7. Recall any especially helpful forms of the use of this day in your childhood, or coming under your observation. FOOTNOTES: [31] See chap. xvii, "The Family and the Church." [32] See chap. vii on "Directed Activity," and the references for study at its end. [33] Much may be learned by a study of Primary plans in a modern Sunday school. See Athearn, _The Church School_, chap. vi. [34] Since we are dealing here especially with religious education in the family, the author refers to his more extended treatment of the question of children in church services in _Efficiency in the Sunday School_, chap. xv. CHAPTER XIV THE MINISTRY OF THE TABLE Shall the periods for meals be for the body only or shall we see in them happy occasions for the enriching of the higher life? Upon the answer depends whether the table shall be little more than a feeding-trough or the scene of constant mental and character development. In some memories the meals stand out only in terms of food, while pictures of dishes and fragments of food fill the mind; in others there are borne through all life pictures of happy faces and thoughts of cheer, of knowledge gained and ideals created in the glow of conversation. § 1. THE OPPORTUNITY The family is together as a united group at the table more than anywhere besides. Table-talk, by its informality and by the aid of the pleasures of social eating, is one of the most influential means of education. Depend upon it, children are more impressed by table-talk than by teacher-talk or by pulpit-talk. They expect moralizing on the other occasions, but here the moral lessons throw out no warning; they meet no opposition; they are--or ought to be, if they would be effective--a natural part of ordinary conversation and, by being part and parcel of everyday affairs, they become normally related to life. The table is the best opportunity for informal, indirect teaching, and this is for children the natural and only really effective form of moral instruction. The child comes to these social occasions with a hungry mind as well as with an empty stomach. His mind is always receptive--even more so than his stomach; at the table he is absorbing that which will stay with him much longer than his food. Even if we were thinking of his food alone, we should still do well to see that the table is graced by happy and helpful conversation; nothing will aid digestion more than good cheer of the spirit; it stimulates the organs and, by diverting attention from the mere mechanics of eating, it tends to that most desirable end, a leisurely consumption of food.