Page:Elmer Gantry (1927).djvu/373

 counsel that keeps 'em all out of jail, you don't find those malefactors going to no lunch club and yipping about Service! You find 'em sitting at small tables at the old Union Club, and laughing themselves sick about Service. And for golf, they go to Tonawanda. I couldn't get you into the Union Club. They wouldn't have any preacher that talks about vice—the kind of preacher that belongs to the Union talks about the new model Cadillac and how hard it is to get genuwine Eye-talian vermouth. But the Tonawanda— They might let you in. For respectability. To prove that they couldn't have the gin they've got in their lockers in their lockers."

It was done, though it took six months and a deal of secret politics conducted by T. J. Rigg.

Wellspring Church, including the pastor of Wellspring, bloomed with pride that Elmer had been so elevated socially as to be allowed to play golf with bankers.

Only he couldn't play golf.

From April to July, while he never appeared on the links with other players, Elmer took lessons from the Tonawanda professional, three mornings a week, driving out in the smart new Buick which he had bought and almost paid for.

The professional was a traditionally small and gnarled and sandy Scotchman, from Indiana, and he was so traditionally rude that Elmer put on meekness.

"Put back your divots! D' you think this is a church?" snapped the professional.

"Damn it, I always forget, Scotty," whined Elmer. "Guess it must be hard on you to have to train these preachers."

"Preachers is nothing to me, and millionaires is nothing to me, but gawf grounds is a lot," grunted Scotty. (He was a zealous Presbyterian and to be picturesquely rude to Christian customers was as hard for him as it was to keep up the Scotch accent which he had learned from a real Liverpool Irishman.)

Elmer was strong, he was placid when he was out-of-doors, and his eye was quick. When he first appeared publicly at Tonawanda, in a foursome with T. J. Rigg and two most respectable doctors, he and his game were watched and commended. When he dressed in the locker-room and did not appear to note the square bottle in use ten feet away, he was accepted as a man of the world.

William Dollinger Styles, member of the Tonawanda house