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Applied Learning
Algorithms for
Intelligent IoT
Applied Learning
Algorithms for
Intelligent IoT

Edited by
Pethuru Raj Chelliah
Usha Sakthivel
Susila Nagarajan
First Edition published [2022]
by CRC Press
6000 Broken Sound Parkway NW, Suite 300, Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742
and by CRC Press
2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN
© 2022 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
CRC Press is an imprint of Taylor & Francis Group, LLC
The right of Pethuru Raj, Usha Sakthivel, and Susila Nagarajan, to be identified as the authors
of the editorial material and the authors for their individual chapters, has been asserted in
accordance with Sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Reasonable efforts have been made to publish reliable data and information, but the author
and publisher cannot assume the responsibility for the validity of all materials or the
consequences of their use. The authors and publishers have attempted to trace the copyright
holders of all the materials reproduced in this publication and apologize to copyright holders
if permission to publish in this form has not been obtained. If any copyright material has not
been acknowledged, please write and let us know so that we may rectify in any future reprint.
Except as permitted under U.S. Copyright Law, no part of this book may be reprinted,
reproduced, transmitted, or utilized in any form by any electronic, mechanical, or other
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from the publishers.
For permission to photocopy or use material electronically from this work, access
www.copyright.com or contact the Copyright Clearance Center, Inc. (CCC), 222 Rosewood
Drive, Danvers, MA 01923, 978-750-8400. For works that are not available on CCC, please
contact mpkbookspermissions@tandf.co.uk
Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks
and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe.
ISBN: 978-0-367-63594-7 (hbk)
ISBN: 978-1-032-11321-0 (pbk)
ISBN: 978-1-003-11983-8 (ebk)

DOI: 10.1201/9781003119838

Typeset in Caslon
by MPS Limited, Dehradun
Contents

CONTRIBUTOR LIST ix

CHAPTER 1 CONVOLUTIONAL NEURAL NETWORK IN COMPUTER

VISION 1
D. AISHWARYA AND R. I. MINU

CHAPTER 2 TRENDS AND TRANSITION IN THE MACHINE

LEARNING (ML) SPACE 33
SRUTHI ANAND, N. SUSILA, AND USHA SAKTHIVEL

CHAPTER 3 NEXT-GENERATION IOT USE CASES ACROSS

INDUSTRY VERTICALS USING MACHINE LEARNING

ALGORITHMS 57
T. R. KALAIARASAN, SRUTHI ANAND,
V. ANANDKUMAR, AND A. M. RATHEESHKUMAR

CHAPTER 4 A PANORAMIC VIEW OF CYBER ATTACK

DETECTION AND PREVENTION USING MACHINE
LEARNING AND DEEP LEARNING APPROACHES 77
ESTHER DANIEL, N. SUSILA,
AND S. DURGA

v
vi CONTENTS

CHAPTER 5 REGRESSION ALGORITHMS IN MACHINE LEARNING 99

USHA SAKTHIVEL, NEHA SINGHAL,
PETHURU RAJ CHELLIAH, AND ASHWINI R.
MALIPATIL

CHAPTER 6 MACHINE LEARNING-BASED INDUSTRIAL INTERNET

OF THINGS (IIOT) AND ITS APPLICATIONS 123
M. SURESH KUMAR, S. RACHEL,
AND M. V. KAVISELVAN

CHAPTER 7 EMPLOYEE TURNOVER PREDICTION USING SINGLE

VOTING MODEL 153
R. VALARMATHI, M. UMADEVI, AND T. SHEELA

CHAPTER 8 A NOVEL IMPLEMENTATION OF SENTIMENT

ANALYSIS TOWARD DATA SCIENCE 175
VIJAYALAKSHMI SARAVANAN, ISHPREET SINGH,
EMANUEL SZAREK, JEREON HAK,
AND ANJU S. PILLAI

CHAPTER 9 CONSPECTUS OF K-MEANS CLUSTERING

ALGORITHM 193
USHA SAKTHIVEL, A. P. JYOTHI, N. SUSILA,
AND T. SHEELA

CHAPTER 10 SYSTEMATIC APPROACH TO DEAL WITH INTERNAL

FRAGMENTATION AND ENHANCING MEMORY SPACE

DURING COVID-19 215
MOHAN APARNA, R. MAHESWARI
AND J. V. THOMAS ABRAHAM

CHAPTER 11 IOT AUTOMATED SPY DRONE TO DETECT AND

ALERT ILLEGAL DRUG PLANTS FOR LAW

ENFORCEMENT 241
GOTLURU ARUN KUMAR, PULUGU YAMINI,
AND R. MAHESWARI

CHAPTER 12 EXPOUNDING K-MEANS-INSPIRED NETWORK

PARTITIONING ALGORITHM FOR SDN CONTROLLER
PLACEMENT 265
J. PUSHPA AND PETHURU RAJ CHELLIAH
 CONTENTS vii

CHAPTER 13 AN INTELLIGENT DEEP LEARNING-BASED WIRELESS

UNDERGROUND SENSOR SYSTEM FOR IOT-BASED

AGRICULTURAL APPLICATION 291

PRISCILLA RAJADURAI
AND G. JASPHER W. KATHRINE

CHAPTER 14 PREDICTING EFFECTIVENESS OF SOLAR POND

HEAT EXCHANGER WITH LTES CONTAINING CUO
NANOPARTICLE USING MACHINE LEARNING 325
K. KARUNAMURTHY, G. SUGANYA, M. ANANTHI,
AND T. SUBHA

