I have a very definite picture of my own grandmother, when quite
advanced in years, patiently teaching one or two illiterates to
spell and to read, in the Sunday-school of an Episcopal church
in a little country village in Vermont, where she was then
residing; and as late as 1837 one object of the Sunday-school
Society of Ireland was “to supply spelling-books and copies of
the Scriptures” to the various Sunday-schools of the island. In
fact, most of the early work was the teaching of reading and
morality, and the Sunday-school was a sort of mission school
among the unfortunate, the vicious, and the illiterate. Others
did not attend, and it was only by very definite effort that
the change to the present status was finally brought about.
I remember hearing an army officer say that as late as 1845,
in central New York, where he then resided as a boy of some
twelve years of age, he was soundly whipt by his father because
he had exprest his unwillingness to attend one of the “ragged
schools”--as the Sunday-schools in his vicinity were then
called; and he added that his impressions of the low caste of
the school were so definite that he took his whipping like a man
and without complaint.--JAMES H. CANFIELD, “Proceedings
of the Religious Education Association,” 1904.
(3111)
=Sunday-school Missionary Work=--See BOYS’ MISSIONARY EFFORTS.