onder and curiosity was too strong. And the
boy on one side of him was scratching his name on the oak panelling
in front, and he couldn't help watching to see what the name was, and
whether it was well scratched; and the boy on the other side went to
sleep, and kept falling against him; and on the whole, though many boys
even in that part of the school were serious and attentive, the general
atmosphere was by no means devotional; and when he got out into the
close again, he didn't feel at all comfortable, or as if he had been to
church.

But at afternoon chapel it was quite another thing. He had spent the
time after dinner in writing home to his mother, and so was in a better
frame of mind; and his first curiosity was over, and he could attend
more to the service. As the hymn after the prayers was being sung, and
the chapel was getting a little dark, he was beginning to feel that he
had been really worshipping. And then came that great event in his, as
in every Rugby boy's life of that day--the first sermon from the Doctor.

More worthy pens than mine have described that scene--the oak pulpit
standing out by itself above the School seats; the tall, gallant form,
the kindling eye, the voice, now soft as the low notes of a flute, now
clear and stirring as the call of the light-infantry bugle, of him who
stood there Sunday after Sunday, witnessing and pleading for his Lord,
the King of righteousness and love and glory, with whose Spirit he was
filled, and in whose power he spoke; the long lines of young faces,
rising tier above tier down the whole length of the chapel, from the
little boy's who had just left his mother to the young man's who was
going out next week into the great world, rejoicing in his strength.
It was a great and solemn sight, and never more so than at this time of
year, when the only lights in the chapel were in the pulpit and at the
seats of the prepostors of the week, and the soft twilight stole over
the rest of the chapel, deepening into darkness in the high gallery
behind the organ.

But what was it, after all, which seized and held these three hundred
boys, dragging them out of themselves, willing or unwilling, for twenty
minutes, on Sunday afternoons? True, there always were boys scattered up
and down the School, who in heart and head were worthy to hear and able
to carry away the deepest and wisest words there spoken. But these were
a minority always, generally a very small one, often so small