VI

Father Damon came dangerously near to being popular. The austerity of
his life and his known self-chastening vigils contributed to this effect.
His severely formal, simple ecclesiastical dress, coarse in material but
perfect in its saintly lines, separated him from the world in which he
moved so unostentatiously and humbly, and marked him as one who went
about doing good. His life was that of self-absorption and hardship,
mortification of the body, denial of the solicitation of the senses,
struggling of the spirit for more holiness of purpose--a life of
supplication for the perishing souls about him. And yet he was so
informed with the modern spirit that he was not content, as a zealot
formerly might have been, to snatch souls out of the evil that is in the
world, but he strove to lessen the evil. He was a reformer. It was
probably this feature of his activity, and not his spiritual mission,
that attracted to him the little group of positivists on the East Side,
the demagogues of the labor lodges, the practical workers of the
working-girls' clubs, and the humanitarian agnostics like Dr. Leigh, who
were literally giving their lives without the least expectation of
reward. Even the refined ethical-culture groups had no sneer for Father
Damon. The little chapel of St. Anselm was well known. It was always
open. It was plain, but its plainness was not the barrenness of a
non-conformist chapel. There were two confessionals; a great bronze lamp
attached to one of the pillars scarcely dispelled the obscurity, but cast
an unnatural light upon the gigantic crucifix that hung from a beam in
front of the chancel. There were half a dozen rows of backless benches in
the centre of the chapel. The bronze lamp, and the candles always burning
upon the altar, rather accented than dissipated the heavy shadows in the
vaulted roof. At no hour was it empty, but at morning prayer and at
vespers the benches were apt to be filled, and groups of penitents or