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.