Yonder sit forty cherry-cheeked boys, thinking
about home and holidays to-morrow. Yonder sit some threescore old
gentlemen pensioners of the hospital, listening to the prayers and the
psalms. You hear them coughing feebly in the twilight,--the old reverend
blackgowns. Is Codd Ajax alive, you wonder?--the Cistercian lads called
these old gentlemen Codds, I know not wherefore--I know not wherefore--
but is old Codd Ajax alive, I wonder? or Codd Soldier? or kind old Codd
Gentleman, or has the grave closed over them? A plenty of candles lights
up this chapel, and this scene of age and youth, and early memories, and
pompous death. How solemn the well-remembered prayers are, here uttered
again in the place wherein childhood we used to hear them! How beautiful
and decorous the rite; how noble the ancient words of the supplications
which the priest utters, and to which generations of fresh children and
troops of bygone seniors have cried Amen! under those arches! The service
for Founder's Day is a special one; one of the psalms selected being the
thirty-seventh, and we hear--
23.
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