gregation—of course I don't mean it in any wrong way," said Wallace Umstead.
Wallace was a student-instructor, head of the minute seminary gymnasium and "director of physical culture"; a young man who had a military mustache and who did brisk things on horizontal bars. He was a state university B. A. and graduate of a physical-training school. He was going into Y. M. C. A. work when he should have a divinity degree, and he was fond of saying, "Oh, I'm still one of the Boys, you know, even if I am a prof."
"That's right," agreed Elmer Gantry. "Say, I had—I was holding a meeting at Grauten, Kansas, last summer, and there was a big boob that kept interrupting, so I just jumped down from the platform and went up to him, and he says, 'Say, Parson,' he says, 'can you tell us what the Almighty wants us to do about prohibition, considering he told Paul to take some wine for his stomach's sake?' 'I don't know as I can,' I says, 'but you want to remember he also commanded us to cast out devils!' and I yanked that yahoo out of his seat and threw him out on his ear, and say, the whole crowd—well, there weren't so awfully many there, but they certainly did give him the ha-ha! You bet. And to be a husky makes a hit with the whole congregation, men's well as women. Bet there's more'n one high-toned preacher that got his pulpit because the deacons felt he could lick 'em. Of course praying and all that is all O. K., but you got to be practical! We're here to do good, but first you have to cinch a job that you can do good in!"
"You're commercial!" protested Eddie Fislinger, and Frank Shallard: "Good heavens, Gantry, is that all your religion means to you?"
"Besides," said Horace Carp, "you have the wrong angle. It isn't mere brute force that appeals to women—to congregations. It's a beautiful voice. I don't envy you your bulk, Elmer—besides, you're going to get fat—"
"I am like hell!"
"—but what I could do with that voice of yours! I'd have 'em all weeping! I'd read 'em poetry from the pulpit!"
Horace Carp was the one High Churchman in the Seminary. He was a young man who resembled a water spaniel, who concealed saints' images, incense, and a long piece of scarlet brocade in his room, and who wore a purple velvet smoking-
