and I haven't cared to accept it. So you can see that this is in no way a hint that I would like such a degree. Heaven forbid! But I do know it might please my congregation, make them feel Abernathy was their own college, in a way."
Dr. Dodd remarked serenely, "Pardon me if I smile! You see I had a double mission in coming to you. The second part was to ask you if you would honor Abernathy by accepting a D.D.!"
They did not wink at each other.
Elmer gloated to himself, "And I've heard it cost old Mahlon Potts six hundred bucks for his D. D.! Oh, yes, Prexy, we'll begin to raise money for Abernathy in two years—we'll begin!"
The chapel of Abernathy College was full. In front were the gowned seniors, looking singularly like a row of arm-chairs covered with dust-cloths. On the platform, with the president and the senior members of the faculty, were the celebrities whose achievements were to be acknowledged by honorary degrees.
Besides the Reverend Elmer Gantry, these distinguished guests were the Governor of the state—who had started as a divorce lawyer but had reformed and enabled the public service corporations to steal all the water-power in the state; Mr. B. D. Swenson, the automobile manufacturer, who had given most of the money for the Abernathy football stadium; and the renowned Eva Evaline Murphy, author, lecturer, painter, musician, and authority on floriculture, who was receiving a Litt. D. for having written (gratis) the new Abernathy College Song:
On plain or mountain, town or sea,
Oh, let us sing how round us clings,
Dear Abernathy, thoooooooooughts—of—thee.
President Dodd was facing Elmer, and shouting:
"—and now we have the privilege of conferring the degree of Doctor of Divinity upon one than whom no man in our
