CHAPTER XXII.
SUNDAY AT SCHOOL.
Sunday morning the scholars slept nearly an hour longer than usual, andthis was looked upon as a great treat, particularly in the wintermonths when it was scarcely light before seven. It seemed very earlyrising to get up by lamp-light, and all the girls were quite ready totake the extra hour of sleep upon Sunday mornings.
After breakfast, which was always nicer than upon other days, when theyhad made their rooms tidy, and prepared themselves for church, all buttheir coats and hats, Miss Chapman called them down to the school-roomto study a Bible lesson for half an hour.
By this time the church bell would begin to ring, and they would go upto their rooms and get ready to start, and then the little processionwould start out just as they did when they went to walk, only, insteadof one of the girls walking at the head, Miss Chapman and Miss Ketchumwere there, and the girls followed them.
It was a very short walk, just across the street, so it was notnecessary to start until the second bell had begun to ring. The girlswould have been very glad if it had been a little longer walk, but itonly took two or three minutes to walk down to the crossing at thecorner, and then go across to the pretty vine-covered church.
Miss Chapman had one rule that none of the girls liked at all, and yetit 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 tothe sermon, remember the text, and the chapter from which it was taken,and then when they came home they were required, after dinner, to spendan hour in writing down all that they could remember of the sermon. Atfirst Ruby was sure that she never could remember anything to writedown afterwards, and though she listened as hard as she could, and didher very best to remember, all that she could possibly keep in herhead was the text, and one sentence, the sentence with which Mr.Morsell began his sermon; but she soon found that by listening veryclosely and trying to remember, she grew able to remember much more.
Some of the older girls, who had been with Miss Chapman for two andthree years, and were accustomed to this practice, could write down areally good epitome of the sermon, and once in a while a scholar did sowell that Miss Chapman would send her work over to the minister, andthe next time he came to tea he would compliment her for it; and thatnot only pleased the scholar, but made all the others determine to doso well that their extracts, too, should be sent over to him sometimes.
Mr. Morsell always remembered what young hearers he had, and he neverfailed to put something in his sermon that even Ruby and Maude couldunderstand and remember, if they tried hard enough; so it was a greatdeal 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 herextracts over, she required the scholars to copy these extracts intotheir blank-books.
Ruby was quite pleased when she found that each Sunday she couldremember more and more, and that where five lines contained all thatshe remembered of the first sermon, it soon took two pages to hold allthat she could write.
She was glad that she had to copy it in this blank-book, for then shecould take it home with her at Christmas, and show it to her father andmother and Ruthy; and everything that she did she always wanted to showthem, or tell them about, for she never forgot the dear ones. Maudewas learning to remember nicely, too. She was not at all a dull littlegirl. It was only that she had not been accustomed to use her mindwhen she came to the school, and it had taken her some little time tolearn to keep her thoughts upon anything, and really study. She wasquite pleased when she found that in this exercise of memory she wasdoing quite as well as any of the new scholars, and better than four orfive of them could do.
After a while, when the girls grew older, and finished learning allthat they could study with Miss Chapman, and some, perhaps, did not goto school any more, they were very glad that they had learned to listenso attentively; for any one of those little girls who practisedlistening to the sermon and remembering all they could of it, and thenstrengthened their memory by writing it down afterwards, found thatthey had a great deal to be glad of in this training. Even after theygrew up, they were so in the habit of listening attentively that theynever heard a sermon without being able to remember a great deal of it;so their memories were not like sieves, through which a great dealcould run, but in which very little, or perhaps nothing, would remain.
But they did not realize then how good it was for them, for evengrown-up people very seldom realize that, and so the girls grumbled agood deal sometimes, when they had to sit down on Sunday afternoon andwrite out what they could remember.
There was one thing, however, which the girls soon discovered. It didnot make it any easier to grumble about it, and the sooner one set towork in good earnest, the more one was likely to remember of thesermon, and the sooner the task was accomplished; and they had the restof the afternoon to themselves until Bible-class hour just beforetea-time.
Then Miss Chapman heard them say the catechism, and talked to them andheard them recite the Bible lesson which they had studied that morning.The time between writing the sermon and the Bible class was always apleasant time to the scholars. They sat in one another's rooms andtalked, or if it was a pleasant day they went out and walked about thegarden. While Miss Chapman would not allow any loud laughing norplaying on this day, yet she was glad to have it one which the girlswould enjoy as much as possible, and would look back upon with pleasure.
There was always some special dainty for tea, and then, after tea, thegirls all gathered around the piano in the parlor, and Miss Emma playedhymns for them, and they sang until it was time to go to bed. They allenjoyed this. Even the girls who could not sing very well themselvesliked to hear the others sing, and they were sorry when the old clockin the hall struck the bed-time hour.
Every Sunday seemed such a long step towards the holidays when theyshould go home and see their fathers and mothers again. While afterthe first week or two none of the girls were homesick, and all werevery happy, yet there was not one of them who had not a little squareof paper near the head of her bed, with as many marks upon it as therewere days before vacation began, and every morning the first thing theydid was to scratch one of these marks off. So Sunday seemed a longstep ahead when they looked back over seven days that had passed.
Agnes and Ruby generally spent the leisure part of Sunday afternoonwith Miss Ketchum. She was very fond of the little girls, and liked tohave them come and see her, so they had a very pleasant time in herroom.
They would save their bags of candy, instead of eating them onSaturday, and Miss Ketchum would have a nice little plain cake, ofwhich her little visitors were very fond, and then they would take downthe dishes and have a very nice time.
While they were enjoying the good things Miss Ketchum would read tothem, or they would see which could tell her the most about theextracts they had written from the sermon. They had such pleasanttimes with her that they were always sorry when the boll rang for Bibleclass, and they had to say good-by and run away.
Altogether, Sunday was a very happy day at Miss Chapman's, not only toRuby and Agnes, but to all the other scholars, and they were alwaysready to welcome it.
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