he 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,