ly betokened some little difficulty in sitting at all
until the soreness wore off.

This, however, foreboded nothing of so unpleasant a nature. When I
entered the light and airy little sanctuary I found thirty or forty
children ranged in rows one above the other, in front of the little
pulpit. Not many boys were there, and there was nothing specially
attractive about those who were, beyond the attractiveness that lurks
within the face of every cleanly-washed child. But the girls were a
picture; they were all in white, but most of them had coloured sashes
round their waists, and coloured ribbons in their hair, and one or two
were distinguished by black adornments, betokening the recent visit of
that guest who is so seldom regarded as a friend.

Some of the frocks were new, but most of them were old; and it is safe
to assume that the younger children were wearing what had served the
turn of a past generation of "sitters-up." In some cases they were so
inadequate to the requirements of the long-limbed, growing maidens who
wore them, that it cannot be denied that the dresses "sat up" even more
than their owners, so that the white cotton stockings were taxed to the
utmost to maintain conventional decency.

To listen to the children's performances, rather than to the address of
the preacher, the chapel was uncomfortably crowded by what the
handbills called "parents, relatives and friends."

The door was wide open, and my eyes often strayed to it before the
service began, for it framed a picture of yellow meadows and waving
trees, of brown moorland and ultramarine sky, with drowsy cattle in the
pastures a hundred feet below, which seemed strangely unfamiliar, and
rather reminiscent of something I had once seen or dreamed of, than of
what I looked upon every day of my life. The explanation is simple
enough, of course. I saw just a _panel_ of the landscape, and with
limited vision the eye observed more clearly and found the beauty of
the scene intensified.

But when the prayer was ended--a rather long and wearisome one, to my
thinking, on such a fine day, when all nature was offering praise so
cheerily--the children's part began.

They sang children's hymns, the simple hymns I had sung myself as a
child, which I hope all English-speaking Christian children sing: the
hymns which belong to the English language and to no one church, but
are broad enough to embrace all creeds, and tender enough to move all
hearts, and w