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+The Project Gutenberg eBook, Uppingham by the Sea, by John Henry Skrine
+
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+
+
+
+Title: Uppingham by the Sea
+       a Narrative of the Year at Borth
+
+
+Author: John Henry Skrine
+
+
+
+Release Date: March 22, 2006  [eBook #18036]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)
+
+
+***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK UPPINGHAM BY THE SEA***
+
+
+
+
+Transcribed from the 1878 Macmillan and Co. edition by David Price, email
+ccx074@coventry.ac.uk
+
+
+
+
+
+UPPINGHAM BY THE SEA.
+
+
+A Narrative of the Year at Borth.
+
+BY
+J. H. S.
+
+[Greek text].
+
+London:
+MACMILLAN AND CO.
+
+1878.
+[_All Rights reserved_.]
+
+CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS,
+CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS.
+
+EDUARDO THRING,
+
+_SCHOLAE UPPINGHAMIENSIS CONDITORI ALTERI_,
+_OB CIVES SERVATOS_:
+
+ET
+
+MAGISTRIS ADJUTORIBUS,
+QUI,
+SALUTE COMMUNI IN ULTIMUM ADDUCTA DISCRIMEN,
+DE RE PUBLICA
+NON DESPERAVERUNT.
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+In the spring of 1876 and of 1877, letters under the heading "Uppingham
+by the Sea" were published in _The Times_ newspaper, and were read with
+interest by friends of the school.  We have thought the following
+narrative would be best introduced to those readers under a name already
+pleasantly familiar to them, and have borrowed, with the writer's
+permission, the title of his sketches for our own more detailed account
+of the same events.
+
+The readers whom we have in view will demand no apology for the attempt
+to supply a circumstantial record of so memorable an episode in the
+school's history.  It deserves indeed an abler historian; but one
+qualification at any rate may be claimed by the present writer: an eye-
+witness from first to last, but a minor actor only in the scenes he
+chronicles, he enjoyed good opportunities of watching the play, and risks
+no personal modesty in relating what he saw.
+
+The best purpose of the narrative will have been served if any Uppingham
+boy, as he reads these pages, finds in them a new reason for loyalty to
+the society whose name he bears.
+
+JUNE 27TH, 1878,
+FOUNDER'S DAY.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.--EXILES, OLD AND NEW.
+
+
+   "_O what have we ta'en_?" _said the fisher-prince_,
+      "_What have we ta'en this morning's tide_?
+   _Get thee down to the wave_, _my carl_,
+      _And row me the net to the meadow's-side_."
+
+   _In he waded, the fisher-carl_,
+      _And_ "_Here_," _quoth he_, "_is a wondrous thing_!
+   _A cradle_, _prince_, _and a fair man-child_,
+      _Goodly to see as the son of a king_!"
+
+   _The fisher-prince he caught the word_,
+      _And_ "_Hail_," _he cried_, "_to the king to be_!
+   _Stranger he comes from the storm and the night_;
+   _But his fame shall wax, and his name be bright_,
+      _While the hills look down on the Cymry sea_."
+
+   FINDING OF TALIESIN.
+
+Elphin, son of Gwyddno, the prince who ruled the coasts between the Dovey
+and the Ystwith, came down on a May-day morning to his father's fishing-
+weir.  All that was taken that morning was to be Elphin's, had Gwyddno
+said.  Not a fish was taken that day; and Elphin, who was ever a luckless
+youth, would have gone home empty-handed, but that one of his men found,
+entangled in the poles of the weir, a coracle, and a fair child in it.
+This was none other than he who was to be the father of Cymry minstrelsy,
+and whom then and there his rescuers named Taliesin, which means Radiant
+Brow.  His mother, Ceridwen, seeking to be rid of her infant, but loath
+to have the child's blood on her head, had launched him in this sea proof
+cradle, to take the chance of wind and wave.  The spot where he came to
+land bears at this day the name of Taliesin.  On the hill-top above it
+men show the grave where the bard reposes and "glories in his namesake
+shore."
+
+* * * * *
+
+There is something magnetic in a famous site: it attracts again a like
+history to the old stage.  Thirteen centuries and a half after the
+finding of Taliesin, the same shore became once again an asylum for other
+outcasts, whose fortunes we propose to chronicle.
+
+But since the day when they drifted to land the cradle of the bard, the
+waves have ebbed away from Gwyddno's weir, and left a broad stretch of
+marsh and meadow between it and the present coast, where stands the
+fishing village of Borth.  The village fringes the sea-line with half a
+mile of straggling cottages; but the eye is caught at once by a massive
+building of white stone, standing at the head of the long street, and
+forming a landmark in the plain.  This building is the Cambrian Hotel,
+reared on a scale that would suggest the neighbourhood of a populous
+health-resort.  But the melancholy silence which haunts its doors is
+rarely broken, between season and season, by the presence of guests,
+unless it be some chance sportsman in quest of marsh-fowl, or a
+land-agent in quest of rents.
+
+When, therefore, on the 15th of March, 1876, a party of four visitors--the
+Rev. Edward Thring, Headmaster of Uppingham School, one of the Trustees
+of the school, and two of the masters--were seen mounting the steps of
+the porch, it was a sight to make the villagers wonder by what chance so
+many guests came to knock at the door in that dead season.  Had the wind
+blown them hither?  It blew a hurricane that day on the bleak coasts of
+Cardigan Bay; but it was a shrewder storm yet which had swept this
+windfall to the doors of Borth.
+
+The story must be briefly told.  On November 2nd, 1875, Uppingham School
+was dispersed on account of a fever which had attacked both town and
+school, not without fatal casualties.  On January 28th, 1876, the school
+met again.  In the interval the school-houses had been put in complete
+sanitary order, and though the efforts made to amend the general drainage
+of the town had been only on a small and tentative scale, it was thought
+that the school, if secure on its own premises, might safely be recalled,
+in spite of remaining deficiencies outside those limits.  But, _tua res
+agitur_--the term began with three weeks of watchful quiet, and then the
+blow fell again.  A boy sickened of the same fever; then, after an
+interval of suspense, two or three fresh cases made it clear that this
+was no accident.  An inspection of the town drainage, ordered by the
+authorities, revealed certain permanent sources of danger.  It was clear
+that the interests of school and town, in matters of hygiene as in
+others, were not separable; perhaps the best fruit of the sequel has been
+the mutual conviction that those interests are one.
+
+Meanwhile the new illustration of this connection of interests had a
+formidable significance for the Uppingham masters.  Men looked at one
+another as those do who do not like to give a name to their fears.  For
+what could be done?  The school could not be dismissed again.  How many
+would return to a site twice declared untenable?  But neither could it be
+kept on the spot: for there came in unmistakable evidence that, in that
+case, the school would dissolve itself, and that, perhaps, irrevocably,
+through the withdrawal of its scholars by their parents from the dreaded
+neighbourhood.  Already the trickling had begun; something must be done
+before the banks broke, and the results and hopes of more than twenty
+long working years were poured out to waste.
+
+When the crisis was perceived, a project which had been already the
+unspoken thought in responsible quarters, but which would have sounded
+like a counsel of despair had the situation been less acute, was suddenly
+started in common talk and warmly entertained.  Why should we not
+anticipate calamity by flight?  Before the school melted away, and left
+us teaching empty benches, why should we not flit, master and scholar
+together, and preserve the school abroad for a securer future afterwards
+at home?
+
+In a space of time to be measured rather by hours than days, this project
+passed through the stages of conception, discussion, and resolve, to the
+first step in its execution.  On Tuesday, March 7th, a notice was issued
+to parents and guardians that the school would break up that day week for
+a premature Easter holiday, and at the end of the usual three weeks
+reassemble in some other locality, of which nothing could as yet be
+specified except that it was to be healthier than that we were leaving.
+
+The proposed experiment--to transport a large public school from its
+native seat and all its appliances and plant to a strange site of which
+not even the name was yet known, except as one of several possible spots,
+and to do this at a few days' notice--was no doubt a novel one.  But the
+resolve, if rapidly formed and daring, was none the less deliberate and
+sane.  Its authors must not be charged either with panic or a passion for
+adventure.  All the data of a judgment were in view, and delay could add
+no new fact, except one which would make any decision nugatory because
+too late.  It was wisdom in those with whom lay the cast of the die, to
+take their determination while a school remained for which they could
+determine anything.
+
+It was a sharp remedy, however.  For on the morrow of this resolve the
+owners of so many good houses, fields, and gardens, all the outward and
+visible of Uppingham School, became, for a term without assignable limit,
+landless and homeless men, and the Headmaster almost as much disburdened
+of his titular realm as if he were a bishop _in partibus_ or the chief of
+a nomad caravan.  It was a sharp remedy; but those who submitted to it
+breathed the freer at having broken prison, and felt something, not
+indeed of the recklessness which inspires adventure, but of the elation
+which sustains it:
+
+   Why now, blow wind, swell billow, and swim bark;
+   The storm is up, and all is on the hazard!
+
+There was cited at this time a somewhat similar event in the history of
+Rugby School.  Dr. Arnold, in a like emergency, had removed the school,
+or all who chose to go, in numerous detachments under the care severally
+of himself and others of his masters to various distant spots, among
+others his own house in the Lake country, where they spent some two
+months, and returned to Rugby when the danger was over.  It was felt,
+however, that this incident furnished no real precedent for the present
+venture.  What we were proposing was not to arrange a number of
+independent reading-parties in scattered country retreats.  Such a plan
+would hardly have been practicable with a system in which, as in our
+case, the division of the school for teaching purposes has no reference
+to the division into boarding-houses.  It was proposed to pluck up the
+school by the roots and transplant it bodily to strange soil; to take
+with us the entire body of masters, with, probably, their families, and
+every boy who was ready to follow; to provide teaching for the latter,
+not only without loss in the amount, but without interruption of the
+existing system in any branch; and to guarantee the supply of everything
+necessary for the corporate life of three hundred boys, who had to be
+housed, fed, taught, disciplined, and (not the easiest of tasks) amused,
+on a single spot, and one as bare of all the wonted appliances of public
+school life as that yet uncertain place was like to prove, of which the
+recommendation for our residence would be that no one else cared to
+reside there.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.--A CHARTER OF SETTLEMENT.
+
+
+   _Habet populus Romanus ad quos gubernacula rei publicae deferat_: _qui
+   ubicunque terrarum sunt_, _ibi omne est rei publicae praesidium_, _vel
+   potius ipsa res publica_.
+
+   CICERO.
+
+   HAMLET.  _Is not parchment made of sheep-skins_?
+
+   HORATIO.  _Ay_, _my lord, and of calf-skins too_.
+
+   HAMLET.  _They are sheep and calves which seek out assurance in that_.
+
+   SHAKESPEARE.
+
+The Trustees of the School met at Uppingham on March 11th.  This was the
+earliest opportunity of consulting them collectively on the resolution to
+break up the school and to migrate, which had been taken on the 7th.  They
+sanctioned the breaking up of the school.  On the question of its removal
+elsewhere they recorded no opinion.
+
+Meanwhile a reconnaissance was being made by one of our body, who was
+despatched to visit, as in a private capacity, Borth, and two or three
+other spots on the Welsh coasts, while inquiries were also made in other
+directions.
+
+On Monday, 13th, the Headmaster left Uppingham for a visit to the sites
+which promised most favourably.  A deep snow on the ground made the
+departure from home seem the more cheerless, but it had melted from the
+Welsh hills before we reached them.  On Tuesday, the party--which now
+consisted of the Headmaster, two of the staff, and one of the Trustees
+(whose services on this occasion, and many others arising out of it, we
+find it easier to remember than to acknowledge as they deserve)--stayed a
+night at the inland watering-place of Llandrindod, one of the suggested
+sites.  The bleak moors round it were uninviting enough that squally
+March day.  But the question of settling here was dismissed at once;
+there was not sufficient house-room in the place.  So next morning we
+bore down upon Borth.
+
+The first sight of the place seemed to yield us assurance of having
+reached our goal.  The hotel is a long oblong building with two slight
+retiring wings, beyond which extends a square walled enclosure of what
+was then green turf; Cambrian Terrace overlooks the enclosure at right
+angles to the hotel, the whole reminding us remotely of a college
+quadrangle.  On entering the hotel, the eye seized on the straight roomy
+corridors which traverse it, and the wide solid staircase, as features of
+high strategic importance.  A tour of the rooms was made at once, and an
+exact estimate taken of the possible number of beds.  Besides two other
+members of the staff, who joined the pioneers at Borth, the school
+medical officer had come down to meet us, and reported on what lay within
+his province.  Meanwhile two of the party were conducted by mine host to
+explore a "cricket-ground" close to the hotel, or at least a plot of
+ground to which adhered a fading tradition of a match between two local
+elevens.  The "pitch" was conjecturally identified among some rough
+hillocks, over the sandy turf of which swept a wild northwester, "shrill,
+chill, with flakes of foam," and now and then a driving hailstorm across
+the shelterless plain.  So little hospitable was our welcome to a home
+from which we were sometime to part not without regretful memories.
+
+Next day, March 16th, a contract was signed, which gave us the tenancy of
+the hotel till July 21st, with power to renew the contract at will for a
+further term after the summer holidays.  Our landlord, Mr. C. Mytton, was
+to provide board (according to a specified dietary) and bed (at least bed-
+room) for all who could be lodged in his walls, and board (with light and
+firing) for the whole party; to supply the service for the kitchen, and
+to undertake the laundry.  Servants for attendance on the boys were to be
+brought by the masters.  The payment was to be 1 pound a head per week
+for all who were lodged and boarded, or boarded only, in the hotel.  For
+washing, and one or two other matters, an extra charge was admitted.  We
+have only to add that the bargain was one with which both parties, under
+their respective circumstances, had reason to be satisfied; and that the
+arrangement worked not more stiffly than could be expected where the
+large margin of the unforeseen left so much to subsequent interpretation.
+Even Dido and Hiarbas were not agreed about the precise width of a bull's-
+hide.  We do not, however, wish it to be inferred from this classical
+parallel, that our settlers claim to have rivalled the adroitness of the
+Punic queen in her dealings with the barbarian prince:
+
+   [Greek text] {12}
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.--TRANSFORMATIONS.
+
+
+   _Your snail is your only right house-builder_; _for he builds his
+   house out of the stuff of his own vitals_, _and therefore wherever he
+   travel he carries his own roof above him_.  _But I have known men_,
+   _spacious in the possession of bricks and mortar_, _who have not so
+   much made their houses as their houses have made them_.  _Turn such an
+   one out of his home_, _and he is a bare_ "_O without a figure_,"
+   _counting for nothing in the sum of things_.  _He only is truly
+   himself who has nature in him_, _when the old shell is cracked_, _to
+   build up a new one about him out of the pith and substance of
+   himself_.
+
+Ten days after the reconnaissance described in the last chapter, the
+pioneers of the school were again upon the ground.
+
+On Monday, March 27th, a goods train of eighteen trucks, chartered by the
+Uppingham masters, was unloading three hundred bedsteads, with their
+bedding, on Borth platform.  These were to be distributed among the
+quarters of their respective owners, in some dozen different houses,
+which we had engaged in addition to the hotel.  The workmen were mostly
+Welshmen, anxious to be doing, but understanding imperfectly the speech
+of their employers.  With the eagerness of their temperament, they went
+at the trucks, and Babel began.  Amid a confused roar of contradictory
+exhortations, with energetic gesture, and faces full of animation and
+fire, they were hauling away, to any and every place, the ton-loads of
+mattresses, and the fragments of unnumbered bedsteads.  It was time for
+the owners to interpose; and those of the school party who were present,
+knowing that time was very precious, and that example is better than
+precept, especially precept in a foreign language, put their own hands to
+the work, the Headmaster being foremost, and earned a labouring man's
+wage at unloading the trucks and carrying the goods to their billets.
+Some of our new acquaintances watched the scene with a shocked surprise
+that authorities should share in the manual labour, instead of looking on
+and paying for it.  But their feelings at last determined to admiration.
+"Why, sirs," they exclaimed, "you get it done as if you were used to move
+every three weeks."  But, in fact, there was so much to be done, and so
+few days to do it in, that the exigencies of the work spared neither age,
+sex, nor degree of our party.  None were exempt, and those who were not
+employed in porterage and rough carpentry might be found shifting
+furniture, or stitching curtains, or jointing together bedsteads.
+
+Meanwhile, workmen in and round the hotel were as busy as
+stage-carpenters preparing a transformation scene.  First, by the
+elimination of carpets and furniture, the interior was reduced to a
+_tabula rasa_.  Then, in the somewhat weather-beaten top story,
+plastering and surface-washing went briskly on.  Our hosts assured us no
+hands could be found for this work, but the Headmaster made a descent
+upon Aberystwith and returned with the required number.  A contractor was
+fitting the large coffee-rooms, the billiard-room and others, and the
+ground-floor corridor from end to end, with long narrow tables--plain
+deal boards on wooden trestles--for the accommodation of three hundred
+diners.  Outside, the stables were converted into the school carpentery,
+and the coach-house into a gymnasium.  Above all, a wooden school-room,
+eighty-three feet by twenty, had been designed, and its site marked out
+on the north side of the enclosure behind the hotel.
+
+Then there was the care of providing supplementary house-room for many
+purposes: rooms for music practice, and for the boys' studies (of which
+we shall have more to say), and for hospital uses.  Ordinary "sick-room"
+accommodation was soon obtained by paying for it, but a fever hospital
+was also a requirement which, with our experiences, we were not likely to
+forget, and this was less easy to secure.  We had to scour the
+neighbourhood, knocking at the door of many a farmhouse and country
+homestead, before we were provided.
+
+The house-room being secured, came the labour of furnishing; the
+distribution of tables, benches, bookshelves, &c, for the class-rooms,
+and of furniture (in many cases a minimum) for the needs of masters and
+their families; the ticketing of the bed-room doors, the beds, the chests
+of drawers, and each drawer in them, with the name of the occupant--with
+many like minutiae, which it took longer to provide than it does to
+detail them.  The task was not rendered easier by being shared in part
+with our hosts, who had hardly taken the measure of our requirements.  It
+became necessary at the last moment to telegraph to the Potteries for a
+large consignment of bed-room ware, which, in spite of protestations, had
+been laid in only in half quantities.  The world of school has marched
+forward since the days when three or four basins sufficed for the toilet
+of a dozen boys.
