of a
friendly spirit has also been set in very bright surroundings. We do
rejoice in the life we have had here, and all that we have found.
(Cheers.) You have spoken to-night of the good conduct of the school,
and have said that we have caused no trouble since our stay here. That
like many other questions, has two sides. Is it not a great credit to
this place that when between a hundred and seventy and a hundred and
eighty strange boys have been put into your cottages and homes, there has
not arisen a single difficulty for the whole year? I say it is quite as
much a feather in your caps as in ours. I am proud of it--very proud of
it. (Applause.) I would also refer to the extensive power which lies in
a great school. It is quite true that some few years hence, these boys
whom you have looked on with interest will be schoolmasters, barristers,
and leaders in every part of the world. (Applause.) There is not a
quarter of the globe where we have not our representative. It is now,
and not in the future only, that I may venture to say that there is no
part of this globe where men are to be found, where, here and there,
Borth has not been heard of this year. (Cheers.) I will mention two
facts only which may interest you. This very week, quite unconscious of
this meeting to-night, I sent a letter to North Canada, with, I may say,
a very glowing account of Borth in it--(cheers)--and the day before
yesterday, having a little leisure, I wrote to the Lieutenant-Governor of
the North-West Provinces of India, when I mentioned Borth in equally warm
terms. (Applause.) That, I need not say, is going on all around us.
These three hundred pens of our school are busy day by day giving to
their friends their own views of our life here, and I may no doubt say
that on the whole they are pleasant views. (Cheers.) It is not only a
pleasant fact to mention, but I hold that where life is working well with
life it is a real power for good that goes out into all lands, a sort of
missionary force traversing this earth, speaking of us as capable of
coming here, and of the welcome you have given us. (Hear, hear.) That,
however, would be a slight thing if we did not leave behind us, as I am
sure we do, that feeling of happy life which we take away with us.
(Cheers.) For my own part, at all events, if I leave, it is not the last
time I hope to spend in Borth. (Applause.) I know no place that has
been more attractive to me, no place