Now I have reached the age of fourteen and a half. I have left school, but have not yet started work. I mean paid work. I worked alright, but I never got paid for my labour […] I was most unhappy for about fifteen months.
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Now I have reached the age of fourteen and a half. I have left school, but have not yet started work. I mean paid work. I worked alright, but I never got paid for my labour […] I was most unhappy for about fifteen months.
But oh, I was so happy on Sunday. All the preparation for cooking was done overnight, so that we only had to wash up the breakfast things and make our own beds and we could dress properly and go to Sunday School.
[…]
It sounds like a dull kind of weekend, but to us it was a taste of Heaven. Our teachers were Angels in our eyes. The pastor was a kind, smiling man named John Williams and we all loved him. I had many friends and I loved them and I think they loved me. We had special Children’s Days when the Church was decorated with flowers and we all wore our best clothes and sang special hymns learned for the occasion.
[…]
One of the high spots of our life was our Sunday School Outing. We assembled at the school with our packet of sandwiches and a clean hanky at 9am. Four hundred or more excited kids, twelve or fourteen horse brakes drew up and we all filed into the seats […] and then with a blast on a long post-horn, we were off along the road, right up Commercial Road and sometimes through the market. Cheering and singing and waving to everyone we passed, and they waved back. The children to-day don’t know what real joy is like.
[…]
[After a day at a farm with various activities and games, we] assembled again and a hymn and three cheers for the teachers who had prepared it all. Then roll call and back to the brakes and so home to Elm Grove again, tired but, oh, so happy.
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