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.