It was about half past twelve when we arrived home, on Twentieth street four doors south of Chestnut. Father, mother and seven children, the normal family, and often with guests, enjoyed, after due thanks to God, the bountiful fare, and the one hour of the week when the head of the house was present at the mid-day meal. Then about 1:40 P.M., we were off again to Sunday School which opened at two o'clock, and which once a month took the form of a Temperance or a Missionary meeting. At times, besides the appropriate singing and special addresses, often from the Master's envoys abroad, but home on a furlough, we had the missionary news from all parts of the world read to us. I remember particularly the presence and words of two Christian Indians from Kansas. One speaker, among many, whom I well remember hearing, was Rev. Wilder, the founder of the Week of Prayer. Among other enterprises, in which my boyish energies were enlisted, was that of securing contributions in money for the equivalent of one or more bricks in the American Sunday School Union building on Chestnut Street. Another was the financing of two and a half shares in the missionary ship _Morning Star_. I remember how the pastor thrilled us with the news of the Reed treaty of 1858, saying "China is open to the gospel". The Yedo embassy of 1861, giving me my first sight of men from the Mikado's empire--and especially as I saw "Tommy" and others at short range on Chestnut street--powerfully impressed my imagination. I little knew at the time that I should be an educational pioneer in the then distant archipelago.[8] [Footnote 8: See The Mikado's Empire, Townsend Harris, Life of Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, Japan in History, Folk-lore and Art, The Religions of Japan, etc.] The afternoon Sunday School over, the preaching and worship in the auditorium above usually attracted a much larger crowd than in the morning. Often I have seen every available space in the aisles, stairways, vestibule and pulpit platform taken up. The afternoon exit to the small boy was even more interesting than in the morning, for the pavement and "church parade" show was greater. Hence, also, for purposes other than of strict devotion the said small boy usually took his seat in the gallery, near the head of the stairs. The benediction over, he was promptly on the side walk to see the largest number of pretty girls, and other people more or less interesting.