ot the case at all. I could not have done the thing at
all to start with, and, given both the nerve and the presence and the
practice of the man, I could not have done it a quarter as well, because
he was in tune with his audience and I should not have been. That was
to me part of the tragedy. The Bishop's voice fell heavily and steadily,
like a stream of water from a great iron pipe that fills a reservoir.
The audience, too, were all in the most elementary mood. Boys of course
frankly desire success without any disguise. And parents less frankly
but no less hungrily, in an almost tigerish way, desire it for their
children. The intensity of belief felt by a parent in a stupid or even
vicious boy would be one of the most pathetic things I know, if it were
not also one of the primal forces of the world.

And thus the tide being high the Bishop went into harbour at the top of
the flood. I don't even complain of the nature of the address; it was
frankly worldly, such as might have been given by a Sadducee in the
time of Christ. But the interesting thing about it was that most of
the people present believed it to be an ethical and even a religious
address. It was the ethic of a professional bowler and the religion of
a banker. If a boy had been for all intents and purposes a professional
bowler to the age of twenty-three, and a professional banker afterwards,
he would almost exactly have fulfilled the Bishop's ideal. I do not
think it is a bad ideal either. I only say that it is not an exalted
ideal, and it is not a Christian ideal. It is the world in disguise,
the wolf in sheep's clothing over again. We were taken in. We said to
ourselves, "This is an animal certainly clothed as a sheep--and we must
remember the old proverb and be careful." But as the Bishop's address
proceeded, and the fragrant oil fell down to the skirts of our clothing,
we said, "There is certainly a sheep inside."

Then a choir of strong, rough, boyish voices sang an old glee or
two--"Glorious Apollo" and "Hail smiling Morn," and a school song about
the old place that made some of us bite our lips and furtively brush
away an unexpected and inexplicable moisture from our eyes, at the
thought of the fine fellows we had ourselves sat side by side with
thirty and forty years ago, now scattered to all ends of the earth, and
some of them gone from the here to the everywhere, as the poet says. And
then we adjourned to see the School Corps inspected--such solem