hours, to comfort, to interpret, to explain; in much heaviness and dejection he labours, while all the time, though he knows it not, the sweet ripple of his thoughts spreads across the stagnant pool.  He may be flouted, contemned, insulted, but he heeds it not; while all the strands of the great mystery, dark and bright alike, work themselves, delicately and surely, into the picture of his life, and the picture of other lives as well.  Larger and richer grows the great design, till it is set in some wide hall or corridor of the House of Life; and the figure of the toil-worn knight, with armour dinted and brow dimmed with dust and sweat, kneeling at the shrine, makes the very silence of the place beautiful; while those that go to and fro rejoice, not in the suffering and weariness, not in the worn face and the thin, sun-browned hands, but in the thought that he loved all things well; that his joy was pure and high, that his clear eyes pierced the dull mist that wreathed cold field and dripping wood, and that, when he sank, outworn and languid after the day’s long toil, the jocund trumpets broke out from the high-walled town in a triumphant concert, because he had done worthily, and should now see greater things than these.

XII

A SPEECH-DAY

In the course of the summer it was my lot to attend the Speech-Day festivities of a certain school—­indeed, I attended at more than one such gathering, vocatus atque non vocatus, as Horace says.  They are not the sort of entertainments I should choose for pleasure; one feels too much like a sheep, driven from pen to pen, kindly and courteously driven, but still driven.  One is fed rather than eats.  One meets a number of charming and interesting people, and one has no time to talk to them.  But I am always glad to have gone, and one carries away pleasant memories of kindness and courtesy, of youth and hope.

This particular occasion was so very typical that I am going to try and gather up my impressions and ideas.  It was an old school and a famous school, though not one of the most famous.  The buildings large and effective, full of modern and up-to-date improvements, with a mellow core of antiquity, in the shape of a venerable little courtyard in the centre.  There were green lawns and pleasant gardens and umbrageous trees; and it was a beautiful day, too, sunny and fresh, so that one was neither baked nor boiled.  The first item was a luncheon, at which I sate between two very pleasant strangers and exchanged cautious views on education.  We agreed that the value of the classics as a staple of mental training was perhaps a little overrated, and that possibly too much attention was nowadays given to athletics; but that after all the public-school system was the backbone of the country, and taught boys how to behave like gentlemen, and how to govern subject races.  We agreed that they were ideal training-grounds for character, and that our public-schools were the envy of the civilised world.  In such profound and suggestive interchange of ideas the time sped rapidly away.