+
+While the elementary needs of the colony were being attended to, its more
+advanced wants were not neglected.  There were those whom the anxiety of
+providing for the school amusements, and in particular its cricket,
+suffered not to sleep.  We believe that the first piece of school
+property which arrived on the scene was the big roller from the cricket-
+field.  Resolved to gather no moss in inglorious ease at home, it had
+mounted a North-Western truck, and travelled down to Bow Street station,
+where it was to disembark for action.  It cost the Company's servants a
+long struggle to land it, but once again on terra firma it worked with a
+will and achieved wonders, reducing a piece of raw meadow land in a few
+weeks' space to a cricket-field which left little to be desired.  This
+meadow lay within a few hundred yards of Bow Street station, four miles
+by rail from Borth.  It is the property of Sir Pryse Pryse, of Gogerddan,
+who gave the school the use of it at a peppercorn rent.
+
+This was but one of the many acts of unreserved generosity shown by this
+gentleman to the school.  It is not often that the opportunity offers of
+winning so much and such hearty gratitude as our neighbour of Gogerddan
+has won by his prompt liberality; still less often is the opportunity
+occupied with such thoughtful and ungrudging kindness.
+
+We had help in the same kind from the Bishop of St. David's, who put at
+our service a field close to the hotel; a rather wild one, but in which
+little plots and patches for a practising wicket were discovered by our
+experts.  The firm sands to the north were reported to yield an excellent
+"wicket;" with the serious deduction, however, that the pitch was worn
+out and needed to be changed every half-dozen balls.
+
+Among such cares the week rolled away only too speedily, and brought the
+day of the school's arrival upon us.  If we have failed, as we have, to
+convey a true impression of the serious labour and anxieties which
+crowded its hours, we will quote the summary of a writer who described it
+at the time, and knew what he was describing: "It was like shaking the
+alphabet in a bag, and bringing out the letters into words and sentences;
+such was the sense of absolute confusion turned into intelligent shape."
+{19}
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+
+   _Gesta ducis celebro_, _Rutulis qui primus ab oris_
+   _Cambriae_, _odoratu profugus_, _Borthonia venit_
+   _Litora_; _multum ille et sanis vexatus et aegris_,
+   _Vi Superum_, _quibus haud curae gravis aura mephitis_:
+   _Multa quoque et loculo passus_, _dum conderet urbem_
+   _Inferretque deos Cymris_.
+
+   AN EPIC FRAGMENT.
+
+   [Greek text].
+
+The careful general who has completed his disposition without one
+discoverable flaw, who has foreseen all emergencies, and anticipated
+every possible combination, may await the action with a certain moral
+confidence of success.  But he would be a man of no human fibre, were he
+not to feel some disquiet in his inmost soul when he gets upon horseback
+with his enemy in sight, and listens for the boom of the first gun.  Not
+very different, except for the absence of a like confidence in the
+completeness of their dispositions, were the emotions of the masters who
+manned the platform of Borth Station, when the gray afternoon of Tuesday,
+April 4th, drew sombrely towards its close.  The station was crowded with
+spectators from Aberystwith and Borth itself, curious to watch the entry
+of the boys.  Expectation was stimulated by the arrival of a train, which
+set all the crowd on tip-toe, and then swept through the station--a mere
+goods train.  Half an hour's longer waiting, and the right train drew up,
+and discharged Uppingham School on the remote Welsh platform.  It struck
+a spark of home feeling in the midst of the lonely landscape, and the
+chill of strange surroundings, to see well-known faces at the windows,
+and to meet the grasp of familiar hands.  But there was no time for
+sentiment that stirring evening.  The station was cleared with all speed
+of boys and spectators, the former turning in to tea at those endless
+tables, the latter strolling away to carry home their first impressions
+of their invaders.  Then one group of masters and servants set to work to
+sort the luggage which cumbered the platform, while others received it at
+the hotel door, and distributed it to the various billets.  Light was
+scant, hands were not too numerous, and the work was not done without
+some confusion.  But it was done; and the tired workers went to their
+beds, thankful for what was finished, and full of good hopes for the work
+which was yet to be begun.
+
+And the boys--how did they feel?  As they stepped out from the railway
+carriage into those bare, vasty corridors and curtainless dormitories,
+did some little sense of desolateness in the new prospect temper its
+excitement?  Did some homesickness arise in the exile as he pondered on
+the retirement and comfort of the "house" at Uppingham, and his
+individual ownership of the separate cubicle, and the study which was
+"his castle?"  He was a unit now, not of a household, but of a camp.
+Small blame to him if life seemed to have lost its landmarks, and things
+round him to be "all nohow," as he sat down in some bare hall upon a
+schoolfellow's book-box (wondering whether he should ever see his own),
+to while away with a story-book the listless interval before bed-time,
+under the niggard light of a smoking lamp, or a candle flickering in the
+draught.  What exactly he felt or thought, however, we do not pretend to
+know.  We only know that there was not one of them but felt proud to be
+out campaigning with his school, and would have counted "ten years of
+peaceful life" not more than worth his share in that honourable venture.
+
+There was no work for them next morning (their masters were busy enough
+providing for the physical needs of the colony), and they were free to
+explore their new country, to ramble up the headlands or along the margin
+of the marsh.  The arrivals of last night were but the first instalment
+of the school, about half the number.  The same train brought in a new
+freight this evening, and the scene on the platform was similar, but more
+tranquil.  By a special train after midnight came in a few more from the
+most distant homes, and the muster was complete.  The number, two hundred
+and ninety, fell but slightly below the full complement of the school.
+Putting out of account the names of those who would in any case have left
+the school that Easter, no more than three, we believe, failed to follow
+us down to Borth.  So unanimous an adhesion of the school to its leaders
+no one had been sanguine enough to reckon on.  It increased no doubt at
+the moment the difficulties of making provision, but withal it made the
+task better worth the effort.
+
+Next morning the school was called together, and the Headmaster addressed
+them, feeling, perhaps, somewhat like a general publishing a manifesto to
+his troops before a campaign.  It was a great experiment, he said, in
+which they were sharing; let them do their best to make the result a
+happy one for themselves, and for the people among whom they had come.
+They were "making history," for this experience was a wholly new one,
+which might not impossibly prove helpful some day to others in like
+circumstances.
+
+It is pleasant to record that the appeal was not wasted.
+
+At the dinner-hour to-day, the full numbers being now on the spot, the
+resources of the commissariat were put to the test.  Some anxiety was
+relieved when the supply proved sufficient; it would have been small
+cause for reproach if the caterers had failed in their estimate on the
+first experiment.  But of the commissariat we shall say more presently.
+
+The secondary necessities of life, fire and light, were not forthcoming
+with quite the same promptness.  There was a twilight period in many
+houses before lamps were furnished in sufficient abundance.  The place of
+fuel was supplied by the genial weather of the first week; and perhaps
+few were aware of what we were doing without.  Next week the east winds
+and the coal arrived together.
+
+The hotel laundry found the task it had undertaken beyond its strength.
+No wonder.  Three hundred sets of _articles de linge_ reach a figure of
+which our hosts had hardly grasped the significance.  We are sometimes
+told that Gaels and Cymry cannot count.  At any rate, when the bales of
+linen came pouring in upon them, heaping every table and piling all the
+floor, and still flowing in faster than room could be found, the
+laundresses, brave workers though they were, felt that the game was lost:
+
+   They stand in pause where they should first begin,
+   And all neglect.
+
+One poor nymph was discovered by a compassionate visitor dissolved in
+tears over her wash-tub.  Such misery could not be permitted; and we
+transferred half the task at once to the laundries of Aberystwith.
+
+On the afternoon of this day took place the distribution of "studies."
+That is to say, some sixty or eighty boys (a number more than doubled
+afterwards), in order to relieve the pressure on our sitting-rooms, were
+billeted upon some of the village people, who let their rooms for the
+purpose.  From two to six boys were assigned to each room according to
+its capacity.  We shall speak again of these studies.  Here we will only
+pause to thank our good landladies for the intrepidity with which they
+threw their doors open to the invasion, the more so as they mostly
+claimed to belong to the category of "poor widows"--a qualification upon
+which they were disposed to set a price in arranging their charges.  Their
+daring proved no indiscretion.  The writer, who has the honour of knowing
+them all, was the depositary of many and emphatic testimonies on their
+part to the cordial relations between them and "the children."  This
+endearing term was exchanged for another by one good old lady, who
+appealed to him against the "very wicked boys," whom she charged with
+having "foolished" her.  The complication traced to ignorance of one
+another's speech (the boys spoke no Welsh, and she would have done more
+wisely to speak no English), and a _modus vivendi_ was easily restored.
+Poor soul! she took a pathetic farewell of them when their sojourn ended:
+"They must forgive her for having a quick temper; she had had much
+trouble; her husband and four sons had gone down at sea."
+
+On Friday came a piece of cheering news.  Some sympathisers were
+intending to appeal to parents of boys in the school for subscriptions to
+a fund, which should help to defray the expense incurred by the masters
+in moving and resettling the school.  The appeal met with a liberal
+response in many quarters; a large sum was raised, though from a number
+of subscribers smaller than the promoters of the fund expected.  Men, who
+were feeling the double pressure at once of keen and novel cares, and of
+an outlay already large, which no one could see to the end of, will not
+forget that well-timed succour.  Not least will it be remembered as a
+"material guarantee" that the subscribers believed the cause they aided
+to be worth a costly effort to save.
+
+The week closed with an old scene on a new stage--a football match on Sir
+Pryse's field at Bow Street.  It was the last of the house-matches, which
+had been interrupted at Uppingham to be played out here.  The sight of
+the school swarming into the railway carriages, which carried us to the
+four-mile-distant ground, and then the mimic war of the red and white
+jerseys contrasting the gray Gogerddan woodlands which overhang the
+meadow, and the shouts of the English boys blending with the excited but
+unintelligible cries of the Welsh rustic children, who were rapt
+spectators of the game, brought home to us the piquant contrast between
+our unchanged school habits and the novelty of their framework.
+
+The weather of this first week was dry and genial; and it had no
+pleasanter moments than those spent on the beach at sunset, whither the
+school flocked down after tea for half an hour's leisure in the after-
+glow.  There is plenty of amusement for them on this broad reach of sand
+and shingle.  Some are groping for shells or for pebbles, which the
+lapidary will transform for a trifle into dazzling jewels; others are
+playing ducks and drakes on the waves, or entertaining themselves like
+Prospero's elves,
+
+   That on the sands, with printless feet,
+   Do chase the ebbing Neptune, and do fly him
+   When he comes back again.
+
+More pensive spirits saunter up and down the grassy terrace which
+overlooks the beach, and watch the shifting line of dark figures seen
+against the white wall of the breaker, or note the fugitive tints on the
+dimpling surface of the water, or the wet margin of the tide.  A group of
+villagers is clustered round the water-fountain a few yards away; the
+children chatter about us as they fill their pitchers; and the old women,
+creeping homewards, cast a glance under their bonnets at the boys, and
+exchange muttered comments with their gossips.  Soon the cliffs of the
+southern headland grow duskier and more remote; the sea fades to a cold
+uniform gray; the colours of the brown twilight marsh and the violet
+hills are lost in one another; and so, with a refreshing breath of
+idyllic peacefulness, the stirring week came to an end.  "Its evening
+closed on a quiet scene of school routine, as if doubt and risk, turmoil
+and confusion and fear, weary head and weary hand, had not been known in
+the place.  The wrestling-match against time was over, and happy dreams
+came down on Uppingham by the Sea."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.--THE NEW COUNTRY.
+
+
+   _All places that the eye of Heaven visits_,
+   _Are to a wise man ports and happy havens_.
+
+   RICHARD II.
+
+The primitive man, after he has satisfied the claims of appetite,
+stitched his skin-mantle, and thatched a hut, may begin to spare time for
+reflection on the quality and flavour of the prey he has eaten, or the
+picturesqueness of his cabin.  Till then his estimate of things is
+quantitative.  He asks not of what sort his food is, but whether there is
+enough of it, and regards less the cut of his coat than its thickness.
+
+The analogy of our circumstances must be our excuse for postponing so
+long a description of our new settlement, its physical surroundings, and
+the complexion of our domestic and social life.  Not in truth that we had
+returned to barbarism: but who could dilate on the beauty of mountain
+scenery, in sight of which he was perhaps to starve; who would criticise
+the pattern of his dinner-service, or be fastidious in carpets and wall-
+paper, before he could reckon upon dinner, or call shelter his own?
+
+But a week is over, and we have all settled into our berths.  The boys
+have found that there will be dinner every day; the masters that no one
+will have to pitch his tent on a sand-dune, or spread a straw litter in a
+bathing-machine.  The level of comfort was, of course, not uniform.  How
+should it be?  Probably there is a choice of corners in a workhouse or
+casual-ward.  Some of our party tasted the painful pleasures of the poor
+in the scant accommodation and naked simplicity of cottage lodgings.  It
+was long after our arrival that we discovered a valued friend still
+sitting on the corner of his packing-case, and brewing his coffee on a
+washhand-stand.  The fire smoked all day; but this vice in the apartment
+was neutralised by a broken window.  Yet he should be quite happy, he
+said, if he could get a glazier _and_ a sweep (like smoke and draught,
+one would not do without the other), a bolster, an occasional clean
+towel, and a little warm water in the morning.
+
+Those who had brought a family with them into camp were more seriously
+troubled with the cares of providing quarters, and pondered regretfully
+on the peace and roominess of home.  Still as we are leaving no one
+houseless or dinnerless, we may turn aside to describe at more leisure
+the place we lived in and the manner of our life.
+
+The stage on which our little history was enacted is a maritime plain of
+irregular semicircular shape, with a sea-front of five miles, and a depth
+inland of from two to three miles.  This plain, a dead level stretch of
+peat, of which part is coming under cultivation, while part is still
+marsh, is surrounded by a ring of hills, which rise in successive well-
+defined ranges of increasing height, till they culminate in the summits
+of Cader Idris on one side and Plinlimmon on the other.
+
+The River Dovey, which cleaves the circle of mountains, flows in a broad
+estuary along the base of the northward hills, under which, at the mouths
+of the estuary, lies the little port of Aberdovey.  At the other end of
+the arc formed by the coastline, close under the slopes of the promontory
+which closes the plain at its north-west corner, stands the village of
+Borth, three-quarters of a mile of straggling dwellings, which vary in
+scale and character from the primitive mud-cabin of the squatter to the
+stately hotel which formed the headquarters of the school.  The little
+town is irregular even to quaintness, without being picturesque.  Its
+houses are not grouped according to size and character, but dropped as it
+were anyhow, in chance collocations, tall and low, thatched and slated
+together.  Two or three gigantesque meeting-houses, featureless and
+sombre, domineer over the roofs around them.  One or two others of a less
+puritan design, and not out of character with the church on a knoll a
+furlong off, compensate their severer rivals.  The shape of the village
+is determined by the narrow ridge of terra firma, the mere heaping of the
+tides, between the quaking marsh and the encroaching sea.  The nidus of
+the present settlement is the tiny hamlet of Old Borth, perched on a spur
+of the promontory, and well out of reach of flood tides.  We are not sure
+that the mother may not outlive her colony, unless substantial measures
+are taken to guard against another 30th of January.  Near Old Borth,
+through a gap in the hills, comes the River Lery, a trout-stream known to
+our anglers, thanks again to Sir Pryse who owns it.  It races bubbling
+round the furze-clad knoll, whose Welsh name is translated Otter's
+Island, on which stands the church, and then is silenced in a blank
+straight-cut channel, which conveys it through the marsh into the estuary
+at Ynyslas.  Up the gorge of the Lery runs the railway, which carried us
+so often past the massive church and steep pine-grown graveyard of
+Langfihangel-geneur-glyn, and across the broad meadows of Bow Street, to
+the civilisation of Aberystwith.  For Aberystwith was our Capua, and used
+to draw large parties on many a blank afternoon for marketing or
+amusement.
+
+Then there was the beach, four miles of it, from the rocks of Borth Head,
+where the waves could be watched breaking on the seaweed-covered reef,
+and sending up columns of white spray against the black face of the
+cliffs, away to the yellow sand dunes near the Dovey's mouth, and the
+reaches of wet sands where we noted on summer days "the landscape winking
+through the heat," almost with the effect of a mirage.  These sands, firm
+and sound under foot, were a famous walking-ground at all times; but they
+changed their character very much with the seasons; at one time
+retreating and laying bare a beach of shingle under the pebble ridge; at
+another, swinging back to cover them up again.  In the former state of
+the shore a suggestive phenomenon might be observed.  At low-water mark
+there appeared certain dark shapeless lumps, which might be taken for
+rocks at a distance, but were in fact the roots and stumps of a submerged
+pine-forest.  Remains of the same forest are found in the marsh.  Wood
+can be cut from the buried trunks, looking as fresh in fibre as if the
+tree still grew.  Here is the verification of the legend (or is it,
+perhaps, the suggestion of it?) which records the fate of the Lost
+Lowland Hundred.  Once on a time (the Cymric bards answer for it), a
+flourishing tract of country stretched at the foot of the hills which are
+now washed by the tides of Cardigan Bay.  The fishermen of Borth, as they
+creep past the headlands in their fishing-smacks, have seen deep down in
+the clear waters, the firmly-cemented stones of a causeway, which must
+once have traversed the plain, and the line of which may be not
+indistinctly descried stretching far out to seaward from the mouth of a
+little combe.  It is true that geologists whom we have consulted ridicule
+the fancy of masonry offering such resistance to the tides, and explain
+it away as a pebble-ridge built up by the action of currents.  And
+perhaps we might mention in this connection, that one of our party, on
+the first view, was half persuaded he had seen a sea-serpent.  Well, this
+prosperous country, defended against the sea by embankments, was during
+the heroic age of Wales laid under water by the opening of the sluices in
+a drunken frolic.  A fragment of it, the marsh between the pebble-ridge
+of Borth and the hills, would seem to have been recovered; but it enjoys
+a precarious safety, and even within our experience the sea gave a
+meaning threat of claiming his own again.  But that is a story which must
+be told in its own place.
