Читать книгу A Half Century Among the Siamese and the Lāo: An Autobiography онлайн

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There was no Presbyterian church in Pittsboro at that time. The church-going population was divided between the Methodist and the Episcopalian churches, the former being the larger. With my cousin’s family I attended the Methodist church. On my first Sunday I joined the Methodist Sunday School, and that school was the next important link in my chain of life. Its special feature was a system of prizes. A certain number of perfect answers secured a blue ticket; ten of these brought a yellow ticket; and yellow tickets, according to the number of them, entitled the possessor to various prizes—a hymnbook, a Bible, or the like. On the first Sunday I was put into a class of boys of my own age, at work on a little primer of one hundred and six questions, all answered in monosyllables. By the next Sunday I was able to recite the whole, together with the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles’ Creed at the end. It was no great feat; but the teacher and the school thought it was. So, on the strength of my very first lesson, I got a yellow ticket, and was promoted to the next higher class. That stimulated my ambition, and I devoted my every spare hour to study. The next book was one of questions and answers on the four Gospels. They were very easy; I was able to commit to memory several hundred answers during the week. In a few Sundays I got my first prize; and it was not long before I had secured all the prizes offered in the school. What was of far more value than the prizes was the greater love for study and for the Scriptures which the effort had awakened in me, and a desire for an education. The shop was often idle; I had plenty of time for study, and made the most of it.