ving-picture company without the alteration of so much as a pew. As a
last step a syndicate, formed among the members of the congregation
themselves, bought ground on Plutoria Avenue, and sublet it to
themselves as a site for the church, at a nominal interest of five per
cent per annum, payable nominally every three months and secured by a
nominal mortgage.

As the two churches moved, their congregations, or at least all that
was best of them--such members as were sharing in the rising fortunes
of the City--moved also, and now for some six or seven years the two
churches and the two congregations had confronted one another among the
elm trees of the Avenue opposite to the university.

But at this point the fortunes of the churches had diverged. St.
Asaph's was a brilliant success; St. Osoph's was a failure. Even its
own trustees couldn't deny it. At a time when St. Asaph's was not only
paying its interest but showing a handsome surplus on everything it
undertook, the church of St. Osoph was moving steadily backwards.

There was no doubt, of course, as to the cause. Everybody knew it. It
was simply a question of men, and, as everybody said, one had only to
compare the two men conducting the churches to see why one succeeded
and the other failed.

The Reverend Edward Fareforth Furlong of St. Asaph's was a man who
threw his whole energy into his parish work. The subtleties of
theological controversy he left to minds less active than his own. His
creed was one of works rather than of words, and whatever he was doing
he did it with his whole heart. Whether he was lunching at the
Mausoleum Club with one of his church wardens, or playing the
flute--which he played as only the episcopal clergy can play
it--accompanied on the harp by one of the fairest of the ladies of his
choir, or whether he was dancing the new episcopal tango with the
younger daughters of the elder parishioners, he threw himself into it
with all his might. He could drink tea more gracefully and play tennis
better than any clergyman on this side of the Atlantic. He could stand
beside the white stone font of St. Asaph's in his long white surplice
holding a white-robed infant, worth half a million dollars, looking as
beautifully innocent as the child itself, and drawing from every matron
of the congregation with unmarried daughters the despairing cry, "What
a pity that he has no children of his own!"

Equally sound was his theology. No man was known to prea