know what would have happened to me if at that moment we had not reached St. Patrick’s Cathedral. The full, rich organ notes seemed to soothe the Herr Director’s ruffled spirit, and our discussion ended as we entered the welcoming portal.

In a church which in all places and all ages remains the same, there was nothing for my guests to see or hear to which they were not accustomed. There was the priest, alone with the great mystery which he was enacting, and by his side the diminutive ministrants. The crowd which filled every available space in that huge interior was silent and reverent. Now the tinkling of a bell, like a command from Heaven, bade all kneel, and now the same bell bade them rise. The incense, the stately chant, and then the hushed, expectant throng going forward to partake from the priest’s hand of the means of grace, which he alone could offer in the name of the one Holy Catholic Church—all this could not fail to impress us.

Into the august and solemn atmosphere there came from a near-by church the chimed notes of a hymn-tune such as the people once sang defiantly when they proclaimed their religious freedom. It was a spiritual war tune which soldiers could sing, and strangely enough it seemed to fit into this atmosphere as if it were the one thing which the service needed. It recalled the self-assertion of the people before their God, their man God, who was born in a stable, who worshipped as He worked, and worked as He worshipped, hurling His anathemas at those who blocked the gates of the kingdom to them who would enter, yet did not enter themselves.

Evidently the Herr Director felt as I felt; for he whispered to me, “The Reformation.” When I nodded my approval, he said: “But see how unmoved she is, this rock-founded church. It will take something more than hymn-tunes to disturb her.”

We left the Cathedral while the hungry multitude was being fed with the Sacrament of our Lord, and our spirits, too, had been fed, although we were not of that fold.

While the Roman Catholics were finishing their worship, the Protestants were making ready to begin. The first bells had chimed appealingly, not commandingly, and a thin stream of worshippers appeared on the Avenue, growing thinner as it divided, entering one or the other of those edifices where men were to worship according to the dictates of their conscience, their taste, or their social position.

Many strangers, like ourselves, were looking critically at the church bulletins as yesterday we had looked into the show windows, and it was the Frau Directorin who said she felt as if she were going shopping for religion.

The Herr Director said that he had no objection to our inventing or importing as many religions as we pleased; but he did object to our exporting any, for we were making the task of regulating and controlling them very difficult. Moreover he did not see how we could develop any kind of common, national ideals with such a confusion of religions. “You have, or pretend to have, a democratic government, and your strongest church is monarchic to the core.”

I had to admit that religiously we are a very chaotic people, and that we are daily adding to that chaos; yet these facts might prove what I had been trying to make clear to him: That this is fundamentally a religious country, and that as a whole we are the most religious people in the world. I supported this statement by quoting a good German authority, the late Prof. Karl Lamprecht, who thinks we have a great future as a people, because we are “capable of religious improvement.”

“Improvement!” The Herr Director sniffed derisively. “Wherever I look I see improvements: churches turned into theaters, theaters into churches, and residences which are still perfectly good turned into sky-scrapers. Chaos is not an improvement upon order. Nothing is finished, nothing complete, not even your religion.”

Just then we were compelled to pass along a wooden walk from which we looked into a canyon blasted out of the rock, upon which still stood the foundation of the house which was being turned into a sky-scraper.

“You see, that is the way we improve; we go deeper each time,” I remarked.

“But in religion,” the Herr Director retorted, “you do not go deeper, you go higher, and that is no improvement.”

For the second time the chimes were pealing, and we entered a sanctuary of friendly yet dignified English Gothic. An usher, who looked very American and well fed and out of place, guided us to a pew in the more than half empty church, from which nothing was missing in the way of ecclesiastical furnishings. One thing it lacked and that no architect can build and no money can buy—Spirit.

The organ was played by a master, the processional was splendidly staged, the rector looked prosperously pious, prayers were read and confessions uttered without any disquieting, spiritual agony, and the anthems were correctly sung by the picturesque boys’ choir. The curate preached a sermon on manliness; a sermon so thin and emasculated that even the Frau Directorin, whose English is limited, could understand it, and said she would like to come again “for the good English.”

I left the church deeply disappointed, and to the Herr Director’s taunts about “improvements” I did not reply, realizing more than ever how difficult and dangerous is this task of introducing the Spirit, especially when one goes to church in the spirit of pride, rather than in the spirit of meekness.

No clergyman can spoil the whole of Sunday, for there is always the dinner, and having found a table d’hôte in harmony with the Herr Director’s national and religious ideals, we continued our discussion somewhat fitfully, if, at times, rather vehemently.

One of the things the Herr Director missed in the church where we tried to worship was reverence. He missed it everywhere and thought it due to the fact that we do not teach religion in the public schools.

This was rather amusing to me, for just prior to that statement he had told me of one of his nephews who, upon approaching his final examinations, said: “If it were not for this accursed religion I could get through without trouble;” and I called his attention to the fact that although I had no difficulty with my “exams” in religion, invariably having an “Ausgezeichnet” which is equivalent to an A, I was always “Schlecht” in conduct.

I had found religious instruction a very irreligious procedure, for the man who taught it was irreligious enough to whip me so that I could not lie upon my back for a week, the cause being that I would not say yes to his credo. Moreover I told the Herr Director I thought all religious instruction irreligious which did not teach the child its whole duty to society, but taught religion from only the narrowing racial or sectarian standpoint.

Religion, I pointed out to him, can after all not be taught; it has to be caught. It is a contagion which comes from a spiritual personality, and our public schools are not religious or irreligious because certain subjects are found or not found in their curricula, but because the teachers have this spiritual personality or lack it. I am convinced that this ethical quality predominates in our public schools, not only because so many of our teachers are women, but because we are fundamentally a religious people.

At this point I became conscious that the attention of the Herr Director and the Frau Directorin had flagged; for their response to my homily was an eloquent tribute to the tenderness of the breast of a Long Island duck, which they had been enjoying while I talked. As they were consequently in a lenient mood towards the whole world and therefore the United States, I renewed my laudable and difficult effort, and, as is often best, through the medium of a story.

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