ike the hope of Honor and the dream of
Glory, that boys do not discuss even with their most intimate equals,
cheerfully assuming that, till he spoke, they had never considered these
possibilities. He pointed them to shining goals, with fingers which
smudged out all radiance on all horizons. He profaned the most secret
places of their souls with outcries and gesticulations, he bade them
consider the deeds of their ancestors in such a fashion that they were
flushed to their tingling ears. Some of them--the rending voice cut a
frozen stillness--might have had relatives who perished in defence of
their country. They thought, not a few of them, of an old sword in a
passage, or above a breakfast-room table, seen and fingered by stealth
since they could walk. He adjured them to emulate those illustrious
examples; and they looked all ways in their extreme discomfort.

Their years forbade them even to shape their thoughts clearly to
themselves. They felt savagely that they were being outraged by a fat
man who considered marbles a game.

And so he worked towards his peroration--which, by the way, he used
later with overwhelming success at a meeting of electors--while they
sat, flushed and uneasy, in sour disgust. After many, many words, he
reached for the cloth-wrapped stick and thrust one hand in his bosom.
This--this was the concrete symbol of their land--worthy of all honor
and reverence! Let no boy look on this flag who did not purpose to
worthily add to its imperishable lustre. He shook it before them--a
large calico Union Jack, staring in all three colors, and waited for the
thunder of applause that should crown his effort.

They looked in silence. They had certainly seen the thing before--down
at the coastguard station, or through a telescope, half-mast high when a
brig went ashore on Braunton Sands; above the roof of the Golf-club, and
in Keyte's window, where a certain kind of striped sweetmeat bore it in
paper on each box. But the College never displayed it; it was no part
of the scheme of their lives; the Head had never alluded to it; their
fathers had not declared it unto them. It was a matter shut up, sacred
and apart. What, in the name of everything caddish, was he driving at,
who waved that horror before their eyes? Happy thought! Perhaps he was
drunk.

The Head saved the situation by rising swiftly to propose a vote of
thanks, and at his first motion, the school clapped furiously, from a
sense of relief.

"A