INDEX 345
Contributors

J. V. Thomas Abraham V. Anandkumar

School of Computer Science and Department of Information
Engineering (SCOPE) Technology
Vellore Institute of Technology Sri Krishna College of
Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India Engineering and Technology
D. Aishwarya Coimbatore, India
SRM Institute of Science and
Technology Mohan Aparna
Kattankulathur, Tamil Nadu, School of Computer Science and
India Engineering (SCOPE)
Vellore Institute of Technology
Sruthi Anand Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Department of Information
Technology Pethuru Raj Chelliah
Sri Krishna College of RJIL College of Engineering
Engineering and Technology and Technology
Coimbatore, India Bengaluru, India

ix
x CONTRIBUTORS

Esther Daniel M. V. Kaviselvan

Department of Computer Science Department of Mechanical
and Engineering, Technology Engineering
Karunya Institute of Technology Sri Sairam Engineering College
and Sciences Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Coimbatore, India
Gotluru Arun Kumar
S. Durga School of Computer Science and
Department of Information Engineering (SCOPE)
Technology Vellore Institute of Technology
Karunya Institute of Technology Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
and Sciences
M. Suresh Kumar
Coimbatore, India
Department of Information,
Jereon Hak Technology
M.S. Student Sri Sairam Engineering College
Rochester Institute of Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Technology
R. Maheswari
Rochester, New York, USA
School of Computer Science and
A. P. Jyothi Engineering (SCOPE)
Department of Computer Vellore Institute of Technology
Science and Engineering VTU Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Chennai, India
Ashwini R. Malipatil
T. R. Kalaiarasan Department of CSE
Department of Information Sri Krishna College of
Technology Engineering and Technology
Sri Krishna College of Coimbatore, India
Engineering and Technology
R. I. Minu
Coimbatore, India
SRM Institute of Science and
K. Karunamurthy Technology
Vellore Institute of Technology Kattankulathur, Tamil Nadu,
Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India India

G. Jaspher W. Kathrine Anju S. Pillai

Karunya Institute of Technology Amrita Vishwa Vidyapeetham
and Sciences Coimbatore, India
Coimbatore, India
 CONTRIBUTORS xi

J. Pushpa T. Sheela
Jain University Department of Information
Bengaluru, India Technology
Sri Sairam Engineering College
S. Rachel
Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Department of Information
Technology Ishpreet Singh
Sri Sairam Engineering College M.S. Student
Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India Rochester Institute of
Technology
Priscilla Rajadurai
Rochester, New York, USA
St. Joseph’s Institute of
Technology Neha Singhal
Chennai, India Department of ISE
Sri Krishna College of
A. M. Ratheeshkumar
Engineering and Technology
Department of Information
Coimbatore, India
Technology
Sri Krishna College of T. Subha
Engineering and Technology Sri Sairam Engineering College
Coimbatore, India Chennai, India

Usha Sakthivel G. Suganya

Dept. of Research and Vellore Institute of Technology
Innovation Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Rajeswari College of
N. Susila
Engineering
Department of Information
Bengaluru, India
Technology
and
Sri Krishna College of
Dept. of Computer Science &
Engineering and Technology
Engineering
Coimbatore, India
Visvesvaraya Technological
University Emanuel Szarek
Belagavi, Karnataka, India M.S. Student
Rochester Institute of
Vijayalakshmi Saravanan
Technology
Faculty Member
Rochester, New York, USA
Rochester Institute of
Technology
Rochester, New York, USA
xii CONTRIBUTORS

M. Umadevi Pulugu Yamini

Department of Computer School of Computer Science and
Science and Engineering Engineering (SCOPE)
SRM Institute of Science and Vellore Institute of Technology
Technology Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India

R. Valarmathi
Department of Computer
Science and Engineering
Sri Sairam Engineering
College
Chennai, Tamil Nadu, India
 1
CONVOLUTIONAL NEURAL
NETWORK IN COMPUTER VISION
D. AISHWARYA1 AND R.I. MINU2
1
Research Scholar, SRM Institute of
Science and Technology,
Kattankulathur, Tamil Nadu, India
2
SRM Institute of Science and
Technology, Kattankulathur,
Tamil Nadu, India

Contents

Introduction 2
Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) 4
Distinctive Properties of CNN 5
Activation Functions for CNN 6
Loss Function 8
Datasets and Errors 9
Bias and Variance 9
Overfitting and Underfitting 10
Understanding Padding and Stride 11
Padding 11
Stride 12
Parameters and Hyper Parameters 13
CONV Layer 13
Filter 13
Feature Map 14
Convolution Operation 14
Key Points about Convolution Layers and Filters 16
Pooling Layer 16
Key Points about Pooling Layer 16
Types of Pooling 17
Forward Propagation 18
Calculating the Parameters 18

DOI: 10.1201/9781003119838-1 1
2 APPLIED LEARNING ALGORITHMS FOR INTELLIGENT IOT

Activation Shape and Size 19

Backward Propagation 20
Optimizers 21
Other Ways to Improve the Performance of CNN 21
Image Data Augmentation 21
Deeper Hidden Layers 22
Early Stopping 22
Application of CNN 22
Image Classification 22
RCNN and Object Detection 25
Region-Based Convolutional Neural Network (R-CNN) 26
Fast R-CNN 27
Faster R-CNN 28
You Only Look Once (YOLO) 29
Transfer Learning 29
Transfer Learning for CNN 29
Fine-Tuning or Freezing? 30
Neural Style Transfer (NST) 30

Introduction

Emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) has made machines “Smart.”

