On the way across the street Coningsby told me something of Charlie Grace and his memorial. He had been the son of a former rector of St. David’s—an important man in the New York of his day, who had outlived his usefulness and been asked to resign his parish. The son had never forgiven this slight, and the William Grace Memorial was intended to avenge it. It had been the express desire of the widow, Mrs. Charlie Grace, that he, Ralph Coningsby, should have sole charge of the building, and the work had been going on since the previous autumn. In the coming autumn the house would be ready for furnishing. It was for this purpose that Mrs. Grace required the exact measurements of each room, with the disposition of the wall spaces. During the summer she could thus consider what she would have to do when the time came in October. Only a corner of the new building was visible from Vandiver Street, the main entrance being on Blankney Place, which was a parallel thoroughfare. Standing in the middle of the grass-plot in front of the dumpy, spurious 1840 Gothic rectory, we had the length of the dumpy, spurious 1840 Gothic church in front of us. The memorial had to be fitted in behind the chancel, on the space formerly occupied by a Sunday-school room. This space had been enlarged by the purchase of the lot in Blankney Place, giving an entry from a more populous neighborhood. The purpose of the memorial had been more or less dictated by Mrs. Ralph Coningsby, who, as Esther Legrand, the rector’s daughter, had from her childhood upward worked among the people round about and knew their needs. As far as I could gather, it was to be a sort of neighborhood club, with parlors, reading-rooms, playing-rooms, a dancing-room, a smoking-room, a billiard-room, a lecture-room, a gymnasium, baths, and so on, and open to those who were properly enrolled, of both sexes and all ages. Of the committee in charge Mrs. Coningsby was apparently the moving spirit, though Mrs. Grace was reserving to herself the pleasure of fitting the house up. Before going inside we discussed the difficulties of harmonizing a modern building with the efforts of the early nineteenth century, and I had an opportunity to commend Coningsby’s judgment. He had kept to the brownstone of the church and rectory, and had suggested their spirit while working on sober, well-proportioned lines. In the middle of this I broke off to say: “Look here, old chap! I hope you’re not inventing this job of yours just for the sake of giving me something to do.” His frank gaze convinced me. “Honest, I’m not. Mrs. Grace is particularly anxious to have the measurements sent down to her at Rosyth, and we’re so short-handed—” “Then that’s all right. Let’s go in, and you can show me what I’m to do.”