If traveller, good treatment be thy care,
A comfortable bed, and wholesome fare,
A Modest bill, and a diverting host,
Neat maid, and ready waiter,—quit this coast.
If dirty doings please, at Stockport lie;
The girls, O frowzy frights, here with their mothers vie.
I think this is all the historian who is merely a gossip can say about Stockport. But stay! One very prominent feature has been passed over, and as I have no wish to incur the wrath of the burgesses, I hasten to repair the omission. Stockport is intensely proud of possessing the largest Sunday School in the world: proud, that is to say, of the large roll-call of its scholars, and possibly also of the mere bulk of the great building. Of its appearance, which is that of any large factory, there could not possibly be any pride. But in these days of secular advances and of a growing godless Socialism in great industrial centres, it is at once surprising and hopeful to see the like of Stockport’s great Sunday School: and in Manchester itself to witness the really wonderful Whitsuntide sight of the Sunday Schools’ processions through the chief streets of the great city.
Footnotes.
[1] Viâ Boroughbridge, Greta Bridge, and Catterick.
[2] Died April 27th, 1905. Will proved, October, 1905, for £1,562,500.