While the crowd was still noisily filing into the rear rows “Billy” Williams’ principal assistant put in an appearance on the platform and was loudly applauded by scattered groups who were promptly quieted by the ushers who moved quickly up and down the aisles, ready at a moment’s notice, to insist upon the preservation of the dignities. The assistant was a jovial looking man with an infectious smile. He held a cornet in one hand and he raised the other to command the attention of the great throng. A hush fell over the assemblage and presently the strains of “Onward, Christian Soldiers” cut through the silence with penetrating incisiveness. The effect was electric. When the cornetist had finished he turned swiftly and at precisely the same instant the thousand singers on the platform rose to their feet and burst into song. Another signal and the audience stood up. In response to a pleading gesture from the man with the smile a voice was raised here and there in unison with the chorus. He pleaded pantomimically once more and, as if by the exercise of sheer hypnotic control, he presently cajoled the great crowd into singing. From that moment he held the audience in the hollow of his hand and played with it. Now he would have everyone on one side of the auditorium singing. Then he would be challenging those on the other side to outdo their competitors. Now it was the women who would be asked to sing alone. Next it would be the men. The choir would be asked to sing a verse. Then the entire audience would be called upon to follow them. By the time he had finished with those preliminaries he had the throats of everyone present in such thorough working order and the feeling of self-consciousness had been so dissipated that when he eventually demanded “a combined effort that will shake the gates of glory” the result was inspiring to the last degree. As the final words of the final chorus were shaken out by ten thousand throats in one last concentrated burst of glad song the Rev. “Billy” Williams stepped through a door on the side of the platform and quickly crossed to the reading desk. No playwright, craftily scheming for a “good entrance” for a stage star, could ever have contrived a situation or a moment more pregnant with dramatic effectiveness or more tense with emotion. The last word of the hymn had died down and the air seemed to still throb with the dying echoes as the evangelist reached to the center of the platform and held up his hand in a gesture which was an invitation to prayer. Ten thousand heads were bowed in humble submission to his implied command, and in a voice which breathed sincerity and fine feeling he offered up a simple supplication beseeching the blessing of Divine Providence upon all assembled and upon himself, an unworthy instrument of a higher Power.