That has always a strange effect
for us self-outcasts from the great British roof, and whether it
makes us smile, or makes us sigh, it never fails to startle us
when we hear it from colonial lips. The word holds in common
kindness Canada and India and South Africa and Australia, and it
has its pathos in the fact that the old mother of these mighty
children seems to leave solely to them the tenderness that draws
them to her in that notion of home.
V
There were about fifty of those British Chautauquans, and when
they had ranged themselves on the grass before the shrubbery of a
pleasant lawn, backed by a wooded slope, the dignified lady of
the house came out with a casket in her hand, and put it on a
table, and the exercises began. Fitly, if the casket really held
the sacred relic, they began with prayer; then a Welsh soloist
followed with a hymn, but whether she sang in Welsh or English, I
do not remember; I am only sure she sang divinely; and then came
the speeches. The first of the speeches was by our friend, who
was the local Unitarian minister, and of a religious body not
inconsiderable in that Calvinistic Wales.
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