said that this should teach us not to try and seize all the good things we could, and that the reason of it was not, as the old Greeks thought, that the gods envied the prosperity of mortals, but that our prosperity was often dashed very wisely and tenderly from our lips, because one of the worst foes that a man can have, one of the most blinding and bewildering of faults, is the sense of self-sufficiency and security.  That would not have spoilt the pleasure of those brisk boys, but would have given them something wholesome to take away and think about, like the prophet’s roll that was sweet in the mouth and bitter in the belly.

It may be thought that I have thus dilated on the Bishop’s address for the sole purpose of showing what a much better address I could have made.  That is not the case at all.  I could not have done the thing at all to start with, and, given both the nerve and the presence and the practice of the man, I could not have done it a quarter as well, because he was in tune with his audience and I should not have been.  That was to me part of the tragedy.  The Bishop’s voice fell heavily and steadily, like a stream of water from a great iron pipe that fills a reservoir.  The audience, too, were all in the most elementary mood.  Boys of course frankly desire success without any disguise.  And parents less frankly but no less hungrily, in an almost tigerish way, desire it for their children.  The intensity of belief felt by a parent in a stupid or even vicious boy would be one of the most pathetic things I know, if it were not also one of the primal forces of the world.

And thus the tide being high the Bishop went into harbour at the top of the flood.  I don’t even complain of the nature of the address; it was frankly worldly, such as might have been given by a Sadducee in the time of Christ.  But the interesting thing about it was that most of the people present believed it to be an ethical and even a religious address.  It was the ethic of a professional bowler and the religion of a banker.  If a boy had been for all intents and purposes a professional bowler to the age of twenty-three, and a professional banker afterwards, he would almost exactly have fulfilled the Bishop’s ideal.  I do not think it is a bad ideal either.  I only say that it is not an exalted ideal, and it is not a Christian ideal.  It is the world in disguise, the wolf in sheep’s clothing over again.  We were taken in.  We said to ourselves, “This is an animal certainly clothed as a sheep—­and we must remember the old proverb and be careful.”  But as the Bishop’s address proceeded, and the fragrant oil fell down to the skirts of our clothing, we said, “There is certainly a sheep inside.”