This painting is based on drawings that George Wesley Bellows made on assignment for Metropolitan Magazine, to accompany an article on popular evangelist Billy Sunday. The title refers to the circuit itinerant evangelists followed as they crossed the country: they frequently covered the ground of their tents with sawdust to hold down the dust and dirt. Bellows’s wife, Emma, later described the painting as being made “after a visit to Philadelphia. Billy Sunday shakes a convert’s hand, at his back stands Ma Sunday and next to her Mr. Rodeheaver directs the vast volunteer choir in the background.”