Untitled - Electric Scotland

144 LIFE OF ARCHBISHOP TAIT [CH. v.
historian found free and congenial scope. And it was the
same with his sermons. In ordinary times there was little
in them either to arouse or stimulate. But on touching-o
occasions, such as the death of a boy or master, he gave
the rein to his feelings, and moved us as deeply as he was
himself moved. No one, I think, doubted that he was
naturally an orator of no common kind. Our only regret
was (as I heard it often said), that we could not remove
his MS., and leave him in the pulpit to the natural elo
quence of the moment. It was a great power in him, which
boys thoroughly appreciate, but which for some reason he
would not, or but rarely, use.
"
But with his illness there came a change a change
both in him and our feeling towards him. Of the illness
itself, and of the long struggle between life and death, and
of the eager interest taken by us in the ever-changing
bulletins of his condition, I will not speak. It is not my
province. But two circumstances which happened at the
time may be worth recording, as showing the influence
he still exerted over us even on his sick-bed. The
first was in the house. One evening, when he was at the
worst, a letter dictated by him came to the head of the
house, in which he begged us, as a dying man, to think
seriously of the great issues of our school life, and never to
go to bed at night without reading some portion
of our
Bibles. I have not a copy of that letter now, though at
the time I made one ; but I remember well the impression
made by its simple, earnest appeal to our higher nature.
The response to it was general. Not only then, but for a
long time after, there was an unwonted silence after evening
prayers in the long schoolhouse passages, as singly, or by
twos or threes, we read our Bibles. Nothing could better
show his influence. There was no talking about it, no
parade ; but every one at once did what dear old Tait
asked us to do from his seeming deathbed.