future), I thank you for this with all my heart, for this which you call
'a slight thing.' It is a slight thing; but yet, like a flag which
armies have rallied round and have died for, it can give spirit and
endurance and confidence. Yes, it is true, as you say, that these have
been hard times, as those know who have had day by day to watch ruin
coming closer and closer, with no hope, no room for escape. Like men in
the story tied to the stake in front of the advancing tide, we had to see
wave on wave coming up to bring a slow but sure destruction." Then,
after speaking of the incidents which ended in our coming to this spot,
he continued: "We have been brought by our troubles much before the eyes
of the public. They speak of 'the fierce light that beats upon a
throne,' but that is hardly so intolerable as the fierce light that beats
upon a great calamity. Yet I trust that fierce light may prove to the
school a refining fire. Certainly the present school has behaved
worthily under their novel circumstances; they have shown themselves true
sons of Uppingham. You of the past school see round you your successors,
and you may be proud of them; at least we have suffered no trouble
through those you see before you here.

"The end of all this which of us knows? But we have faith that it shall
be good. Though all seems to fail and perish, all our work to die, yet I
am sure there shall be no real death of the life of the school, but that
it shall have its resurrection."

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