II + 

Something like statewide fame began to cling about the Reverend Elmer Gantry during his two years in Sparta⁠—1918 to 1920. In the spring of ’18 he was one of the most courageous defenders of the Midwest against the imminent invasion of the Germans. He was a Four-Minute Man. He said violent things about atrocities, and sold Liberty Bonds hugely. He threatened to leave Sparta to its wickedness while he went out to “take care of our poor boys” as a chaplain, and he might have done so had the war lasted another year. + 

In Sparta, too, he crept from timidly sensational church advertisements to such blasts as must have shaken the Devil himself. Anyway, they brought six hundred delighted sinners to church every Sunday evening, and after one sermon on the horrors of booze, a saloon-keeper, slightly intoxicated, remarked “Whoop!” and put a fifty-dollar bill in the plate. + 

Not to this day, with all the advance in intellectual advertising, has there been seen a more arousing effort to sell salvation than Elmer’s prose poem in the Sparta World-Chronicle on a Saturday in December, 1919: + 

Would You Like Your Mother to Go Bathing Without Stockings? + 

Do you believe in old-fashioned womanhood, that can love and laugh and still be the symbols of God’s own righteousness, bringing a tear to the eye as one remembers their brooding tenderness? Would you like to see your own dear mammy indulging in mixed bathing or dancing that Hell’s own fool monkeyshine, the one-step? + 

Reverend Elmer Gantry + 

will answer these questions and others next Sunday morning. Gantry shoots straight from the shoulder. + 

Poplar Avenue Methodist Church + 

Follow the crowd to the beautiful times + 

At the beautiful church with the beautiful chimes. + 