Therefore
the Bishop answered, very politely:

"I am very well, thank you."

"Did you recognize the name?" modestly asked H. R.

"Oh yes," said the Bishop, who recently had read about some meeting in
Rutgers Square and therefore remembered Rutgers.

He was a fine figure of a man with clean-cut features and a look of
kindliness so subtly professional as to keep it from being
indiscriminatingly benevolent; a good-natured man rather than a strong.
One might imagine that he made friends easily, but none could visualize
him as a Crusader. He was cursed with an orator's voice, sensitive ears,
and the love of words.

"Perhaps you've read the newspapers? They've been full of me and my
doings these many weeks," said H. R., looking intently at the Bishop.

"My dear boy!" expostulated Dr. Phillipson.

"I need your help!" said H. R., very earnestly.

The Bishop knew it! Those to whom you cannot give cheering words and
fifty cents are the worst cases. To relieve physical suffering is far
easier than to straighten out those tangles that society calls
disreputable--after they get into print.

H. R. went on, "I want you to help me to help our church."

"Help you to help our church?" blankly repeated the Bishop. The
unexpected always reduces the expectant kind to a mere echo.

"Exactly!" And H. R. nodded congratulatorily. "Exactly! In order that we
may stop losing ground!"

There were so many ways in which this young man's words might be taken
that his mission remained an exasperating mystery. But the Bishop smiled
with the tolerance of undyspeptic age toward over-enthusiastic youth and
said kindly:

"Pardon me, but--"

"Pardon _me_," interrupted H. R., "but since it is only the Roman
Catholics who are growing--"

"Our figures--" interjected the Bishop, firmly.

"Ah yes, figures of speech. Don't apply to _our_ church. The reason is
that the Catholics leave out the possessive pronoun. They never say
_their_ church any more than they say _their_ God. Now, why did we build
our huge Cathedral?"

The Bishop stared at H. R. in astonishment. Then he answered, austerely,
confining himself to the last question:

"In order to glorify--"

"Excuse me. There already existed the Himalayas. The real object of
building cathedrals hollow, I take it, is to fill 'em with the flesh of
_living_ people. Otherwise we would have made sarcophagi. We Protestants
don't bequeath our faith to our posterity; only our pews. They are
to-day