Nobody was going in or out; the bronze doors were closed and doubtless locked fast against untimely intrusion.
“Shut down for the week, by George!” Falcontent commented, in astonishment.
It was a gigantic building occupying a great block of what Falcontent called in his business lingo high-class real estate. And it was truly a magnificent edifice. It occurred all at once to Falcontent that a plant of this spaciousness and exquisite exterior, running full time, as it were, only on Sundays, with occasional week-day operations, situated in a neighborhood in which real-estate values were of such an appalling character that few men could look upon them and live thereafter without horrified envy, must have an enormous patronage to support it. That is to say, a good many people of consequence must still be going to church. And it astonished Falcontent to the very deeps of his knowledge of the world to confront this visible evidence of what he had for a good many years conceived to have become an old-fashioned and generally abandoned habit of piety. Moreover, Falcontent could recall other churches. There were hundreds of them. There were thousands. Good Lord, there must be millions—the country over! And most of them, Falcontent was shocked to remember, were of an extravagant magnitude and elegance, each according to its community.
What the deuce did people still go to church for, anyhow? Nobody that Falcontent was intimate with ever went to church. But there must still be something in it!
Falcontent began to ponder this odd disclosure when the bus got under way. Thus: Well, anyhow, the young women, God bless ’em! went to church to display their dainty little attractions and to assert each her peculiar interpretation of the fashions of the day. Of course! That was plain enough. It always had been that way. It was tenderly feminine, too—a most engaging weakness of the sex. And the young men—amorous young sparks of the town—followed the young women. A very natural and proper thing! It always had been that way. And Falcontent had done it himself—long ago. The delectable business of mating, then, accounted for a good deal. But not for very much. Still, there were the aged. They went to church, of course, for the traditional consolations of religion. Falcontent wondered, flushed with melancholy, whether or not they got what they went for. Probably not. Falcontent did not know. He had heard rumors to the contrary; and these rumors now mightily incensed him. Hang it all, anyhow! There was nothing specific or downright any more. Doubtless the old-fashioned religion, such as Falcontent had known as a boy, was in these days altogether a thing of the past.
“The devil!” Falcontent thought, out of temper with the times; “they might at least have preserved that institution for a while—for one more generation—if for nothing more than mere sentiment’s sake.”
Deuce take it all!
“Of course the thing had to go to the scrap-heap; but still—for a few more years——”
Other folk went to church, as Falcontent very well knew; men of largest riches, for example, whose hobby was pious behavior in private life, and who voiced with amusing precision in the Sunday-schools the antique platitudes of piety. Falcontent grinned grimly when this crossed his mind with significance. Groot, of Groot & McCarthy, was a man cut from that cloth. But never mind Groot! The upkeep of these expensive establishments was not by any means to be accounted for by the piety of Falcontent’s unctuous boss. What the deuce did keep the churches on their feet? Well, there was just one adequate answer; there must still be a vast body of—of—well, of consumers of religion, so to speak—of paying patrons of religious exercises—whom Falcontent had forgotten, and of whose needs and ancient practices he had continued in surprising ignorance. It was these substantial folk who kept the churches in what was obviously a thriving state of health. Churches in the city, churches in the towns—churches the whole country over. Steeples everywhere, by George! Good Lord, there must be a big bunch of people in the country—like that!
They were the real people, too. They were always the real people. No matter what sort of big industry their patronage kept on its feet—they were the real people! And every business man knew it.