By “Smart,” we mean the ability of the machine (possibly a com­
puter) to process the given data with rationality, like an intelligent
human being, and take a suitable decision. AI achieves this in­
telligence with the help of its subsets of algorithms (see Figure 1.1).
AI is a broader field that includes machine learning (ML), artificial
neural network (ANN), and deep learning (DL) as its subsets. AI is
achieved by ANN, which is a network of artificial neurons resembling a
biological neuron and the nervous system. ML enables the machines to
process the data, make decision, and optimize the results based on ex­
perience. ML primarily requires a feature engineer to do the feature en­
gineering process. Also, ML works its best for structured dataset (mostly
comprises numerical data) but is proven inefficient for unstructured types.
To process the unstructured and continuous data like video,
speech, etc., we need more complex neural network. Here comes in
the DL with better results on processing the unstructured data. One
Discovering Diverse Content Through
Random Scribd Documents
any detail in the practice of the Professional Good Man. He would be
able to produce sermons which would be highly informative about
the geography of Palestine, yet useful to such of his fold as might
have a sneaking desire to read magazines on the Sabbath. Thus
guided, he could increase the church membership; he could give
advice to errant youth; he could raise missionary funds so that the
heathen in Calcutta and Peking might have the opportunity to
become like the Reverend Elmer Gantry.

II
Though Cleo took him for a drive through the country, most of the
time before Sunday he dedicated to refurbishing a sermon which he
had often and successfully used with Sharon. The text was from
Romans 1:16: “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is
the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth.”
When he came up to the church on Sunday morning, tall and
ample, grave and magnificent, his face fixed in a smile of
friendliness, his morning coat bright in the sun, a Bible under his
arm, Elmer was exhilarated by the crowd filtering into the church.
The street was filled with country buggies and a Ford or two. As he
went round to the back of the church, passing a knot at the door,
they shouted cordially, “Good morning, Brother!” and “Fine day,
Reverend!”
Cleo was waiting for him with the choir—Miss Kloof, the school-
teacher, Mrs. Diebel, wife of the implement-dealer, Ed Perkins,
deliveryman for Mr. Benham, and Ray Faucett, butter-maker at the
creamery.
Cleo held his hand and rejoiced, “What a wonderful crowd there
is this morning! I’m so glad!”
Together they peeped through the parlor door into the auditorium,
and he almost put his arm about her firm waist. . . . It would have
seemed natural, very pleasant and right and sweet.
When he marched out to the chancel, the church was full, a
dozen standing. They all breathed with admiration. (He learned later
that the last pastor had had trouble with his false teeth and a
fondness for whining.)
He led the singing.
“Come on now!” he laughed. “You’ve got to welcome your new
preacher! The best way is to put a lot of lung-power into it and sing
like the dickens! You can all make some kind of noise. Make a lot!”
Himself he gave example, his deep voice rolling out in hymns of
which he had always been fond: “I Love to Tell the Story” and “My
Faith Looks up to Thee.”
He prayed briefly—he was weary of prayers in which the priest
ramblingly explained to God that God really was God. This was, he
said, his first day with the new flock. Let the Lord give him ways of
showing them his love and his desire to serve them.
Before his sermon he looked from brother to brother. He loved
them all, that moment; they were his regiment, and he the colonel;
his ship’s crew, and he the skipper; his patients, and he the loyal
physician. He began slowly, his great voice swelling to triumphant
certainty as he talked.
Voice, sureness, presence, training, power, he had them all.
Never had he so well liked his rôle; never had he acted so well;
never had he known such sincerity of histrionic instinct.
He had solid doctrine for the older stalwarts. With comforting
positiveness he preached that the atonement was the one supreme
fact in the world. It rendered the most sickly and threadbare the
equals of kings and millionaires; it demanded of the successful that
they make every act a recognition of the atonement. For the young
people he had plenty of anecdotes, and he was not afraid to make
them laugh.
While he did tell the gloomy incident of the boy who was drowned
while fishing on Sunday, he also gave them the humorous story of
the lad who declared he wouldn’t go to school, “because it said in the
Twenty-third Psalm that the Lord made him lie down in green
pastures, and he sure did prefer that to school!”
For all of them, but particularly for Cleo, sitting at the organ, her
hands clasped in her lap, her eyes loyal, he winged into poetry.
 To preach the good news of the gospel, ah! That was not, as the
wicked pretended, a weak, sniveling, sanctimonious thing! It was a
job for strong men and resolute women. For this, the Methodist
missionaries had faced the ferocious lion and the treacherous fevers
of the jungle, the poisonous cold of the Arctic, the parching desert
and the fields of battle. Were we to be less heroic than they? Here,
now, in Banjo Crossing, there was no triumph of business so stirring,
no despairing need of a sick friend so urgent, as the call to tell
blinded and perishing sinners the necessity of repentance.
“Repentance—repentance—repentance—in the name of the Lord
God!”
His superb voice trumpeted it, and in Cleo’s eyes were inspired
tears.
Beyond controversy, it was the best sermon ever heard in Banjo
Crossing. And they told him so as he cheerily shook hands with them
at the door. “Enjoyed your discourse a lot, Reverend!”
And Cleo came to him, her two hands out, and he almost kissed
her.

III
Sunday School was held after morning service. Elmer determined
that he was not going to attend Sunday School every week—“not on
your life; sneak in a nap before dinner”—but this morning he was
affably and expansively there, encouraging the little ones by a bright
short talk in which he advised them to speak the truth, obey their
fathers and mothers, and give heed to the revelations of their
teachers, such as Miss Mittie Lamb, the milliner, and Oscar Scholtz,
manager of the potato warehouse.
Banjo Crossing had not yet touched the modern Sunday School
methods which, in the larger churches, in another ten years, were to
divide the pupils as elaborately as public school and to provide
training-classes for the teachers. But at least they had separated the
children up to ten years from the older students, and of this juvenile
department Cleo Benham was superintendent.
 Elmer watched her going from class to class; he saw how
naturally and affectionately the children talked to her.
“She’d make a great wife and mother—a great wife for a
preacher—a great wife for a bishop,” he noted.

