Boy's-eye views of the Sunday-school

Dedication

To the Congregational Sunday-school at Medford, Oklahoma, where most of these plans were tried, in whole or in part, and where much experimenting was home with Christlike patience, this little hook is lovingly dedicated.

Introduction

The editor of the Worker asked me one time if I couldn't write something for his paper. I told him I couldn't do it, because I hated to write essays so. He said he didn't want any essays, but for me just to tell about the Sunday-schools I have been to and how I liked them.

I could tell more about how I didn't like some of them. He said that would do, too, if I didn't get pessimistic (that means forgetting about all the good things, you know).

So, "for the good of the cause," as Brother Parker says, I started in. Every month I would WTite some about our Sunday-school, or some other one, and he would put it in the Worker. I thought of more things to write than ever I supposed I could. You see there was new things happening all the time, and I just told about them as they happened.

After a while he said to me one day, "Pucker, how would you like to have the pieces you have written about the Sunday-school made into a book?" I told him there wasn't enough of it yet to make a book, but he said there was, and so that's how this book came. If you will read it, perhaps you will find some things your school could try. Yours,

Pucker.

Contents

CHAPTER PAGE

I Vacations i

II Beginners S

Chapter I Vacations

First, I'll tell about the Sunday-school I go to now. It's a school in a town in Oklahoma, but you needn't try to guess the name of that town, for it isn't the one you think it is.

Ours is what they call an evergreen school, and in some ways it's a mighty appropriate name, for they're awful green about what boys like. But that isn't what evergreen means. It means a Sunday-school that don't have any vacations.

I like vacations myself, and our preacher does, too. He gets a whole month every year. But our Sunday-school don't take any vacation, not even for Christmas. But of course we couldn't then, for that would knock out having any Christmas tree, or arch, or balloon, or windmill, or whatever they want to have.

I used to belong to a Sunday-school that had a vacation every summer. It was down in Texas, and they have vacation in summer because it is

SO hot, just like day-school does. But Fve got a cousin up in Iowa that belongs to a Union school that takes its vacation all winter because it gets so cold.

''They're a^wful green about 'what boys like,'*

I suppose the farther north you go the longer winter vacation they have, and the farther south you go the longer summer vacation they have, till at the north pole it's all winter vacation, and at the Panama canal it's all summer vacation.

^ I Ve figured out that our school must be just half-way between, and that's the reason we don't get any of either kind.

The only trouble with a Sunday-school vacation is that the lessons don't take any vacation. They go right on just the same. Down in Texas our school let out right after Children's Day, when we was studying about Joseph being sold into Egypt, you know, and getting to be next highest to the king, and when we started in again, the first of October, the lessons was about Paul's missionary journeys, and I never did know how Joseph came out or where Paul came from.

If the lessons don't take any vacation I don't think the schools ought to either. How would you feel in day-school if you came back after vacation and found that most of the class had been going on all summer, and were way over into fractions, and you just couldn't understand how fractions could be, let alone adding them? I guess you'd wish you hadn't taken any vacation. I saw in our Sunday-school paper where it said schools should be evergreen and teachers nevergreen, and I think so too.

My cousin in Iowa says he had to go to day-school in that schoolhouse all winter, if it was cold. I thought that was mighty queer. If they couldn't keep warm one hour on Sunday, how could they ever keep warm five hours a day the rest of the week?

My father says our Sunday-school came awful near quitting one summer, when he used to live here before I was born, and before we went to Texas. He says if it hadn't been for Deacon Taft it would have quit. But when they was going to vote on it, Deacon Taft says: "You can shut up the school if you want to, but you'll find me here on the door-step every Sunday morning studying the lesson." So they talked a while longer, and finally voted not to quit. I guess all it takes to keep a school evergreen is one person that is just bound it shan't quit.

Chapter II Beginners

There's another good thing about our school besides its being evergreen, and that's the way they treat the babies. I don't mean the little bits of babies that are on the Cradle Roll, but the little fellers just big enough to sit up and not big enough to read.

Our church hasn't got any Rockefeller in it, and can't afford to have but just one room. But the primary teacher and Brother Parker put up a wire across the choir corner and hung a curtain on it made out of some kind of cloth like mother's old wash-day dress. That makes another room, as far as seeing goes, but of course don't help the noise any.

