February 17 Sunday – From Sam’s Feb.18 Alta letter, published Mar. 30:
BISHOP SOUTHGATE’S MATINEE
I attended Bishop Southgate’s matinee yesterday after noon, in pursuance of my desire to test all the amusements of the metropolis. The ungodly are not slow to get up nick-names for sacred things here. All the pretty girls, and also all the young men who dote on them, go to the Sunday afternoon services at Bishop Southgate’s Church, in Thirty-eighth street, and they call it the Bishop’s “matinee;” and there is Dr. Bellows’ Church, in Fourth avenue, somewhere above Twentieth street—it is the wildest piece of architecture you ever saw—gridironed all over with alternate short bars of showy red and white, like a Confederate flag—so the ungodly call it the “Church of the Holy Zebra” [Schmidt]. Note: Dr. Henry Whitney Bellows (1814-1882); see insert.