terly love-feast, but not in the Sabbath-school.
I remember once when Brother Butler was away they set John Snyder to
teach us. John didn't know any more than the law allowed, and we made
him feel it, until finally, badgered beyond endurance, he blurted out
that all he knew was that he was a sinner saved by grace. Maybe he
couldn't just tell where to find this, that, and t' other thing in the
Bible, but he could turn right to the place where it said that though
a body's sins were as scarlet, yet they should be white as snow. It was
regarded as a very poor sort of an excuse then, but thinking it over
here lately, it has seemed to me that maybe John had the root of the
matter in him after all.

The comparative scarcity of polemical athletes and the relative plenty
of the Miss Susie Goldrick kind of teachers, apparently called into
being the Berean Lesson Leaf system, with its Bible cut up into
lady-bites of ten or twelve verses, its Golden Topics, Golden Texts, its
apt alliterations, like:

S AMUEL
EEKS
AUL
ORROWING

and its questions prepared in tabloid form, suitable for the most
enfeebled digestions, see directions printed on inside wrapper. Among
the many evidences of the degeneracy of the age is the scandalous
ignorance of our young people regarding the sacred Scriptures, which
at the very lowest estimate are incontestably the finest English ever
written. Those whose childhood antedates the lesson leaf are not so
unfamiliar with that wondrous treasure-house of thought. It is not for
me to say what has wrought the change. I can only point out that lesson
leaves, being about the right size for shaving papers, barely last from
Sunday to Sunday, while that very identical Bible with the blinding type
that I won years and years ago, by learning verses, is with me still.
Yes, and as I often wonder to discover, some of those very verses that I
gobbled down as heedlessly as any ostrich are with me still.

Remain to be considered the opening and closing exercises, principally
devoted, I remember, to learning new tunes and singing old ones out of
books with pretty titles, like "Golden Censer," "Silver Spray," "Pearl
and Gold," "Sparkling Dewdrops," and "Sabbath Chimes." I wasn't going to
tell it, but I might as well, I suppose. I can remember as far back as
"Musical Leaves." There must be quite a lot of people scattered about
the country who sung out of that when they were little. I wish a few of
us old