+
+Such then were the geographical details of the spot in which we had
+settled, and they made up a landscape, which, if it can be more than
+rivalled in other parts of the Principality, has yet a characteristic and
+impressive beauty.  The following extract may serve, for lack of a better
+rendering, to describe how the scene looked to the eyes of someone who
+watched it on a June afternoon from the grassy slopes of Borth Head:
+
+   My eyes run on with the tide which drifts inland up the estuary, and,
+   farther than vision can really follow, track the march of its glancing
+   ripples, as they swim on past shoal and sand-dune and morass up to the
+   dewy gates of the Spring, in among green-clad river meadows and crisp
+   close-skirted woodlands which the salt breath of sea-winds restrains
+   from a richer luxuriance, on past springing knolls plumed with dark
+   firs, and dimpling valleys mellow with the contrasted gold of the
+   oak's young leafage.  Above these, hills moulded on a grander scale
+   heave up their broad shoulders to the sunlight, which is reflected in
+   pale but tender hues of blue or violet or rose from their bare rock
+   masses, or the slopes hardly less bare, which are swept by great
+   winds, and browsed yet closer by climbing mountain sheep.  At this and
+   the other point the bosses of the hills are lighted with the sparkle
+   of gorse-thickets, or dusky with heather not yet kindled into bloom.
+   Lower down there are belts of woodland, fencing off the pastures which
+   strew the lowest terraces of the mountains from the barren wastes
+   above them, and these pastures are brightly flecked with patches of
+   white-walled homesteads down to the brown edge of the marsh.  And so,
+   ridge after ridge, the hills enclose the scene in a half-circle, of
+   which this breezy headland, our "specular mount," is an extreme horn.
+   But what the eye reposes on at last is the broad floor of marsh-land
+   between mountain and sea.  A broad smooth floor, which would be vacant
+   and dull enough had not Nature taken thought to drape its formlessness
+   the more lovingly and richly.  She has unrolled on it a carpet of
+   various and solemn-tinted stuffs, where pale breadths of rusted bents
+   sometimes mellow into strips of verdurous pasture, sometimes deepen
+   into belts of embrowned peat-beds, sometimes take a yellower
+   barrenness in parched flats, still briny and unreclaimed, and shaggy
+   with bristling reeds.  It is a wilderness, but not unrelieved with
+   here and there an oasis, where, like islands left high and dry in a
+   deserted ocean bed, one and another rocky knoll lift up above the
+   waste flats around them some acres of sweet grass, or a broad field of
+   flowering mustard, shining with a splendour as of cloth of gold, and
+   fringed with a loop or two of silver braid by the river winding at the
+   base.  There is animate life, too, sprinkled not stintedly over its
+   surface, not only of visitant sea-fowl from the shore, or solitude-
+   loving creatures native to the place--plover and duck and long-winged
+   herons, but also of cattle and horses grazing on the cultivated edges
+   of the marsh, which make us look for the homes of their human masters
+   at no great distance.  Why there they are, lying overlooked at our
+   feet all the while, a straggle of lowly white-roofed dwellings
+   clinging to the long pebble ridge like barnacles on a rock, breathing
+   a thin smoke from their scattered chimneys, whence the blessed smell
+   of peat-fires is wafted through the dry air to our nostrils.  But one
+   great house I notice with a crowd about its door-steps, and a flag
+   waving over them a device I have somewhere seen before, where the
+   kitchen chimney smokes with a most hospitable volume; guests must be
+   plenty there.  Yes; and if further signs of life be needed, you may
+   listen to the puff of a farmer's steam-engine planted in the swamp,
+   and see the glitter of the steel ropes, with which it draws its
+   ploughshares, resistless as fate, through the oozy fallows.  Well, if
+   it is come to this, the farmers and their engines will soon civilise
+   away the beauty of this romantic wild.  But shall we complain?  If
+   they have begun to drain these intractable marshes, then there is a
+   chance for other places, where the interest on the cost of drainage
+   will be less problematical than here.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI.--MAKESHIFTS.
+
+
+   [Greek text].
+
+From our chapter on the geographical features of our settlement we pass
+on to describe how the settlers were housed and organised.
+
+If a school be an institution for teaching purposes, its school-room and
+class-rooms should be the most essential portion of its plant.  Without
+discussing the adequacy of the definition, we will begin with these.  We
+were not ill provided; with an exception or two, the rooms appropriated
+for class-rooms answered the purpose well.  Some of them were spacious;
+the rest were large enough for the wants of the classes, limited to an
+average of twenty.  Nor would a Government Inspector have justly measured
+this adequacy by the "cubic capacity," if he failed to take into account
+the exhilarating five minutes' breathing time upon the beach, at eleven
+o'clock.  There was a rare pleasure in those moments of escape from Greek
+verbs to the sparkle of the tide and the scent of the sea breeze.
+
+What Germans call the "real" subjects, were also provided for.  The
+modern languages were taught mostly in the class-rooms of the classical
+masters.  Music took up her quarters in several scattered dwellings.
+Wales is the home of song, and our musicians were very welcome to make
+the cottage walls resound to violin or key-board.  We remember well the
+affectionate reverence with which one aged custodian spoke of the
+"pianass" she was proud to house; she cherished them as if they had been
+tame elephants.  Several concerts were given during our stay--but in the
+Assembly Rooms of Aberystwith; our wooden school-room was found, on the
+first experiment, unfit for the purpose, from the want of resonance.  The
+makeshift gymnasium and carpentery, in the stables and coach-house, have
+been mentioned before.  If among "real studies" we may include the
+cricket, this was, as we saw, well cared for; while the instructor in
+swimming had nothing to complain of, with four miles of good beach, and
+the Irish Channel before him.
+
+If the accommodation during school hours was adequate, it was less easy
+to find elbow-room for the boys at other times.  It was well enough from
+May to August under the ample roof of blue summer weather; but in the
+rainy season (and at Borth, as elsewhere, that winter was a wet one) we
+should have been sorely cramped but for relief afforded by the "studies"
+noticed in a previous chapter.  It is time we should describe them.
+Studies they were not, in the sense in which the word is understood at
+Uppingham, where a school law declares that "a boy's study is his
+castle," and confers upon him what Aristotle calls the "unspeakable"
+delight of the "sense of private property."  At Borth this could not be.
+In very rare cases was a room the one and indivisible belonging of a
+single owner; often as many as six shared the table and fireplace.  Some
+of these tenements had at least the less solid merit of looking
+picturesque.  Peeping into a Welsh interior, with its stone
+kitchen-floor, polished wainscoting, and oak furniture, its walls hung
+with German prints of imaginative battle-pieces and Nonconforming
+worthies, and its kitchen-dresser with ranks of ancestral crockery, vivid
+in light and colour, which catches the eyes first of all things through
+the open door, "This," one was tempted to cry, "were the study for me!
+Here would I sit in the shelter of the wooden screen which keeps away
+draughts and noisy company, and turn the pages of my Livy for the tale of
+Cincinnatus, and deeds of rustic heroes; or hear old Horace descant on
+the gracious simplicity of life among the Sabines."
+
+The boys thought quite otherwise.  The kitchen was generally the last
+room to be chosen.  Perhaps the idyllic attractions did not balance the
+drawback of living in the thoroughfare of the house.  Nor could one fail
+to sympathise with those who preferred the garret, a poor thing but their
+own, in which two studious souls could hob-nob, or even the austere
+whitewash, narrow skylight, and niggard dimensions of some monastic cell,
+which held just the one student, his table, and his books.  The editor of
+the School Magazine, writing a month after our arrival, finds it "a queer
+new feeling to do the old work in a strange place, to miss the accustomed
+pictures on the walls, the accustomed column of books rising on either
+hand--even the familiar table-cloth and carpet, and to sit instead inside
+the framework of a six-foot bed, with roof and walls forming the queerest
+possible combinations of lines and angles, and hung with three different
+patterns of paper."  To woo the muses in a garret is the common fate of
+genius; but most of the "students" (for so their landladies, misled by a
+name, called the occupants of a study) were better off than this literary
+gentleman.  When fires came to be lighted in the winter, there was a
+cheerful domesticity in the sight of the red coals, which is unknown to
+the solitude of Uppingham studies, with their hot-water pipe that warms
+but not exhilarates.  In particular, one cheery well-furnished parlour,
+where a blazing hearth threw its light over the well-worn bindings of a
+select library brought with us from the Sixth-Form-room, and on the well-
+contented faces of its two custodians, burns as a bright spot in our
+memory of those winter days.
+
+Thus we managed things even better than if we had listened to another
+ingenious writer, with whose proposal we will close this topic.  It was
+this: "Let two hundred bathing-machines be brought together from
+Llandudno and other watering-places within reach, and ranged along the
+beach.  Let one machine be assigned to each boy, and let them be filled
+up with book-shelves, table, chairs, &c.  Thus the whole difficulty will
+be solved in a moment.  And the plan has this further advantage, that
+when the time comes for returning to Uppingham, the bathing-machines
+would be simply formed in line, and driven across the country to
+Rutlandshire, and all further trouble in the way of furniture-vans and
+families-removing be cut away at one stroke."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.--THE COMMISSARIAT.
+
+
+   _To feed were best at home_.
+
+   MACBETH.
+
+   [Greek verse]
+
+   ILIAD IX.
+
+   PRINCE HENRY.  _Doth it not show vilely in me to desire small beer_?
+
+   POINS.  _Why_, _a prince should not be so loosely studied as to
+   remember so weak a composition_.
+
+   PRINCE HENRY.  _Belike then my appetite was not princely got_; _for_,
+   _by my troth_, _I do now remember the poor creature_, _small beer_.
+   _But_, _indeed_, _these humble considerations make me out of love with
+   my greatness_.
+
+   2 HENRY IV.
+
+"Who ought to take the command, in the event of anything happening to
+your lordship?" asked Wellington's officers on an occasion in the
+Peninsular War.  "Beresford," the great strategist answered, after
+reflection.  And then, in answer to their surprised looks: "If it were a
+question of handling troops, some of you fellows might do as well,
+perhaps better than he; but what we now want is someone to _feed_ our
+men." {46}
+
+This story, and the countenance of the epic and royal personages of our
+mottoes, is our excuse for passing on to treat of the ignoble topic of
+knives and forks, and to describe how three times a day our colony was
+fed.  It is a topic which could not be left outside a narrative which
+seeks to "show how fields were won."
+
+If our readers will follow the master of the week as he makes his round
+of the tea-tables at a quarter to seven on a winter evening, he will
+witness a cheerful scene not wanting in picturesqueness.  The vista of
+the corridor is filled with three very long and very narrow tables, and
+the boys of as many houses seated at them.  The subdued light, which
+streams from numerous but feeble oil-lamps through the atmosphere of
+fragrant vapour steamed up by the tea-urns, falls with Rembrandtesque
+contrast of light and shadow on the long ranks of faces.  There is that
+hum of quiet animation which seems always to exhale along with the aroma
+of the Chinese leaf.  From the urn, where the house matron mounts guard
+up to the Sixth Form end of the table, where the head of the house is
+jotting down the list of absentees from the roll-call, the cloth is
+thickly studded with the viands in tins and jars, rich and various in
+colour, with which the schoolboy adds succulence to his meal.  We open a
+door out of the dim corridor, and enter a room with three more houses
+seated round its walls.  The sense of animation rises with the warmth and
+brightness of the fire which roars in the grate.  We collect the lists,
+and move on to another and another room, till we have seen the last of
+the eleven houses in a severely simple servants'-hall on the basement
+floor.  Thence we return to the wind and rain outside.
+
+If we came here at dinner-time, we should see the housemaster at the head
+of his table, and his wife or members of his family at the other end.  The
+scene would be quite wanting in the picturesque, but no sense of comfort
+would make amends for it.  For it is dark, especially in the centre of
+the corridor, and the carver of those vast joints never knows when he
+will strike his elbow against the walls or passers-by; while the
+incidence of draughts is clearly enough defined by here and there a coat-
+collar turned up in self-defence; for neither the glass front door, nor
+the wooden porch, nor our massive porter can effectually keep out the
+weather.  Dinner here is a stern bit of the day's work, to be discharged
+with a serious fortitude.
+
+We have described how we eat, but said nothing yet of what was eaten.  Yet
+our practical narrative cannot ignore the matter.  Certain delicate
+subjects, however, are best treated dialectically, and perhaps we could
+not here do better than record a dialogue which we think we must have
+overheard between Grumbler and Cheerful, two dramatic characters not
+unknown to readers of the School Magazine some year ago:
+
+   _Cheer_.  Have you read that jolly letter in _The Times_, on
+   "Uppingham by the Sea?"
+
+   _Grumb_.  Yes, I have; and the writer says, "The commissariat was on
+   the whole good."  I must say that surprises me.
+
+   _Cheer_.  Why where was it at fault, then?
+
+   _Grumb_.  Where?  It was at fault all round.  Look at the
+   puddings--everlastingly smoked!
+
+   _Cheer_.  Yes; but the commissariat is not puddings.
+
+   _Grumb_.  Well then, the coals--all chips and small dust; at least,
+   when there _were_ any.
+
+   _Cheer_.  But the commissariat is not coals.
+
+   _Grumb_.  Then the cold plates your gravy froze on!
+
+   _Cheer_.  My good fellow, who ever heard of hot plates on a picnic?
+
+   _Grumb_.  How about the vegetables then, that never came to table
+   except to make believe there was something in the Irish stew? or what
+   do you call the thing they sometimes served out for butter?
+
+   _Cheer_.  Ah! well! "a rose by any other name"--you know the rest.  But
+   still, the commissariat isn't bad because the butter was so sometimes.
+
+   _Grumb_.  Oh! of course, you can say the Commissariat (if you spell it
+   with a big C) doesn't mean the meat, or the soup, or the puddings, or
+   the greens, or the butter, or the coals, or the rest of it--but if it
+   isn't these, I should like to know what it is.
+
+   _Cheer_. (_loftily_).  My good friend, it is easy for you to say this
+   thing or the other was not to your fancy, but it was not quite so easy
+   a matter for our landlord to provide a daily supply of meat, bread,
+   and dairy stuff for some four hundred people; especially as it had to
+   be organised for the occasion, without previous experience.  I take it
+   if you knew how the farmers had to be coaxed to sell us their butter,
+   how green things couldn't be had in the markets for love or money, and
+   if you knew how many miles of railway those beeves travelled to and
+   fro between pasture, slaughter-house, and kitchen, before their weary
+   joints rested on our table, I say you would thank the commissariat
+   that you hadn't something worth grumbling about.  I am glad we never
+   were on famine rations.  I asked to live, not to live well.
+
+   _Grumb_. (_a trifle ashamed, but dogged_).  Why, of course, I don't
+   mean to say things might not have been worse.  Still I stick to it,
+   they were not nice.
+
+   _Cheer_.  But you'll admit the commissariat did its work: the army was
+   fed.  After all, the proof of a pudding is _not_ the eating of it, it
+   is how you feel after it.  Now, people are not starved who look the
+   strong healthy fellows ours did when they went home after the first
+   term of it.  No 'famine marks' in those firm, brown faces, eh?  And
+   then, tell me, did the Rutland pastures ever yield such juicy mutton,
+   or flow so abundantly with milk?
+
+   _Grumb_.  Enough, enough; you have it.  Only I won't be told I was
+   revelling in comfort when I was doing nothing of the kind.  I'll bear
+   it, but I won't grin and say I like it; I'll say nothing against it if
+   it's better not, but I shan't say what is untrue in favour of it.
+   [_Exeunt arm-in-arm_.]
+
+Our two interlocutors fairly exhaust the facts of the case between them,
+and the historian, who can serve no purpose by trying to think things
+better or worse than they were, will silence neither.  We give our honest
+praise to the organisers of the food supply for their effectual
+performance of a very heavy, vexatious, and precarious task, the scale of
+which we have been brought by inquiry to estimate at its true magnitude.
+At the same time we will spare such sympathy as the dignity of the matter
+demands for the sufferers from tough beef, tub butter, smoked puddings,
+cold potatoes, and congealed gravy, and not mislead any refugee
+schoolmaster of the future into the belief that he can dine in the
+wilderness as comfortably as in Pall Mall.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.--DIVERSIONS AT BORTH: NEW SOIL, NEW FLOWERS.
+
+
+   _There be delights_, _there be recreations and jolly pastimes that
+   will fetch the day about from sun to sun_, _and rock the tedious year
+   as in a delightful dream_.
+
+   MILTON, "AREOPAGITICA."
+
+   _O summer day_, _beside the joyous sea_!
+      _O summer day_, _so wonderful and white_,
+      _So full of gladness and so full of pain_!
+   _For ever and for ever shalt thou be_
+      _To some the gravestone of a dead delight_,
+      _To some the landmark of a new domain_.
+
+   LONGFELLOW.
+
+Housed, fed, and taught; what more does the school need done for it?  "Is
+that all?" some of the English public will exclaim.  "Then you have done
+nothing.  What about the boys' sports?"  We foresaw the question, and
+when we left home some people felt uneasy as to what would happen to a
+school separated from its fives-courts and playing-fields.  True, there
+was to be a beach, and the boys could amuse themselves by throwing stones
+into the sea: but when there were no more stones to throw--what then?  The
+prospect was a blank one.
+
+Well, as we have seen, things came right enough as regarded the cricket.
+Players had to content themselves with fewer games, for the ground could
+only be reached on half-holidays.  On the other hand, the season of 1876
+gained a character of its own from the novelty of its matches against
+Welsh teams.  One of these was the eleven of Shrewsbury School.  With
+this ancient seat of learning our troubles brought us into genial
+intercourse, and a few months later we met them again on the football-
+field.  Both matches were played at Shrewsbury; in the former we gained a
+victory over our kind hosts, the latter was a drawn game.
