The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-05-06

form The floorwalker-lo looking man acted as sort of living buffer in the paths of these streams. Working with & marvel ous precision and rapidity. he caught each person who reached him, under the right elbow and gave a quick upward jerk of the arm so that the right hand of the other came up to the level of Sundays outstretched hand. and then in the same half second of space, the hand-clasp hav- ing been accomplished, he bestowed upon the convert sharp little shove rear ward
 In another half second, the individual thus treated-man or woman or child as the case might be--him or her into the front row of benches which magically had been emptied of their recent occu- pants to make room for those who wished to profess religion. As each bench hero filled up yet other attendants passed along its front taking down the names, the addresses, and the denominational preferences of every group. There was no chance for anyone to delay the prog ress of the movement for a moment, no time for any prolonged speech with MT. Sunday. The mechanism seemed perfect. do not see how 1t could have been more perfect. To you, 1t might appear to smack overmuch of commercialized spirit in religion, but all the same you had to admire it for it's precision and It's smoothness of operation.
 ALL GLAD TO SHAKE HANDS
 was where could look down on mov- ing lines and study the upturned faces. Far be it from me to question the sin cerity or the motive of any human being engaged in an act of religion, or of con- triton, but could not help but suspect that good many of these trail -hitters were actuated, in part at least. by per- haps natural desire to share after some small fashion in the drama of theatri- cally big moment. or, let us say, by a yearning to be able to boast afterwards that they publicly had shaken hands and swapped words with the most conspicuous and famous revivalist of his generation These, in my judgment might mainly be identified by their ha1f-embarrassed half-nervously. But I would not risk the assertion that these persons were in the majority or even that they constituted any very considerable proportion of the minority. These persons were spaced in between men and women and children who came up with earnestness and con- viction in their bearing and in the looks upon their faces.
 Probably 70 per cent of the trail-hitters were young; that is, they were under 45 Three in four looked as if they might be small clerks or artisans, or else, work ing girls, shop girls. domestic servants. An interesting circumstance was that a fairly large number of them were evil dently Jewish. This was especially true of the female contingent. I should say that one in every 10 or 12 of the younger women was distinctly and distinctively of the Semitic type. By this I do not mean that Billy Sunday had made even an indirect effort at proselyting members of their faith to the Christian religion either in this sermon or in any other sermon I have heard him preach dur ing the revival which he is conducting this spring in New York. As I inter- preted the fact. his roughly dramatic style of pulpteering had an especial ap- peal for the representatives of an in- l herently emotional race.
 l The traiI- hitting was almost over A few stragglers were being herded forward I by volunteer workers who had become l infected with the spirit of the meeting. 1 All the others-SO0 and more of them were being listed and tabulated and, for all I know, card -indexed. Edgar Selwyn the playwright, standing at my elbow suddenly said to me:
 ''who on the stage does Sunday re. mind you of?''
 T give it up,.' I said. '.who?'
 Eddie Foy." he said
 F glanced again at the preacher, study. ing his face and posture. and sure enough ] selwyn was right Billy Sunday, look. aVS.-A than little bit like Eddie Foy shoe Ter I came to think 1t over de terday T at his voice in It's dry. humorous be asst : twist suggested Foy's and that K, rs, ,.x his movements. smacked of tn, com edian's, too. When say this thinl lI am complinenting both of these dis 4 ltinguished gentlemen. And I imagine too. that if Foy were preacher, h, would preach much as Sunday does ant that if Sunday were comic opera star he would aing and dAnct much as Flo. slngs and dances,
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