ned with great chestnuts and hushed in a
stillness that was almost religion itself. There was not a house in the
parish assessed at less than twenty-five thousand, and in very heart of
it the Mausoleum Club, with its smooth white stone and its Grecian
architecture, carried one back to the ancient world and made one think
of Athens and of Paul preaching on Mars Hill. It was, all considered, a
splendid thing to fight sin in such a parish and to keep it out of it.
For kept out it was. One might look the length and breadth of the broad
avenue and see no sign of sin all along it. There was certainly none in
the smooth faces of the chauffeurs trundling their drowsy motors; no
sign of it in the expensive children paraded by imported nursemaids in
the chequered light of the shaded street; least of all was there any
sign of it in the Stock Exchange members of the congregation as they
walked along side by side to their lunch at the Mausoleum Club, their
silk hats nodding together in earnest colloquy on Shares Preferred and
Profits Undivided. So might have walked, so must have walked, the very
Fathers of the Church themselves.

Whatever sin there was in the City was shoved sideways into the roaring
streets of commerce where the elevated railway ran, and below that
again into the slums. Here there must have been any quantity of sin.
The rector of St. Asaph's was certain of it. Many of the richer of his
parishioners had been down in parties late at night to look at it, and
the ladies of his congregation were joined together into all sorts of
guilds and societies and bands of endeavour for stamping it out and
driving it under or putting it into jail till it surrendered.

But the slums lay outside the rector's parish. He had no right to
interfere. They were under the charge of a special mission or
auxiliary, a remnant of the St. Asaph's of the past, placed under the
care of a divinity student, at four hundred dollars per annum. His
charge included all the slums and three police courts and two music
halls and the City jail. One Sunday afternoon in every three months the
rector and several ladies went down and sang hymns for him in his
mission-house. But his work was really very easy. A funeral, for
example, at the mission, was a simple affair, meaning nothing more than
the preparation of a plain coffin and a glassless hearse and the
distribution of a few artificial everlasting flowers to women crying in
their aprons; a thing easily do