would return to a site twice declared untenable? But neither could it be
kept on the spot: for there came in unmistakable evidence that, in that
case, the school would dissolve itself, and that, perhaps, irrevocably,
through the withdrawal of its scholars by their parents from the dreaded
neighbourhood. Already the trickling had begun; something must be done
before the banks broke, and the results and hopes of more than twenty
long working years were poured out to waste.

When the crisis was perceived, a project which had been already the
unspoken thought in responsible quarters, but which would have sounded
like a counsel of despair had the situation been less acute, was suddenly
started in common talk and warmly entertained. Why should we not
anticipate calamity by flight? Before the school melted away, and left
us teaching empty benches, why should we not flit, master and scholar
together, and preserve the school abroad for a securer future afterwards
at home?

In a space of time to be measured rather by hours than days, this project
passed through the stages of conception, discussion, and resolve, to the
first step in its execution. On Tuesday, March 7th, a notice was issued
to parents and guardians that the school would break up that day week for
a premature Easter holiday, and at the end of the usual three weeks
reassemble in some other locality, of which nothing could as yet be
specified except that it was to be healthier than that we were leaving.

The proposed experiment--to transport a large public school from its
native seat and all its appliances and plant to a strange site of which
not even the name was yet known, except as one of several possible spots,
and to do this at a few days' notice--was no doubt a novel one. But the
resolve, if rapidly formed and daring, was none the less deliberate and