Then they have a lot of little red chairs, just right for the little fellers to sit on, and before Sunday-school they move the choir chairs and put the little red ones up there, all ready. Of course every little shaver has got some kind of a little chair of his own at home, and so when he comes to Sunday-school he feels right at home there.

One Sunday I went with Whacker Johnson to visit his Sunday-schooL Whacker's father is the preacher, and Whacker says his father thinks sermons are more important than just boys and girls, and he writes sermons till he don't have time to think about Sunday-school. If he would

just give them an old sermon once, and then think about Sunday-school, he would find out how many good things there is to have and how ''Just stick them up on many of them his school

the front seat,'' Wasn't got.

They don't have any curtain, nor little chairs, nor nothing for their little tads. They just stick them up on the front seat, where they can't rest their backs, nor touch the floor, nor nothing ; and if they get tired and twist around they fall off. When I saw them there so uncomfortable-like, some of them leaning Vay back, with their feet sticking straight out in front, and some of them sitting on the very edge, just ready to slip off, with their little feet hanging down and feeling all full of pins and needles, I felt sorry for them. I thought, how would grown folks like to sit on seats twice too big for them all over? How could they expect to listen to the sermon if their backs ached and their feet was asleep? If we had giant seats in our church, I bet the Ladies' Aid would meet quicker'n scat Monday afternoon and get up an oyster supper to get smaller ones. I know a lot of people that wouldn't come to churcH any more till they did get them.

Then I thought of little Dickie Mason, and how cute he looks on Sunday in a little red coat and red stockings, sitting on that little red chair, just as comfortable as if he was at home. He thinks that chair belongs to him. Why, after Sunday-school he goes and gets it and takes it down to his mother, and she puts it in between the pews and lets him sit on it all through church.

Then, over to Whacker's school they have all

If fwe had giant seats in our church,^* sizes together. There was Susie Green, in the fourth grade in day-school, sitting alongside of little Paul Riley, who isn't old enough to go to school at all. The teacher had Susie read most all the verses, and didn't pay hardly a bit of attention to Paul and the other little kids. In our school, as soon as you can read you get promoted from the little red chairs to the juniors, on a bench back of the stove.

But the little chairs and the curtain isn't the best thing about our primary class. They have a lesson of their own that fits their minds just the same as the little chairs do their legs. How could you expect little folks to like to learn big folks' lessons any more than they do sitting in big folks' chairs?

The lessons they use is the Beginners' Course, and instead of studying about Ezekiel and Zedekiah and Belshazzar they learn about Adam and Eve, God making trees and things and taking care of people. Then they have pictures of the lessons, and lesson songs and stories. It's more like play than learning, but my little brother Jim knows more about those lessons than you'd think a little kid like him could learn.

Brother Parker said the Beginners* Course was a part of the International Lesson System (that's what most everybody studies, you know), but the Lesson Committee gets them up extra for the babies. Seems to me it took them a long time to think of it, for they didn't have any extra baby lessons when I was a kid,

I expect you are wondering how they can sing those lesson songs with nothing but a curtain between them and the other classes. Well, they do, all right. Why, sometimes the Bible class makes so much noise that you could pretty near holler right out and nobody could hear it.

But they sing those songs in a whisper. Did you know you could whisper a tune? Well, you just try it once and see. It isn't very pretty music, — sounds like the whole class had got a bad cold, — but it pleases the little kids and teaches them the songs, for after they have learned to whisper a song, tune and all, they can sing it out loud without any practise. Sometimes after the lesson the superintendent pulls the curtain back to one end of the wire and has the babies sing a song out loud, and I tell you they do it fine. You just ought to hear them.

Chapter III A Bible Christmas

I've just got to tell you about the Christmas we had down to our church. It was a heap different from any Christmas I ever saw before. Brother Parker hatched it up. At first we didn't think it was any good at all, but when it was over we decided in our class that it was the most fun we ever had at Christmas. And I guess all the other classes thought so, too.

You know generally for Christmas you have a tree, or a windmill, or a fire-place, or something like that.

