ternational
Sunday-school lessons, and seemed to me to be submerged in the geography
of Palestine and other tiresome details. For me, reading as I did, the
whole of the New Testament was radiant with interest, a frankly human
interest. There were many passages that I did not pretend to understand,
sometimes because the English was obscure or archaic, and sometimes
because my mind was not equal to it or my knowledge too small. Whatever
may be the opinion of other people, mine is that the reading of the New
Testament in the simplicity of childhood, with the flower of intuition
not yet blighted, is one of the most beautiful of mental experiences. In
my own case, it gave a glow to life; it caused me to distinguish between
truth and fairy tales, between fact and fiction--and this is often very
difficult for an imaginative child.

This kind of reading implies leisure and the absence of distraction.
Unhappily, much leisure does not seem to be left for the modern child.
The unhappy creature is even told that there will be "something in
Heaven for children to do!" As to distractions, the modern child is
surrounded by them; and it appears to be one of the main intentions of
the present system of instruction not to leave to a child any moments of
leisure for the indulgence of the imagination. But I am not offering the
example of my childhood for imitation by the modern parents.

Nevertheless, it had great consolations. There were no "movies" in those
days, and the theatre was only occasionally permitted; but on long
afternoons, after you had learned to read, you might lose yourself in
"The Scottish Chiefs" to your heart's content. It seems to me that the
beauty of this fashion of leisurely reading was that you had time to
visualize everything, and you felt the dramatic moments so keenly, that
a sense of unreality never obtruded itself at the wrong time. It was not
necessary for you to be told that Helen Mar was beautiful. It was only
necessary for her to say, in tones so entrancing that you heard them,
"My Wallace!" to know that she was the loveliest person in all Scotland.
But "The Scottish Chiefs" required the leisure of long holiday
afternoons, especially as the copy I read had been so misused that I
had to spend precious half hours in putting the pages together. It was
worth the trouble, however.

Before I could read, I was compelled on rainy days to sit at my mother's
knee and listen to what _she_ read. I am happy to say th