IV + 

The afternoon and evening sermons⁠—those were the high points of the meetings, when Sharon cried in a loud voice, her arms out to them, “Surely the Lord is in this place and I knew it not,” and “All our righteousness is as filthy rags,” and “We have sinned and come short of the glory of God,” and “Oh, for the man to arise in me, that the man I am may cease to be,” and “Get right with God,” and “I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God unto salvation.” + 

But before even these guaranteed appeals could reach wicked hearts, the audience had to be prepared for emotion, and to accomplish this there was as much labor behind Sharon’s eloquence as there is of wardrobes and scene-shifters and box offices behind the frenzy of Lady Macbeth. Of this preparation Elmer had a great part. + 

He took charge, as soon as she had trained him, of the men personal workers, leaving the girls to the Director of Personal Work, a young woman who liked dancing and glass jewelry but who was admirable at listening to the confessions of spinsters. His workers were bank-tellers, bookkeepers in wholesale groceries, shoe clerks, teachers of manual training. They canvassed shops, wholesale warehouses, and factories, and held noon meetings in offices, where they explained that the most proficient use of shorthand did not save one from the probability of hell. For Elmer explained that prospects were more likely to be converted if they came to the meetings with a fair amount of fear. + 

When they were permitted, the workers were to go from desk to desk, talking to each victim about the secret sins he was comfortably certain to have. And both men and women workers were to visit the humbler homes and offer to kneel and pray with the floury and embarrassed wife, the pipe-wreathed and shoeless husband. + 

All the statistics of the personal work⁠—so many souls invited to come to the altar, so many addresses to workmen over their lunch-pails, so many cottage prayers, with the length of each⁠—were rather imaginatively entered by Elmer and the Director of Personal Work on the balance-sheet which Sharon used as a report after the meetings and as a talking-point for the sale of future meetings. + 

Elmer met daily with Adelbert Shoop, that yearning and innocent tenor who was in charge of music, to select hymns. There were times when the audiences had to be lulled into confidence by “Softly and Tenderly Jesus Is Calling,” times when they were made to feel brotherly and rustic with “It’s the Old-Time Religion”⁠— + 

It was good for Paul and Silas + 

And it’s good enough for me⁠— + 

and times when they had to be stirred by “At the Cross” or “Onward, Christian Soldiers.” Adelbert had ideas about what he called “worship by melody,” but Elmer saw that the real purpose of singing was to lead the audience to a state of mind where they would do as they were told. + 

He learned to pick out letters on the typewriter with two fingers, and he answered Sharon’s mail⁠—all of it that she let him see. He kept books for her, in a ragged sufficient manner, on checkbook stubs. He wrote the nightly story of her sermons, which the newspapers cut down and tucked in among stories of remarkable conversions. He talked to local church-pillars so rich and moral that their own pastors were afraid of them. And he invented an aid to salvation which to this day is used in the more evangelistic meetings, though it is credited to Adelbert Shoop. + 

Adelbert was up to most of the current diversions. He urged the men and the women to sing against each other. At the tense moment when Sharon was calling for converts, Adelbert would skip down the aisle, fat but nimble, pink with coy smiles, tapping people on the shoulder, singing the chorus of a song right among them, and often returning with three or four prisoners of the sword of the Lord, flapping his plump arms and caroling “They’re coming⁠—they’re coming,” which somehow started a stampede to the altar. + 

Adelbert was, in his girlish enthusiasm, almost as good as Sharon or Elmer at announcing, “Tonight, you are all of you to be evangelists. Every one of you now! Shake hands with the person to your right and ask ’em if they’re saved.” + 

He gloated over their embarrassment. + 

He really was a man of parts. Nevertheless, it was Elmer, not Adelbert, who invented the “Hallelujah Yell.” + 

Remembering his college cheers, remembering how greatly it had encouraged him in kneeing the opposing tackle or jabbing the rival center’s knee, Elmer observed to himself, “Why shouldn’t we have yells in this game, too?” + 

He himself wrote the first one known in history. + 

Hallelujah, praise God, hal, hal, hal! + 

Hallelujah, praise God, hal, hal, hal! + 

All together, I feel better, + 

Hal, hal, hal, + 

For salvation of the nation⁠— + 

Aaaaaaaaaaa⁠—men! + 

That was a thing to hear, when Elmer led them; when he danced before them, swinging his big arms and bellowing, “Now again! Two yards to gain! Two yards for the Savior! Come on, boys and girls, it’s our team! Going to let ’em down? Not on your life! Come on then, you chipmunks, and lemme hear you knock the ole roof off! Hal, hal, hal!” + 

Many a hesitating boy, a little sickened by the intense brooding femininity of Sharon’s appeal, was thus brought up to the platform to shake hands with Elmer and learn the benefits of religion. + 