After prayers the next day the Doctor stopped in the chapel, which was also a school-room, and told everybody to remain in his place.
Then he whispered to Corkey major, and Corkey went off, and presently came back with a very swagger book bound in red leather and having a yellow back with gold letters upon it.
The Doctor dearly likes these occasions; and so do we, because it means missing at least one class for certain. When he once fairly begins talking, he keeps at it. Now he had the four essays on the desk in front of him, and the prize; and then he spoke to Briggs, and Briggs led up Macmullen and Tomkins and Smythe and Walters.
They knew this was coming, and had all prepared to a certain extent. I noticed that Smythe had borrowed a green tie from Webster, and that Mac. had turned his usual hue at times of excitement. Walters was still inky, despite pumice stone.
"We have now, my boys, to make our annual award of the ’Harold Bolsover’ prize for English composition," began the Doctor. "Mr. Bolsover, whose name is now not unfavourably known to his countrymen as an ingenious fabricator of romance, was educated at this seminary. To me it fell to instruct his incipient intellect and lift the vacuity of his childish mind upwards and onwards into the light of knowledge and religion.
"The art of fiction, while it must not be considered a very lofty or important pursuit, may yet be regarded as a permissible career if the motives that guide the pen are elevated, and a high morality is the author’s first consideration. Lack of leisure does not permit me to read story books myself; but I have little doubt that Mr. Bolsover’s work is all that it should be from the Christian standpoint, and I feel confident that those lessons of charity, patience, loyalty, and honour, which he learnt from my own lips, have borne worthy fruit in his industrious brain.
"The work I have selected for the ’Bolsover’ prize is _Gilpin on Forest Scenery_—a book which leads us from Nature to the contemplation of the Power above and behind Nature; a book wherein the reverend author has excelled himself and presented to our minds the loftiest thoughts, and to our eyes the most noble scenes, that his observance could record, and his skill compass within the space of a volume.