and mother let her, and
she comes to Sunday-school here."

"Where does she go to church?" I found myself inquiring.

"To the Baptist Church, with her father and mother," was the reply. "She
asked them to let her come to Sunday-school here; but it never occurred
to her to think of going to church excepting with them."

Somewhat later I chanced to meet the child's mother. It was not long
before she spoke to me concerning her little girl's membership in the
Episcopal Sunday-school. "What were her father and I to do?" the mother
said. "We didn't feel justified in standing in her way. She wanted to be
christened; it seemed to mean something real to her--" she broke off.
"What _were_ we to do?" she repeated. "It would be a dreadful thing to
check a child's aspiration toward God! Of course she is only a little
girl, and she wanted to be like the others. Her father and I thought of
that, naturally. But--" Again she stopped. "One can never tell," she
went on, "what is in the mind of a child, nor what may be happening to
its spirit. Samuel was a very little child when God spoke to him," she
concluded, simply.

Quite as far as that mother, has another mother of my acquaintance let
her little girl go along the way of religious freedom. One day I went
with her and the child to an Italian jewelry shop. Among the things
there was a rosary of coral and silver. The little girl, attracted by
its glitter and color, seized it and slipped it over her head. "Look,
mother," she said, "see this lovely necklace!"

Her mother gently took it from her. "It isn't a necklace," she
explained; "it is called a rosary. You mustn't play with it; because it
is something some people use to say their prayers with."

The child's mother is of Scotch birth and New England upbringing. The
little girl has been accustomed to a form of religion and to an attitude
toward the things of religion that are beautiful, but austerely
beautiful. She is an imaginative child; and she caught eagerly at the
poetical element thus, for the first time, associated with prayer. "Tell
me how!" she begged.

When next I was in the little girl's bedroom, I saw the coral and silver
rosary hanging on one of the head-posts of her bed. "Yes, my dear," her
mother explained to me, "I got the rosary for her. She wanted it--'to
say my prayers with,' she said; so I got it. After all, the important
thing is that she says her prayers."

Among my treasures I have a rosary, brought to me