IV
Evening services at the Banjo Crossing Methodist Church had
normally drawn less than forty people, but there were a hundred
tonight, when, fumblingly, Elmer broke away from old-fashioned
church practise and began what was later to become his famous
Lively Sunday Evenings.
He chose the brighter hymns, “Onward, Christian Soldiers,”
“Wonderful Words of Life,” “Brighten the Corner Where You Are,” and
the triumphant pæan of “When the Roll is Called up Yonder, I’ll be
There.” Instead of making them drone through many stanzas, he had
them sing one from each hymn. Then he startled them by shouting,
“Now I don’t want any of you old fellows to be shocked, or say it isn’t
proper in church, because I’m going to get the spirit awakened and
maybe get the old devil on the run! Remember that the Lord who
made the sunshine and the rejoicing hills must have been behind the
fellows that wrote the glad songs, so I want you to all pipe up good
and lively with ‘Dixie’! Yes, sir! Then, for the old fellows, like me, we’ll
have a stanza of that magnificent old reassurance of righteousness,
‘How Firm a Foundation.’ ”
They did look shocked, some of them; but the youngsters, the
boys and the girls keeping an aseptic tryst in the back pews, were
delighted. He made them sing the chorus of “Dixie” over and over, till
all but one or two rheumatic saints looked cheerful.
His text was from Galatians: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy,
peace.”
“Don’t you ever listen for one second,” he commanded, “to these
wishy-washy fellows that carry water on both shoulders, that love to
straddle the fence, that are scared of the sternness of the good old-
time Methodist doctrine and tell you that details don’t mean anything,
that dogmas and the discipline don’t mean anything. They do!
Justification means something! Baptism means something! It means
something that the wicked and worldly stand for this horrible stinking
tobacco and this insane alcohol, which makes a man like a murderer,
but we Methodists keep ourselves pure and unspotted and undefiled.
“But tonight, on this first day of getting acquainted with you,
Brothers and Sisters, I don’t want to go into these details. I want to
get down to the fundamental thing which details merely carry out,
and that fundamental thing—— What is it? What is it? What is it but
Jesus Christ, and his love for each and every one of us!
“Love! Love! Love! How beauteous the very word! Not carnal love
but the divine presence. What is Love? Listen! It is the rainbow that
stands out, in all its glorious many-colored hues, illuminating and
making glad again the dark clouds of life. It is the morning and the
evening star, that in glad refulgence, there on the awed horizon, call
Nature’s hearts to an uplifted rejoicing in God’s marvelous
firmament! Round about the cradle of the babe, sleeping so quietly
while o’er him hangs in almost agonized adoration his loving mother,
shines the miracle of Love, and at the last sad end, comforting the
hearts that bear its immortal permanence, round even the quiet
tomb, shines Love.
“What is great art—and I am not speaking of ordinary pictures but
of those celebrated Old Masters with their great moral lessons—
what is the mother of art, the inspiration of the poet, the patriot, the
philosopher, and the great man of affairs, be he business man or
statesman—yes, what inspires their every effort save Love?
“Oh, do you not sometimes hear, stealing o’er the plains at dawn,
coming as it were from some far distant secret place, a sound of
melody? When our dear sister here plays the offertory, do you not
seem sometimes to catch the distant rustle of the wings of
cherubim? And what is music, lovely, lovely music, what is fair
melody? Ah, music, ’tis the voice of Love! Ah, ’tis the magician that
makes right royal kings out of plain folks like us! ’Tis the perfume of
the wondrous flower, ’tis the strength of the athlete, strong and
mighty to endure ’mid the heat and dust of the valorous conquest.
Ah, Love, Love, Love! Without it, we are less than beasts; with it,
earth is heaven and we are as the gods!
 “Yes, that is what Love—created by Christ Jesus and conveyed
through all the generations by his church, particularly, it seems to
me, by the great, broad, democratic, liberal brotherhood of the
Methodist Church—that is what it means to us.
“I am reminded of an incident in my early youth, while I was in the
university. There was a young man in my class—I will not give you
his name except to say that we called him Jim—a young man
pleasing to the eye, filled with every possibility for true deep
Christian service, but alas! so beset with the boyish pride of mere
intellect, of mere smart-aleck egotism, that he was unwilling to
humble himself before the source of all intellect and accept Jesus as
his savior.
“I was very fond of Jim—in fact I had been willing to go and room
with him in the hope of bringing him to his senses and getting him to
embrace salvation. But he was a man who had read books by folks
like Ingersoll and Thomas Paine—fool, swell-headed folks that
thought they knew more than Almighty God! He would quote their
polluted and devil-inspired ravings instead of listening to the cool
healing stream that gushes blessedly forth from the Holy Bible. Well,
I argued and argued and argued—I guess that shows I was pretty
young and foolish myself! But one day I was inspired to something
bigger and better than any arguments.
“I just said to Jim, all of a sudden, ‘Jim,’ I said, ‘do you love your
father?’ (A fine old Christian gentleman his father was, too, a country
doctor, with that heroism, that self-sacrifice, that wide experience
which the country doctor has.) ‘Do you love your old dad?’ I asked
him.
“Naturally, Jim was awful’ fond of his father, and he was kind of
hurt that I should have asked him.
“ ‘Sure, of course I do!’ he says. ‘Well, Jim,’ I says, ‘does your
father love you?’ ‘Why, of course he does,’ said Jim. ‘Then look here,
Jim,’ I said; ‘if your earthly father can love you, how much more must
your Father in Heaven, who created all Love, how much more must
he care and yearn for you!’
“Well, sir, that knocked him right over. He forgot all the smart-
aleck things he’d been reading. He just looked at me, and I could
see a tear quivering in the lad’s eyes as he said, ‘I see how you
mean, now, and I want to say, friend, that I’m going to accept Jesus
Christ as my lord and master!’
“Oh, yes, yes, yes, how beautiful it is, the golden glory of God’s
Love! Do you not feel it? I mean that! I don’t mean just a snuffling,
lazy, mechanical acceptance, but a passionate—”

