[Daisy Cowper was five years old when she first attended St. Silas’s Church of England School, in 1895. While her parents were originally devout Anglicans, they left the Church of England and became ardent members of a Welsh Baptist chapel, Windsor Street, Liverpool. The youngest of nine siblings, Daisy had seven older brothers]

And now, while I’m still a little one, what about my religious life, or spiritual growth, if it can be called by so imposing a title?

[…]

My first hymn, learned at St. Silas’s C.E. school, was “Jesus bids us shine”, each verse ending “You in your small corner, and I in mine.” I imagined Jesus as being like one of my own elder brothers, but even kinder, for He wouldn’t ask me to leave my play to do things for Him, as the boys did. He lived in my singing of the hymn as the fifth person in a game I’d watched the big (8-year!) girls playing, “Pussy Four Corners.” Four girls occupied the four corners, and dodged from one to the other while the unfortunate fifth, in the middle, tried to occupy a corner during the moment’s vacating of it. Yes, I saw it all: Jesus, in his white sheet, wouldn’t mind being the one left out all the time: He was so kind. So I understood why we sang about “You in your small corner and I-in-mine” – each clutching a little Christmas-tree candle. 

I heartily disliked one hymn which even yet strangely depresses me – “Safe, in the arms of Jesus”. It had a monotonous tune which didn’t help  [...]