would the Reverend Mr. Gantry give to a young man who wanted to go to college and had no money? From what book was that quotation about "Cato learned Greek at eighty Sophocles" which he had used in last Sunday's sermon? Would Mr. Gantry be so kind and address the Lincoln School next Friday morning at nine-fifteen—the dear children would be so glad of any Message he had to give them, and the regular speaker couldn't show up. Would it be all right for the Girls' Basket Ball team to use the basement tonight? Could the Reverend come out, right now, to the house of Ben T. Evers, 2616 Appleby Street—five miles away—because grandmother was very ill and needed consolation. What the dickens did the Reverend mean by saying, last Sunday, that hell-fire might be merely spiritual and figurative—didn't he know that that was agin Matthew V:29: "Thy whole body should be cast into hell." Could he get the proof of the church bulletin back to the printers right away? Could the officers of the Southwest Circle of Women meet in Mr. Gantry's study tomorrow? Would Reverend Gantry speak at the Old Town Improvement Association Banquet? Did the Reverend want to buy a secondhand motor-car in A 1 shape? Could the Reverend—
"God!" said the Reverend; and, "Huh? Why, no, of course you couldn't answer 'em for me, Cleo. But at least you might try to keep from humming when I'm simply killing myself trying to take care of all these blame' fools and sacrificing myself and everything!"
And the letters.
In response to every sermon he had messages informing him that he was the bright hope of evangelicism and that he was a cloven-hoofed fiend; that he was a rousing orator and a human saxophone. One sermon on the delights of Heaven, which he pictured as a perpetual summer afternoon at a lake resort, brought in the same mail four comments:
i have got an idea for you verry important since hearing yrs of last sunday evening why do'nt you hold services every evning to tell people & etc about heven and danger of hell we must hurry hurry hurry, the church in a bad way and is up to us who have many and infaliable proofs of heven and hell to hasten yes we must rescew
