A Little Journey in the World | Page 4

don't think you try much," said Mrs. Morgan, who carried along her
traditional religious observance with grateful admiration of her
husband.
Mr. Page Morgan had inherited money, and a certain advantageous
position for observing life and criticising it, humorously sometimes,
and without any serious intention of disturbing it. He had added to his
fair fortune by marrying the daintily reared daughter of a cotton-spinner,
and he had enough to do in attending meetings of directors and looking
out for his investments to keep him from the operation of the State law
regarding vagrants, and give greater social weight to his opinions than
if he had been compelled to work for his maintenance. The Page
Morgans had been a good deal abroad, and were none the worse
Americans for having come in contact with the knowledge that there
are other peoples who are reasonably prosperous and happy without
any of our advantages.
"It seems to me," said Mr. Lyon, who was always in the conversational
attitude of wanting to know, "that you Americans are disturbed by the
notion that religion ought to produce social equality."
Mr. Lyon had the air of conveying the impression that this question
was settled in England, and that America was interesting on account of
numerous experiments of this sort. This state of mind was not offensive
to his interlocutors, because they were accustomed to it in transatlantic
visitors. Indeed, there was nothing whatever offensive, and little
defensive, in Mr. John Lyon. What we liked in him, I think, was his
simple acceptance of a position that required neither explanation nor
apology--a social condition that banished a sense of his own personality,
and left him perfectly free to be absolutely truthful. Though an eldest
son and next in succession to an earldom, he was still young. Fresh
from Oxford and South Africa and Australia and British Columbia he
had come to study the States with a view of perfecting himself for his
duties as a legislator for the world when he should be called to the

House of Peers. He did not treat himself like an earl, whatever
consciousness he may have had that his prospective rank made it safe
for him to flirt with the various forms of equality abroad in this
generation.
"I don't know what Christianity is expected to produce," Mr. Morgan
replied, in a meditative way; "but I have an idea that the early
Christians in their assemblies all knew each other, having met
elsewhere in social intercourse, or, if they were not acquainted, they
lost sight of distinctions in one paramount interest. But then I don't
suppose they were exactly civilized."
"Were the Pilgrims and the Puritans?" asked Mrs. Fletcher, who now
joined the talk, in which she had been a most animated and stimulating
listener, her deep gray eyes dancing with intellectual pleasure.
"I should not like to answer 'no' to a descendant of the Mayflower. Yes,
they were highly civilized. And if we had adhered to their methods, we
should have avoided a good deal of confusion. The meeting-house, you
remember, had a committee for seating people according to their
quality. They were very shrewd, but it had not occurred to them to give
the best pews to the sitters able to pay the most money for them. They
escaped the perplexity of reconciling the mercantile and the religious
ideas."
"At any rate," said Mrs. Fletcher, "they got all sorts of people inside the
same meeting-house."
"Yes, and made them feel they were all sorts; but in those, days they
were not much disturbed by that feeling."
"Do you mean to say," asked Mr. Lyon, "that in this country you have
churches for the rich and other churches for the poor?"
"Not at all. We have in the cities rich churches and poor churches, with
prices of pews according to the means of each sort, and the rich are
always glad to have the poor come, and if they do not give them the
best seats, they equalize it by taking up a collection for them."

"Mr. Lyon," Mrs. Morgan interrupted, "you are getting a travesty of the
whole thing. I don't believe there is elsewhere in the world such a spirit
of Christian charity as in our churches of all sects."
"There is no doubt about the charity; but that doesn't seem to make the
social machine run any more smoothly in the church associations. I'm
not sure but we shall have to go back to the old idea of considering the
churches places of worship, and not opportunities for sewing-societies,
and the cultivation of social equality."
"I found the idea in Rome," said Mr. Lyon, "that the United States is
now the most promising field for the spread and permanence of the
Roman Catholic faith."
"How is that?" Mr. Fletcher