+
+The athletics were held on the straight reach of road beyond Old Borth;
+the steeple-chases in the fields which border it.  At the prize-giving,
+the "champion" was hoisted as usual, and carried round the hotel, instead
+of along the _via sacra_ of the Uppingham triumph, with the proper
+tumultuary rites.  For the make-believe of paper-chases we had the
+realities of hare-hunting, of which we will speak again in its season.
+Grounds for football were found when the autumn came; the best was a
+meadow just below Old Borth, of excellent turf, which dries quickly after
+rain; though the peaty soil, lately reclaimed from the marsh, would quake
+under the outset of the players.
+
+The village boys, fired by a novel example, began to hold their own
+athletics.  One might see the corduroyed urchins scrambling down the
+street in a footrace, or jerking their awkward little limbs over a
+roadside ditch.  Our boys looked on as men look at a monkey, half amused,
+half indignant at the antics "which imitated humanity so abominably."
+
+If we were little worse off than at home in the appliances for games,
+there were other recreations which were proper to the place, and clear
+gain to the immigrants.  For example, the fishing in the Lery, along
+whose banks groups of anglers might be seen strolling, whipping the water
+to the full entertainment of themselves and the fish, or now and then
+blessing Sir Pryse, as the angler landed his first trout from our good
+friend's waters.  Yet we had our old sportsmen too, who could kill trout
+as well as amuse themselves, and bring home a delicate dish for a half-
+holiday tea.  For masters, there was a little shooting to be had on the
+land of some friendly neighbours; and on the no-man's-land of the coast,
+a variety of sea-fowl fell to our guns, and were stuffed to enrich our
+museum with a "Borth Collection."  We must not forget the Rink at
+Aberystwith, for which parties used to be formed on half-holidays; nor
+the Golf, which the long strip of rough ground along the shore tempted us
+to introduce.  The "links" were famous in extent and variety of ground,
+but the game, in spite of patronage in high quarters, did not become
+popular.  There were also recreations of a more intellectual kind:
+archaeological visits to "British camps," or others of those Cymric
+monuments, which were just then provoking Lord F. Hervey's
+incomprehensible spleen; scientific rambles in quest of rare shells,
+seaweeds, or the varieties of a new flora; and rambles, half-scientific,
+half-predatory, along the woody cliffs of the Lery, whence adventurers
+would return with news of a hawk's nest discovered, but not reached, or
+the more substantial result of snakes, and such venomous "beasties,"
+captured and brought home in a bag.  The rocks under Borth Head were good
+hunting-grounds, and supplied sea-monsters for an aquarium, which the
+Headmaster built and presented to the school.  One of the first prizes
+was a small octopus, which his captor, having no other vessel handy,
+brought home floating in his cap.  In the aquarium, however, spite of
+this good beginning, we have to record a failure.  "The masters could
+not, and the boys would not, attend to it; and our best octopus, after
+coming to the top of the water, and spitting a last farewell at sundry
+lookers-on, died; and with him died the attempt."
+
+We are quoting from a letter of a correspondent to _The Times_, and we
+cannot better conclude this part of the subject than by a graphic
+paragraph from the same hand:
+
+   Again, there were the birds, many always on shore and marsh; but when
+   the herring-fry passed up the bay the birds positively possessed it.
+   There was a wilderness of glistening wings in the air, a restless bank
+   of floating feathers on the sea--a mile of wings and glancing foam of
+   life, with many a strange wild cry, giving the high notes to the deep
+   bass of the waves.  How often from the marsh, or somewhere, dreamland
+   or ghostland, came the plaintive wail of the curlews; then the
+   dotterels would run and flit about the sands; and, not least, the
+   herons, measuring out their dominions with their lordly arch of wings
+   in leisurely pride of sovereignty, passed grandly on their way; or,
+   ever and anon, a thousand plover, as with one soul, would turn and
+   glance in the sun far away.  All this was a new revelation to many
+   boys, whose sole ideas of birds had been sparrows, thrushes, perhaps,
+   and ducks at so much a couple, and a duck-pond.
+
+In our enumeration, however, of fish and fowl we had almost forgotten "a
+portent of the wave," which was a nine hours' wonder with us.  A stray
+seal, revisiting the familiar shore, and unaware of the change which had
+transformed his quiet haunts was encountered by one of our party as he
+cruised round Borth Head in his fishing-boat.  We are glad to record that
+the _rencontre_ ended without bloodshed.  It was a sportsman and a
+naturalist who had crossed the poor seal's path; but he remembered that
+he, too, was a stranger in the land, and he could not lift rifle against
+the
+
+   Sea-worn face, sad as mortality,
+
+which leaned from the ledge of rock to look at him.  So the monster
+passed on his way unharmed.
+
+We have detailed at length enough of the diversions and interests which
+lay close at our own doors.  But these delights pale by the side of those
+red-letter days when we went far afield to keep a holiday among the
+mountains.  We shall not see the like of those days again!  On such
+mornings, the hotel steps and the esplanade would be dotted with anxious
+groups waiting for breakfast, and observing the omens of the sky.  If
+these are favourable, a little before eight a broad stream sets towards
+the station, and fills the sunny platform with a vivacious crowd.
+Masters, who organise the several expeditions, use the interval to count
+heads and sort their parties.  The benevolent Cambrian railway supplies
+spare carriages and return tickets at single fares.  Presently the train
+is sighted sliding down the winding incline from Langfihangel; it picks
+us all up--near two hundred souls, it may be--moves out into the open
+plain, still glittering with the morning dew, and reaching Glandovey,
+drops half its passengers at the junction to explore the northward coast,
+while it carries the rest to Machynlleth and Cemmes Road.  Here and there
+it sows little companies of explorers at some mountain's foot or river's
+mouth.  One band assails Cader Idris from the rich vale of Dolgelley, and
+meets on the summit another which has scaled it from Tal-y-llyn.  Each
+party is convinced that their ascent was the more creditable in point of
+speed, and that they enjoyed the more magnificent views.  One, however,
+claims an advantage which can be more easily gauged; they have haled a
+hamper of luncheon with them to the peak, with infinite pains.  During
+the descent this hamper (but that was after luncheon) slipped from its
+carrier's hand, and plunged beyond recovery down the Fox' Walk.
+Meanwhile, others are befogged on the broad top of Aran Mowddy, but will
+be anxious to explain this evening, that if the view from the summit was
+lost in mist, that was more than made amends for by "the enchanting
+glimpses caught through the cloudrifts in the descent."  The day wears
+on, and signs of fatigue appear.  Some are wondering what Miss Roberts of
+the famous "Lion" at Dolgelley has got for their dinner.  Small boys
+begin to declare that they could go on at this pace for any time you
+like; this is nothing to what they did last year in the Highlands;
+something like mountains _there_, you know!  The sun is far in the west
+when the knot of adventurous reconnoitrers who have gone farthest afield
+mount the train at Portmadoc.  Nearer home they thrust heads out of
+window to rally their friends who join them on the poverty of their
+exploits.  These, taciturn with weariness or hunger, find they haven't
+their best repartees at command.  But they are all smiles and good humour
+again at the news that young So-and-so, with two or three more, who had
+strayed from their party, were sighted rushing along, all dust up to
+their eyes, to catch the train as it moved out of the station.  There is
+no other to-night; but our good hostess, we know, will give the
+youngsters tea, put them to bed, and forward them prepaid next morning.
+At length the last station has poured in its tributary to the volume of
+the returning multitude, and the train glides softly on between the
+brimming estuary and the marsh golden with sunset.  The full stream is
+peaceably disgorged again through the narrow station-door, and
+distributes itself along the tea-tables.  Sleep comes down upon tired
+limbs and easy consciences, and the day's glory throws the rich shadows
+of some Midsummer Night's Dream far into the bright dawn of another
+working day.
+
+It was never professed that on these occasions we were doing other than
+taking a holiday.  If, together with mountain air and the scent of
+heather, a boy drank in a love and understanding of Nature, and felt,
+possibly for the first time, the inspiration of beauty, then probably
+hours were never spent in a class-room to more profit than were these on
+the slopes of Cader or Plinlimmon, or along the banks of Mowddy.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.--THE FIRST TERM: MAKING HISTORY.
+
+
+   "_Happy is the people which has no history_."  _Stands this too among
+   the beatitudes_?  _Surely this were a fit evangel only for sheep and
+   oxen_, _or for such human kine as covet the fat pastures rather than
+   the high places of existence_.  _For whoso is ill-content to live long
+   and see good days_, _save he may also live much and see great days_,
+   _will not be so tamely gospelled_, _seeing that every past is mother
+   of a future_, _and that there is no history but is a prophecy as
+   well_.
+
+In our late digression on the conditions and circumstances of our life at
+Borth, we have somewhat anticipated the narrative of events.  But it was
+a plan agreeable to the facts of the case, that narrative should pass
+into description at the point where the stream of our little history,
+after descending the rapid of alarms and difficulties, abrupt resolves
+and swift action, fell quietly again into the smooth channel of a new
+routine.  Not that the story of the succeeding months was really
+uneventful.  If our readers suppose that from this point onward we led a
+prosperous untroubled existence, it will be due to the illusion, which,
+in fiction, makes us cheerful over the woes of the struggling hero,
+because we have glanced at the end of the book, and view the present
+trouble in the light of the successful issue: what the end would be we
+did not know, nor when it would come.  And if, to resume our metaphor,
+the current of the enterprise flowed for the most part smoothly, there
+were rocks underneath which those who saw them could not forget, though
+they seldom raised an eddy on the surface.  Here, however, we must ask
+the reader to believe us that it was so, without demanding explanations,
+which at this date would be inconvenient.  We will go on then to notice
+the chief incidents of the term.
+
+The wooden school-room, the slow completion of which had been watched
+with some impatience, was ready for use on April 29th.  On the next day,
+being Sunday, we inaugurated it by reuniting under its shelter our
+scattered congregations, hitherto distributed over the three largest
+rooms at our disposal.  It was not a noble building, being,
+architecturally, a long shed of rough planks against the bowling-green
+wall, which was whitewashed for the better lighting of the room.  But it
+was apt to the conditions of a colony, looking as it did like a log-house
+in a backwoods-clearing.  Internally it was well lighted and ventilated,
+and just sufficient for our numbers.  _Heureusement il n'y on a pas
+beaucoup_.  This was not the only occasion on which we were thankful for
+the school's self-imposed limit of numbers.  The completion of this poor
+structure was a fact of which those who have but little knowledge of
+school affairs will appreciate the value.  It was a new burden on an
+embarrassed exchequer, but not a gratuitous one.  It is not too much to
+say that the social life of the school would have been of a different and
+lower stamp, and its organisation crude and ineffective, if there had
+been no place of assembly where we could meet for common occasions, for
+roll-call, prayers, addresses, lectures, entertainments--no place to
+furnish the visible unity, which is so large an influence in a healthy
+social life.  And did the school ever feel surer of its oneness, or more
+proud of its name, than when it sat on those rude benches within the
+ruder walls of their makeshift great school-room?
+
+The next day, May 1st, is the Uppingham Encoenia, the commemoration of
+the Chapel opening.  It forced one to contrast the wooden walls in which
+the Saint's-day's service was held, with the high rooftree and the deep
+buttresses, which this year would not echo the chanting procession.  The
+anniversary rites lapsed of necessity.  An accidental piece of ceremony
+marked this day; for that morning a flagstaff was erected on the terrace
+in front of the hotel, and a flag run up, by the lowering of which the
+hour of dinner or roll-call could be signalled to ramblers on the shore
+or the hill.  On the 19th of the month we hoisted with much cheering our
+own colours: a banner, on which some of the ladies had worked the
+Founder's device, the antique schoolmaster and his ring of scholars.  The
+flags (there were three in all) were carried home with us, and the faded
+and tattered folds which had fought with the sou'-wester, now droop in a
+graceful canopy at one end of the great school-room.
+
+By the middle of June the new church of Borth, so opportunely built in
+time for our settlement, was declared ready.  It was courteously placed
+at our disposal for two services on Sunday before the hours of the parish
+services.  The building exactly held us, with a little pinching.  The
+first occasion of our using it was a confirmation held by the Bishop of
+St. David's.  The Bishop, whose early connections are with this
+neighbourhood, and who had already in his capacity of landowner given us
+proof of his goodwill, seemed to rejoice in the occasion of expressing
+his sympathy with the immigrants into his quiet home.  The kindness of
+the visit was not slight; for the journey, to and fro, from difficulties
+of transport, demanded two days.  We have the more reason to be grateful
+for his willing sacrifice of time, because, in view of the interval since
+the last confirmation and of the long sojourn in Wales before us, we
+should otherwise have suffered a kind of mitigated excommunication.
+
+June 29th and 30th were the days of the "Old Boys' Match," the annual
+reunion of the Past and Present School.  There seemed no reason why
+absence from our native soil should sever our ties with the Past.  Quite
+the contrary.  _Ubi Caesar ibi patria_, thought our Old Boys, who,
+indeed, never before felt so glad to claim their heritage in the fortunes
+of Uppingham.  The game, which was like other games of cricket, and need
+not be described, was played on the Gogerddan field, where the
+Headmaster, in lieu of his customary supper, not practicable at Borth,
+gave a luncheon each day.  On the first day, as the company rose from
+table, a signal was given to the school to draw up to the tent, outside
+which the guests were standing.  They formed a kind of hollow square to
+see what would happen, and an old Uppinghamian (Mr. R. L. Nettleship,
+Fellow of Balliol College, Oxford) came forward and presented an "Address
+from the Old Boys at Oxford, to the Headmaster and Masters of Uppingham
+School."  He noticed briefly the circumstances under which it had been
+drawn up, explaining why (through lack of time to concert matters with
+the sister university) it had come from Oxford only, and added that they
+hoped shortly to give something more substantial than parchment.  "What
+they could offer was a slight thing, it was true, yet one which their old
+Headmaster and his coadjutors would not think valueless."  He proceeded
+to read the address, which ran thus:
+
+   "We, the undersigned old members of Uppingham School, now resident at
+   Oxford, write to express our deep sympathy with the Headmaster and
+   Masters of Uppingham School in the great difficulties with which they
+   have lately had to contend.  Feeling as we do, that though we have
+   left the school, we still, in the truest sense, belong to it, we can
+   but testify our gratitude to those whose courage and skill have
+   carried it safely through such a crisis, and converted a great
+   misfortune into a proof that it is strong enough to defy accidents.
+   Our confidence in the Headmaster is, as always, entire and unabated,
+   and we are sure that the school which he has so successfully led to
+   Borth will come back under the same leadership, with its vigour
+   undiminished, to its home at Uppingham." {66}
+
+In reply the Headmaster said, addressing himself to the memorialists and
+the school, "the past and future (for what we are doing has a past and
+future), I thank you for this with all my heart, for this which you call
+'a slight thing.'  It is a slight thing; but yet, like a flag which
+armies have rallied round and have died for, it can give spirit and
+endurance and confidence.  Yes, it is true, as you say, that these have
+been hard times, as those know who have had day by day to watch ruin
+coming closer and closer, with no hope, no room for escape.  Like men in
+the story tied to the stake in front of the advancing tide, we had to see
+wave on wave coming up to bring a slow but sure destruction."  Then,
+after speaking of the incidents which ended in our coming to this spot,
+he continued: "We have been brought by our troubles much before the eyes
+of the public.  They speak of 'the fierce light that beats upon a
+throne,' but that is hardly so intolerable as the fierce light that beats
+upon a great calamity.  Yet I trust that fierce light may prove to the
+school a refining fire.  Certainly the present school has behaved
+worthily under their novel circumstances; they have shown themselves true
+sons of Uppingham.  You of the past school see round you your successors,
+and you may be proud of them; at least we have suffered no trouble
+through those you see before you here.
+
+"The end of all this which of us knows?  But we have faith that it shall
+be good.  Though all seems to fail and perish, all our work to die, yet I
+am sure there shall be no real death of the life of the school, but that
+it shall have its resurrection."
+
+The words were meant for the ears to which they were addressed.  If to
+readers remote from the facts and the feeling of the hour they perhaps
+strike a note of scarcely intelligible emotion yet our story cannot spare
+them.  To us who heard them they were an expressive summary of many
+thoughts, and fears, and hopes of that time, which our narrative cannot
+give expression to otherwise than in this indirect fashion.  Had those
+thoughts and hopes been other, we should not, perhaps, have had this
+story to tell.
+
+The choir gave an _al fresco_ concert on the night of the second day of
+the match in the grass close.  The resonance from the surrounding
+buildings made the songs very effective for an outdoor entertainment.
+
+_Surgit amari aliquid_.  Just at this time came news of a new fever case
+at Uppingham.  We knew what might be the significance of the news, and
+began to make up our minds for another term at Borth.
+
+On July 5th a public concert was given by the choir, and attended by the
+rest of the school, at Aberystwith.  It was the second of two given in
+support of the new church at Borth, to the debt on which the proceeds
+were devoted.  The first was held in the Assembly Room of the Queen's
+Hotel, a beautiful room, with fine acoustic properties.  We cannot say as
+much for the Temperance Hall, in which the second was given.  It is a
+structure of the very severest Georgian architecture.  "Why," asks a
+reporter, "should water-drinkers allow it to be supposed that the graces
+of art are all in the hands of Bacchus?"  The journey to and fro by rail
+was, in the popular estimate, an integral part of the entertainment; its
+charm lay in the uncertainty as to whether the laden train would be able
+to climb the abrupt incline to Langfihangel, or would keep on the rickety
+rails as it spun down the same curve in returning.  Otherwise, that the
+school should make a railway journey _en masse_ to hold an evening
+concert seemed, under our nomad conditions, to be only in the common
+course of things.
