At the same time verses and songs were also issued to be learned for the Children’s Day program, and there would be several Saturday morning practices scheduled. Margaret and Jenny practiced theirs at home until they knew them perfectly and Mother and Daddy listened carefully to be sure they said them clearly, and not too fast, and with good expression in their voices and to stand up straight and speak loudly enough to be heard by those at the back of the Church.
When Jenny was eight, she saw a few of the seventh and eighth graders at the Children’s Day program get special mention for earning the “String of Pearls.” The Pearls weren’t beads, but were little cards with the text or the name of the memorized work printed on them and slots so that they could be strung on a ribbon.
Those who earned the pearls were also awarded a Scofield reference Bible, for serious Biblical scholars. There were about thirty pearls and some were short Bible verses and others longer passages such as the Beatitudes, the Lord’s Prayer and the Twenty Third psalm. The crowning achievement was two somewhat difficult chapters, the twelfth chapter of Romans and the thirteenth chapter of Corinthians. Jenny decided she would start learning “The String of Pearls,” and asked her Sunday School teacher about it. The teacher gave her the list of the work to be memorized and Jenny took it home and she and Mother would look it up in the black Holy Bible with the thin gold edged pages that was kept on a little table in the parlor.
Each Sunday she would take one of the teachers aside and say the memorized work for her. They would give her the card or cards, and by the time she was nine, she had learned them all. She was the youngest on record in the Church to earn this award.
At about the same time as she was learning the “String of Pearls,” Jenny became interested in reading, “The Story of the Bible,” a large old book that had been handed down in Daddy’s family with the Bible stories very slightly simplified and in bigger print than the King James version of the Holy Bible that was kept on the little table in the parlor. There were dramatic, sepia toned pictures of Adam and Eve in the garden with the serpent, Abraham about to sacrifice his son Isaac, Noah and the ark, Moses and the Children of Israel crossing the Red Sea where God had parted the waters, and the Egyptians in their chariots trying to follow, but drowning as the waters closed back over them, little David slaying Goliath with his slingshot, Saul and Absalom, King Solomon poised to cut a baby in half, when two women each claimed it was her child, Christ fishing in the Sea of Galilee, walking on the water, praying in the garden of Gethsemane, and of course the crucifixion with Christ on the center cross, flanked by the two thieves on crosses.
Jenny liked the poetic language of the Bible reading and the boldly drawn pictures. but she suffered much guilt, feeling sure that she was never good enough or holy enough and she prayed often to be forgiven for her sins. She wrote poetry about the Bible stories, thinking that this might help atone for her sins. She decided to begin at the front of the Bible and write a poem about each important Bible story, but didn’t attain this goal. The first poem she wrote was about Adam and Eve. It began:
I suppose you’ve heard of Adam
About the forbidden fruit
For his wife and he were naked
Without a dress or suit.
At the urging of Aunt Henriette, who had seen the poem, she read this poem to “The Ladies Aid Society.” The ladies thought it was wonderful, and Jenny was sometimes called upon to write a poem for some special event. Jenny’s religious fervor cooled somewhat when she was about ten, and hadn’t yet been struck dead like Balaam on his ass after all.
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