awoke at seven, a habit formed in her Winnebago days.
Eight-thirty one morning found her staring up at the dim
vastness of the dome of the cathedral of St. John the
Divine. The great gray pile, mountainous, almost ominous,
looms up in the midst of the dingy commonplaceness of
Amsterdam avenue and 110th street. New Yorkers do not know
this, or if they know it, the fact does not interest them.
New Yorkers do not go to stare up into the murky shadows
of this glorious edifice. They would if it were
situate in Rome. Bare, crude, unfinished, chaotic, it gives
rich promise of magnificent fulfillment. In an age when
great structures are thrown up to-day, to be torn down to-
morrow, this slow-moving giant is at once a reproach and an
example. Twenty-five years in building, twenty-five more
for completion, it has elbowed its way, stone by stone, into
such company as St. Peter's at Rome, and the marvel at
Milan. Fanny found her way down the crude cinder paths that
made an alley-like approach to the cathedral. She entered
at the side door that one found by following arrows posted
on the rough wooden fence. Once inside she stood a moment,
awed by the immensity of the half-finished nave. As she
stood there, hands clasped, her face turned raptly up to
where the massive granite columns reared their height to
frame the choir, she was, for the moment, as devout as any
Episcopalian whose money had helped make the great building.
Not only devout, but prayerful, ecstatic. That was partly
due to the effect of the pillars, the lights, the
tapestries, the great, unfinished chunks of stone that
loomed out from the side walls, and the purple shadow cast
by the window above the chapels at the far end; and partly