Page:Our Philadelphia (Pennell, 1914).djvu/204

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181
OUR PHILADELPHIA

lessly to St. Andrew's which was highly respectable, if not fashionable, and new-fashioned people might brave criticism with the Ritualists at St. Clement's. As for Catholics, a pew down at St. Joseph's in Willing's Alley or, worse still, up town at the Cathedral in Logan Square, put them out of the reckoning, at a hopeless disadvantage socially, however better off they might be for it spiritually. That the Cathedral was in Logan Square was in itself a social offence of a kind that society could not tolerate. At the correct churches every function, every meeting, every Sunday-school, every pious re-union, as well as every service, became a fashionable duty; and at the church door after service on Sunday, a man with whom one had danced the night before might be picked up to walk on Walnut Street with, which was a social observance only less indispensable than attendance at the Assembly and the Dancing Class.

I recall the excitement of girls of my age, their feeling that they had got to the top of everything, the first time they took this sacramental walk, if not with a man which was the crowning glory, at least with a woman who was prominent, or successful, in society. But I believe I could count the times I joined in the Walnut Street procession on Sunday morning. As long as I lived in Third Street, my usual choice of a church lay between St. Joseph's, the Jesuit church in Willing's Alley with its air of retirement, and St. Mary's on Fourth Street, where the orphans used to come from Seventh and Spruce and sometimes sing an