modern life was increasingly perplexing.

In these ranks were certain maiden ladies and widows who found in church
work an outlet to an otherwise circumscribed existence. Hodder met them
continually in his daily rounds. There were people like the Bradleys,
who rented half a pew and never missed a Sunday; Mr. Bradley, an elderly
man whose children had scattered, was an upper clerk in one of Mr. Parr's
trust companies: there were bachelors and young women, married or single,
who taught in the Sunday school or helped with the night classes. For
the most part, all of these mentioned above belonged to an element that
once had had a comfortable and well-recognized place in the community,
yet had somehow been displaced. Many of them were connected by blood
with more fortunate parishioners, but economic pressure had scattered
them throughout new neighbourhoods and suburbs. Tradition still bound
them to St. John's.

With no fixed orbit, the rector cut at random through all of these
strata, and into a fourth. Not very far into it, for this apparently
went down to limitless depths, the very contemplation of which made him
dizzy. The parish house seemed to float precariously on its surface.

Owing partly to the old-fashioned ideas of Dr. Gilman, and partly to
the conservatism of its vestry, the institutionalism of St. John's was
by no means up to date. No settlement house, with day nurseries, was
maintained in the slums. The parish house, built in the, early nineties,
had its gymnasium hall and class and reading rooms, but was not what in
these rapidly moving times would be called modern. Presiding over its
activities, and seconded by a pale, but earnest young man recently
ordained, was Hodder's first assistant, the Reverend Mr. McCrae.