lack Mass? This
is a wretched letter, and it doesn't succeed in the least in
expressing what I owe to you and what I already owe to Father
Rowley. I used to think that the Sacred Heart was a rather material
device for attracting the multitude, but I'm beginning to realize
in the atmosphere of St. Agnes' that it is a gloriously simple
devotion and that it is human nature's attempt to express the
inexpressible. I'll write to you again next week. Please give my
love to everybody at the Rectory.

Always your most affectionate

Mark.

Father Rowley had been at St. Agnes' seven or eight years when Mark
found himself attached to the Mission, in which time he had transformed
the district completely. It was a small parish (actually of course it
was not a parish at all, although it was fast qualifying to become one)
of something over a thousand small houses, few of which were less than a
century old. The streets were narrow and crooked, mostly named after
bygone admirals or forgotten sea-fights; the romantic and picturesque
quarter of a great naval port to the casual glance of a passer-by, but
heartbreaking to any except the most courageous resident on account of
its overcrowded and tumbledown condition. Yet it lacked the dreariness
of an East End slum, for the sea winds blew down the narrowest streets
and alleys, sailors and soldiers were always in view, and the windows of
the pawnbrokers were filled with the relics of long voyages, with idols
and large shells, with savage weapons and the handiwork of remote
islands.

When Mark came to live in Keppel Street, most of the brothels and many
of the public houses had been eliminated from the district, and in their
place flourished various clubs and guilds. The services in the church
were crowded: there was a long roll of communicants; the civilization of
the city of God was visible in this Chatsea slum. One or two of the lay
helpers used to horrify Mark with stories of early days there, and when
he seemed inclined to regret that he had arrived so late upon the scene,
they used to tease him about his missionary spirit.

"If he can't reform the people," said Cartwright, one of the lay
helpers, a tall thin young man with a long nose and a pleasant smile,
"he still has us to reform."

"Come along, Mark Anthony," said Warrender, another lay helper, who
after working for seven years among the poor had at last been charily
accepted b