V
He had them!
It had been fun to watch the old fanatics, who had objected to the
singing of Dixie, come under the spell and admit his power. He had
preached straight at one of them after another; he had conquered
them all.
At the end they shook hands even more warmly than in the
morning.
Cleo stood back, hypnotized. When he came to her she intoned,
her eyes unseeing, “Oh, Reverend Gantry, this is the greatest day
our old church has ever known!”
“Did you like what I said of Love?”
“Oh . . . Love . . . yes!”
She spoke as one asleep; she seemed not to know that he was
holding her hand, softly; she walked out of the church beside him,
unspeaking, and of her tranced holiness he felt a little awe.

VI
In his attention to business, Elmer had not given especial heed to
the collections. It had not been carelessness, for he knew his
technique as a Professional Good Man. But the first day, he felt, he
ought to establish himself as a spiritual leader, and when they all
understood that, he would see to it that they paid suitably for the
spiritual leadership. Was not the Laborer worthy of his Hire?

VII
 The reception to welcome Elmer was held the next Tuesday
evening in the basement of the church. From seven-thirty, when they
met, till a quarter of eight, he was busy with a prodigious amount of
hand-shaking.
They told him he was very eloquent, very spiritual. He could see
Cleo’s pride at their welcome. She had the chance to whisper, “Do
you realize how much it means? Mostly they aren’t anything like so
welcoming to a new preacher. Oh, I am so glad!”
Brother Benham called them to order, in the basement, and
Sister Kilween sang “The Holy City” as a solo. It was pretty bad.
Brother Benham in a short hesitating talk said they had been
delighted by Brother Gantry’s sermons. Brother Gantry in a long and
gushing talk said that he was delighted by Brother Benham, the
other Benhams, the rest of the congregation, Banjo Crossing, Banjo
County, the United States of America, Bishop Toomis, and the
Methodist Episcopal Church (North) in all its departments.
Cleo concluded the celebration with a piano solo, and there was
a great deal more of hand-shaking. It seemed to be the rule that
whoever came or was pushed within reach of the pastor, no matter
how many times during the evening, should attack his hand each
time.
And they had cake and homemade ice cream.
It was very dull and, to Elmer, very grateful. He felt accepted,
secure, and ready to begin his work.

VIII
He had plans for the Wednesday evening prayer-meeting, He
knew what a prayer-meeting in Banjo Crossing would be like. They
would drone a couple of hymns and the faithful, half a dozen of
them, always using the same words, would pop up and mumble,
“Oh, I thank the Lord that he has revealed himself to me and has
shown me the error of my ways and oh that those who have not
seen his light and whose hearts are heavy with sin may turn to him
this evening while they still have life and breath”—which they never
did. And the sullenly unhappy woman in the faded jacket, at the
back, would demand, “I want the prayers of the congregation to save
my husband from the sins of smoking and drinking.”
“I may not,” Elmer meditated, “be as swell a scholar as old
Toomis, but I can invent a lot of stunts and everything to wake the
church up and attract the crowds, and that’s worth a whole lot more
than all this yowling about the prophets and theology!”
He began his “stunts” with that first prayer-meeting.
He suggested, “I know a lot of us want to give testimony, but
sometimes it’s hard to think of new ways of saying things, and let me
suggest something new. Let’s give our testimony by picking out
hymns that express just how we feel about the dear Savior and his
help. Then we can all join together in the gladsome testimony.”
It went over.
“That’s a fine fellow, that new Methodist preacher,” said the
villagers that week.
They were shy enough, and awkward and apparently indifferent,
but in a friendly way they were spying on him, equally ready to praise
him as a neighbor or snicker at him as a fool.
“Yes,” they said; “a fine fellow, and smart’s a whip, and mighty
eloquent, and a real husky man. Looks you right straight in the eye.
Only thing that bothers me— He’s too good to stay here with us.
And if he is so good, why’d they ever send him here in the first
place? What’s wrong with him? Boozer, d’ye think?”
Elmer, who knew his Paris, Kansas, his Gritzmacher Springs, had
guessed that precisely these would be the opinions, and he took
care, as he handshook his way from store to store, house to house,
to explain that for years he had been out in the evangelistic field, and
that by advice of his old and true friend, Bishop Toomis, he was
taking this year in a smaller garden-patch to rest up for his labors to
come.
He was assiduous, but careful, in his pastoral calls on the
women. He praised their gingerbread, Morris chairs, and souvenirs
of Niagara, and their children’s school-exercise books. He became
friendly, as friendly as he could be to any male, with the village
doctor, the village homeopath, the lawyer, the station-agent, and all
the staff at Benham’s store.
But he saw that if he was to take the position suitable to him in
the realm of religion, he must study, he must gather several more
ideas and ever so many new words, to be put together for the
enlightenment of the generation.

