the table; opposite him, with his minute-book, was Riddell, then Secretary—­that huge fellow in the Eight, you recollect.  The vote of thanks to the President was carried; he said a few words in a broken voice, and sate down; the Secretary’s vote of thanks was proposed, and he, too, rose to make acknowledgment.  In the middle of his speech we were attracted by a movement of the President.  He put his head in his hands and sobbed aloud.  Riddell stopped, faltered, looked round, and leaving his sentence unfinished, sate down, put his face on the book and cried like a child.  I don’t think there was a dry eye in the room.  And these boys were not sentimental, but straightforward young men of the world, honest, and, if anything, rather contemptuous, I had thought, of anything emotional.  I have never forgotten that scene, and have interpreted many things in the light of it.

Well, this morning I woke early and heard all the bustle of departure.  Depression fell on me; soon I got up, with a blessed sense of leisure, breakfasted at my ease, saw one or two boys, special friends, who came to me very grave and wistful.  Then I wrote letters and did business; and this afternoon—­it is fearfully hot—­I have been for a stroll through the deserted fields and street.

So another of these beautiful things which we call the summer half is over, never to be renewed.  There has been some evil, of course.  I wish I could think otherwise.  But the tone is good, and there have been none of those revelations of darkness that poison the mind.  There has been idleness (I don’t much regret that), and of course the usual worries.  But the fact remains that a great number of happy, sensible boys have been living perhaps the best hours of their life, with equal, pleasant friendships, plenty of games, some wholesome work and discipline to keep all sweet, with this exquisite background of old towers and high-branching elms, casting their shade over rich meadow-grass; the scene will come back to these boys in weary hours, perhaps in sun-baked foreign lands, perhaps in smoky offices—­nay, even on aching deathbeds, parched with fever.

The whole place has an incredibly wistful air, as though it missed the young life that circulated all about it; as though it spread its beauties out to be used and enjoyed, and wondered why none came to claim them.  As a counterpoise to this I like to think of all the happiness flowing into hundreds of homes; the father and mother waiting for the sound of the wheels that bring the boy back; the children who have gone down to the lodge to welcome the big brothers with shouts and kisses; and the boy himself, with all the dear familiar scene and home faces opening out before him.  We ought not to grudge the loneliness here before the thought of all those old and blessed joys of life that are being renewed elsewhere.