American literature -- 19th century -- Periodicals; Sunday schools -- United States -- Periodicals
NOT a long journey this time. It was a bright Sabbath afternoon, and
I walked own Gilbert avenue, then McMillan avenue, then Kibbe street,
until I came to a large new building into which all the world seemed to
be trying to crowd. We were late; the sound of many voices in song made
us try to hasten, but the crowd was so great that this was not easy to
do. On the way, Sabbath though it was, we had passed many crowds of a
different sort. Men and women pushing into street cars, talking loud
and laughing gayly, on their way to park, or garden, or theatre. On the
corners were crowds of boys, talking, spitting, swearing; we passed
saloons out of which reeled drunken men; in short, we passed places
and people which did not make us think of Sunday at all. But this was
different. The singing was very sweet; the room was large, and had many
windows; the walls were white, and everything was fresh and new. The
floor was carpeted, and seated with chairs, and every chair was filled;
so also were the aisles, and the doorways leading into the side rooms.
But the great evergreen letters on the space opposite the main door,
said--
WELCOME.
And the ushers came forward cordially and motioned us in, saying
cheerily, "Always room here for one more." So we elbowed and wedged our
way.
What was going on? Why, this was the dedication of Bethany Chapel, the
room for which the young men and the young women up on these Hills have
been working for years. Yesterday it was in order. On the wall hung a
motto at which everybody looked and smiled. It was a very pretty motto:
FAITH IN ACTION.
Those were the words; and looking about the pretty room, one could not
help feeling that there must have been a good deal of it in action to
have given us such results. But I noticed that people looked beyond
the motto at the nail from which it hung. A gold nail! Very large,
and entirely covered with gold. That was certainly a new kind of nail.
I wondered what it meant; presently the superintendent of the school
told us about it. It seems that, a long time before, the teachers had
explained to their scholars just what was to be done, and just how much
money, and time, and work, it would take, and how much help would be
needed. Among others, the primary teacher had explained very carefully
to her little bits, and had said: "Now we all want to help; every
little girl and every little boy must do something; I am sure you each
want a nail in the new building. Don't you?"
Then of course every one of them said "Yes, ma'am," in their eager
little voices; and then I suppose some of them went home and forgot all
about it. Not so little Faith whose story I am going to tell you. She
thought it over, fixing all the powers of her mind on it. She talked it
over with her particular friend Robbie, as he worked with the scissors
and a sheet of paper trying to cut a pattern for a new kind of cart
wheel which he intended to make.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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