What the owner’s intimates saw, once they got inside and continued to the end of the building, was a low-ceiled room warmed by an old-fashioned Franklin stove and lighted by a drop covered by a green shade.  All about were easy chairs, a table or two, a sideboard, some long shelves loaded down with books, and an iron safe which held some precious manuscripts and one or two early editions.

When the room was shut the shop was open, and when the shop was shut, the shutters fastened, and the two benches with their books lifted bodily and brought inside, the little back room, smoke-dried as an old ham, and as savory and inviting, once you got its flavor, was ready for his guests.

On one of these rare nights when the room was full, it happened that the same fifteenth-century chant book, which had brought Tim and Felix together, was lying on the table.  The discussion which followed easily drifted into the influence of the Roman Catholic church on the art of the period; Felix maintaining that but for the impetus it gave, neither the art of illumination nor any of the other arts would at the time have reached the heights they attained.

“This missal is but an example of it,” he continued, drawing the battered, yellow-stained book toward him.  “Whatever these old monks, with their religious fervor, touched they enriched and glorified, whether it were an initial letter, as you see here, or an altar-piece; and more than that, many of them painted wonderfully well.”

“And a narrow-minded, bigoted lot they were,” broke in Crackburn.  “If they’d had their way there would not have been a printing-press in existence.  If you are going to canonize anybody, begin with Aldus Minutius.”

“Only a difference in patrons,” chimed in Lockwood, “the difference between a pope and a doge.”

“And it’s the same to-day,” echoed Kelsey, taking the book from O’Day’s hand, to keep the leaves from buckling.  “Only it’s neither pope nor doge, but the money king who’s the patron.  We should all starve to death but for him.  I’ve been waiting for Mr. O’Day to hunt one down and make him buy this,” he added, closing the book carefully.  “Nobody else around here appreciates its rarity or would give a five-dollar bill for it.”

“Go slow,” puffed old Silas, hunched up in his chair.  “Money kings are good in their way, and so perhaps were popes and doges, but give me a plain priest every time.  You wonder, Mr. O’Day, what those great masters in art could have done without the protection of the church.  I wonder what the poor of to-day would do without their priests.  Go up to 28th Street and look in at St. Barnabas’s.  Its doors are open from before sunrise until near midnight.  When you are in trouble, either hungry or hunted, and most of the poor are both, walk in and see what will happen.  You’ll find that a priest in New York is everything from a policeman to a hospital nurse, and he is always on his job.  When nobody else listens, he listens; when nobody else helps, he holds out a hand.  I haven’t lived here sixty years for nothing.”