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.

The service ended, and the people scattered, but the organist played on, and the boy choir regathered, but less formally.

“What is it?” we asked of the verger, who was preparing to close the doors.

“There will be a funeral of one of the oldest members of the congregation to-morrow, and they are about to go through the music of the office.”

Suddenly a rich bass voice, strong in conviction, trumpeted forth—­“I am the resurrection and the life!” And only a stone’s throw away jingled the money market of the western world.  The temple and the table of the money changers keep step as of old.  Ah, wonderful New York!

* * * * *

The afternoon was clear staccato and mild withal, and the sun, almost at setting, lingered above orange and dim cloud banks at the end of the vista Broadway made.

“Are you tired?  Can you walk half a dozen blocks?” asked Evan of Miss Lavinia, as we came out.

“No, quite the reverse; I think that I am electrified,” she replied briskly.

“Then we will go to Battery Park,” he said, turning south.

“Battery Park, where all the immigrants and roughs congregate!  What an idea!  We shall catch smallpox or have our pockets picked!”

“Have you ever been there?” persisted Evan.

“Yes, once, I think, when steamship passengers lathed at the barge office, and of course I’ve seen it often in going to Staten Island to visit Cousin Lucretia.”

Evan’s only reply was to keep on walking.  We did not cross the “bowling green,” but swung to the right toward Pier I, and took the path between old Castle Garden and the sea wall at the point where one of the fire patrol boats was resting, steam up and hose nozzles pointed, lance couchant wise.

Ah, what a picture!  No wonder Miss Lavinia adjusted her glasses quickly (she is blindly nearsighted), caught her breath, and clung to Evan’s arm as the fresh sea breeze coming up from the Narrows wheeled her about.  Before us Staten Island divided the water left and right, while between it and the Long Island shore, just leaving quarantine and dwarfing the smaller craft, an ocean liner, glistening with ice, was coming on in majestic haste.  All about little tugs puffed and snorted, and freighters passed crosswise, parting the floating ice and churning it with their paddles, scarcely disturbing the gulls, that flew so close above the water that their wings touched, or floated at leisure.