She was fond of devotional reading, but had little time
for it, and it pleased her to know that so small a child as I
really cared for the hymns she loved.
I learned most of them at meeting. I was told to listen to the
minister; but as I did not understand a word he was saying, I
gave it up, and took refuge in the hymn-book, with the
conscientious purpose of trying to sit still. I turned the leaves
over as noiselessly as possible, to avoid the dreaded reproof of
my mother's keen blue eyes; and sometimes I learned two or three
hymns in a forenoon or an afternoon. Finding it so easy, I
thought I would begin at the beginning, and learn the whole.
There were about a thousand of them included in the Psalms, the
First, Second, and Third Books, and the Select Hymns. But I had
learned to read before I had any knowledge of counting up
numbers, and so was blissfully ignorant of the magnitude of my
undertaking. I did not, I think, change my resolution because
there were so many, but because, little as I was, I discovered
that there were hymns and hymns.
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