"Never was there in my life," said Jack.
"Humph! Well, it ain't a bad place, Buffalo, when you know the people well. I have only been there five years, but I have found in our congregation some real nice folks. Of course, mine is the Episcopal Church, and I have generally found the Episcopalians, in my sojournings in different places, to be the superior people of the locality."
From the compliment to the Episcopalians it was evident that the clergyman had no doubt Jack belonged to that aristocratically inclined sect, and Jack smiled at his friend's shrewdness, forgetting the fact that "Church of England—mild, acquiescent, and gentlemanly"—was written all over him, and that the cut of his clothes, the shape of his whisker, the turn of his head when listening, and even the solidity of his utility-first boots made it almost impossible for any person to suppose he belonged to any other denomination.
"I have heard," Jack said, "that the Buffalo people, many of them, have lots of money, and that they give freely to the churches. I suppose money is an element in a congregation which gentlemen of your calling do not object to?"
It seemed to Jack that the long gray eyes of the minister smiled at this point more because he thought he was expected to smile than from any sense of mirth. He was a grave man, who, behind a dignified reserve, seemed capable of taking in a great deal at a glance.
"No one can deny the power of money," he said. "But, though there is a good deal of it in St. James's Church, what with a paid choir, and the church debt, and repairs, and the new organ, and the paying of my superior in office, I can tell you there is not very much left for the person who plays second fiddle, as one may say."
"Ah!" said Jack sympathetically.
"When a man has a wife and a growing family to support and bring up in a large city, and prices away up, twelve hundred dollars a year don't go a very great ways, young man, and if it were not for our perquisites some of us would find it difficult to make both ends of the string meet around the parcel we have got to carry."
Jack was becoming slightly interested in this man and was wondering what his previous history was. He wondered that his new acquaintance had not made more money than he seemed to possess. There was something behind his grave immobility of countenance that suggested ability of some sort, he did not know what. His slightly varying expressions of countenance did not always seem to appear spontaneously, but to be placed there by a directing intelligence that first considered what expression would be the right one. It seemed like a peculiar mannerism which might in another man be the result of a slightly sluggish brain.
They conversed with each other all the way to the bridge, and although the dignified reserve of the clergyman never quite thawed out, Jack began to rather like him and be interested in his large fund of information about the United States and anecdotes of frontier life in California, where as a youth he had had a varied experience.