Childhood
Bliss Knapp, C.S.B., was born on June 7, 1877 in Lyman, New Hampshire. His parents, Ira Oscar Knapp and Flavia Stickney Knapp, were students of Mary Baker Eddy, the founder of Christian Science, and they were pioneering workers in its growth. Ira Knapp was one of the original directors to whom Mrs. Eddy deeded the land on which the Original Edifice of the Mother Church, The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, was built.
Bliss Knapp's mother Flavia had studied under Eddy at the Massachusetts Metaphysical College in Boston, having completed her Primary in April 1889. In the summer of 1895 she taught a Primary class with Bliss as a member. He finished this class before the beginning of the fall session at the university. Bliss's sister Daphne was in Mrs. Eddy's last class of 1898, the so-called "Class of Seventy" as seventy invitations had been sent out although 67 attended. Mrs. Knapp was selected as the first teacher in the new Board of Education. Mrs. Knapp taught 85 primary class pupils as a teacher of Christian Science. She was selected to teach the 1898 Normal class but died on March 15, 1898. Her death was a tremendous blow to Bliss's father. However, Eddy proceeded to pray for Ira audibly and this prayer supposedly healed him of his grief.
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Famous quotes containing the word childhood:
“The real dividing line between early childhood and middle childhood is not between the fifth year and the sixth year—it is more nearly when children are about seven or eight, moving on toward nine. Building the barrier at six has no psychological basis. It has come about only from the historic-economic-political fact that the age of six is when we provide schools for all.”
—James L. Hymes, Jr. (20th century)
“Later you hear it wander the dark house
Like a mother who rises at night to seek a childhood picture;
Or it goes to the backyard and stands like an old horse cold in the
pasture.”
—Robert Penn Warren (1905–1989)
“If a child were kept in a place where he never saw any other but black and white till he were a man, he would have no more ideas of scarlet or green, than he that from his childhood never tasted an oyster, or a pineapple, has of those particular relishes.”
—John Locke (1632–1704)