Sometimes everybody brings presents and hangs them on the tree for their kids and all their friends. But you never get what you want. One year, down in Texas, there was seven children in one family. Their father was away from home, and their mother hardly ever went to church, and those kids never got a single thing. You ought to have heard them howl when Santa Claus passed out the very last doll of the Sunday-scbool 11

and Noah's ark, and never had one for them. I guess everybody else felt Hke crying some too, and even I had to sniff my nose once or twice, thinking about how if it was me. I'd have given them some of my presents only they was all girls and wouldn't have any use for my ball and bat or watch chain. Some of the teachers did give them something, but they never came back to that school any more, and I don't blame them.

If you don't have presents they give you a skeeter netting bag or sock with about a nickel's worth of mixed candy and a few nuts in it, and sometimes an orange that you can't eat till you get home, and by that time you're so full of candy and popcorn you don't want it.

This year we had what Brother Parker called a Bible Christmas. He said a Bible Christmas was a giving Christmas. He said the person who was having the birthday always got the presents from the other people, and as it was Jesus' birthday we ought to give things to him that day, instead of getting things, like it was our birthday.

He talked a long time one Sunday and told lots of Bible verses about giving, and finally the school voted to do it. Our class didn't vote very loud for we couldn't see any fun in it. But there was, all right.

Brother Parker said the way to give to Jesus was to give to somebody that was in trouble. So we decided to make some things for the orphan asylum. Each class was to make something, but they mustn't let any of the other classes know what they was making till that night.

It was heaps of fun meeting at the teacher's house and deciding what to make, and she let us decide it, and make motions and second them ourselves, just like they do at the high school literary society.

And then it was lots of fun having a class secret. Every morning when we got to school we'd look at each other and say, "You know," and then we'd all laugh and go off, for fear we might tell. It was just like belonging to a club.

Then every night after school we would scatter and each one go a different way so they wouldn't know we was all going down to our barn to work on it. Why, one night Bulldog Jones came down the alley and instead of climbing the fence like the rest of us did, he crawled under the barn and came right up through a rotten board in the floor. It was most Hke being a detective, only just the opposite, for we was trying not to be detectived.

Well, when Christmas night came we all went

'Came right up through a rotten hoard in the floor, ^^

to the church, and I never saw it look so pretty in all my life.

There wasn't any tree, but all around the room was candles — ninety-six of them I counted. They was in the windows, on the pulpit, organ, library, in brackets on the wall, just everywhere, and it made the church as bright inside as the saloon down on the corner.

Of course, there was Christmas mottoes and a star, but they had giving mottoes, too. Right opposite "Merry Christmas'* was "It is More Blessed to Give Than to Receive," and under "Peace on Earth, Good Will to Men" it said, "The Lord Loveth a Cheerful Giver."

All the songs were about giving, the superintendent read in the Bible about the Wise-men giving presents to Jesus, there was speaking and exercises by the classes, and Brother Parker made a talk about giving ourselves to Jesus. All the people said it was a good talk, but I was mighty glad it was short for it made you feel so kind of mean, and I couldn't hardly wait for what was coming next.

Pretty soon it was time to bring out the things the classes had made, and everybody was stretching their necks and rubbering to see what it would be. And the old folks was worse than the kids about rubbering.

The girls of course had made dolls and hemmed handkerchiefs and such-like stuff; the young ladies' class had made a quilt and some pillows ; the Bible class had brought a big newspaper holder ; the young men had made a bookcase; and even the baby class brought a scrapbook.

But what our class gave was the very best of all. It was a long, low bench, with a box under it the whole length. Inside the box was lots of shoe-brushes and boxes of blacking, and the little orphan boys can use the bench part to black their shoes on Saturday nights for Sundays.

Bulldog Jones thought of it. He said he saw one once in a magazine advertisement. He said he didn't have much use for it himself, but that we ought to see that those orphans was brought up right.

Each class took its present up and unwrapped it and put it on the table; then Brother Parker prayed over the things, that the orphans would like them, and that Jesus would know that we meant them for him.

Then we sang "Joy to the World," and as we went out each one got a Christmas card with a Bible verse on it. My verse was *'Love seeketh not her own."

I vote for that kind of a Christmas every year.

Chapter IV Our Superintendent

We had election of officers in our school the other Sunday for the new year. Of course they elected the same old superintendent again, for they all think there isn't anybody else will have it. I bet some of them would if they ever got a chance.

