[Illustration: A COLLARLESS, WEAK-FACED SLAVE OF DISSIPATION IS NEXT IN LINE TO A BEAUTIFUL GIRL IN THE DEW OF HER YOUTH] In the particular session I am describing, a big delegation of railroad men is present, and the evangelist keeps turning to them, with an occasional "Come on, Erie!" The memories of his own days as a railroad brakeman are evidently working within him, and he seizes a green lantern and waves it. "A clear track ahead!" Toward these men he is most urgent, beckoning them also with a white railroad flag which he has taken from the decorations. When the master mechanic "hits the trail" there is cheering from the crowd, and Sunday himself shows a delight that was exhibited over none of the society folk who came forward. Rare and remarkable as are these scenes in religious history, they occur nightly in the Sunday tabernacle. Two hundred, three hundred, five hundred, one thousand converts are common. Anybody interested in life and in the phenomena of religion will find this occasion the most interesting scene at present to be witnessed in the whole world. As for the novelist, this is the human soul bared, and beyond the compass of his highest art. For life is at its apex when, in new resolution, a mortal spirit makes compact with the Almighty. CHAPTER XIV The Service of Society A lot of people think a man needs a new grandfather, sanitation, and a new shirt, when what he needs is a new heart.--BILLY SUNDAY. Some day a learned university professor, with a string of titles after his name, will startle the world by breaking away from the present conventionalism in sociology, and will conduct elaborate laboratory experiments in human betterment on the field of a Billy Sunday campaign. His conclusion will surely be that the most potent force for the service of society--the shortest, surest way of bettering the human race--is by the fresh, clear, sincere and insistent preaching of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Of course, the New Testament has been teaching that for nearly twenty centuries, but the world has not yet comprehended the practicability of the program. Your learned professor may prove, by literally thousands of incidents, that honesty, chastity, brotherliness, and idealism have been more definitely promoted by revivals of religion than by legislative or educational programs. All that the social reformers of our day desire may be most quickly secured by straight-out preaching of the Gospel. The shortcut to a better social order is by way of converted men and women. And when a modern scholar comes to demonstrate this he will draw largely upon the aftermath of the Sunday campaigns for his contemporaneous evidence. If there is one phrase which, better than another, can describe a Billy Sunday campaign it is "restitution and righteousness." In season and out, the evangelist insists upon a changed life as the first consequence of conversion. His message runs on this wise: