SUNDAY AT SCHOOL.
Sunday morning the scholars slept nearly an hour longer than usual, and
this was looked upon as a great treat, particularly in the winter
months when it was scarcely light before seven. It seemed very early
rising to get up by lamp-light, and all the girls were quite ready to
take the extra hour of sleep upon Sunday mornings.
After breakfast, which was always nicer than upon other days, when they
had made their rooms tidy, and prepared themselves for church, all but
their coats and hats, Miss Chapman called them down to the school-room
to study a Bible lesson for half an hour.
By this time the church bell would begin to ring, and they would go up
to their rooms and get ready to start, and then the little procession
would start out just as they did when they went to walk, only, instead
of one of the girls walking at the head, Miss Chapman and Miss Ketchum
were there, and the girls followed them.
It was a very short walk, just across the street, so it was not
necessary to start until the second bell had begun to ring. The girls
would have been very glad if it had been a little longer walk, but it
only took two or three minutes to walk down to the crossing at the
corner, and then go across to the pretty vine-covered church.
Miss Chapman had one rule that none of the girls liked at all, and yet
it was one for which they were all very glad when they had grown older,
and did not have to follow it unless they wished.
It was her rule that the girls should all listen very attentively to
the sermon, remember the text, and the chapter from which it was taken,
and then when they came home they were required, after dinner, to spend
an hour in writing down all that they could remember of the sermon. At
first Ruby was sure that she never could remember anything to write
down afterwards, and though she listened as hard as she could, and did
her very best to remember, all that she could possibly keep in her
head was the text, and one sentence, the sentence with which Mr.
Morsell began his sermon; but she soon found that by listening very
closely and trying to remember, she grew able to remember much more.
Some of the older girls, who had been with Miss Chapman for two and
three years, and were accustomed to this practice, could write down a
really good epitome of the sermon, and once in a while a scholar did so
well that Miss Chapman would send her work over to the minister, and
the next time he came to tea he would compliment her for it; and that
not only pleased the scholar, but made all the others determine to do
so well that their extracts, too, should be sent over to him sometimes.
Mr. Morsell always remembered what young hearers he had, and he never
failed to put something in his sermon that even Ruby and Maude could
understand and remember, if they tried hard enough; so it was a great
deal easier for them than if he had preached only for grown-up people.
Each girl had a blank-book, and after Miss Chapman had looked her
extracts over, she required the scholars to copy these extracts into
their blank-books.
Ruby was quite pleased when she found that each Sunday she could
remember more and more, and that where five lines contained all that
she remembered of the first sermon, it soon took two pages to hold all
that she could write.
She was glad that she had to copy it in this blank-book, for then she
could take it home with her at Christmas, and show it to her father and
mother and Ruthy; and everything that she did she always wanted to show
them, or tell them about, for she never forgot the dear ones. Maude
was learning to remember nicely, too. She was not at all a dull little
girl. It was only that she had not been accustomed to use her mind
when she came to the school, and it had taken her some little time to
learn to keep her thoughts upon anything, and really study. She was
quite pleased when she found that in this exercise of memory she was
doing quite as well as any of the new scholars, and better than four or
five of them could do.
After a while, when the girls grew older, and finished learning all
that they could study with Miss Chapman, and some, perhaps, did not go
to school any more, they were very glad that they had learned to listen
so attentively; for any one of those little girls who practised
listening to the sermon and remembering all they could of it, and then
strengthened their memory by writing it down afterwards, found that
they had a great deal to be glad of in this training. Even after they
grew up, they were so in the habit of listening attentively that they
never heard a sermon without being able to remember a great deal of it;
so their memories were not like sieves, through which a great deal
could run, but in which very little, or perhaps nothing, would remain.
But they did not realize then how good it was for them, for even
grown-up people very seldom realize that, and so the girls grumbled a
good deal sometimes, when they had to sit down on Sunday afternoon and
write out what they could remember.
There was one thing, however, which the girls soon discovered. It did
not make it any easier to grumble about it, and the sooner one set to
work in good earnest, the more one was likely to remember of the
sermon, and the sooner the task was accomplished; and they had the rest
of the afternoon to themselves until Bible-class hour just before
tea-time.
Then Miss Chapman heard them say the catechism, and talked to them and
heard them recite the Bible lesson which they had studied that morning.
The time between writing the sermon and the Bible class was always a
pleasant time to the scholars. They sat in one another's rooms and
talked, or if it was a pleasant day they went out and walked about the
garden. While Miss Chapman would not allow any loud laughing nor
playing on this day, yet she was glad to have it one which the girls
would enjoy as much as possible, and would look back upon with pleasure.
There was always some special dainty for tea, and then, after tea, the
girls all gathered around the piano in the parlor, and Miss Emma played
hymns for them, and they sang until it was time to go to bed. They all
enjoyed this. Even the girls who could not sing very well themselves
liked to hear the others sing, and they were sorry when the old clock
in the hall struck the bed-time hour.
Every Sunday seemed such a long step towards the holidays when they
should go home and see their fathers and mothers again. While after
the first week or two none of the girls were homesick, and all were
very happy, yet there was not one of them who had not a little square
of paper near the head of her bed, with as many marks upon it as there
were days before vacation began, and every morning the first thing they
did was to scratch one of these marks off. So Sunday seemed a long
step ahead when they looked back over seven days that had passed.
Agnes and Ruby generally spent the leisure part of Sunday afternoon
with Miss Ketchum. She was very fond of the little girls, and liked to
have them come and see her, so they had a very pleasant time in her
room.
They would save their bags of candy, instead of eating them on
Saturday, and Miss Ketchum would have a nice little plain cake, of
which her little visitors were very fond, and then they would take down
the dishes and have a very nice time.
While they were enjoying the good things Miss Ketchum would read to
them, or they would see which could tell her the most about the
extracts they had written from the sermon. They had such pleasant
times with her that they were always sorry when the boll rang for Bible
class, and they had to say good-by and run away.
Altogether, Sunday was a very happy day at Miss Chapman's, not only to
Ruby and Agnes, but to all the other scholars, and they were always
ready to welcome it.