I was able to place Dave as janitor of the church.  After he had been there for a while and comfortably housed in the janitor’s quarters in the basement, he thought it a propitious time to be reconciled to his wife; so we arranged to have Mary come down and inspect the place.  We put extra work into the cleaning of the quarters, furnishing it with some sticks of furniture.  Reconciliations were getting to be an old story with Mary, and Dave knew he was going to have difficulty in this new attempt.  He finally persuaded her to make a visit to the church.  When he was ready, Dave, in a most apologetic tone, said: 

“There is just one thing lacking here.”

“What is it Dave?”

“A white tie.”

“Where?”

“On you.”

The white tie as ecclesiastical appendage I had avoided.  I despised it.  But Dave assured me that if Mary came down to look the church over, she would be more interested in my appearance than in the appearance of the church, because what she really wanted was an assurance that Dave was “on the square!” and if he could introduce her to a real minister as his friend, it would enhance his chance.

I sent Dave to the Bowery for a five cent white string tie, and I borrowed a Prince Albert coat.  There was an old stovepipe hat in the church—­sort of legacy from former pastorates—­and it was trotted out, carefully brushed and put on the study table.  Then Mary appeared!  Dave had instructed me to put up a “tall talk,” so I put up the tallest possible.  Mary inspected the church, the quarters and the minister; then she looked at Dave and said in an undertone—­“This looks on the level.”

“You bet your sweet life!” Dave said.

So Mary was installed as “the lady of the temple” at Sixty-one Henry Street, and for seven years ministered to the poor and the needy, and kept in order the House of God.  After her death, Dave remained at the church about a year; then he became my successor as missionary to the lodging houses on the Bowery, where he still works—­a sort of humble doctor of the humanities; feeding the hungry, clothing the naked, comforting men in despair.

It seemed to me at that time that what a weak church like that most needed was a strong, powerful church to put its arms around it and give it support.  I interviewed Dr. Parkhurst, as I was Chairman of a Committee of the City Vigilance League which he organized.  The result was that Dr. Parkhurst’s church gave it for a year support and absolute independence of action at the same time.  Then the Rev. John Hopkins Dennison, who had been Dr. Parkhurst’s assistant, superseded me in the care of the church, and was able to bring to its support help that I could not have touched.  Mr. Dennison’s service to that church is worthy of a better record than it has yet received.  He performed brilliant service, intensified the life of the church and gathered around it a band of noble people.  He transformed the tower of the church into a kind of modern monastery in which he lived himself, and in which Dowling, the old Irish tinker, had a place also, and which he made a centre of ten years’ missionary work chiefly among the lodging houses where I found him.