The Birmingham age-herald., 1917-04-29
PRAYS LIKE BASEBALL ROOTER


 rye got to get lem today. Oh, Lord,
 help me to do it! I've got to get 'em to-. day Oh, Lord, help me to do it!"-just like that, over and over and over again. You did not have to be believer in Sun day or the Sunday way to know the man meant what he was saying. There was
 nothing studied, nothing theatrical about it. It was as spontaneous, as natural and as sincere as when a race track tout hugs a post. in the home stretch begging the little horse upon which he has risked
 his last dollar to come on and win. or
 when local rooter, in the last half of the
 ninth inning, with the bases full and the
 score tie two men out and the home team at bat, two strikes called and three
 balls, pleads with Providence to vouch- safe just one dinky little hit.
 Then Sunday got up and went to the pulpit and gripped his hands upon it's edges and rocked back and forth on his
 heels, as though to supple his leg mus cles, and began his sermon. The sermon Idoesn't matter. It was just one of those unorthodoxically orthodox Sunday ser mons with not bit of teaching in it, but with a great deal of hard slugging preaching in it. It was laden with guar antees of eternal salvation for those who
 hearkened to the Word, and with threats of everlasting anthracite for those who did not.
 It was laced with flashes of the rough
 Sunday humor and shot with dashes of the Sunday courseness. which sounded
 doubly course dealing, as it generally did,
 with sacred subjects, as for instance, when he likened three of the apostles to
 ducks in a puddle" And, of course 1t abounded in extravagant promises of what a religious awakening. revival of the Sundayesque variety would bring to pass in the wicked and pleasure loving city of New York.
 "You folks do your duty' he shouted in their faces "and when we get through with~this fight. there won't be a saloon left open in this old town, nor pros titute walking the streets of the red light
 district, nor gunman lurking in a dark alley And that's the truth. Bud, I'm telling you"
 He went on the hard assumption that all men who drank liquor came home to their wives physically unwell as result l-"spewing' was the highly descriptive word favored by him to describe the most prevalent symptom of the sufferers-and
 on the equally hard assumptions that all retail liquor dealers had bullnecks and weasel eyes. and that all girls who wore low-neck dresses and went to dances courted a certain downfall And whether the subject he dealt with was good or evil he had no adjective for it except the 1 tails read at random the verbatim re- ports printed in the New York papers any day.
 | For the purposes of this dispatch the 1 sermon was of no consequence. To me, the main thing was the fashion after which this man, by dint of sheer muscu-
 lar force and sheer intent put fervor into l that apathetic gathering. For, at the out ! set and for some minutes thereafter his auditors were cold-cold and unrespon- 1 sive. They listened, politely enough, but | that was about all-for awhile. But as I watched the faces in front of me, gradu- ally I saw the expressions on those faces changing. I saw the droop going out of I the curved spines of those people and l almost as plainly as though it had been tangible thing sensed the waves of l sympathy flowing in great and greater | and still greater volume from them to
 him and back again from him to them. CLIMAX-THEN EXHAUSTION l He worked harder and harder. His husky voice rose to blare He ran from side to side of the platform. whirling and | twisting, with every thew of his athletic body in play He beat with his two
 clenched fists on the pulpit top until 1t | shook and quivered. His wilted-d down grab and sound of rending linen, he jerked it loose and flung it behind him. | He reached his conclusion. This time | he wound up with a little prayer, and l then he turned and he went down the steps, all wringing wet and staggering from exhaustion as he came, to be halt ed at the foot of the platform by perhaps 1 twoscore converts of the night before l who came pressing forward to tell him 1 I suppose how much they thanked hin | and how thorough was their repentance He shook hands with each one of them
 and, to each. he said something. I sup.