And the
fourth-form boy who reads their names rudely cut on the old hall tables,
or painted upon the big-side cupboard (if hall tables and big-side
cupboards still exist), wonders what manner of boys they were. It will
be the same with you who wonder, my sons, whatever your prowess may be
in cricket, or scholarship, or football. Two or three years, more or
less, and then the steadily advancing, blessed wave will pass over your
names as it has passed over ours. Nevertheless, play your games and do
your work manfully--see only that that be done--and let the remembrance
of it take care of itself.
The chapel-bell began to ring at a quarter to eleven, and Tom got in
early and took his place in the lowest row, and watched all the other
boys come in and take their places, filling row after row; and tried
to construe the Greek text which was inscribed over the door with the
slightest possible success, and wondered which of the masters, who
walked down the chapel and took their seats in the exalted boxes at the
end, would be his lord. And then came the closing of the doors, and the
Doctor in his robes, and the service, which, however, didn't impress him
much, for his feeling of wonder 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.
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