must the man's personal characteristics be adequate, but he must be of that peculiar type of churchmanship which was approved by the parish.

Meanwhile the priest officiating was proceeding to organize the work of the Chapel as its necessities suggested. He was becoming more and more the pastor of the neighbourhood; his society of young men under his direction was doing the work of half a dozen deacons; he was organizing the older men into a mutual benefit society, gathering in the longshoremen and the teamsters from the riverside, the mechanics and the clerks from the tenements.

He was celebrating the Holy Communion at seven every Sunday morning, superintending the Sunday school and teaching his Bible class from nine-thirty to ten-thirty, conducting divine worship and sometimes preaching from eleven to twelve-thirty, conducting children's service once a month at three in the afternoon and service every Sunday evening at seven. This priest officiating was reading history, theology and philosophy from eight to eleven, was in his office disposing of from twenty to thirty cases from eleven to one every day, visiting the sick and the poor from two to six in the afternoon and on call in the evening till midnight. He was with his workingmen's club and his young men's club on appointed evenings. All this he was doing as a day's work contentedly, happily, for two thousand five hundred dollars a year. Meanwhile, Trinity vestry was scouring the American Church to find a man who would consent to do part of this work for ten thousand dollars a year-but such is the way of vestries.

After passing under survey the prominent clergy of the Episcopal Church the choice of the vestry fell upon a gentleman of whom it is not unjust to say that he did not quite come up to specifications. He was not a St. Chrysostom in the pulpit, nor a St. Gregory in the pastoral office,

nor did he have the social charm of Giovanni de Medici,

Pope Leo X. He was an ordinary clergyman of the second class. He was a man who had gone from parish to parish, serving each for about five years and always most highly recommended by the parish he was leaving. He had been called from the fashionable church of a small Western town. He was without experience or aptitude for the work of St. Paul's Chapel. He might, and did, minister to the few old men and women who lived uptown, but they had, for the most part, reached that point in their spiritual career that called only for the offices of the visitation of the sick and the burial of the dead. This good man had ten thousand dollars to spend and it required time and thought to accomplish the task. He rented a two-thousand-dollar house uptown. For the sake of his health he would walk from his house in the Twenties to his office at Vesey Street, a journey of from an hour and a half to two hours; would stay in his office an hour and return to his home for early dinner.

On Sundays he would preach a sermon carefully selected from his barrel, a sermon safe and sound, too long for a nap, not long enough for a slumber. The vestry were not long in discovering that, whatever else he might be, he was not an energetic parish worker, and there was work to be done in St. Paul's.

To meet this condition the vestry did a very unwise thing, as you may see. After this gentleman had been at the head of St. Paul's Chapel for about three months, the rector came to my room of a Tuesday morning, his face aglow, and told me that at its meeting on the previous evening the vestry of Trinity Church had placed me on the permanent staff of the parish as junior assistant minister, at a salary of four thousand dollars a year, and that he would assign me to duty at St. Paul's Chapel. This was a startling thing for me and most remarkable for the parish.

Here was I, only twenty months out of the seminary, less than three months a priest, and here was the rector of Trinity handing me one of the plums of the clerical profession. I was fixed for life, a prelate of the Church; all that I had to do was to do nothing out of the way, and in due time I would be senior assistant minister with a salary of ten thousand a year, with the possibility of the rectorship of the parish and a bishopric always in sight. At once I became an important man, much talked of in the Church—my people at home were, of course, proud of me and my Uncle Isaac took all the credit to himself, seeing that he had recommended me to go to New York. But nevertheless it was an unjust, unwise thing for the vestry to do and dangerous for me. It was really an insult to the senior assistant minister; it was done without consulting him and, in effect, took the direction of the work out of his hands, and he knew it. It placed me in an impossible situation and ministered to my pride and vanity. But I did not see these consequences until later, and assumed at once the dignities and emoluments of my new office.

This action of the vestry of Trinity parish was the consequence of radical changes in the life of the rector, which altered his relations to St. Paul's, and to the parish work in general. The vestry had a few years before sold St. John's Park to the New York Central Railroad, which had built its freight depot on the site. The neighbourhood had changed so that it was no longer tenable as a home for the rector. The old rectory had been set apart as an infirmary and hospital under the care of the Sisters of Saint Mary. A new rectory had been purchased on Twentyfifth street, next to Trinity Chapel. To his great grief, Dr. Dix was compelled by the vestry to leave his home among the masses and take up his abode with the classes. Soon after his removal from the old to the new rectory,

I had occasion to visit him in his brownstone front on Twenty-fifth Street. The butler answered my ring, ushered me into the drawing-room, where I found the rector sitting alone and desolate; he rose, greeted me and sat down again, and, sighing deeply, he said, "Mr. Crapsey, this is lonely magnificence"-and it was. To relieve the loneliness and set off the magnificence, the rector married a young, charming, beautiful woman. Somehow, the Dr. Dix of the new rectory was never quite like the Dr. Dix of the old rectory. He put me in St. Paul's to keep alive his work among the people of the Chapel. Following the example of my rector, on the second of June, 1875, I was married to Adelaide Trowbridge, daughter of Marcus Henry and Harriet Gunn Trowbridge, of Catskill, New York.

W

CHAPTER XIX

A LODGING-HOUSE

HEN Dr. Dix called at my rooms to give me my commission as junior assistant minister, he informed me that the vestry would be pleased if I could find lodgings in some neighbourhood where there would be less noise, less dirt and better air. I sent my thanks to the vestry for their suggestion and assured them that I would give the matter consideration. But disinclination to change kept me where I was until marriage compelled me to follow the advice of the vestry. It was all very well for a man to sleep in a dark bedroom, to be without bath or kitchen, but for a woman this way of living was not to be thought of. In anticipation of this necessary change in my mode of life, I had rented a house in Van Dam Street, near Hudson. This was a quiet, old-fashioned neighbourhood, lying between the extremes of poverty and riches. It was the home of clerks and small professional men, the rental being well within my means, especially as my friend, Philip Brown, junior assistant minister of St. John's Chapel, had consented to share the house and the expense with me.

My home was within half an hour's walk of my office and there was no change in the order of my daily life. I spent my morning in my study; was at my desk at eleven to hear and dispose of applications for relief; had my lunch in the neighbourhood and gave up my afternoons to the visitation of the sick and the needy; dined at home at six-thirty and was back at the parish house at eight, having