Uppingham by the Sea | Page 4

reported on what lay
within his province. Meanwhile two of the party were conducted by
mine host to explore a "cricket-ground" close to the hotel, or at least a
plot of ground to which adhered a fading tradition of a match between
two local elevens. The "pitch" was conjecturally identified among some

rough hillocks, over the sandy turf of which swept a wild northwester,
"shrill, chill, with flakes of foam," and now and then a driving
hailstorm across the shelterless plain. So little hospitable was our
welcome to a home from which we were sometime to part not without
regretful memories.
Next day, March 16th, a contract was signed, which gave us the
tenancy of the hotel till July 21st, with power to renew the contract at
will for a further term after the summer holidays. Our landlord, Mr. C.
Mytton, was to provide board (according to a specified dietary) and bed
(at least bed- room) for all who could be lodged in his walls, and board
(with light and firing) for the whole party; to supply the service for the
kitchen, and to undertake the laundry. Servants for attendance on the
boys were to be brought by the masters. The payment was to be 1
pound a head per week for all who were lodged and boarded, or
boarded only, in the hotel. For washing, and one or two other matters,
an extra charge was admitted. We have only to add that the bargain was
one with which both parties, under their respective circumstances, had
reason to be satisfied; and that the arrangement worked not more stiffly
than could be expected where the large margin of the unforeseen left so
much to subsequent interpretation. Even Dido and Hiarbas were not
agreed about the precise width of a bull's- hide. We do not, however,
wish it to be inferred from this classical parallel, that our settlers claim
to have rivalled the adroitness of the Punic queen in her dealings with
the barbarian prince:
[Greek text] {12}
CHAPTER III.
--TRANSFORMATIONS.
Your snail is your only right house-builder; _for he builds his house out
of the stuff of his own vitals, and therefore wherever he travel he
carries his own roof above him. But I have known men_, spacious in
the possession of bricks and mortar, _who have not so much made their
houses as their houses have made them. Turn such an one out of his

home, and he is a bare "O without a figure_," counting for nothing in
the sum of things. _He only is truly himself who has nature in him,
when the old shell is cracked, to build up a new one about him out of
the pith and substance of himself_.
Ten days after the reconnaissance described in the last chapter, the
pioneers of the school were again upon the ground.
On Monday, March 27th, a goods train of eighteen trucks, chartered by
the Uppingham masters, was unloading three hundred bedsteads, with
their bedding, on Borth platform. These were to be distributed among
the quarters of their respective owners, in some dozen different houses,
which we had engaged in addition to the hotel. The workmen were
mostly Welshmen, anxious to be doing, but understanding imperfectly
the speech of their employers. With the eagerness of their temperament,
they went at the trucks, and Babel began. Amid a confused roar of
contradictory exhortations, with energetic gesture, and faces full of
animation and fire, they were hauling away, to any and every place, the
ton-loads of mattresses, and the fragments of unnumbered bedsteads. It
was time for the owners to interpose; and those of the school party who
were present, knowing that time was very precious, and that example is
better than precept, especially precept in a foreign language, put their
own hands to the work, the Headmaster being foremost, and earned a
labouring man's wage at unloading the trucks and carrying the goods to
their billets. Some of our new acquaintances watched the scene with a
shocked surprise that authorities should share in the manual labour,
instead of looking on and paying for it. But their feelings at last
determined to admiration. "Why, sirs," they exclaimed, "you get it done
as if you were used to move every three weeks." But, in fact, there was
so much to be done, and so few days to do it in, that the exigencies of
the work spared neither age, sex, nor degree of our party. None were
exempt, and those who were not employed in porterage and rough
carpentry might be found shifting furniture, or stitching curtains, or
jointing together bedsteads.
Meanwhile, workmen in and round the hotel were as busy as
stage-carpenters preparing a transformation scene. First, by the

elimination of carpets and furniture, the interior was reduced to a
tabula rasa.