+
+One concert we held in the wooden school-room on the 22nd of May; on that
+occasion (we quote the magazine's reporter) "All the members of the choir
+might be seen flocking to the school-room, with candle and candlestick in
+hand, to furnish light for the performance.  The candles were arranged in
+sevens on wooden shelves all down the sides of the room, and though the
+whole spectacle had its laughable side, as most things have, the general
+effect was far from bad.  It was cheerful enough; in fact, only a
+Christmas-tree and some more disorder was needed to turn the
+entertainment into as good an imitation of a happy school-treat as you
+would get at a day's notice."  But the music sounded dully in the timber
+walls, and the experiment was not repeated.
+
+Meanwhile a new inroad of care had for the last fortnight, since the late
+news from Uppingham, disquieted the colony.  Major Tulloch, a Government
+Inspector, who, on behalf of the Local Sanitary Board, had reported on
+the state of the town of Uppingham, had expressed a strong opinion that
+the school ought not to return thither before Christmas.  In consequence
+of this a memorial was sent from the masters to the Trustees, requesting
+them to reverse their decision of June 17th, which recalled the school in
+September.  At a meeting of the Trustees, on July 14th, the following
+resolution was passed:
+
+   Resolved--"That, while in the opinion of the Trustees there is nothing
+   in the present condition of the town of Uppingham which calls upon
+   them to rescind their resolution of the 17th ult, yet, having regard
+   to a memorial addressed to them by the whole body of the assistant-
+   masters, they are willing, in compliance with the same, that the
+   school shall remain at Borth during the autumn term."
+
+Arrangements were at once begun for returning to camp after the holidays.
+The responsibility for this step, which was thus devolved upon the
+masters, though it was accepted without hesitation, was felt to be no
+light one.  Our engagement with the lessee of the hotel had provided for
+a renewal of the contract at will; but there remained the owners of some
+thirty houses, large and small, with whom we should have to reckon.  They
+would have us in their hands, and might, if so minded, "turn our
+necessity to glorious gain."  Then, too, many of the lodging-houses,
+excellent as airy summer pavilions, did not promise much comfort in
+winter time, to those who remembered how in the spring weeks the curtains
+and everything movable within doors
+
+   Fluttered in the besieging wind's uproar,
+   And the long carpets rose along the gusty floor.
+
+Moreover, natives who knew, threatened us with rain all day and every
+day, from the beginning of September till the end of October, after which
+it would be dry.  Others, who also knew, promised us fine weather till
+the latter date, and then wet till Christmas.  Putting the two assurances
+together, one inferred that weather at Borth would be like weather in
+general.  However, in prospect of winds and wet, the open porch of the
+hotel was walled up with planks so as to put another door between the
+sou'-wester and the diners in the corridor.  Also a long lean-to shed,
+like a cloister without windows, was run along two sides of the bowling-
+green wall.  The outlay on the latter yielded no adequate return.  It
+afforded some shelter for chapel roll-call, and for the few minutes'
+lounge before evening prayers, except when it rained hard enough, and
+then the water poured through the contractor's felt roof.  It was too
+narrow to be used, as was hoped, for games; unless, indeed, we had turned
+it into a skittle-alley.  But then skittles is a game of low connections.
+Finally, well-wishers were solemn in their warnings that the drainage of
+the spot was defective (which, indeed, was no otherwise than true, till
+we brought about a reform), and that our settlement by the sea was
+nothing if it was not healthy.
+
+The outlook then was not unclouded.  But one bright day we had before we
+said good-bye to the past, and fronted the future cares.  Sir Pryse had
+invited the school to spend a day with him at Gogerddan, Thursday, July
+20th, the last day of term.  Room was found for all his guests to dine
+together in a large barn near the house, where, from the high and narrow
+windows, the light fell in picturesque mellowness on the close-packed
+ranks.  A match was played in the grounds between the school and an
+Aberystwith eleven; the rest whiled away the afternoon right pleasantly
+among the flowers and grass-slopes.  At a pause in the game there was a
+gathering on the lawn to watch the execution of a little surprise which
+the cricketers had prepared for our host.  From a box which had been
+perilously smuggled in, was produced a memorial gift (it consisted of a
+study-clock and inkstand), which "the cricketers of Uppingham begged Sir
+Pryse to accept, as a slight acknowledgment of his special liberality to
+themselves;" for so it was set forth in an address which the captain of
+the eleven proceeded to read to him.  Our host, as much startled as if
+the present and the address had been shot at him out of a cannon,
+answered in a brief but not the less effective speech.  Then, as if to
+relieve the warmth of feeling generated between us, a piano was run into
+the bow of an open window, and the choir outside delivered themselves of
+some hearty music.  Soon the evening train was carrying us home for the
+reading of the class-list and the prize-giving.  In the customary
+address, the Headmaster could congratulate the school on having borne
+themselves well during the great time in the school's history which this
+day brought to a close: he called on them to "come back with the soldier
+spirit" to face whatever remained.
+
+There was dark work going on in the street that night.  When dawn broke,
+it disclosed an array of flags, streamers, and devices, along the
+approach to the station, where "the special" was waiting.  Prominent
+among the devices was the motto, _Au revoir_.  For the feeling it spoke,
+all were grateful; but not all rejoiced in the occasion of it.  The train
+moved out of the station with the school, to a boy, on board of it, to
+the sound of a farewell cheer, and so the curtain fell on the first act
+of the play.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.--A WINTER CAMPAIGN.
+
+
+   _Sanitas sanitation, omnia sanitas_.
+
+   _The farmer vext packed up his beds and chairs_,
+   _And all his household stuff_, _and with his boy_
+   _Betwixt his knees_, _his wife upon the tilt_,
+   _Sets forth_, _and meets a friend_, _who hails him_, "_What_!
+   _You're flitting_!"  "_Yes_, _we're flitting_," _says the ghost_
+   (_For they had packed the thing among the beds_).
+   "_Oh_, _well_," _says he_, "_you flitting with us too_--
+   _Jack_, _turn the horses' heads and home again_."
+
+   TENNYSON, "WALKING TO THE MAIL."
+
+September 15th and 16th were the days of the school's return to Borth.  We
+slipped at once and easily into the groove of last term's routine,
+filling our old quarters and several additional houses.  Some building
+operations needed for the winter's sojourn have been mentioned by
+anticipation.  Our medical officer, also, and the ready pickaxe of
+"Sanitary Tom" (as the boys called the navvy who was his stout ally), had
+been at work laying bare the subterranean geography of our premises and
+making all right.  At his instance, the proprietor ran out an extended
+culvert into the sea beyond low-water mark, a grand engineering work,
+which remains the one permanent monument of our settlement.  Having in
+mind some ancient aspersions on the wholesomeness of Borth we are glad to
+bear testimony to the present adequate sanitation of the place.
+
+We do not write for the scientific, and yet we must notice (we hope
+without wounding an unprofessional ear) the beautiful economy of natural
+forces by which that sanitation is effected.  The channel of the Lery,
+between which and the sea the hotel is built, runs parallel to the
+coastline, till it meets at right angles the estuary of the Dovey.  The
+same tide which washes the beach also fills the Lery channel and the
+adjoining ditches.  When the ebb has set in the water in the latter
+stands for a time at a higher level than on the beach.  Reflecting on
+this, our engineers cut a duct between the Lery and the sea, so as to
+draw the water from the river down the main drainage artery, performing
+twice daily a most effective flushing.
+
+Some of us would have preferred to leave a more dignified memorial of
+ourselves, forgetting, perhaps, that it is a Cloaca which is the most
+impressive witness to the civilised resources of an ancient king.  So an
+offer was made to the proprietors that, if they would find the tools and
+directors of the work, the school would provide the labourers for the
+making of a road between the village and the church, an interval of a
+furlong of marshy land, bridged at that time by a makeshift causeway.
+They did not, however, see their way to accept our amateur industry, and
+the project fell through.
+
+With the arrival of the boys came also news, that on the day before,
+September 14th, the engineers had broken ground at Uppingham:
+
+      _Ea vox audita laborum_
+   _Prima tulit finem_.
+
+We had waited not without some impatience for the first sound of the
+pickaxe; and its echoes were welcomed as promising an end to our exile.
+
+The new term opened smilingly.  The smooth working order into which
+everything fell at once contrasted pleasantly with the anxious bustle of
+the entry in April.  A glorious autumn was settling on the hills, draping
+them from head to foot with a red mantle of the withering bracken, which
+slowly burnt itself out along their slopes.  There was sun and daylight
+enough for many rambles along old paths or new ones before the year was
+fairly dead.
+
+Our prosperity was suddenly staggered.  Just five weeks after the return
+a case of scarlet fever occurred, followed in the course of the week by
+half-a-dozen more.  An outbreak of this kind is too common an incident in
+a large school to merit much surprise or great alarm.  But then our
+circumstances were exceptional.  If the infection spread, it might be
+difficult to find hospital room; to communicate it to the villagers, as
+might easily befall, would be an unhappy return for their own ready
+hospitality; and then how miserable to have fled from sickness at
+Uppingham, and find it had followed us to Borth, as if, like the haunted
+family of the poem, "we had packed the thing among the beds."  Already
+there came news which raised unspoken doubts of our returning home after
+Christmas.  How, then, if we could not stay here?  The question was hard
+to answer.
+
+It is, however, a well-recognised fact that epidemics of this kind are
+very much under the control of scientific precautions, and as we had good
+advice on the spot, no time was lost in stamping out the plague.  War is
+not made with rose-water (it certainly was not rose-water which reeked
+along our passages), and fever germs can be exterminated, it seems, by
+nothing less exasperatingly unsavoury than carbolic acid, an agency which
+was laid on without any ruth.  Grumblers were offered the alternative of
+being smoked with sulphur.  Some complained of sore throats, contracted,
+they said, from the fumes of the disinfectant, and declared that the
+remedy, like vaccination, was only a mitigated form of the disorder.  The
+landlords of our studies looked on with irresolute wonder, when some of
+us sprinkled their floors with a potent decoction poured from watering-
+pots.  Most of them regarded it as a kind of magical rite into which it
+would not be seemly to inquire.  In one house a practical seaman, late
+home from a cruise, took a less reverent view of the lustration, and
+uttered hints of what he would do to the perpetrators' heads if their
+acid touched his carpets again.  Probably the best disinfectant applied
+was the clear strong wind, which ten days after the first case succeeded
+the previous relaxing weather.  All windows and doors were ordered wide
+open for the free passage of the blast; and the boys were directed to
+bring down their rugs, great-coats, and dressing-gowns, and anything of
+the kind which might be supposed to harbour mischief, and spread them for
+purification on the pebbles of the beach.  It will be believed the scene
+was a quaint one, however it might remind the scholar of the idyllic
+laundry scene by the Phaeacian shore, where Nausicaa and her maidens:
+
+   [Greek verse]
+
+Whether it was these purgations, or the fumes of the carbolic which
+exorcised the infection, or whether the pest was starved out by the
+immediate and careful isolation of the cases that occurred, we must leave
+doctors to determine.  It is certain that the epidemic came to an end in
+less than ten days after the first case.  That we were able to apply the
+most necessary of measures, that of isolating at once all cases declared
+or suspected, we owe to the readiness of the villagers to put house-room
+at our service, a readiness on which we certainly had no right to
+calculate.  The rent we might pay them was no measure of the service
+rendered.  If a panic had closed their doors, our situation would have
+been worse than critical.
+
+The cause of the outbreak could not be confidently assigned, but since
+the most probable theory traced it to a recent railway excursion made by
+some school parties, these expeditions were discontinued for a time.  This
+was no great privation, for the year was closing in.
+
+About this time, October 16th, the appointment of new "Praepostors" was
+made, to fill up vacancies in the body.  In speaking as usual on the
+occasion, the Headmaster called attention to the experiment in
+self-government which our special circumstances were affording.  There
+would be little reason for our recording the occasion, were it not that
+since that date the monitorial system in public schools has been
+canvassed in the Press, on occasion of an untoward incident of recent
+notoriety, and has been described by some as the parent of the "grossest
+tyranny," ruinous to the future of any school from which the institution
+is inseparable.  We had thought this view of the system obsolete, or
+correct only of schools subject to obsolete conditions.  If we were
+mistaken, it may be worth while to record an experience which tends to a
+less pessimistic conclusion.
+
+It will easily be understood that the mechanical organisation of the
+school was greatly deranged by the removal from home.  The boys of the
+several houses were no longer locally separated, nor in the same
+immediate contact with their housemasters; they were restrained by few
+bolt-and-bar securities, "lock-up" being for the most part impracticable,
+and were allowed a larger liberty in many less definable ways.  At the
+same time they were exposed to no little discomfort, and during the rainy
+months to much monotony, the very conditions which promote bullying and
+other mischief.  Further, the same causes which reduced the control of
+masters, also embarrassed the upper boys in their monitorial duties.  Thus
+the school was left in a quite unusual degree to its self-government, and
+that government had to act at a disadvantage.
+
+Yet the result was that all went well.  The boys did not bully one
+another, and they gave their masters no sort of trouble.  Old rules had
+to be relaxed, because they could not be enforced, but no licence came of
+it; new rules had to be made, which might seem vexatious and not very
+intelligible restrictions, but there was no tendency to break them.  Of
+course wrong things were done at Borth as elsewhere; but if we were to
+record the few misdeeds which occur to us, their insignificance would
+provoke a smile; while we have good evidence for the belief that the rate
+of undetected offences was not increased.
+
+These are the facts we have to record.  Different explanations will
+suggest themselves to others, but among observers on the spot there was
+but one opinion--that the prosperous result was due to the system of self-
+government, "monitorial system," or whatever we name the institution,
+which rests on the assumption that English boys are capable of
+responsibility and authority, and will prove trustworthy if their masters
+are willing to trust them.  We do not forget that other factors entered
+into the cause; one which cannot be ignored was the consciousness of the
+boys that the school was on its trial, and that a public one.  But people
+cannot acquire self-control merely by the removal of restraints, or
+behave well, for a long time together and in spite of tedium, simply
+because they would like to do so.  The truth is, that in a time which
+might have been anarchical, we lived on the fruits of a long-established
+order; and it is fair to add that at the end of thirteen months there
+were no visible symptoms that discipline was wearing threadbare.
+
+Shall we, for writing this, be taxed with the vain-glory for which public
+schools are at times reproached?  We must brave the charge, then; for the
+facts seem to furnish evidence of a kind so rarely obtainable, that to
+omit them from this chapter in school life would be hardly excusable.  An
+experiment so crucial as that to which we were submitted does not occur
+once in fifty years.
+
+But enough of serious matters.  Let us go out and forget them in a run
+with Sir Pryse's harriers, along the breezy gorse-covered downs of the
+Gogerddan estate.  We take the train which arrives just after we have
+risen from dinner, and land at the upland village of Langfihangel.  It is
+a Saturday afternoon, the 21st of October, the day is clear and sunny,
+and several ladies are of the party.  A few hundred yards from the
+station we met the hounds, and Sir Pryse's man who hunts them.  The owner
+is not with them, but (by his good leave) yonder tall, lithe fellow, the
+best runner in the school, acts as Master of Hounds.  He promises us good
+sport, having heard from the huntsman of a hare which is "waiting for
+us."  As they prepare to cast off, the non-effectives separate from the
+runners, and climb a round-topped hill which commands the country.  The
+fields are spread like a map under us; nothing on the face of the country
+escapes our eyes.  The hare that was "waiting for us" has grown tired of
+it, and left the rendezvous, but another is soon started, and a stout
+one.  She is of the mountain breed, as are many in this country; they
+could not otherwise have held out so long before the pursuit of such
+runners, to say nothing of the hounds.  The "tally-ho" comes cheerly up
+to us from the valley through the crisp October air, and we see puss
+scudding along up the hedgerow, the hounds and the foremost runners in
+the next field, the rest thinning out and straggling behind them.  Among
+these we recognise with glee a friend or two, who years ago were in the
+first flight of every Uppingham paper-chase (_si nunc foret illa
+uventus_), labouring across a turnip-field, or held by the leg in a gorse-
+cover.  A check gives them a chance of coming up again with huntsman and
+master.  We won't spoil the chance by halloing where the hare went,
+though, from our vantage-ground, we can view her throughout.  Our friends
+have just got in line with the leaders, and are finding their breath
+again for a second burst, when the scent is recovered; the chase sweeps
+up the ridge, and over it out of our sight, away, perhaps, towards the
+moorland spurs of Plinlimmon.  We descend the hill homewards, leaving
+puss to her doom, whatever it may be.  For these runs sometimes had a
+fatal termination.  In the school serial is told the story of a
+magnificent day, of which, however, the runners did not witness the end,
+for "time was drawing late, and we were far from the station, so had to
+leave the hounds under the charge of the huntsman alone, and as the hare
+was now exhausted, they soon killed her.  We were on the scent for over
+two hours, and ran about twelve miles."  These days took place two or
+three times a week; for good practical reasons the "field" was restricted
+in numbers.
+
+After the short and sharp battle with the scarlet fever narrated above,
+the term went on very peacefully, but with a growing expectation that
+this would not be the last one in Wales.  News from Uppingham of the
+unpreparedness of the place to receive us left little room for doubt, but
+the question was not decided (at least, officially) even at the date of
+the break-up.  The prospect of a fresh period of makeshift life was not a
+welcome one; but the worst had been faced by this time, and found, after
+all, not hard to deal with.  The long dark evenings of November proved a
+less difficulty than was anticipated.  With afternoon school shifted to
+the hour of sunset, and with meetings of the Debating and other societies
+on half-holiday evenings, the dark hours did not hang heavily, and the
+expected tedium of an Arctic winter was not experienced.  The term closed
+with a concert given in the Assembly Room at Aberystwith, December 13th,
+and another on the next night in the Temperance Hall at popular prices.
+On the 14th, a team of Old Boys played the usual football match against
+the Present School, and were beaten by two goals to one.  That evening
+the class-list was read and the prizes given.  If the boys hoped to
+gather from the Headmaster's speech an intimation of where they would
+meet him after Christmas they were disappointed.  The government had as
+yet no communication to make.  Next morning, in the darkness before dawn,
+the special train carried them to their homes, to await with curiosity
+their next marching orders.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI.--LUDIBRIA MARIS.
+
+
+   _Sit down_, _and hear the last of our sea-sorrow_.
