he regular class work and the
closing exercises, about peacocks. I had read of them, but had never
seen one. What did they look like? She said a peacock was something like
a butterfly. I have always remembered that, and when I did finally see
a peacock, I was interested to note the essential accuracy of the
description.

Also, one day a new lady taught our class, Miss Evans having gone up to
Marion to spend a Sunday with her brother, who kept a stove store there,
and this new lady borrowed two flower vases from off the pulpit and a
piece of string from Turkey-egg McLaughlin to explain to us boys how the
earth went around the sun. We had too much manners to tell her that we
knew that years and years ago when we were in Miss Humphreys's room. I
don't remember what the earth going around the sun had to do with the
lesson for the day, which was about Samuel anointing David's head with
oil--did I ever tell you how I anointed my own head with coal oil?--but
I do remember that she broke both the vases and cut her finger, and had
to keep sucking it the rest of the time, because she didn't want to get
her handkerchief all bloodied up. It was a kind of fancy handkerchief,
made of thin stuff trimmed with lace--no good.

The Sabbath-school may be said to be divided into three courses, namely,
the preparatory or infant-class, the collegiate or Sabbath-school
proper, and the post-graduate or Mr. Parker's Bible-class.

What can a mere babe of three or four years learn in Sabbath-school?
sneers the critic. Not much, I grant you, of justification by Faith, or
Effectual Calling; but certain elementary precepts can be impressed
upon the mind while it is still in a plastic condition that never can
be wholly obliterated, come what may in after life. Prime among these
elementary precepts is this: "Always bring a penny."

Some one has said, "Give me the first seven years of a child's life
and I care not who has the remainder." I cannot endorse this without
reserve; but I maintain as a demonstrated fact: "Bring up a child to
contribute a copper cent, and when he is old he will not depart from
it." It was recently my high privilege to attend a summer gathering
of representative religious people in the largest auditorium in this
country. Sometimes under that far-spreading roof ten thousand souls were
assembled and met together. This fact could be guessed at with tolerable
accuracy from the known seating capacity, but the interesting thing was