen. See if I couldn't've been a preacher—a knock-out—bet I could handle a big crowd well's any of 'em. Listen. . . . What is Love? What is the divine Love? It is the rainbow, repainting with its spangled colors those dreary wastes where of late the terrible tempest has wreaked its utmost fury—the rainbow with its tender promise of surcease from the toils and travails and terrors of the awful storm! What is Love—the divine Love, I mean, not the carnal but the divine Love, as exemplified in the church? What is—"

"Say!" protested the most profane of the eleven, "I don't think you ought to make fun of the church. I never go to church myself, but maybe I'd be a better fella if I did, and I certainly do respect folks that go to church, and I send my kids to Sunday School. You God damn betcha!"

"Hell, I ain't making fun of the church!" protested Elmer.

"Hell, he ain't making fun of the church. Just kidding the preachers," asserted Ad Locust. "Preachers are just ordinary guys like the rest of us."

"Sure; preachers can cuss and make love just like anybody else. I know! What they get away with, pretending to be different," said Elmer lugubriously, "would make you gentlemen tired if you knew."

"Well, I don't think you had ought to make fun of the church."

"Hell, he ain't making fun of the church."