+
+   "THE TEMPEST."
+
+   _They said_, "_and why should this thing be_?
+   _What danger lowers by land or sea_?
+   _They ring the tune of Enderby_."
+
+   JEAN INGELOW.
+
+"England, when she goes to war," said a Prime Minister not long ago, "has
+not to consider whether she will be able to fight a second or a third
+campaign."  We remembered that we were Englishmen; and on January 19th,
+1877, went down again with a good courage for our third campaign on the
+Welsh coast.  A furious gale was howling that day among the hills of
+Cardiganshire, recalling to the memory of some of us the stormy Ides of
+March, when the pioneers of our little army first set foot in Borth.
+_Omina principiis inesse solent_.  This gale was sounding the key-note
+of the term's adventures.
+
+The cause of our return to Borth for a third term is briefly told.  We
+had gone home at Christmas, uncertain whether we should meet again there
+or at Uppingham.  Dr. Acland, of Oxford, to whose active sympathy with
+the school in its perplexities we must at least gratefully allude, had
+undertaken on our behalf to inspect the sanitary condition of Uppingham,
+and give us his judgment on the expediency of reassembling there.  His
+judgment was submitted to the attention of the Trustees at their meeting,
+on December 22nd, when it was resolved that, "In the face of Dr. Acland's
+report, the Trustees deeply regret they cannot at present recall the
+school to Uppingham."  So we went back to the sea.
+
+Our numbers this term just missed by one the normal total of three
+hundred.  In the two preceding terms they had been smaller by some five
+or six.  The camp at Borth, therefore, had not suffered from want of
+recruits.  Indeed, it was now foreseen that the return to Uppingham would
+be for about one-third of the school a first arrival there.
+
+The beginning of the end of our exile seemed to be marked by the reduced
+number of masters' families in camp.  Some had gone into winter quarters
+at Aberystwith; some had already resettled at Uppingham.  Our connection
+with home began to be retightened also by parochial and other common
+transactions, in which we took our share from a distance.  Not, indeed,
+that the connection had ever been discontinued.  We had left too precious
+pledges behind us.  The deserted gardens did not waste all their
+sweetness on the air which we had exchanged for a "fresher clime."  A
+thin intermittent stream of their products found its way along the nine
+hours of railway through most of the year.  Flowers, fruit, and
+vegetables might raise tantalising memories of the pleasant places where
+they grew, but were not the less welcome to dwellers in this somewhat
+austere tract where they did not grow or grew very niggardly.  The
+traffic in these delicacies drew the attention of the London and North-
+Western Railway Company, whose officials called to account one of our
+servants for travelling with an excess of personal luggage.  The artless
+contrabandist, besides his own modest pack, had fourteen several hampers
+and boxes under his charge.  This was checked.  But who was the miscreant
+who systematically staved in and pounded into such odd shapes the little
+tin boxes in which our rose-fanciers had their choice blooms sent them by
+post?  Post Office authorities thought the damage was caused by "the
+pressure of the letters."  We did not, and remonstrated, till the
+practice, whoever was the criminal, was stopped.  Besides these gracious
+souvenirs of home, there were from time to time business matters which we
+had to transact as parishioners and ratepayers.  One was sensible of an
+almost humorous contrast, when we discussed our interests in the Midlands
+in a room overlooking the coast and hills of Cardiganshire, where one
+turned from watching the waves breaking crisply on the beach, to study a
+map of some property in Rutland pastures.  It has been accounted a signal
+proof of Roman self-confidence, that bidders could be found for a piece
+of land on which Hannibal was encamped at the moment of sale.  The
+situations are not quite parallel.  But people who could seriously
+debate, as we did, on the purchase of a freehold at a time when not even
+their Rome was their own, clearly had not despaired of their country.
+
+With the exception of the moving incidents to be immediately narrated,
+the tale of this term's life differs little from that of the preceding.
+The round of work and play was much the same; the harriers were out
+again, football went on as before, till superseded by the "athletics,"
+and a match was played on March 7th against Shrewsbury School on their
+ground, of which the result was a drawn battle.
+
+Our difficulties this term were with the elements.  In novels of school
+life, where the scene is laid on the coast, the hero always imperils his
+bones in an escapade upon the cliffs.  The heroes of our romance knew
+what was expected of them.  Accordingly, two new boys of a week's
+standing start one afternoon for a ramble on Borth Head and are missing
+at tea-time.  Search parties are organised at once (it was not the first
+occasion, for the writer remembers sharing in a wild-goose chase which
+lasted four hours of the night, along and under the same cliffs); while
+one skirted the marsh to Taliesin, another explored the coast.  The
+latter party at nine o'clock in the evening discovered the involuntary
+tenants perched upon a rock a little way up the cliff.  They had climbed
+to it to escape the tide which had cut them off, and here they sat,
+telling stones in turn, they said, to while away the time till the tide
+should retire.  Before the waters went, however, darkness came; and
+either from fear of breaking bones in the descent or suspicion of some
+fresh treachery in the mysterious sea, they clung to their perch,
+blessing the mildness of a January night without wind or frost, but
+blessing with still more fervency the lanterns of their rescuers.  They
+had passed five hours in this anxious situation.
+
+This was the sportive prelude of more serious trouble.  _Nunquam
+imprudentibus imber incidit_: as the servant perhaps reflected, who, on
+Monday, January 29th, was conveying the dinner of his master's family
+from the Hotel kitchen to Cambrian Terrace.  As he crossed the gusty
+street between them, the harpies of the storm swept the dinner from dish,
+and rolled a prime joint over and over in the dust.  A leg of mutton was
+following, but he caught it dexterously by the knuckle-end as it fell,
+and rescued so much from the wreck.  Such incidents are significant:
+trifles light as air, no doubt, but at least they showed which way the
+wind blew.  And did it not blow? for three days the sou'-wester had been
+heaping up the sea-water against the shores of Cardigan Bay.  People
+remembered with misgivings that an expected high tide coincided in time
+with the gale, and shook their heads significantly as they went to bed on
+the eve of January 30th.
+
+In the half light before sunrise, the classes, emerging from the school-
+room after morning prayers, found the street between them and the Terrace
+threaded by a stream of salt water, which was pouring over the sea-wall
+in momently increasing volume.  Skirting or jumping the obstruction they
+reached the class-rooms, and work began.  But before morning school was
+over the stream had become a river, and thrifty housewives were keeping
+out the flood from their ground-floors by impromptu dams.  Those who were
+well placed saw a memorable sight that morn, as the terrible white
+rollers came remorselessly in, sheeting the black cliff sides in the
+distance with columns of spouted foam, then thundering on the low sea-
+wall, licking up or battening down the stakes of its palisades, and
+scattering apart and volleying before it the pebbles built in between
+them, till the village street was heaped with the ruins of the barrier
+over which the waters swept victoriously into the level plain beyond:
+
+   The feet had hardly time to flee
+   Before it brake against the knee,
+   And all the world was in the sea.
+
+Those who were looking inland saw how
+
+         Along the river's bed
+   A mighty eygre reared its head
+   And up the Lery raging sped.
+
+And though they could not see how the tenants of the low-lying hamlet of
+Ynislas fled to their upper storey as the tide plunged them into twelve
+feet of water; how it breached the railway beyond, sapping four miles of
+embankment, and sweeping the bodies of a drowned flock of sheep far
+inland to the very foot of the hills; yet they saw enough to make them
+recall the grim memories of the historic shore, and doubt if our fortunes
+were not about to add a chapter to the legend of the Lost Lowland
+Hundred.
+
+For an hour the narrow ridge on which the village stands was swept by a
+storm of foam, while, from moment to moment, a wave exploding against the
+crest of the ridge, would leap in through the intervals between the
+houses, and carrying along a drift of sea-weed and shingle, splintered
+timber, and wrecked peat-stacks, go eddying down into the drowned
+pastures beyond.  Yet when the ebb came, and men began to count their
+losses, there were but few to record.  The embankment at the south end of
+the village had been beaten flat, and the road behind it buried under a
+silt of shingle; the nearest houses to it had been flooded and threatened
+with collapse, so that the owners were offering them next day on easy
+terms; from our hospital, which stood in this quarter, the one patient
+and his nurse were rescued on the backs of waders; the foundations of a
+chapel, which was building on lower ground, were reported sapped, and a
+staunch Churchman of our Welsh acquaintance stood rapturously contrasting
+the fate of the conventicle with the security of his own place of worship
+on the neighbouring knoll.  "If Borth goes, the church won't, anyhow!" he
+cried, in self-forgetting fervour.  No lives were lost, though several
+were barely saved.  One of our party rescued his dog, already straining
+at his chain to escape a watery grave; another saved (dearer than life
+itself) his favourite violin.  A fisherman, surprised in his kitchen, was
+flung down and nearly strangled between door and doorpost by the rush of
+a wave through the window.  A neighbour was drifted out of his house on
+the top of one wave, and scrambled back to find the door slammed and held
+against him by another.  Rueful groups of women stood in the street,
+sobbing over armfuls of what one feared might be drowned infants, but
+were, in fact, the little pigs which they had plucked alive and
+remonstrant from the flooded styes.  In short, if many were frightened,
+few could plead to being hurt.
+
+Meanwhile, the boys had found their way from the class-rooms upon bridges
+of railway-sleepers requisitioned from the station-yard.  We could not
+but enjoy that "something not altogether unpleasing to us in the
+calamities of our neighbours," but the "humorous ruth," with which we
+contemplated the comical incidents of the disaster was exchanged in good
+time for practical pity.  There was to be another high tide that evening,
+and how would the village stand this second storm of its broken defences?
+So the order was given to assemble in the street after dinner, and work
+at the repair of the breaches.  The street looked like an ant-hill, as
+the workers, divided into gangs by houses, with the housemaster at the
+head of his gang, swarmed on the roadway, clearing it from the _debris_
+with pickaxe, spade, and a multitude of hands; re-stacking the cottagers'
+store of peat-sods, which the waves had sown broadcast; forming chains
+across the beach to pass up from hand to hand the large pebbles at low-
+water mark, to build in between the palisades; or cutting down the old
+stakes and driving in new ones.  This last was the most attractive branch
+of the service.  How enviable was he whom a reputation as a woodman
+secured the enjoyment of an axe, and the genial employ of hewing and
+hammering!  This was much to be preferred to cutting your hands in moving
+rubbish or standing still to hand wet stones in a freezing wind.  However,
+the pleasure of helping other people was common to all; and many of the
+young hearts, which tasted that pleasure in this rough day's labour, will
+have gained an impulse of prompt helpfulness that may serve them in other
+and ruder storms than that which shook the frail homes of these friendly
+villagers.
+
+We do not know how our defences would have stood the test of battle.  They
+were not put to the proof, for the wind, veering to the north that
+morning, and blowing strongly all day, reduced again the volume of the
+water in the bay, and the following tides came and went harmlessly.  But
+had the morrow repeated the terrors of this day, we should hardly have
+been up to witness them, for (_proh pudor_!) we rewarded ourselves for
+our exertions by a lie-a-bed next morning in place of early school.
+
+Elsewhere the storm-wave had worked more havoc.  At Ynyslas, a flock of
+one hundred and fifteen sheep were caught in their pastures, and drowned,
+the farmer rescuing only eleven.  The cottagers were driven to their
+lofts, while the tide snatched away their furniture, doors,
+window-frames, and tables, and strewed them along the railway banks.
+There was flotsam and jetsam on what was now once more the coast-line at
+the village of Taliesin, where in old days the bard's cradle had been
+washed ashore; here one poor woman recovered her parlour-table of heavy
+oak; her chairs had travelled farther yet to the door of a farmhouse in
+the extreme corner of the marsh.  These people were greater sufferers
+than our villagers, but we could only help them by a subscription to
+replace their losses.
+
+For ourselves, we suffered nothing except a temporary scarcity of coals
+and oil from the interruption of the railway traffic.  It was a fortnight
+before the next train ran on the stretch between us and Machynlleth, and
+in the meanwhile the gap was bridged by a coach service.  From four miles
+of embankment the ballast had been sapped away, and the sleepers and
+rails collapsing into the void presented a dismal picture of wreck.
+
+Yes, we suffered one other privation.  It was long before our football-
+field rose again from the deeps, and was dry enough for play.  Its
+goalposts pricking up mournfully through the floods were a landmark which
+the boys recognised with rueful eyes in the midst of the drowned and
+deformed landscape.
+
+More substantial measures than the patching up of the barricades in which
+we assisted must be taken if Borth is to remain permanently in the roll
+of Welsh villages.  Our storm-wave was but part of a system of aggression
+which the sea is carrying out upon these coasts.  Older residents
+remember a coach-road under the promontory, where now there is nothing
+but rock and seaweed, and look forward gloomily to a day when Borth will
+be "disturbed;" for so they euphemistically describe the catastrophe
+which is finally to wash it away.  But an acquaintance of ours, who
+claims one of the longest memories in the place, is more confident.  He
+has known Borth seventy years and as he has never seen it destroyed
+during all that time, does not think it will be now.  His own house is
+safe on the hill of Old Borth, so he judges with all the calm of
+conscious security.  His conviction, however, is not shared by his
+townsfolk, who were soon busy holding meetings, and considering schemes
+for the provision of something better than these moral guarantees.
+Heartily do we hope that funds and measures will be found to save our
+friends from another and more calamitous "disturbance."  But a letter
+from Borth, a year later, speaks of the sea as again threatening their
+security.  "We are not afraid of him, though," the correspondent, one of
+our landladies, devoutly adds, "for he is under a Master."  All the same,
+we should like to hear of a stout sea-wall as well.
+
+Once again the elements caused us alarm.  A heavy gale got up in the
+evening of February 19th, and roared all night upon the roof of the
+hotel, tearing up the fluttering tiles in patches, and sending them
+adrift through the air, till the master who slept under the leads, in
+charge of the top storey, began to doubt whether the straining roof would
+last overhead till morning.  It was small consolation that this time he
+and his neighbours should at least "die a dry death," so the inmates of
+the floor were summoned from their beds in the small hours to spend the
+rest of the night in a bivouack on the ground-floor.  One or another of
+those luckless youngsters will, in after days, remember, as a cheerful
+incident, the arrival on the scene of the Headmaster, with a store of
+biscuits and such supplies as could be requisitioned at the moment, to
+provision the watch.  Your schoolboy, he reflected, is hungry at all
+times; what must he be at night when dragged from bed to save his life,
+and forced to sit up, rather cold and very empty, for several hours
+before daybreak.  Solaced, however, by these beguilements, the hours
+passed cheerfully away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII.--FAREWELL.
+
+
+      _The primal sympathy_,
+   _Which_, _having been_, _must ever be_.
+
+   WORDSWORTH.
+
+Thenceforward the weeks rolled smoothly on, unmarked by moving incident,
+till they gladdened us with the growing light of spring, and brought us
+within near sight of our home.  Must the truth be told?  We are all of us
+loyal sons of Uppingham, but not all of us were glad to find our return
+to the mother-country was at last arriving.  So far away from the
+offence, we need not fear attainder if we confess, some few of us, that
+our hearts were not whole in their welcome of the long-deferred event.  It
+belonged to the irony that waits on all lives which are not too dull a
+material for fortune's jests, that we should cease to desire our home
+just when long patience and often-thwarted efforts, and
+
+   The slow, sad hours which bring us all things ill,
+   And all good things from evil,
+
+had brought its coveted security at last within our reach.  For so it was
+with some of us.  Perhaps the air of sea and mountain had got into the
+blood, and infected it with a certain disrelish for the restraints, the
+even decorum, and the tamer surroundings of our life in the Midlands.
+Well, we are not the only emigrants who have preferred their backwoods to
+the streets of the mother city, nor the first campaigners who have come
+back to home-quarters a trifle spoiled by adventure.  And, moreover,
+while everything about us was a reminder of what we must forego, there
+was nothing to tell us of what a greeting our townsmen were preparing for
+us, or of the solid mutual good which filled the vista beyond that
+auspicious welcome.
+
+However, alike for those who were impatient and those who were half
+reluctant to attain it, the equal-handed hours brought the end of our
+exile.  On one of our last evenings, April 6th, a reading was given in
+the school-room, "A Midsummer Night's Dream" with Mendelssohn's music; no
+unfit close, we said, to our _annns mirabilis_.  For, indeed, its
+incidents had been "such stuff as dreams are made of," as whimsical if
+not quite as harmless, as if their plot had been directed by the blithe
+goblin of Shakespeare's fantasy.  The chorus of readers and of singers
+were so far encouraged by their success, as to offer a second recital as
+a farewell entertainment to the good people of Borth.  They enjoyed it
+hugely.  Doubtless some of the simpler members of that audience would
+follow the drift of the Sassenach poet only at a certain distance; but
+Bottom's "transformed scalp," a pasteboard ass's-head, come all the way
+from Nathan's, was eloquent without help of an interpreter.  "Oh! that
+donkey, he was beautiful," was the dramatic criticism of an esteemed
+friend, a fisher's wife.  The criticism was at least sincere; from the
+moment of the monster's entry she had been in one rapture of laughter,
+till her "face was like a wet cloak ill laid up."  Well, the kind soul
+had reason good enough for her merriment.  But had the reason been less,
+our neighbours would not have lost the occasion of dropping the shyness
+of intercourse in a frank outburst of good fellowship.
+
+But we took a more solemn farewell on the morrow, the 10th of April.  The
+parts were reversed now, and we were the spectators.  Just at sundown of
+a day of clear spring weather, the school was gathered at their doors
+watching a long procession of villagers advancing up the street towards
+them.  We had heard whispers in the morning of a "demonstration," and now
+it was come.  Through the dust we caught sight of banners flying at the
+head of the column; under them marched the choir of children singing, and
+behind them the whole village was a-foot.  The people of Borth, of every
+age and degree, from the first householders and yeomen of the place to
+the fishermen's boys and girls, had come to wish us God speed.  Reaching
+the school quarters they halted, the boys lining the roadway on each side
+of them, and filling the broad flight of steps before the hotel doors.
