"I wonder how much of all this is bad for uptown home life?" Miss Lavinia
queried, gazing around the room; but as she did not address either of us
in particular, we did not answer, as we did not know,--who does?
A spare half-hour before closing time we gave to the Stock Exchange, and
it was quite enough, for some one was short on something, and pandemonium
reigned. As we stood on the corner of Rector Street and Broadway,
hesitating whether to take surface or elevated cars, faint strains of
organ music from Trinity attracted us.
"Service or choir practice; let us go in a few moments," said Evan, to
whom the organ is a voice that never fails to draw. We took seats far
back, and lost ourselves among the shadows. A special service was in
progress, the music half Gregorian, and the congregation was too
scattered to mar the feeling that we had slipped suddenly out of the
material world. The shadows of the sparrows outside flitted upward on the
stained glass windows, until it seemed as if the great chords had broken
free and taking form were trying to escape.
Now and then the door would open softly and unaccustomed figures slip in
and linger in the open space behind the pews. Aliens, newly landed and
wandering about in the vicinity of their water-front lodging-houses,
music and a church appealed to their loneliness. Some stood, heads bowed,
and some knelt in prayer and crossed themselves on leaving; one woman,
lugging a great bundle tied in a blue cloth, a baby on her arm and
another clinging to her skirts, put down her load, bedded the baby upon
it, and began to tell her beads.
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