IX
His duties at Banjo Crossing were not violent, and hour after
hour, in his quiet chamber at the residence of the Widow Clark, he
gave himself trustingly to scholarship.
He continued his theological studies; he read all the sermons by
Beecher, Brooks, and Chapman; he read three chapters of the Bible
daily; and he got clear through the letter G in the Bible dictionary.
Especially he studied the Methodist Discipline, in preparation for his
appearance before the Annual Conference Board of Examiners as a
candidate for full conference membership—full ministerhood.
The Discipline, which is a combination of Methodist prayerbook
and by-laws, was not always exciting. Elmer felt a lack of sermon-
material and spiritual quickening in the paragraph:

The concurrent recommendation of two-thirds of all the

members of the several Annual Conferences present and
voting, and of two-thirds of all the members of the Lay
Electoral Conferences present and voting, shall suffice to
authorize the next ensuing General Conference by a two-
thirds vote to alter or amend any of the provisions of this
Constitution excepting Article X, § i; and also, whenever such
alteration or amendment shall have been first recommended
by a General Conference by a two-thirds vote, then so soon
as two-thirds of all the members of the several Annual
Conferences present and voting, and two-thirds of all the
members of the Lay Electoral Conferences present and
voting, shall have concurred therein, such alteration or
amendment shall take effect; and the result of the vote shall
be announced by the General Superintendents.
 He liked better, from the Articles of Religion in the Discipline:

The offering of Christ, once made, is that perfect redemption,

propitiation, and satisfaction for all the sins of the whole world,
both original and actual; and there is none other satisfaction
for sin but that alone. Wherefore the sacrifice of masses, in
the which it is commonly said that the priest doth offer Christ
for the quick and the dead, to have remission of pain or guilt,
is a blasphemous fable and dangerous deceit.

He wasn’t altogether certain what it meant, but it had such a fine

uplifting roll. “Blasphemous fable and dangerous deceit.” Fine!
He informed his edified congregation the next Sunday that the
infallibility of the Pope was “a blasphemous fable and a dangerous
deceit,” and they almost jumped.
He had much edification from these “Rules for a Preacher’s
Conduct” in the Discipline:

Be Serious. Let your motto be, “Holiness to the Lord.” Avoid

all lightness, jesting, and foolish talking. Converse sparingly
and conduct yourself prudently with women. . . . Tell every
one under your care what you think wrong in his conduct and
temper, and that lovingly and plainly, as soon as may be; else
it will fester in your heart.

As a general method of employing our time we advise you, 1.

As often as possible to rise at four. 2. From four to five in the
morning and from five to six in the evening to meditate, pray,
and read the Scriptures with notes.

Extirpate out of our Church buying or selling goods which

have not paid the duty laid upon them by government. . . .
Extirpate bribery—receiving anything, directly or indirectly—
for voting at any election.

Elmer became a model in all these departments except, perhaps,

avoiding lightness and jesting; conducting himself in complete
prudence with women; telling every one under his care what he
thought wrong with them—that would have taken all his spare time;
arising at four; and extirpating sellers of smuggled goods.
For his grades, to be examined by the Annual Conference, he
wrote to Dean Trosper at Mizpah. He explained to the dean that he
had seen a great new light, that he had worked with Sister Falconer,
but that it had been the early influence of Dean Trosper which,
working somewhat slowly, had led him to his present perfection.
He received the grades, with a letter in which the dean observed:
“I hope you will not overwork your new zeal for righteousness. It
might be hard on folks. I seem to recall a tendency in you to overdo
a lot of things. As a Baptist, let me congratulate the Methodists on
having you. If you really do mean all you say about your present
state of grace—well, don’t let that keep you from going right on
praying. There may still be virtues for you to acquire.”
“Well, by God!” raged the misjudged saint, and, “Oh, rats, what’s
the odds! Got the credentials, anyway, and he says I can get my B.
D. by passing an examination. Trouble with old Trosper is he’s one of
these smart alecks. T’ hell with him!”

