About three-quarters of an hour before the time for commencing, I start for the children, going from home to home, inviting and coaxing them to come. I sometimes carry with me pieces of cake and candy or a bright text-card to attract those who seem more timid than the rest.
If I meet a stray child on the street, I say “Na lie dook she?” (You come to school?) Sometimes my labors are rewarded by seeing a bundle of clothes slip past me, and a minute afterward all is lost in oblivion in a small alley; but sometimes they slip their dirty hands into mine and trudge along with me, amid the jeers and contemptuous smiles of those passing by. Finally we arrive at our school room, between twenty and thirty children being present, ranging all the way from five to twelve years. We commence by singing three or four hymns; then all rise and repeat a prayer after me in concert, sentence by sentence. I then explain the Sabbath-school lesson through an interpreter, and either show the picture of the International Lessons, or a black-board drawing, and sometimes an object. I find, as with all children, their interest can be awakened and held by means of an object or picture. After letting each repeat the text given the week before, we close with the Lord’s Prayer in Chinese; and after good-bye is said all around, I dismiss them, taking some of them home, as their parents are afraid to trust them across the car tracks alone.
These children are exceedingly bright and attentive, and as to their good behavior, I can sometimes hold up their example as worthy of the imitation of my class of American boys. Only to-day, in speaking of the lesson on “Worshiping the Golden Calf,” I asked which they worshiped, God or idols, and one little girl said, “Me worship God; idols no good. They have eyes, no see; hands and feet, and no walk.” And when I asked all to raise their hands who would worship Jesus, she raised both hands. When shown the picture of Abraham offering Isaac, one of them said, “Why did not he run away?” One day, when taking home a little girl of five years of age, she looked at the cable car which was passing, and said, “What for does that car go faster than that one (pointing to a horse car)? That has no horse.” They ask innumerable questions, and want to know the why and wherefore of everything.
Oh! my dear Christian friends, pray for me, that I may be aided in teaching and guiding these precious souls, on whom so much of China’s progress depends.
Yours in Christ,
Lilian Lamont.