News travels very rapidly indeed in the country. My boy friend told some
of the other children that I was reading the _oldest_ books in the
library. "She takes them out by the armfuls," I overheard him remark.

No doubt he made more comments that I did not overhear; for one morning
a small girl called to see me, and, after a few preliminaries, said, "If
you are through with 'The Fairchild Family,' may I have it? You like it
awfully much, don't you?"

Not only in the secular teaching of their children do thoughtful country
parents, in common with careful fathers and mothers living elsewhere,
try to obtain the best means and to use them to the best ends; in the
religious instruction of their children they make a similar attempt.
They are not content to let their children learn entirely at home, to
depend solely upon parental guidance. The church, and even the Sunday
school, are integral parts in the up-bringing of the most happily
situated country children. The little white meeting-houses in the small
rural villages are familiar places to the country child--joyously
familiar places, at that. The only weekly outing that falls to the lot
of the younger children of country parents is the Sunday trip to church
and Sunday school.

What do they get from it? Undoubtedly, very much what city children
receive from the church and the Sunday school--in quantity and in
quality. There is a constant pleasure from the singing; an occasional
glimmer of illumination from the sermon; and an unfailing delight from
the Bible stories. We can be reasonably sure that _all_ children get
thus much from the habitual church and Sunday-school attendance. Some,
irrespective of city or country environment, glean more.