X
Along with his theological and ecclesiastical researches, Elmer
applied himself to more worldly literature. He borrowed books from
Cleo and from the tiny village library, housed in the public school;
and on his occasional trips to Sparta, the nearest sizable city, he
even bought a volume or two, when he could find good editions
secondhand.
He began with Browning.
He had heard a lot about Browning. He had heard that he was a
stylish poet and an inspiring thinker. But personally he did not find
that he cared so much for Browning. There were so many lines that
he had to read three or four times before they made sense, and
there was so much stuff about Italy and all those Wop countries.
But Browning did give him a number of new words for the note-
book of polysyllables and phrases which he was to keep for years,
and which was to secrete material for some of his most rotund public
utterances. There has been preserved a page from it:
incinerate—burn up
Merovingian—French tribe bout a. d. 500
rem Golgotha was scene crucifixn
Leigh Hunt—poet—1840—n. g.
lupin—blue flower
defeasance—making nix
chanson (pro. Shan-song)—French kind of song
Rem: Man worth while is m. who can smile when ev thing goes
dead wrong
Sermon on man that says other planets inhabited—nix. cause
Bible says o of Xt trying to save THEM.
Tennyson, Elmer found more elevating than Browning. He liked
“Maud”—she resembled Cleo, only not so friendly; and he delighted
in the homicides and morality of “Idylls of the King.” He tried
Fitzgerald’s Omar, which had been recommended by the literary set
at Terwillinger, and he made a discovery which he thought of
communicating through the press.
He had heard it said that Omar was non-religious, but when he
read:
Myself when young did eagerly frequent
Doctor and Saint, and heard great argument
About it and about: but evermore
Came out by the same door wherein I went,
he perceived that in this quatrain Omar obviously meant that though
teachers might do a whole lot of arguing, Omar himself stuck to his
belief in Jesus.
In Dickens Elmer had a revelation.
He had not known that any literature published previous to the
Saturday Evening Post could be thrilling. He did not care so much for
the humor—it seemed to him that Mr. Dickens was vulgar and almost
immoral when he got Pickwick drunk and caused Mantalini to
contemplate suicide—but he loved the sentiment. When Paul
Dombey died, Elmer could have wept; when Miss Nickleby protected
her virtue against Sir Mulberry Hawk, Elmer would have liked to have
been there, both as a parson and as an athlete, to save her from that
accursed society man, so typical of his class in debauching youth
and innocence.
“Yes, sir, you bet, that’s great stuff!” exulted Elmer. “There’s a
writer that goes right down to the depths of human nature. Great
stuff. I’ll preach on him when I get these hicks educated up to literary
sermons.”
But his artistic pursuits could not be all play. He had to master
philosophy as well; and he plunged into Carlyle and Elbert Hubbard.
He terminated the first plunge, very icy, with haste; but in the
biographies by Mr. Hubbard, at that time dominating America, Elmer
found inspiration. He learned that Rockefeller had not come to be
head of Standard Oil by chance, but by labor, genius, and early
Baptist training. He learned that there are sermons in stones,
edification in farmers, beatitude in bankers, and style in adjectives.
Elmer, who had always lived as publicly as a sparrow, could not
endure keeping his literary treasures to himself. But for once Cleo
Benham was not an adequate mate. He felt that she had read more
of such belles-lettres as “The Message to Garcia” than even himself,
so his companion in artistic adventure was Clyde Tippey, the
Reverend Clyde Tippey, pastor of the United Brethren Church of
Banjo Crossing.
Clyde was not, like Elmer, educated. He had left high school after
his second year, and since then he had had only one year in a
United Brethren seminary. Elmer didn’t think much, he decided, of all
this associating and fellowshiping with a lot of rival preachers—it was
his job, wasn’t it, to get their parishioners away from them? But it
was an ecstasy to have, for once, a cleric to whom he could talk
down.
He called frequently on the Reverend Mr. Tippey in the modest
cottage which (at the age of twenty-six) Clyde occupied with his fat
wife and four children. Mr. Tippey had pale blue eyes and he wore a
fourteen-and-a-half collar encircling a thirteen neck.
 “Clyde,” crowed Elmer, “if you’re going to reach the greatest
number and not merely satisfy their spiritual needs but give ’em a
rich, full, joyous life, you gotta explain great literature to ’em.”
“Yes. Maybe that’s so. Haven’t had time to read much, but I
guess there’s lot of fine lessons to be learned out of literature,” said
the Reverend Mr. Tippey.
“Is there! Say, listen to this! From Longfellow. The poet.
Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal,
and this—just get the dandy swing to it:
Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sands of time.
I read that way back in school-reader, but I never had anybody to
show me what it meant, like I’m going to do with my congregation.
Just think! ‘The grave is NOT its goal!’ Why, say, Longfellow is just
as much of a preacher as you or I are! Eh?”
“Yes, that’s so. I’ll have to read some of his poetry. Could you
lend me the book?”
“You bet I will, Clyde! Be a fine thing for you. A young preacher
like you has got to remember, if you’ll allow an older hand to say so,
that our education isn’t finished when we start preaching. We got to
go on enlarging our mental horizons. See how I mean? Now I’m
going to start you off reading ‘David Copperfield.’ Say, that’s full of
fine passages. There’s this scene where—— This David, he had an
aunt that everybody thought she was simply an old crab, but the
poor little fellow, his father-in-law—— I hope it won’t shock you to
hear a preacher say it, but he was an old son of a gun, that’s what
he was, and he treated David terribly, simply terribly, and David ran
away, and found his aunt’s house, and then it proved she was fine
and dandy to him! Say, ’ll just make the tears come to your eyes, the
place where he finds her house and she don’t recognize him and he
tells her who he is, and then she kneels right down beside him
—— And shows how none of us are justified in thinking other folks
are mean just because we don’t understand ’em. You bet! Yes, sir.
‘David Copperfield.’ You sure can’t go wrong reading that book!”
“ ‘David Copperfield.’ I’ve heard the name. It’s mighty nice of you
to come and tell me about it, brother.”
“Oh, that’s nothing, nothing at all! Mighty glad to help you in any
way I can, Clyde.”
Elmer’s success as a literary and moral evangel to Mr. Clyde
Tippey sent him back to his excavations with new fervor. He would
lead the world not only to virtue but to beauty.
Considering everything, Longfellow seemed the best news to
carry to this surprised and waiting world, and Elmer managed to get
through many, many pages, solemnly marking the passages which
he was willing to sanction, and which did not mention wine.
Ah, nothing is too late
Till the tired heart shall cease to palpitate.
Cato learned Greek at eighty; Sophocles
Wrote his grand Œdipus, and Simonides
Bore off the prize of verse from his compeers,
When each had numbered more than fourscore years.
Elmer did not, perhaps, know very much about Simonides, but
with these instructive lines he was able to decorate a sermon in each
of the pulpits he was henceforth to hold.
He worked his way with equal triumph through James Russell
Lowell, Whittier, and Ella Wheeler Wilcox. He gave up Kipling
because he found that he really enjoyed reading Kipling, and
concluded that he could not be a good poet. But he was magnificent
in discovering Robert Burns.
Then he collided with Josiah Royce.

XI
Bishop Wesley R. Toomis had suggested to Elmer that he ought
to read philosophy, and he had recommended Royce. He himself, he
said, hadn’t been able to give so much time to Royce as he would
have liked, but he knew that here was a splendid field for any
intellectual adventurer. So Elmer came back from Sparta with the
two volumes of Royce’s “The World and the Individual,” and two new
detective stories.
He would skip pleasantly but beneficially through Royce, then
pick up whatever ideas he might find in all these other philosophers
he had heard mentioned: James and Kant and Bergson and who
was that fellow with the funny name—Spinoza?
He opened the first volume of Royce confidently, and drew back
in horror.
He had a nice, long, free afternoon in which to become wise. He
labored on. He read each sentence six times. His mouth drooped
pathetically. It did not seem fair that a Christian knight who was
willing to give his time to listening to people’s ideas should be treated
like this. He sighed, and read the first paragraph again. He sighed,
and the book dropped into his lap.
He looked about. On the stand beside him was one of the
detective stories. He reached for it. It began as all proper detective
stories should begin—with the tap-room of the Cat and Fiddle Inn, on
a stormy night when gusts of rain beat against the small ancient
casement, but within all was bright and warm; the Turkey-red
curtains shone in the firelight, and the burnished handles of the beer-
pump—
An hour later Elmer had reached the place where the Scotland
Yard Inspector was attacked from the furze-bush by the maniac. He
excitedly crossed his legs, and Royce fell to the floor and lay there.
But he kept at it. In less than three months he had reached page
fifty-one of the first volume of Royce. Then he bogged down in a
footnote:

