Page:Adams - A Child of the Age.djvu/21

Rh I didn't think of this till Wallace told me on Monday night that Cookie had left. And afterwards Mrs. Whittaker said Cookie was a thief and had stolen a lot of her things, but I didn't believe it.

At the end of the term we were examined by a gentleman who came from Glastonbury School, where Whittaker was when he was a kid. Blake was his name. I liked him. We were all examined together in English and Scripture, and he said that I was the brightest boy of the lot, and he said it to the Reverend too, when he came in at one o'clock and they were standing talking together at the door.

The next day was Speech-day. We most of us had pieces of poetry, Shakespeare or out of the poetry-book, to say. We were supposed to choose our own pieces. I was just head of my form by the term marks (there were only five in it. Black, Campbell, Morris, Wallace, and I), and I chose the 'Psalm of Life.' Currie (the undermaster) didn't mind; and so I learnt it again, a little excited: I mean, I read it over with the book, and repeated it again and again, to make sure I hadn't forgotten any of it.

I sat in my place, waiting for my turn, with my lips rather dry, and every now and then I shivered as if a draught came upon me through an opened door: but I wasn't really afraid. I was a little excited, I say; and yet it seemed somehow like a dream and I couldn't notice anyone's face.

At last my turn came. It was after Whitman's. I got up shivering, and I thought I shouldn't have breath to say it all with. But when I got up on to the green-baize platform, and stood in the middle, and looked down over them, the ladies in their white and coloured dresses, and the men, and the boys—all at once the shivering went away from me altogether, and I turned my head straight to Mr. Blake at the table at the side, and smiled to him. He smiled too, but only in his eyes. And I began:—

'Tell me not in mournful numbers, "Life is but an empty dream!" For the soul is dead that slumbers, And things are not what they seem.'