He saw himself, then, tramping down the aisle among his gaping hearers, and leaving the church forever.
But: "I'm too tired. Too miserable. And why hurt the poor bewildered souls? And— I am so tired."
He stood up at the beginning of the second meeting and said gently, "I had refused to resign. I still feel I have an honest right to an honest pulpit. But I am setting brother against brother. I am not a Cause—I am only a friend. I have loved you and the work, the sound of friends singing together, the happiness of meeting on leisurely Sunday mornings. This I give up. I resign, and I wish I could say, 'God be with you and bless you all.' But the good Christians have taken God and made him into a menacing bully, and I cannot even say 'God bless you,' during this last moment, in a life given altogether to religion, when I shall ever stand in a pulpit."
Elmer Gantry, in his next sermon, said that he was so broad-minded that he would be willing to receive an Infidel Shallard in his church, providing he repented.
When he found that he liked the Charity Organization Society and his work in that bleak institution no better than his work in the church, Frank laughed.
"As Bess said! A consistent malcontent! Well, I am consistent, anyway. And the relief not to be a preacher any more! Not to have to act sanctimonious! Not to have men consider you an old woman in trousers! To be able to laugh without watching its effect!"
Frank was given charge, at the C. O. S., of a lodging-house, a woodyard at which hoboes worked for two hours daily to pay for lodging and breakfast, and an employment bureau. He knew little about Scientific Charity, so he was shocked by the icy manner in which his subordinates—the aged virgin at the inquiry desk, the boss of the woodyard, the clerk at the lodging-house, the young lady who asked the applicants about their religion and vices—treated the shambling unfortunates as criminals who had deliberately committed the crime of poverty.
They were as efficient and as tender as vermin-exterminators.
In this acid perfection, Frank longed for the mystery that clings to even the dourest or politest tabernacle. He fell in