The scholastic text-books, namely, as for instance the

Disputations of Suarez, employ our terms much as follows.
Being (ens), taken quite in the abstract, such writers said, is a
word that shall equally apply both to the what and to the that.
Thus if I speak of the being of a man, I may, according to this
usage, mean either the ideal nature of a man, apart from
 man’s existence, or the existence of a man. The term “Being”
is so far indifferent to both of the sharply sundered senses. In
this sense Being may be viewed as of two sorts. As the what
it means the Essence of things, or the Esse Essentiæ. In this
sense, by the Being of a man, you mean simply the definition
of what a man as an idea means. As the that, Being means
the Existent Being, or Esse Existentiæ. The Esse Existentiæ
of a man, or its existent being, would be what it would
possess only if it existed. And so the scholastic writers in
question always have to point out whether by the term Ens, or
Being, they in any particular passage are referring to the what
or to the that, to the Esse Essentiæ or to the Existentiæ.

The Reverend Elmer Gantry drew his breath, quietly closed the
book, and shouted, “Oh, shut up!”
He never again read any philosophy more abstruse than that of
Wallace D. Wattles or Edward Bok.

XII
He did not neglect his not very arduous duties. He went fishing—
which gained him credit among the males. He procured a dog, also a
sound, manly thing to do, and though he occasionally kicked the dog
in the country, he was clamorously affectionate with it in town. He
went up to Sparta now and then to buy books, attend the movies,
and sneak into theaters; and though he was tempted by other
diversions even less approved by the Methodist Discipline, he really
did make an effort to keep from falling.
By enthusiasm and brass, he raised most of the church debt, and
made agitation for a new carpet. He risked condemnation by having
a cornet solo right in church one Sunday evening. He kept himself
from paying any attention, except for rollickingly kissing her once or
twice, to the fourteen-year-old daughter of his landlady. He was, in
fact, full of good works and clerical exemplariness.
But the focus of his life now was Cleo Benham.
 CHAPTER XXI

I
with women Elmer had always considered himself what he
called a “quick worker,” but the properties of the ministry, the
delighted suspicion with which the gossips watched a preacher who
went courting, hindered his progress with Cleo. He could not, like the
young blades in town, walk with Cleo up the railroad tracks or
through the willow-shaded pasture by Banjo River. He could hear ten
thousand Methodist elders croaking, “Avoid the vurry appearance of
evil.”
He knew that she was in love with him—had been ever since she
had first seen him, a devout yet manly leader, standing by the pulpit
in the late light of summer afternoon. He was certain that she would
surrender to him whenever he should demand it. He was certain that
she had every desirable quality. And yet—
Oh, somehow, she did not stir him. Was he afraid of being
married and settled and monogamic? Was it simply that she needed
awakening? How could he awaken her when her father was always
in the way?
Whenever he called on her, old Benham insisted on staying in the
parlor. He was, strictly outside of business hours, an amateur of
religion, fond of talking about it. Just as Elmer, shielded by the piano,
was ready to press Cleo’s hand, Benham would lumber up and
twang, “What do you think, Brother? Do you believe salvation comes
by faith or works?”
Elmer made it all clear—muttering to himself, “Well, you, you old
devil, with that cut-throat store of yours, you better get into Heaven
on faith, for God knows you’ll never do it on works!”
And when Elmer was about to slip out to the kitchen with her to
make lemonade, Benham held him by demanding, “What do you
think of John Wesley’s doctrine of perfection?”
“Oh, it’s absolutely sound and proven,” admitted Elmer,
wondering what the devil Mr. Wesley’s doctrine of perfection might
be.
It is possible that the presence of the elder Benhams, preventing
too close a communion with Cleo, kept Elmer from understanding
what it meant that he should not greatly have longed to embrace her.
He translated his lack of urgency into virtue; and went about
assuring himself that he was indeed a reformed and perfected
character . . . and so went home and hung about the kitchen,
chattering with little Jane Clark in pastoral jokiness.
Even when he was alone with Cleo, when she drove him in the
proud Benham motor for calls in the country, even while he was
volubly telling himself how handsome she was, he was never quite
natural with her.

II
He called on an evening of late November, and both her parents
were out, attending Eastern Star. She looked dreary and red-eyed.
He crowed benevolently while they stood at the parlor door, “Why,
Sister Cleo, what’s the matter? You look kind of sad.”
“Oh, it’s nothing—”
“Come on now! Tell me! I’ll pray for you, or beat somebody up,
whichever you prefer!”
“Oh, I don’t think you ought to joke about—— Anyway, it’s really
nothing.”
She was staring at the floor. He felt buoyant and dominating, so
delightfully stronger than she. He lifted her chin with his forefinger,
demanding, “Look up at me now!”
In her naked eyes there was such shameful, shameless longing
for him that he was drawn. He could not but slip his arm around her,
and she dropped her head on his shoulder, weeping, all her pride
gone from her. He was so exalted by the realization of his own power
that he took it for passion, and suddenly he was kissing her,
conscious of the pale fineness of her skin, her flattering yielding to
him; suddenly he was blurting, “I’ve loved you, oh, terrible, ever
since the first second I saw you!”