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 He had a number of phrases—all stolen—and he made his disciples repeat them in chorus, in the manner of all religions. Among the more powerful incantations were:

They were all of them ready for a million a year, except their teacher, who was ready for bankruptcy.

He got pupils enough, but the overhead was huge and his pupils were poor. He had to hire the ballroom, pay for advertising; he had to appear gaudy, with a suite in the hotel, fresh linen, and newly pressed morning coat. He sat in twenty-dollar-a-day red plush suites wondering where he would get breakfast. He was so dismayed that he began to study himself.

He determined, with the resoluteness of terror, to be loyal to any loves or associates he might have hereafter, to say in his prayers and sermons practically nothing except what he believed. He yearned to go back to Mizpah Seminary, to get Dean Trosper's forgiveness, take a degree, and return to the Baptist pulpit in however barren a village. But first he must earn enough money to pay for a year in the seminary.

He had been in correspondence with the manager of the O'Hearn House in Zenith—a city of four hundred thousand in the state of Winnemac, a hundred miles from Mizpah. This was in 1913, before the Hotel Thornleigh was built, and Gil O'Hearn, with his new yellow brick tavern, was trying to take