I don't think much of our superintendent. He may be all right for a Sunday-school, but he sure never would do in a football game. Why, he would always do the very same thing with the ball that he did last time, and before he got started the whole of the other team would be on top of him. I tell you, youVe got to have some life to play football. You can't have just any old walking corpse on your team.

I heard our superintendent say once that he was born the same year that gold was discovered in California. If he was, it looks like he would have caught the fever and would discover something new for the opening exercises of our school.

But it's always the same old thing. There isn't a boy in our class but could get up and run the school just the way he does, from "We will open our school this morning by the use of hymn Number 69/' to "The teachers will now take their classes." We don't have to listen, for we always know just what is coming next.

He don't even have to tell us how to read the lesson, for he seems to think there isn't but one way it can be read. "Read the lesson," means for him to read one verse and we read the next, and so on; you know how.

I've been to this school more than a year now, and he's never read it any other way yet. Bumps Brown wanted to bet his watch against my birddog pup that he wouldn't read the lesson any other way before summer vacation. But I don't bet, at least not when it's a dead sure thing I lose.

Our class knows who would make a good superintendent, and he would take it, too, because we asked him one day. But they never give us a chance to say nothing on election Sunday. If it wasn't for our teacher and Brother Parker, a lot of the boys in our class say they'd quit and go to the Baptist.

I'm mighty glad Conference let him come back this year, for I'd hate to have our class run down like the Bible class was before Brother Parker came. There was only three members, and two of them didn't come very regular.

I expect I would be the one in our class that would have to come every Sunday anyhow, because my father's the class leader and mother teaches the young ladies' class, and I just know they wouldn't never let me stay at home or go to any other school.

I bet if our class broke up they'd even put me in that old class of girls, and I'd have to sit alongside of Mayme Whitney and hear the silly things talk about parties and dresses and such stuff.

The Baptist school has got a fine superintendent. He looks like he was just a young fellow, but he's editor of the paper and secretary of the school board and sends the telegrams to the Wichita papers when anybody gets killed or there is a cyclone or anything else interesting.

Jim Purdy goes to that Sunday-school, and tells us all about it at recess. Jim don't care nothing for Sunday-school. He says he just goes for the fun of it, to see what in thunder they will do next., (That isn't swearing.) He says their superintendent believes in running their Sunday-school the way he runs his paper, and that if he didn't get something new in his paper once in a while nobody would take it.

Jim says you never know how they are going to start that school. Sometimes they sing three songs right along, or they may read the lesson first. Sometimes they begin with three or four prayers, and once in a while the superintendent will tell a story first of all, that somehow shows how things just like the lesson are happening now.

And after they get started you never know what is coming next. Perhaps it's a song or a prayer, or maybe Bible verses or a review of the last lesson, or just anything. Jim says it's like a three-ring circus, you have to watch every minute or you miss something.

My father says he thinks they carry it too far making the Sunday-school like a circus, but Jim didn't mean like a real circus, but just that it's interesting.

Jim Purdy's father is engineer on «the Flyer, and sometimes Jim goes with him on the engine.

Jim says maybe he will take me with him some day. He says it will nearly take my breath away, but he says nothing slow for him, and I say so too.

Over at the Baptist they read the lesson a different way nearly every Sunday. Sometimes one person will read it all, and all the rest of them will just sit and listen. Sometimes the whole school reads it together. But Jim says the best is when they divide it up like a dialogue, all the boys read what the men in the lesson say, all the girls read what the women in the lesson say, and the superintendent reads what comes in between. He says you can get some sense out of it then.

I wish our old superintendent was a Baptist.

Chapter V Starting A Home Department

We've got messengers in our school. Did you know that? And we're it.

They're part of the Home Department, you know, but I think they're about the biggest part. And it isn't play, neither, but the real thing, all right.

You know a Home Department is for old folks and sick folks, and anybody that can't come to Sunday-school. Only I believe some in our Home Department could come if they wanted to.

But I think the Home Department is a good thing just the same, because lots of them really can't come, and maybe if the rest of them keep on studying the lessons they will get interested by and by, and then they will come.

