TABLE OF CONTENTS
Volume 1.
I. THE WARING PROBLEMS
II. MR. LANGMAID'S MISSION
III. THE PRIMROSE PATH
IV. SOME RIDDLES OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY
Volume 2.
V. THE RECTOR HAS MORE FOOD FOR THOUGHT.
VI. "WATCHMAN, WHAT OF THE NIGHT"
VII. THE KINGDOMS OF THE WORLD
VIII. THE LINE of LEAST RESISTANCE.
Volume 3.
IX. THE DIVINE DISCONTENT
X. THE MESSENGER IN THE CHURCH
XI. THE LOST PARISHIONER
XII. THE WOMAN OF THE SONG
Volume 4.
XIII. WINTERBOURNE
XIV. A SATURDAY AFTERNOON
XV. THE CRUCIBLE
XVI. AMID THE ENCIRCLING GLOOM
Volume 5.
XVII. RECONSTRUCTION
XVIII. THE RIDDLE OF CAUSATION
XIX. MR. GOODRICH BECOMES A PARTISAN
Volume 6.
XX. THE ARRAIGNMENT
XXI. ALISON GOES TO CHURCH
XXII. WHICH SAY TO THE SEERS, SEE NOT!
Volume 7.
XXIII. THE CHOICE
XXIV. THE VESTRY MEETS
XXV. "RISE, CROWNED WITH LIGHT!"
XXVI. THE CURRENT OF LIFE
Volume 8.
XXVII. RETRIBUTION
XXVIII. LIGHT
THE INSIDE OF THE CUP
Volume 1.
CHAPTER I. THE WARING PROBLEMS
I
With few exceptions, the incidents recorded in these pages take place in
one of the largest cities of the United States of America, and of
that portion called the Middle West,--a city once conservative and
provincial, and rather proud of these qualities; but now outgrown them,
and linked by lightning limited trains to other teeming centers of the
modern world: a city overtaken, in recent years, by the plague which has
swept our country from the Atlantic to the Pacific--Prosperity. Before
its advent, the Goodriches and Gores, the Warings, the Prestons and the
Atterburys lived leisurely lives in a sleepy quarter of shade trees
and spacious yards and muddy macadam streets, now passed away forever.
Existence was decorous, marriage an irrevocable step, wives were wives,
and the Authorized Version of the Bible was true from cover to cover. So
Dr. Gilman preached, and so they believed.
Sunday was then a day essentially different from other days--you could
tell it without looking at the calendar. The sun knew it, and changed
the quality of his light the very animals, dogs and cats and horses,
knew it: and most of all the children knew it, by Sunday school, by Dr.
Gilman's sermon, by a dizzy afternoon connected in some of their minds
with ceramics and a lack of exercise; by a cold tea, and by church
bells. You were not allowed to forget it for one instant. The city
suddenly became full of churches, as though they had magically been let
down from heaven during Saturday night. They must have been there on
week days, but few persons ever thought of them.
