nts; Mr. Pahnker's class, ninety-three
cents; Miss Rut's class, naw repawt."
Poor old Miss Root! There was hardly ever any report from her class.
Often she hadn't a penny to give, and perhaps the other old ladies, who
found the keenest possible delight in doing what they called "running up
the references," had no more, for they were relics of an age when women
weren't supposed to have money to fling right and left in the foolish
way that women will if they're not looked after--shoes for the baby, and
a new calico dress every two or three years or so.
Yes, it is rather interesting for a change now and then to hear these
folks go on about what a terrible thing the Sabbath-school is, and how
it does more harm than good. They get really excited about it, and storm
around as if they expected folks to take them seriously. They know, just
as well as we do, that this wouldn't be any kind of a country at all if
we couldn't look back and remember the Sabbath-school, or if we couldn't
fix up the children Sunday afternoons, and find their lesson leaves for
them, and hunt up a penny to give to the poor heathen, and hear them say
the Golden Text before they go, and tell them to be nice. Papa and mamma
watch them from the window till they turn the corner, and then go back
to the Sunday paper with a secure sort of feeling. They won't learn
anything they oughtn't to at the Sabbath-school.
THE REVOLVING YEAR
"'It snows!' cries the schoolboy, 'Hurrah!'
And his shout is heard through parlor and hall."
MCGUFFEY's THIRD READER.
(Well, maybe it was the Second Reader. And if it was the Fourth, what
difference does it make? And, furthermore, who 's doing this thing, you
or me?)
Had it not been that never in my life have I ever heard anybody say
either "It snows!" or "Hurrah!" it is improbable that I should have
remembered the first line of a poem describing the effect produced upon
different kinds of people by the sight of the first snowstorm of winter.
Had it not been for the plucky (not to say heroic) effort to rhyme
"hall" with "hurrah" I should not have remembered the second, and still
another line of it, depicting the emotions of a poor widow with a large
family and a small woodpile, is burned into my memory only by reason
of the shocking language it contains, the more shocking in that it was
deliberately put forth to be read by innocent-minded children. Poor
Carrie Rinehart! When she stood up to r
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