Main Street Sinclair Lewis (books to read romance TXT) š
- Author: Sinclair Lewis
Book online Ā«Main Street Sinclair Lewis (books to read romance TXT) šĀ». Author Sinclair Lewis
This August Sunday she had been tempted by the announcement that the Reverend Edmund Zitterel would preach on the topic āAmerica, Face Your Problems!ā With the great war, workmen in every nation showing a desire to control industries, Russia hinting a leftward revolution against Kerensky, woman suffrage coming, there seemed to be plenty of problems for the Reverend Mr. Zitterel to call on America to face. Carol gathered her family and trotted off behind Uncle Whittier.
The congregation faced the heat with informality. Men with highly plastered hair, so painfully shaved that their faces looked sore, removed their coats, sighed, and unbuttoned two buttons of their uncreased Sunday vests. Large-bosomed, white-bloused, hot-necked, spectacled matronsā āthe Mothers in Israel, pioneers and friends of Mrs. Champ Perryā āwaved their palm-leaf fans in a steady rhythm. Abashed boys slunk into the rear pews and giggled, while milky little girls, up front with their mothers, self-consciously kept from turning around.
The church was half barn and half Gopher Prairie parlor. The streaky brown wallpaper was broken in its dismal sweep only by framed texts, āCome unto Meā and āThe Lord is My Shepherd,ā by a list of hymns, and by a crimson and green diagram, staggeringly drawn upon hemp-colored paper, indicating the alarming ease with which a young man may descend from Palaces of Pleasure and the House of Pride to Eternal Damnation. But the varnished oak pews and the new red carpet and the three large chairs on the platform, behind the bare reading-stand, were all of a rocking-chair comfort.
Carol was civic and neighborly and commendable today. She beamed and bowed. She trolled out with the others the hymn:
How pleasant ātis on Sabbath morn
To gather in the church
And there Iāll have no carnal thoughts,
Nor sin shall me besmirch.
With a rustle of starched linen skirts and stiff shirtfronts, the congregation sat down, and gave heed to the Reverend Mr. Zitterel. The priest was a thin, swart, intense young man with a bang. He wore a black sack suit and a lilac tie. He smote the enormous Bible on the reading-stand, vociferated, āCome, let us reason together,ā delivered a prayer informing Almighty God of the news of the past week, and began to reason.
It proved that the only problems which America had to face were Mormonism and Prohibition:
āDonāt let any of these self-conceited fellows that are always trying to stir up trouble deceive you with the belief that thereās anything to all these smart-aleck movements to let the unions and the Farmersā Nonpartisan League kill all our initiative and enterprise by fixing wages and prices. There isnāt any movement that amounts to a whoop without itās got a moral background. And let me tell you that while folks are fussing about what they call āeconomicsā and āsocialismā and āscienceā and a lot of things that are nothing in the world but a disguise for atheism, the Old Satan is busy spreading his secret net and tentacles out there in Utah, under his guise of Joe Smith or Brigham Young or whoever their leaders happen to be today, it doesnāt make any difference, and theyāre making game of the Old Bible that has led this American people through its manifold trials and tribulations to its firm position as the fulfilment of the prophecies and the recognized leader of all nations. āSit thou on my right hand till I make thine enemies the footstool of my feet,ā said the Lord of Hosts, Acts II, the thirty-fourth verseā āand let me tell you right now, you got to get up a good deal earlier in the morning than you get up even when youāre going fishing, if you want to be smarter than the Lord, who has shown us the straight and narrow way, and he that passeth therefrom is in eternal peril and, to return to this vital and terrible subject of Mormonismā āand as I say, it is terrible to realize how little attention is given to this evil right here in our midst and on our very doorstep, as it wereā āitās a shame and a disgrace that the Congress of these United States spends all its time talking about inconsequential financial matters that ought to be left to the Treasury Department, as I understand it, instead of arising in their might and passing a law that anyone admitting he is a Mormon shall simply be deported and as it were kicked out of this free country in which we havenāt got any room for polygamy and the tyrannies of Satan.
āAnd, to digress for a moment, especially as there are more of them in this state than there are Mormons, though you never can tell what will happen with this vain generation of young girls, that think more about wearing silk stockings than about minding their mothers and learning to bake a good loaf of bread, and many of them listening to these sneaking Mormon missionariesā āand I actually heard one of them talking right out on a street-corner in Duluth, a few years ago, and the officers of the law not protestingā ābut still, as they are a smaller but more immediate problem, let me stop for just a moment to pay my respects to these
Comments (0)