ndertaking of luring the most expert
saxophone performer of his acquaintance away from the flaunting tents of
the transgressor and herding him into the fold of the safely regenerate.
He succeeded. He saved Cephus Fringe, plucking him up as a brand from
the burning, to remold him into a living torch fitted to light the way
for others.

Of Cephus it might be said, paraphrasing the lines about little dog
Rover, that when he was saved he was saved all over. Being redeemed, he
straightway disbanded his orchestra. He tore up his calling-card
reading,

+-----------------------------------------+
| PROFESSOR CEPHUS FRINGE ESQUIRE |
| THE ANGLO-SAXOPHONE KING |
| Address: Care Champey's Barber-Shop |
|SOLE PROPRIETOR FRINGE'S ALL-STAR TROUPE |
+-----------------------------------------+

He enlisted under the militant banners and on the personal staff of the
Sin Killer. Amply then was the prior design of his new commander
justified. For if it was the eloquence, the magnetism, the compelling
force of the revivalist which brought the penitents shouting down the
tan-bark trail to the mourner's bench, it was the harmonious croonings
of Prof. Fringe as he conducted the introductory program--now rendering
as a solo his celebrated original composition, "The Satan Blues," now
leading the special choir--which psychologically paved the way for the
greater scene to follow after. There was distress in the devil's
glebe-lands when this pair struck their proper stride--first the
Fringian outpourings harmoniously exalting the spirits of the assemblage
and then the exhorters tying his hands to the Gospel plow and driving
down into the populous valleys of sin, there to furrow and harrow, to
sow and tend, to garner and glean.

The team had struck its stride early at the protracted meeting so
competently fostered by the resident pastor of Emmanuel Chapel, the Rev.
A. Risen Shine. To himself, as already stated, the latter took prideful
credit for results achieved and results promised. Well he might. Already
hundreds of converts had come halleluiahing through; hundreds more
teetered and swayed, back and forth, between doubt and conviction, ready
at a touch to fall like the ripe and sickled grain in the lap of the
husbandman. Wavering brethren had been fortified and were made stalwart
again. Confirmed backsliders rubbed their wayward feet in the resin of
faith and were boosted up the