Annals of our ancestors; one hundred and fifty years of history in the ...

OUR SPRINGTIME 113
stump or the spur of an oak, a pile of money. So one night
our boys did sally forth with shovels on their shoulders to dig
for buried treasure by the mysterious stones. To be sure, they
went believing it was scarcely probable that they would find
anything; and they kept their fruitless adventures a secret,
to be laughed over only in the privacy of our own family.
Some time in 1850 the subject of Sunday schools was
claiming much attention. Father had read of the great work
being done in England and of the philanthropic work inaugurated
by one of the advance guard of Christian workers who
suggested the plan of getting each child to bring a penny a
Sunday, and that out of these united small offerings a great
and successful work might be carried on. This report so
enthused our father that he took us all down to Carthage, and
in a nice little speech told the Sunday school what could be
accomplished if each one gave a penny a Sunday, and it was
decided that we would ^ry the plan in our school. It was a
success and was continued. Sunday schools at that time were
conducted very differently from now. We just read our New
Testament lesson and recited our verses. A reward was offered
for the one who in a given time should have the largest number
of verses committed to memory. It is almost needless to say
that Brother Will outdistanced even those pupils who recited
hundreds of Bible verses at one recitation. In the Sunday
school there was a widow's son, a bright boy who came near
to Will in the number of verses he could recite. I remember
that when the time to close the contest was very near, the
superintendent came to father and laid the case before him,
asking how it would do for Will to drop out so that the widow's
son might gain the coveted prize. Brother was just beginning
to assume the dignity of young manhood, and this request he
felt to be almost a reflection on his own manliness. He re-
signed in favor of the poor boy, but always felt the injustice of
the request.
Carthage, where we went to church, was three miles off,
and the way was all down hill. To shorten the distance to
Sunday school the boys found a way to reach the place by a
cut across the fields until we could enter Cook's Woods. The