+When the cheers for "Uppingham" and our answering cheers for "Borth" had
+rung out across the sands to seaward, there was an interval, filled up
+with songs by the children, while they waited the arrival of the
+spokesmen, whom they had charged with their valediction.  When these
+arrived, a deputation of the villagers moved into the school-room shed,
+and there presented a brief address, which ran thus: "We, the inhabitants
+of Borth, beg to tender our most sincere thanks to Dr. Thring, and all
+the masters and scholars of the celebrated Uppingham School, for the very
+many generous acts and kindly feelings exhibited to us during their
+sojourn here."  The address was introduced and explained by speeches
+marked by refined feeling, and delivered with a noticeable grace of
+manner.  We will here cite, though for another reason, a few words of the
+speaker who moved the address; he commented on the discipline which (from
+the evidence of their conduct when at large) seemed to rule the school;
+naively but pointedly he noted that no offence had ever been given; "No
+boy had laughed at the villagers, if they were old and queer-looking or
+queerly dressed; there had been no disorder, no shabby act, nothing
+_un_decent" (so he put it in his unpractised English) "during the whole
+twelve months we had spent among them."  We give his testimony without
+note or comment, sure that the facts would not be better told in words
+less simple.  They were little things he witnessed to; was it a little
+thing that the witness could be truly borne?
+
+The boys were not present to hear the speeches, but they will like well
+to remember the scene without doors at that unlooked-for reunion of
+school and village.  It was a scene made up of homely elements enough,
+but somehow, in our own memory at least, few pictures will remain printed
+in such fast colours.  Clearly, as on that evening, we shall always see,
+distinct in the quiet light of the afterglow, the ranks of serious faces,
+touched and stilled by the surprise of a contagious sympathy, as English
+boys and Welsh cottagers looked each other in the face, and felt, if for
+the space of a few heartbeats only, an outflash of that ancient kinship
+which binds man and man together more than race and circumstance divide.
+
+It pleases the smaller kind of criticism to cheapen the meaning of such
+incidents as this, and explain them by the easy reference to interested
+and conventional motives.  Wiser men will take occasion to rejoice that
+human nature is after all so kind; and if this be error, we would rather
+err with the wise.  Take once again our thanks, kind people of Borth, if
+our thanks are worth your taking.  You showed us no little kindness in a
+strange land, and the day is far off when we shall forget the friendly,
+gentle people whose name is the memorial of a great ill escaped, of much
+good enjoyed, in the days that are over, and the landmark of who knows
+what greater good in the days that are to be.
+
+
+
+
+CONCLUSION.
+
+
+   _Perhaps poetry and romance are as plentiful as ever in the world_,
+   _except for those phlegmatic natures_, _who_, _I suspect_, _would in
+   any age have regarded them as a dull form of erroneous thinking_.
+   _They exist very easily in the same room with the microscope_, _and
+   even in railway carriages_: _what banishes them is the vacuum in
+   gentleman and lady passengers_.  _How should all the apparatus of
+   heaven and earth_, _from the farthest firmament to the tender bosom of
+   the mother who nourished us_, _make poetry for a mind that has no
+   movements of awe and tenderness_, _no sense of fellowship which
+   thrills from the near to the distant, and back again from the distant
+   to the near_?
+
+   GEORGE ELIOT.
+
+   [Greek verse]
+
+   ANTIGONE.
+
+All is over now; April was just a twelfth-night old when the school
+departed.  Some of our company have lingered on for business, a few from
+reluctance to have done with it.  But to-day the last group has taken
+wing for the Midlands.  Old "Borth," the colley dog, followed them to the
+station, and poked his nose into the carriage to take his leave.  Old
+Borth--we had almost forgotten him, and that had been deep ingratitude
+for he was not the least warm-hearted of our friends in Wales.  His
+master lived two miles away; but soon after our arrival, Borth had come
+down from the hills to attach himself to our fortunes, and henceforth
+became, as it were, our familiar, the pet of the regiment, like the goat
+of the "23rd."  He knew his position, and was a stickler for formalities;
+he had a wag of the tail for every boy who wore the image of the
+venerable schoolmaster upon his cap; but if he met him bare-headed, or,
+by any chance, in an indistinctive head-gear, he would cut that boy dead,
+were he never so much the same urchin from whose hand he had yesterday
+eaten a cheese-cake.  That was his official rebuke for the irregularity.
+By day, Borth would bask in some sunny corner of our quarters; at night,
+he has been known to venture on a nearer intimacy where doors were left
+open.  We found you once ourselves, Borth, curled up and asleep upon our
+own bed.  You woke up, shook yourself with a modest, but not startled
+manner, and walked quietly away, like a gentleman.
+
+Ah! kind friend, you showed us the sincerest of flatteries, that of
+imitation.  You left a comfortable home for chance quarters and uncertain
+fare, that you might be one of us, an outcast among outcasts.  Now we
+must part, for our home will spare us no longer, as neither will yours
+spare you.  And so the last good-bye is said, and you are limping away to
+your hills again, with dejection expressed in every fibre of your frame,
+from the drooping ears to the last hair on your tail.
+
+All is over, and the place is very silent, except for the clink of
+hammers where they are breaking down our wooden walls, and, seaward, the
+cry and splash of gull and tern dipping for their prey in the shoal of
+herring-fry which is wandering about the bay.  Close inshore a porpoise
+is wallowing, like the jolly sea-pig that he is, in his berth of
+glistening water.  The wild creatures seem to have grown tamer since
+there are no strollers to keep them aloof.  This morning, as we passed
+his pool, the stately heron let us come within twenty yards of him before
+he got leisurely upon the wing.  The village seems even quieter; the
+people at their doors betray, to our fancy, a certain lassitude as if,
+like merrymakers on the morrow of a revel, they felt somewhat sleepy and
+sorry, now that the stirring social year is over, and the little fishing
+town has returned to its "old solitary nothingness."
+
+Yes, the silence has come down again; but it is a silence full of voices.
+For, as it often happens that, when things without are stillest, men hear
+most audibly the tumult of their own brains, so is it now with us.  Action
+is ended, and memory begins to work.  Into the vacuum which the silence
+makes, the stream of our little history pours in a long backwater.  Our
+thoughts go back to the beginning of it, the hour when, as we were
+sailing prosperously under press of canvas, the blast struck us suddenly
+out of a sunny sky.  We live again the slow months of enforced vacation,
+and the brief spell of apparent security, broken by the second stroke.  We
+recall the slow and painful sickening of hope, amid the frustration of
+attempted remedies; the watchings and communings by late firesides; the
+morning questionings and bulletins; the deepening of fears, until the
+moment when the sharp pressure of calamity became the liberating touch,
+and made a hazardous adventure seem a welcome alternative.  Not less
+distinctly we remember the zest with which the wretched waiting for evil
+tidings was exchanged for hopeful activity; the rush of preparations; the
+anxiety which watched their passage through the ordeal of practice; the
+growing sense of security; the mellowing down of novelty and privation
+into routine and ease; the contrast, all the while, between the outward
+peace of the colony, and the secret difficulties of finance and
+commissariat; the long intermittent crisis which gave the administrative
+no rest; the hopes and efforts for our return home, and the reversal of
+them; all this, and--and--very much else as well, which was of acutest
+interest at the time, and which it will become convenient to describe
+only when it will be of interest to no one.  All this passes before us in
+the series of a long dissolving view, full of bright lights, and only
+less full of unlovely shadows.
+
+And, somehow, as we review the past this evening, pacing the beach in the
+twilight, the fact accomplished seems to us not smaller, but greater than
+when we lived in it.  There are moments some would say of illusion, some
+of vision--when the things most familiar to our eyes and thoughts,
+whether in nature or human society, surprise us with a dignity and beauty
+not discovered in them before.  That glamour is in the air this evening.
+Perhaps the night-wind, which creeps to us from over the grassy tomb of
+Taliesin, warrior and bard has touched the fancy with a breath out of his
+heroic days.  What wonder if it were so?  Thirteen centuries ago the hero
+became the guardian of the shore; but the story which ends to-day is,
+perhaps, as worthy note as any he has watched from his hill-side.  Those
+who rate the dignity of human action by other standards than the breadth
+and conspicuousness of its stage, will not mock us because we find some
+stuff of romance in the homely circumstance and not always epic passages
+of this modern episode of school.
+
+But if the stranger who may read the tale will spare his scorn--those for
+whom we shall tell it would forgive even a bolder word; for some of them
+were themselves a part of it, and others will make it a part of their
+heritage in the past.  English schools have always honoured their
+traditions, counting them the better part of their wealth.  Some have
+majestic memories of royal benefactors, or can point to a muster-roll of
+splendid names, whose greatness was cradled in their walls.  Such
+traditions are not ours.  A past, not brief, but not memorable, has
+denied us these.  But a tradition we have henceforward which is all our
+own and wholly single in its kind.  We persuade ourselves that in far-off
+years those who bear our name will say that, in the memory of a great
+disaster overcome, no mean heirloom has been left them.  They will not be
+ashamed of a generation which, in an hour of extreme peril, did not
+despair of the commonwealth, but dared to trust their faith in a further
+destiny, and saved for those who should come after them a cause which
+must else have perished in the dark.  _Stet fortuna domus_.  And stand it
+will if there is assurance in augury.  For the fairy legend has a truth
+in fact, and the luck of a house, grasped daringly and held fast in an
+act of venturous hardihood, will not break or be lost again until the
+sons forget to guard it.
+
+Here and there, at any rate, among the posterity which will sometime fill
+our ranks, there will not be wanting generous and gifted spirits,
+_illustres animae nostrumque in nomen iturae_, who will rejoice in making
+good the forecast that the venture was not made in vain.  They will
+possess more worthily the good which an elder race foresaw and laboured
+not all unworthily to preserve.  To their safe keeping we commend as
+under a seal, the legacy of hopes which are better left unspoken now.
+
+
+
+
+APPENDIX.
+
+
+HOW WE LEFT BORTH.
+
+
+(_From_ "_The Cambrian News_.")
+
+On Tuesday evening, April 10, the inhabitants of Borth, almost to a man,
+turned out to take part in a farewell demonstration to the masters and
+scholars of Uppingham School, after their twelve months' residence in
+Wales.  Shortly after seven o'clock a procession of the inhabitants was
+formed, and, headed by a flag-bearer, made its way to the square in front
+of the Cambrian Hotel, where several songs were sung by the assembly
+under the schoolmaster's (Mr. Jones's) direction; and at the conclusion a
+hearty round of cheers was given for the Uppingham School, who
+immediately responded by making the place ring again with three
+enthusiastic cheers for Borth.  The assembly then adjourned to the wooden
+building in the hotel-yard, when Mr. Jones, Brynowen, was voted to the
+chair on the proposition of Mr. Lewis, Post Office, seconded by Mr.
+Jones, Neptune Baths.
+
+The CHAIRMAN said, as the meeting was aware, the object of the
+demonstration--and he was exceedingly glad to see such a popular
+demonstration--was, that the Borth people might have a chance of giving
+public expression to the kind feeling of respect they entertained for Mr.
+Thring, the masters, and scholars of Uppingham School before they left
+Borth, after a twelve months' sojourn there.  (Cheers.)  When some twelve
+months ago a rumour came to Borth respecting the advent of Uppingham
+School, a few old women and nervous people, in the innocence of their
+hearts, were afraid they would be swamped by an inundation of Goths and
+Vandals.  (Laughter.)  The meeting would, however, agree with him that
+kinder-hearted gentlemen than the masters, and better-behaved boys than
+the scholars, could not be found.  (Hear, hear.)  There had been no town-
+and-gown feeling existing similar to what prevailed in places of greater
+pretensions.  The people of the village and the School had pulled
+together in a friendly manner, and everything had gone on quite smoothly.
+(Hear.)  After referring to the progress of the School under the
+headmastership of Mr. Thring, and remarking that the older schools would
+have to look to their laurels, as Uppingham was treading close upon their
+heels, the Chairman said that in some fifteen or twenty years to come
+many of the boys would be in Parliament, some of them officers in the
+army or navy, fighting the battles of the nation, some of them would be
+barristers, seeing that the people got fair play in the courts of law,
+others would no doubt be eminent merchants, importing the produce of
+foreign countries, whilst others would be surgeons, like Dr. Childs--(loud
+cheering)--and physicians.  They would therefore exercise an influence
+over the destinies of the nation.  (Cheers.)  The people of Borth were
+exceedingly sorry that the school was going away.  Its members would be
+missed very much indeed.  He owed the Uppingham people no ill-feeling,
+but if a case of smallpox, the cholera, or some other virulent disease
+broke out in that place and prevented the return of the school, he was
+sure that Borth people would not feel at all sorry.  (Laughter and
+cheers.)  There was the name of a gentleman whom he might mention.  That
+gentleman had earned the gratitude of the Borth people perhaps more than
+anyone else.  He referred to Dr. Childs.  (Applause.)  He had acted the
+part of the Good Samaritan thoroughly, responding as readily to the call
+of the sick and suffering at midnight as at noon.  (Cheers.)  He would
+detain them no longer, but ask Mr. Lewis to submit a proposition to the
+meeting.
+
+Mr. LEWIS, Post Office, said he had very great pleasure in reading the
+resolution, because he knew it would be heartily responded to by everyone
+present.  It was as follows:--"We, the inhabitants of Borth, beg to
+tender our most sincere thanks to Dr. Thring, and all the masters and
+scholars of the celebrated Uppingham School, for the very many generous
+acts and kindly feelings exhibited towards us during their sojourn here."
+Mr. Lewis followed by commenting upon the excellent discipline which
+evidently ruled the school, judging from their exemplary conduct out of
+school.  He was not aware of any shabby, mean, or ungenerous act
+committed by the young gentlemen during the whole twelve months they had
+been at Borth.  (Applause.)  The meeting would remember the assistance
+rendered in the terrific storm in February.  Even the ladies came out and
+helped the people in their distress--(loud applause)--thereby setting an
+excellent example to the women of Borth.  (Cheers.)  They had not only
+worked as hard as they could, but subscribed money among themselves which
+they distributed to the most needy of those who had sustained loss by the
+storm.  (Applause.)  The money then distributed would pass into other
+hands in a short time, but the kind feelings the act engendered would
+last for ever.  (Applause.)  He only hoped that each and all connected
+with Uppingham School would enjoy long, prosperous, and useful lives.
+(Loud applause.)
+
+Mr. JONES, The Baths, expressed the fears he once entertained, in common
+with others, that the Uppingham School would take Borth by storm, an
+opinion he had to change entirely after the boys had been there a week,
+for instead of laughing at the quaintness of some of the Welsh costumes
+or the peculiarities of the nation, they had obtained the goodwill of the
+inhabitants by their gentleness of demeanour, and completely won their
+hearts on that memorable day when masters and scholars, young and old,
+turned out to assist in reducing, as much as possible, the ill-effects of
+the storm.  (Cheers.)  He did not exactly wish that some contagious
+disease would break out at Uppingham, but he hoped that when the School
+got back it would repent, and so return to Borth.  (Laughter and cheers.)
+
+Speeches were also made by Mr. Thomas G. Thomas and Mr. R. Pritchard
+Roberts, Garibaldi House.
+
+The Rev. E. THRING, M.A., then rose amid cheers and said: Mr. Chairman
+and our friends at Borth, I have made many speeches in my life since I
+have been master of this school.  Two-and-twenty years of
+school-mastering gives a good deal of exercise for the tongue from time
+to time; but never in my life have I stood up to make any speech which I
+feel so little capable of making as I do to-night; not from want of
+practice, but because the feelings you have aroused in us are such--and
+our sojourn here has been such a boon to us (cheers)--that it is
+impossible for me to tell you the value we set on living here, and the
+welcome we have received.  (Applause.)  I never heard anything sweeter to
+my ear than your singing to-night.  The time it must have taken, the
+goodwill manifested in the songs, and altogether the circumstances under
+which they were delivered, and we on our last day here, made them go down
+into my heart, and into all our hearts with peculiar power.  (Cheers.)
+Never in my life have I had such testimony to the school which I cared so
+much for, as the testimony you have given to-night.  We get our
+reputation in the English world, but what is that compared to the inner
+life to which you have borne witness.  What signifies it whether we know
+much or little in comparison with the fact that we have a character of
+life which you like.  It is life answering unto life across all those
+ties, both of nationality--for I grieve I cannot speak in your native
+tongue--and also of distance which set gulfs between man and man, but
+cannot separate life when it is true.  (Hear, hear.)  If your life is
+true, and our lives are true, then it flows across and we meet as
+to-night one united body of living men.  (Cheers.)  And this is what
+gives a peculiar value to our being here.  You know as none can know what
+this school is.  We came among you as strangers, and you looked upon us
+with the eyes of strangers; we stayed among you as friends, and we part
+from you as friends.  (Cheers.)  Everybody knows that the one thing on
+earth which makes life pleasant is the friendly atmosphere in which men
+live--the one thing that makes it hateful is to be surrounded by
+thoroughly bitter hearts.  There is an old saying that "stone walls do
+not a prison make, nor iron bars a cage."  No, the life within can make
+any place enjoyable--nay, happy.  Yet, I think it is better to be in
+happy surroundings too.  Of this, however, you may be sure: those
+glorious hills of yours, this sea, and all the happy hours we have spent
+wandering about, will not easily pass out of our minds.  The jewel of a
+friendly spirit has also been set in very bright surroundings.  We do
+rejoice in the life we have had here, and all that we have found.
