"I shouldn't wonder if a majority of people thought that common sense had nothing to do with religion," he said, laughing; "and that is what makes us silly and sentimental when we try to talk about it. In our effort to be solemn, and suit our words to the theme, we are unnatural. But your statement with regard to the little children is true; I have often observed it." "That other point, about visiting, was the one that troubled me," Marion said. "It doesn't annihilate it to say that teachers don't visit; they don't, to be sure, with here and there a delightful exception. My experience on this matter, as well as on several other matters connected with the subject, reaches beyond these few weeks of personal experience. I have had my eyes very wide open; I was alive to inconsistencies wherever I found them; the world and the church, and especially the Sunday-school, seemed to me to be full of professions without any practice. I rather enjoyed finding such flaws. Why I thought the thin spots in other people's garments would keep me any warmer, I am sure I don't know; but I was fond of bringing them to the surface. "Still, because a duty isn't done is no sign that it cannot be. Of course a teacher with six pupils could visit them frequently, while one with a hundred could do it but rarely; and yet, systematic effort would accomplish a great deal in that direction, it seems to me. I don't know why we should have more than fifty people in our churches; certainly the pastor could visit them much more frequently, and keep a better oversight, than when he had eight hundred, as you have; yet we don't think it the best way after all. We recognize the enthusiasm of numbers and the necessity for economizing good workers so long as the field for work is so large. "But I know a way in which a strong personal influence could be kept over even a hundred children; by keeping watch for the sick and sorrowing in their homes, and establishing an intimacy there, and by making a gathering of some sort, say twice a year, or oftener, if a person could, and giving the day to them; and, well, in a hundred different ways that I will not take your time to speak of; only we teachers of day-schools know that we can make our influence far reaching, even when our numbers are large; and we know that there is such an influence in numbers and in disciplined action, that, other things being equal, we can teach mathematics to a class of fifty better than we can to a class of five; and if mathematics, why not the Lord's Prayer? "Now I have relieved my mind on this subject," she added, laughing, as she arose, "and I feel a good deal better. Mind, I haven't said at all that the present system cannot be carried out successfully; I only say that I can't do it. I have tried it and failed; it is not according to my way of working." "But the remedy, my dear friend; in our class, for instance. Suppose we wanted to reorganize, what would we do with the teachers in rule at present?"