Heaven; that is, a place to which only a few can get admission, and
those few are bored. They spend their time going through costly
formalities--not because they enjoy it, but because of its effect upon
the populace, which reads about them and sees their pictures in the
papers, and now and then is allowed to catch a glimpse of their
physical Presences, as at the horse-show, or the opera, or the
coaching-parade.

#Horn-blowing#

I know the Church of Good Society in America, having studied it from
the inside. I was an extraordinarily devout little boy; one of my
earliest recollections--I cannot have been more than four years of
age--is of carrying a dust-brush about the house as the choir-boy
carried the golden cross every Sunday morning. I remember asking if I
might say the "Lord's prayer" in this fascinating play; and my
mother's reply: "If you say it reverently." When I was thirteen, I
attended service, of my own volition and out of my own enthusiasm,
every single day during the forty days of Lent; at the age of fifteen
I was teaching Sunday-school. It was the Church of the Holy Communion,
at Sixth Avenue and Twentieth Street, New York; and those who know the
city will understand that this is a peculiar location--precisely half
way between the homes of some of the oldest and most august of the
city's aristocracy, and some of the vilest and most filthy of the
city's slums. The aristocracy were paying for the church, and occupied
the best pews; they came, perfectly clad, aus dem Ei gegossen, as the
Germans say, with the manner they so carefully cultivate, gracious,
yet infinitely aloof. The service was made for them--as all the rest
of the world is made for them; the populace was permitted to occupy a
fringe of vacant seats.