+(Cheers.)  You have spoken to-night of the good conduct of the school,
+and have said that we have caused no trouble since our stay here.  That
+like many other questions, has two sides.  Is it not a great credit to
+this place that when between a hundred and seventy and a hundred and
+eighty strange boys have been put into your cottages and homes, there has
+not arisen a single difficulty for the whole year?  I say it is quite as
+much a feather in your caps as in ours.  I am proud of it--very proud of
+it.  (Applause.)  I would also refer to the extensive power which lies in
+a great school.  It is quite true that some few years hence, these boys
+whom you have looked on with interest will be schoolmasters, barristers,
+and leaders in every part of the world.  (Applause.)  There is not a
+quarter of the globe where we have not our representative.  It is now,
+and not in the future only, that I may venture to say that there is no
+part of this globe where men are to be found, where, here and there,
+Borth has not been heard of this year.  (Cheers.)  I will mention two
+facts only which may interest you.  This very week, quite unconscious of
+this meeting to-night, I sent a letter to North Canada, with, I may say,
+a very glowing account of Borth in it--(cheers)--and the day before
+yesterday, having a little leisure, I wrote to the Lieutenant-Governor of
+the North-West Provinces of India, when I mentioned Borth in equally warm
+terms.  (Applause.)  That, I need not say, is going on all around us.
+These three hundred pens of our school are busy day by day giving to
+their friends their own views of our life here, and I may no doubt say
+that on the whole they are pleasant views.  (Cheers.)  It is not only a
+pleasant fact to mention, but I hold that where life is working well with
+life it is a real power for good that goes out into all lands, a sort of
+missionary force traversing this earth, speaking of us as capable of
+coming here, and of the welcome you have given us.  (Hear, hear.)  That,
+however, would be a slight thing if we did not leave behind us, as I am
+sure we do, that feeling of happy life which we take away with us.
+(Cheers.)  For my own part, at all events, if I leave, it is not the last
+time I hope to spend in Borth.  (Applause.)  I know no place that has
+been more attractive to me, no place where, if I can, I shall more
+readily come back to--not, I hope, next time as an exile, but coming from
+home to happy holiday to spend it pleasantly among my friends here.
+(Applause.)
+
+MR. LEWIS proposed a hearty vote of thanks to Dr. Childs for his
+gratuitous attendance on the sick in his professional capacity.  (Loud
+cheers.)
+
+DR. CHILDS referred to the pleasure experienced in doing a kindly action,
+and afterwards humorously added that at one time he thought of setting up
+in practice at Borth, but finding the place so healthy he had given up
+the idea.  (Laughter and cheers.)  He should, however, know where to send
+his convalescent patients in future.  He should recommend them to take
+the first train, and spend a week on the sands at Borth, with an
+occasional dip in the Neptune Baths.  (Loud laughter and cheers.)  Three
+cheers were given for the ladies of Uppingham School, and the assembly
+separated after singing the National Anthem.
+
+
+
+HOW WE CAME BACK TO UPPINGHAM.
+
+
+(_From the_ SCHOOL MAGAZINE.)
+
+(_Signifer, statue signum, hic manebimus optime_.)
+
+Who has not known the moment when, as he looked on some familiar
+landscape, its homely features and sober colouring have suddenly, under
+some chance inspiration of the changing sky, become alive with an
+unexpected beauty: its unambitious hills take on them the dignity of
+mountains, its woods and streams swell and broaden with a majesty not
+their own.  Though, perhaps, it is their own, if Nature, like Man, is
+most herself when seen in her best self; if her brightest moments are her
+truest.
+
+Shall we be thought fanciful if we confess that we felt something of this
+same kind when, returning from a year-long exile, in the last gleams of a
+bright May evening we turned the corner of the High Street of Uppingham,
+and came face to face with our welcome.  The old street, seen again at
+last after so many months of banishment, the same and not the same; the
+old, homely street--forgive us, walls and roofs of Uppingham, and forgive
+us, you who tenant them, if sometimes perhaps to some of us, as our eyes
+swept the grand range of Welsh mountain-tops, or travelled out over
+limitless sea distances, there would rise forbidden feelings of
+reluctance to exchange these fair things for the bounded views and less
+unstinted beauties of our midland home: forgive us, as you may the more
+readily because these thoughts, if any such lingered, were charmed away
+on the instant by the sight of the real Uppingham.  There lay the path to
+our home, an avenue of triumphal arches soaring on pillars of greenery,
+plumed with sheaves of banners, and enscrolled with such words as those
+to whom they spoke will know how to read and remember.  Our eyes could
+follow through arch after arch the reaches of the gently-winding street,
+alive from end to end with waving flags, green boughs, and fanciful
+devices, till the quiet golden light in the western sky closed the vista,
+and glorified with such a touch of its own mellow splendour the ranges of
+brown gables and their floating banners, that for a moment we half
+dreamed ourselves spectators of an historic pageant in some "dim, rich
+city" of old-world renown.  Only for a moment, though; for when we drop
+our eyes to the street below us, those are our own townsfolk,
+well-remembered faces, that throng every doorstep and fill the
+overflowing pavements and swarming roadway.  Yes, they are our own
+townsfolk, and they are taking care to let us know it--such a welcome
+they have made ready for us.
+
+We hardly know how to describe with the epic dignity which it merits the
+act by which they testified their joy at our return.  We who saw the
+sight were reminded of an incident in the AEneid--
+
+   Instar montis equum divina Palladis arte
+   Aedificant, sectaque intexunt abiete costas;
+   Votum pro reditu simulant.
+
+   * * * * *
+
+      Pueri circum innuptaeque puellae
+   Sacra canuut, funemque manu contingere gaudent.
+
+But the ill-starred folk of Troy could not have shown more enthusiasm in
+haling within their walls the fatal wooden horse, than did the men and
+boys of Uppingham, who harnessed themselves, some four-score of them, to
+that guileless structure, which, though indeed it has some other name, we
+will call at present our triumphal car.  They harnessed themselves to it
+at the east-end of the town, and drew it with the pomp of a swarming
+multitude all the length of the long street to its western mouth and half
+the way back again.  On went that unwieldy car of triumph, bearing a
+freight of eager faces behind its windows, and carrying a crowd of
+sitters, precariously clustered wherever a perch could be found on its
+swaying roof, under the verdant span of the arches and the flow of the
+streamers:
+
+   Ilia subit mediaeque minans inlabitur urbi.
+
+On it went, with the hum of applauding voices increasing round it, till
+the popular fervour found articulate utterance in a burst of jubilant
+music.  There swept past our ears, first, the moving strains of "Auld
+lang syne," and then, as if in answer to the appeal to "Auld
+acquaintance," came the jocund chorus "There is nae luck about the
+house"--most eloquent assurance that we were welcome home.  And then in
+turn the music died down, and the crowd round the now halted procession
+cheered with a will for "the school," "the Headmaster and the masters,"
+and the school taking up with zest the genial challenge, returned the
+blessing with such a shout as if they meant the echoes of that merry
+evening to make amends in full to street and houses for their fourteen
+months of silence.
+
+It was "all over but the shouting:" but that was not over till some hours
+of dusk had gathered over school and town.  For first the multitude
+besieged the well-known mighty gates, behind which lies the studious
+quiet of the Schoolhouse Quad.  When they were admitted they came in like
+a flood, and filled the space within; but for all they were so many,
+there was an orderliness and quietude in the strange assemblage which
+made their presence there seem not strange at all, and they listened like
+one man to the words in which the Headmaster, who came out to meet them,
+framed his thanks for this unequivocal welcome.  This done, they flowed
+out again, and streamed across the valley and up the hill to carry the
+same message of goodwill to the distant houses, and so with more cheering
+and more speeches came to an end a day of happiest omen for the joint
+fortunes of Uppingham School and Town.
+
+A few additional details are needed to complete our account.  A friend,
+remarkable for his plain common-sense, reminds us that the epic vehicle
+we so indistinctly describe, was the Seaton 'bus, and that the music was
+due to "the splendid band connected with Mrs. Edmonds' menagerie, which
+happened to be in the town."  We are not in a position to deny either
+statement, or another to the effect that "the conveyances which
+accompanied the 'bus formed a procession of considerable length," having
+been halted by arrangement outside the town, and formed into file for the
+entry.  When the same friend hazards some further criticism on a
+confusion of dates and incidents in our narrative, in which he finds the
+events of two days, a Friday and a Saturday, presented as in a single
+scene, we feel it time to silence him by an appeal, which he does not
+follow, to the "truer historic sense" and the "massive grouping" of
+imaginative history.
+
+
+
+THE ADDRESS.
+
+
+On Tuesday of the next week, May 8, an address was presented by a
+deputation of the townspeople to the Headmaster and assistant masters.
+The ceremony took place in the school-room, the body of which was almost
+filled by those who had assembled to support their deputation, while the
+masters, their families, and the Sixth Form were seated on the tiers of
+the orchestra.  The deputation coming forward, Mr. Bell said that Mr.
+Hawthorn and himself had been requested by their fellow townsmen to
+undertake the presentation of an address, in explanation of which he
+would make a few remarks.  In an appreciative speech he reviewed the
+circumstances which had given rise to the present occasion, gave some
+explanation of the form and terms of the address, and took occasion to
+add that although the ladies were not mentioned in the address, the
+townspeople were not unmindful of the energetic way in which they had
+seconded the efforts of the masters.
+
+MR. HAWTHORN said he had been asked to read the Address, but that he was
+unwilling to do so without some slight expression of the feelings with
+which he and others took part in the presentation of it.  Though they
+were met to congratulate the school, they felt, he said, that there were
+good grounds to congratulate themselves as townsmen.  The absence of the
+school had pressed with greater or less severity on many tradesmen, being
+felt more especially by a large number of the poorer inhabitants, and had
+made it evident to many how poor a place Uppingham would be without a
+school upon its present important scale.  But they valued the School on
+other grounds too; they recognize the advantage of the presence among
+them of so many representatives of liberal education and its broader
+views on matters of public interest.  To the Headmaster it must be a
+cause for rejoicing and thankfulness that the labour of his life had been
+saved from a sudden and unfortunate conclusion.  To him and his assistant
+masters, the parents, and the boys, by whose loyal adherence the time of
+trial had been happily passed through, their congratulations were
+offered.  He proceeded to read the address, which was received with much
+applause by the townspeople.  It is a handsomely illuminated document, to
+which between sixty and seventy names are attached; the terms of it are
+as follows:
+
+"_To the Rev. Edward Thring, M.A., Headmaster, and to the Assistant
+Masters of Uppingham School_.
+
+"Gentlemen,--We, the undersigned residents in Uppingham, have great
+pleasure in meeting you with a hearty welcome on the re-assembling of the
+school in full numbers in its native home, and gladly avail ourselves of
+this opportunity of conveying to you our congratulations that the period
+of anxiety and trial through which you have so successfully passed has
+clearly demonstrated the sound principles upon which the school has been
+conducted, and which have raised it to its present eminence as one of the
+great schools of the country, and have won for it the confidence of
+parents in all parts of the kingdom, many of whom have entrusted their
+sons to your care at Borth, and are continuing that trust now that you
+are returning to your homes.
+
+"We desire also to express our sense of the courage and enterprise
+manifested in removing the school from Uppingham at the time of the
+anxious crisis in February, 1876.
+
+"And we pray Almighty God that it may please Him to bless the school, and
+that under His guidance those who from time to time leave the school may
+as scholars and Christian gentlemen uphold its fame in whatever sphere
+they may be placed.
+
+"_Uppingham_, _May_, 1877."
+
+The HEADMASTER then rose and said: "Mr. Bell, Mr. Hawthorn, and friends
+in Uppingham,--Home is home, and you may be quite sure that we, at all
+events, who went through exile felt it indeed to be home when we came
+back again.  (Applause.)  It does not signify what the circumstances may
+be, but it is not possible to live long in a place and to have your home
+there without taking root in it, and having fibres sent deep which cannot
+be torn up without pain.  (Applause.)  We are very grateful, therefore,
+for the hearty, the enthusiastic welcome you gave us on our return.
+(Cheers.)  Assuredly as our eyes looked on this pleasant hill and the
+familiar fields, we felt a deep thankfulness for the great peril passed,
+the page of life turned, and a year such as never can come again closed
+with success.  (Applause.)  And it is a pleasant spot to look on when you
+come down the dip of the valley before you near Uppingham, and look up
+and see the ancient homes crowning the brow of the hill--it is a fair
+sight to any eye, even to a stranger's eye, the pleasant homes of
+Uppingham, with the church and its spire in the midst, the spire of the
+school chapel beyond, each adding, methinks, to the beauty of the other,
+and both alike in their upward spring and their holy worship.  It _is_ a
+pleasant spot to look on, and you made your old picturesque street very
+beautiful with your decorations and that bright outbreak of welcome which
+greeted us as we came in.  (Cheers.)  The school hardly knew what we
+meant--they did not know when we asked them to cheer at the top of the
+hill; but as the stream of life wound round and came in sight of that
+avenue of arches and flags, then they understood what was meant, and they
+were ready enough to second it.  (Cheers.)  We were very thankful, also,
+that you recognise in that address--that able address and pleasing to
+receive--how hard it was to go, how great a risk had to be faced to save
+the school; for that was what was at stake.  I do not say that in years
+to come there should not again have been a school as great as this, or
+greater; but this I am sure of, that we were in the very last week of the
+life of this present school; that at the beginning of the week, when it
+was decided to go, there was news from different quarters that made it
+absolutely certain that another Monday would have seen no school here.
+For a school is not a mere machine which can be set going to order, and
+which anybody who happens at the time to have the mastery of can deal
+with like a machine.  "I can call spirits from the vasty deep," says
+Shakespeare in one of his plays; and the rejoinder comes, "Why, so can I,
+or so can any man; but will they come when you do call for them?"
+(Laughter and cheers.)  Now that is just what they won't do; and we
+simply had no choice; we lay absolutely helpless before the fact that
+ruin stared us in the face, and we could not stir hand or foot to stop it
+unless we had been able then to find a door of escape.  This present
+school was at an end, and neither I nor some others amongst us could have
+set foot again in Uppingham as our home.  Now I do assure you ruin is a
+hard thing to look on after a life-work of many years of labour--not a
+less hard thing because the sun rose as usual, and it was all peace, and
+the buildings looked as of old, and the fields were just as they had
+always been; but an invisible barrier had risen up, and we had no place
+here any more.  To see the four-and-twenty years of life go at a
+touch--indeed it was hard to think of.  "For my part, I have built my
+heart in the courses of the wall"--(cheers)--and nothing short of this
+impelled us to that dire necessity of leaping in the dark, to go we did
+not know where, and when we found the _where_, not knowing who would
+follow us.  But it was worth while to run any risk--to face any danger--to
+keep together the life of this place, and that its name should not go out
+in England.  (Loud cheers.)  We did not know who would follow us, and it
+was a day to be remembered--a day of much cheer, though full of labour
+and trial and fear also, when on that 4th of April three hundred came in.
+(Loud applause.)  Not above two or three that night were wanting of those
+who were going to remain at the school.  (Cheers.)  Well have you taken
+in your address that staunch adherence of parent and boy as the proudest
+honour that a school can boast of (cheers), and well have you noted that
+at Borth also the entries kept level with the leavings, and that we have
+brought back this year--this day--almost a hundred boys who had never
+seen Uppingham.  (Renewed cheering.)  This was worth fighting for; this
+is worth rejoicing.  The school was saved, and we and you to-night once
+more meet together as one body.  (Loud applause.)  We are united now as
+we never have been before methinks (cheers); for never before, to my
+knowledge, in England, have town and school been so completely welded
+together as your welcome to us home and our presence here together to-
+night shows us to be now.  (Loud and long-continued applause.)  There
+have been many blessings in this great trial, but certainly not least do
+I set that, that we and you are once more met as one.  Your work and ours
+is so mixed up--our work so mixed with yours, and yours with ours--that
+it is not possible that anything should go out of this place, any life
+come forth from it, which does not to a great degree bring honour or
+discredit to both; and I do think (what was said to-night) that we are
+here together to work in the highest way, not as a matter of pecuniary
+advantage only in a place like this, but simply that we, one with
+another, should push forward life and make it crown that living edifice
+of truth, which, as it seems to me, is town and school working together.
+And what a type that town is.  "A city set upon a hill cannot be hid;"
+and surely as a school and a home, a home of learning and light, this
+place is both actually and figuratively set upon its hill.  Everything of
+the past year has gone out into land after land, in letters and papers
+and narratives on all sides: the busy-boy mind and the busy-boy pen
+photographs most accurately all the minute incidents that interest their
+opening life, and it passes out everywhere.  I know that in India, and
+China, and Australia, and Canada--and I might go on with half the
+countries in the world--there has been talk in many a distant home of
+what has happened here.  It may very well be that at this moment your
+names are on many lips as letters of English news have come in lately
+from England, and your welcome of us will travel out to the ends of the
+earth, so great is the power of "a city set upon a hill."  And when you
+pray that we may be Christian gentlemen in the life that is coming, I say
+it lies a great deal in your own hands.  Help us by so smoothing our path
+in all ways so that your honour may be our honour and your work our work,
+and that as we are grateful to you to-night so the world outside may be
+grateful to you also for work hereafter, and that none shall go out of
+Uppingham School and shall not carry wherever he goes a thankful memory
+of Uppingham town, and that whenever the name of Uppingham is heard in
+any part of the world it shall be that of an honoured place, with no
+divided interest, but one place working wisely, so that the world may be
+grateful for good work done, as we to-night are grateful for the welcome
+given, grateful for the lightening of our burdens, grateful for the
+possibility of good work in the future, most grateful for the happy homes
+you have given us in welcoming us home so fervently.  I thank you most
+heartily in the name of the school and the masters and myself for this
+address, which I trust will for ever remain not the least honoured relic
+of this school."
+
+The Headmaster sat down again amid much cheering from the audience of
+townspeople, to which the small party of boys present found voice to make
+no ineffective answer in three salutes 'for Uppingham town.'
+
+* * * * *
+
+CHARLES DICKENS AND EVANS, CRYSTAL PALACE PRESS.
+
+
+
+
+Footnotes:
+
+
+{12}  "Prom. Vinct.," 904.
+
+{19}  _The Times_, Friday, April 14th, 1876.
+
+{46}  "Fifty Years of my Life," Albemarle, p. 308.
+
+{66}  Believers in augury are too seldom confronted with the negative
+instance.  May we then invite their attention to the following?  The
+address was published in a paragraph of _The Times_, but the words "under
+the same leadership" were omitted.  Nevertheless, to the discredit of
+omination, under the same leadership the school did return.
+
+
+
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