Our Philadelphia . aints. I think I must have for-gotten it with many foolish books for children read in mychildhood had not Kate Vincent been so like Philadel-phians in her calm superiority, though, fortunately, Phila-delphians did not share her proselytising fervour. Theywent to the other extreme of lofty indifference and forthem the Catholic churches in their town did not exist anymore than the streets of little two-story houses south ofPine, a region into which they would not have thought ofpenetrating except to look up somebody who worked for them. II I might have learned as much during m
Our Philadelphia . aints. I think I must have for-gotten it with many foolish books for children read in mychildhood had not Kate Vincent been so like Philadel-phians in her calm superiority, though, fortunately, Phila-delphians did not share her proselytising fervour. Theywent to the other extreme of lofty indifference and forthem the Catholic churches in their town did not exist anymore than the streets of little two-story houses south ofPine, a region into which they would not have thought ofpenetrating except to look up somebody who worked for them. II I might have learned as much during my holidays atmy Grandfathers had I been given to reflection during myearly years. ^ly Father was a convert with the convertsproverbial ardour. He had been baptised in the Conventchapel with my Sister and myself—I was eight years oldat the time—and many who were present declared it themost touching ceremony they had ever seen. However, tothe familv, who had not seen it, it was anything but touch- •-?VT^^r^^-. THE PULPIT, ST. PETERS A QUESTION OF CREED 181 ing. They were all good inenibers of the EpiscopalChurch and had been since they landed in Virginia; more-over, one of my Fathers brothers was an Episcopal clergy-man and Head Master of the Episcopal Academy, Phila-delphias bed-rock of religious respectability. The bap-tism was only conditional, for the Catholic Church baptizesconditionally those who have been baptized in any churchbefore, but even so it must have been trying to them as aprecaution insolently superfluous. I do not remember thatanything was ever said, or suggested, or hinted. But therewas an undercurrent of disapproval that, child as I was, Ifelt, though I could not have put it into words. One thingplain was that when we children went off to our churchwith my Father, we were going where nobody else in myGrandfathers house went, except the servants, and that,for some incomprehensible reason, it was rather an oddsort of thing for us to do, making us differen
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