After St. Michael's, St. Philip's--although St. Philip's is the real mother church of all Charleston. The old town does not pin her faith upon a single lion. The first time we found our way down Meeting street, we saw a delicate and belfried spire rising above the greenery of the trees in a distant churchyard. The staunch church from which that spire springs was well worth our attention. And so we found our way to St. Philip's. We turned down Broad street from St. Michael's--to commercial Charleston as its namesake street is to New York--then at the little red-brick library, housed in the same place for nearly three-quarters of a century, we turned again. The south portico of St. Philip's, tall-columned, dignified almost beyond expression, confronted us. And a moment later we found ourselves within a churchyard that ranked in interest and importance with that of St. Michael's, itself. A shambling negro care-taker came toward us. He had been engaged in helping some children get a kitten down from the upper branches of a tree in the old churchyard. With the intuition of his kind, he saw in us, strangers--manifest possibilities. He devoted himself to attention upon us. And he sounded the praises of his own exhibit in no mild key. "Yessa--de fines' church in all de South," he said, as he swung the great door of St. Philip's wide open. He seemed to feel, also intuitively, that we had just come from the rival exhibit. And we felt more than a slight suspicion of jealousy within the air. The negro was right. St. Philip's, Charleston, is more than the finest church in all the South. Perhaps it is not too much to say that it is the most beautiful church in all the land. Copied, rather broadly, from St. Martins-in-the-Fields, London, it thrusts itself out into the street, indeed, makes the highway take a broad double curve in order to pass its front portico. But St. Philip's commits the fearful Charleston sin of being new. The present structure has only been thrusting its nose out into Church street for a mere eighty years. The old St. Philip's was burned--one of the most fearful of all Charleston tragedies--in 1834. "Yessa--a big fire dat," said the caretaker. "They gib two slaves dere freedom for helpin' at dat fire." But history only records the fact that the efforts to put out the fire in St. Philip's were both feeble and futile. It does tell, however, of a negro sailor who, when the old church was threatened by fire on an earlier occasion, climbed to the tower and tore the blazing shingles from it and was afterward presented with his freedom and a fishing-boat and outfit. Does that sound familiar? It was in our Third Reader--some lurid verses but, alas for the accuracy that should be imparted to the growing mind--it was St. Michael's to whom that widespread glory was given. St. Michael's of the heart of the town once again. No wonder that St. Philip's of the side-street grieves in silence.