Our Home Department was started about a year ago, and it was like this:

My mother went to a big Sunday-school convention at Guthrie, and when she came back she said we just had to have a new thing called a

Home Department that she heard about at the convention.

She said one afternoon a big bald-headed man got up to make a spiel about something. She didn't listen much at first, because she hadn't heard his name and didn't know what he was going to talk about, and was most tired to death anyway.

But pretty soon some one sung out that he was the Field Secretary's father. At that, she says everybody clapped their hands, and she waked up and began to listen with both ears, and never missed another word.

She says he just told them they wasn't doing their whole duty unless they took the open Bible to them what can't come to Sunday-school, and that they could do it by starting a Home Department, and how if they didn't do it they wasn't obeying that place in the Bible where it says: "Go everywhere and take the Gospel to everybody." And she said she just decided then and there to do it for our school.

She sent to the place where we always get our quarterlies and got a lot of samples and things and some Home Department quarterlies.

Then she kept thinking about it and hating it, like I hate doing the chores, till that quarter was gone and those quarterlies was no more good than an invitation to a party that's already over. Then she had to get some new ones.

Finally she started out, and she took me along with her, to kind of brace her up I guess. She said she would only go to Widow Smith and old man Mosely, what can't walk on account of the rheumatiz, and then she would do some more some other day.

Well, it was better than a circus to see mother drag her feet up to old Widow Smith's door. She looked just like that young book agent that came to our house to sell father the life of Bob Ingersoll. I guess with all her teaching in the Sunday-school mother hasn't been doing very much inviting lately, or she wouldn't hate it like she did.

But old Mrs. Smith was real pleasant, and after they had talked about the weather for half an hour mother finally told her what she had come for; how the Sunday-school wanted her to be a member, even if she couldn't come, and how they would bring her a quarterly every quarter, and she could study the lesson at home every week just the same.

And then old Mrs. Smith just reached out her hand and got hold of mother's, and says:

*'0h, Sister Henly, you don't know how glad I am for this. I've been just hungry for the Sunday-school. Why," she says, "I've been to Sunday-school ever since I was a little girl, and, altogether, I've been scholar, teacher, and superintendent more than fifty years, but now that I can't get out very regular I thought the Sunday-school had forgot me."

And then she just bawled right out loud, and I looked at mother, and she was beginning to bawl too, and I seen that was no place for me, and I just scooted out and chased an old rooster in from out in the road and wished I hadn't come.

But finally they got over it, and mother came out, with old Mrs. Smith thanking her every step of the way, and we left.

Say, mother couldn't get to the next place quick enough. Old man Mosely didn't bawl any, only grunt at his rheumatiz, but he said he would be real glad to know where the lesson was every week, and that studying of it would help him to forget his bones. So he took the quarterly and things, and said on some warm, pleasant Sunday he was going to visit the school.

I thought we was going to quit then for that day, but no, sir-ee. Mother was just finding out that she had something people wanted, and she began to like it. So she just hustled home for more quarterlies and envelopes, and before supper we went pretty near all over town.

She said I didn't need to go with her if I didn't want to, but I kind of liked it myself, so I went along.

Altogether we got seventeen members that day. There was only one what wouldn't, and she was nice about it. She said:

"Why, Sister Henly, I don't want to disappoint you, but I don't believe I shall have time. But I will think it over and let you know.'*

That's what she said, but I knew that what she meant was that she didn't want to, and mother knew it too. You can't fool mother.

I've got to stop now before I get to the real messenger part, but I'll tell about that next time, and it's the best of all.

Chapter VI Home Department Messengers

ELL, IVe been waiting a whole month to tell you the rest about us messengers, and now I'm going to do it.

You remember I told you how mother and I started our Home Department, and how we got seventeen members the first day. Well, mother kept right on getting them — sick people, lazy church members, saloon-keepers* wives, the hotel man and his wife, the livery barn man, the telephone girl, the agent down to the depot, and a deaf-and-dumb woman. Brother Parker helped her some, and finally she got fifty-three members.

Mother said she couldn't look after so many and her Sunday-school class too, so she got old Mrs. Smith to be at the head of the Home Department, and they appointed our class to be messengers, to run errands for her and carry 26 round the quarterlies, because, you know, she can't get round much herself.