THE PARISH HOUSE
During Dr. McKnight's rectorship, the basement of the church was fitted up for Sunday School and other parochial meetings, but the social side of the Parish in these happy bygone days centered, for the most part, in the Rectory or in the homes of the Parishioners. Each week or fortnight, the ladies of the Parish would meet, sew for some worth object, prepare a supper to which the men came, and all staid to make merry the evening. If for any reason the social was held in the church basement, the loyal ladies must needs bring their own linen, silver, dishes to make very pleasing the bountiful suppers served on those festive occasions. The missionary spirit was very strong and the social life of the Parish very real in those days. As time flew by, the need of a Parish House became more and more insistent. The old order of things changes; fewer persons felt able to open their homes for socials. The old basement became impossible. "It is very hard for any of us now to make real again to our minds the old Sunday School room under the church," wrote Mr. Brooks, in 1888, "where we held our first Sociable together in the hot stifling atmosphere, with the uneven rotten damp floor below us, and the dismantled cobwebbed church threatening to fall through the cracked ceiling, above us."
This crying need was bravely met. A building fund was started. The ladies added substantially to it, by a well remembered three days' Fair held in the old City Hall. "Does not the grand window in our new Parish House tell the story exactly of our church life, made up of mingled Past and Present," again wrote Mr. Brooks. "It is a memorial of . . . Daniel P. Crocker; it is full of his voice every time that I
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