What Koweit will be in the future now remains to be seen. It may, perhaps, some day be the terminus of the Bagdad Railway, after all, and develop into a great commercial port. had greatly extended. During picture-shows, and other blessthe Great War Indian troops ings of our civilisation. But I were camped at Koweit. Then like better to think of the days came the announcement of when it was a living bit of the Sheikh Mubarak's death, full Arabian Nights Entertainment; of years and of honours. when I rode through the dusky bazaars and out through the gate to the desert on Wazna, most beautiful of Arab mares; when I listened to the doleful music of the two Calenders or the stories of Hadji Ali the One-eyed; and when, at the close of each burning day, I sat on the palace roof drinking coffee with my friend the Sheikh Mubarak ibn Subah, now gathered to his fathers. Peace to his ashes! Meanwhile it appears to be becoming prosperous and civilised. That means, no doubt, that it will soon possess policemen, newspapers, motor-cars, beer-houses, gramophones, advertisement hoardings, moving THE RETARDATION OF THE ABBEY CLOCK. BY H. W. S. "Look here, Martin," said stone facing was being carried the Old 'un-he was aged four- on. teen, and was so called because his brother, a year younger, was known as the Young 'un -"Logan and those chaps were up the Abbey last week. I vote we go." "Yes-let's," said the laconic Martin, one of the innumerable Martin Leakes who have been at Westminster School for generations, and have served their country nobly in peace and war. His pleasant freckled countenance and ever-present grin, and his good forward play at footer, made him a general favourite. To him, and Paddy Kaye on the left, the Old 'un played a faithful half back game, passing with that precision and devotion which are the highest merit of a good half-back. They were now wandering, hands in pockets, in the shadows of the Abbey cloisters, pouring scorn on their house-master for having stopped their leave. It was a "Sat.Sun.-Mon., or Saturday to Monday holiday, and most of the boys had gone off on three days' leave. The two stood gazing up at the great flying buttresses and pinnacles of the south side of the Abbey, and at the slender scaffolding rising above the lofty clerestory windows, by means of which the work of restoring the weathered "We'll get Paddy Kaye," said the Old 'un, "and"-he hesitated-"let's get Grills,— he's a good climber. I've climbed tons of trees with him at home." Now Grills was in College, and therefore, although the same age as the other friends, was on an intellectual plain of great elevation; hence the doubt in the mind of the Old 'un. At the same time he greatly reverenced that worthy on account of his family's intimate connection with the Royal Navy, and of the many happy holidays the Old 'un had spent with him and his brothers. "Right-oh!" said Martin, and that settled it. "Monday there'll be no workmen on-it's a bank holiday or something,-we'll go then. I'll get the others," said the Old 'un. Next day being Sunday, the boys from their seats in the choir stalls gazed up in anticipatory delight at the mysterious and lovely galleries of the triforium, the narrow passages across the tall clerestory windows above, and the still more exciting ledges across the great rose-windows of the transept. The outside world can little realise the extent to which the Abbey enters into the life of the boys brought up under its shadow. The great south transept is their morning chapel. Beneath Henry VII.'s gorgeous fan vaulting they are confirmed, and they hear year after year the choir sing Sterndale Bennett's imperishable harmonies in "God is a Spirit." Under the immense arches of the nave the boys take part in every ceremony: they help at the burial services of the great; they are part of national thanksgivings; and even at coronations they take an active part with the leaders of the Empire in the national ceremonial. There, between the organ and the choir, they learn to know the masterpieces of English Church music, and from thence they carry in their hearts through life the echoes of the harmonies, the fugues, the the solos, and the great chorales which make Wesley, Purcell, Barnby, Stainer, Martin, Coleridge-Taylor, and many others friends and household names to them. There, too, wandering between school-hours with cherished friends among the tombs and monuments of England's kings and queens and greatest men, they learn and realise that the history of England is not a precarious procession of separate epochs, but a gradually growing whole, a service to which all are called in greater or less degree in their own time and generation. There, seeing under their eyes the evidence of the ordered continuance of life and work and struggle that has gone to the building of our England, they first learn that the game is greater than the player, and that work and duty are the watchwords of Empire. In the course of their varied wanderings at odd times among the aisles and chapels, they find ever fresh interest awakened. New boys wander in frankly curious and somewhat awed. But by degrees the spirit of the place asserts itself, and as a boy goes up the school and the years pass, it seems to dominate and possess him with a sense of its mystery and divineness. It becomes an embodiment of the history of England, of which the boy himself feels he is a part-a great and visible crystallisation of the years, linking the humblest boy with her greatest past. And when the boy comes to his last day in the Abbey, it sends him forth to work "for this Church and Nation" with a secret in his heart like a consecration-at once a blessing, a command, and a faith. Ever after in his life the Westminster boy carries with him a certain feeling of possession, of intimacy and of understanding, between himself and the spirit of that great fane. However broken by the fevers, wars, or hardships of life, he returns from time to time from his distant post, to renew there the aspirations and thrice blessed friendships of his boyhood, and to draw from the Abbey's inexhaustible store of encouragement, of promise, and of exhortation. The four boys who gathered Turning westward, they found in the cloisters on that Monday their way at length to the afternoon were filled not only North or Clock Tower. Havwith the excitement of the ad- ing climbed to the summit and venture and curiosity to pene- studied a bird's-eye view of trate those lofty mysteries of London with exclamations of which they had heard whis- approval and delight, they pered stories from those who started down the narrow, windhad ventured on the quest, ing, pigeon-infested stone stairs. but also with a certain sense of the inevitableness of their response to the call upon their imaginations exercised by the ever-beckoning fingers of the familiar pinnacles and turrets. Paddy and Martin were out as scouts to ascertain that all was quiet in the cloisters; the canons in residence who would take the afternoon service were still at lunch. The Clerk of the Works office was securely locked. Not a soul moved. "Bags, I first!" said Grills, as he and the Old 'un surveyed the scaffolding ladders. As the climbing powers of Paddy and Martin were not known, it was arranged that they should go next, the Old 'un bringing up the rear. It did not take them long to reach the topmost ladder, and step on to the staging on which a number of readydressed stones were resting, level with the parapet of the roof. From here the Old 'un, having on one occasion been thus far before, became the officer in command of the expedition. Led by him, they dived into the small door which leads in from the parapet beneath the great peaked roof, between it and the stone vault of the nave. An exclamation from the irrepressible Paddy, whose mischievous faculties were now thoroughly awake, awake, brought them up suddenly. He was inside the great clock. In this most delectable of places he found, among other matters of interest, the regulating mechanism. After careful examination of the arrangements, and a lecture thereon from Paddy, it was proposed by Grills, and carried with acclamation, that each member of the expedition should put back the clock one and a half minutes exactly total, six minutes. 66 "They'll find it out," said Paddy doubtfully. Of course they will," said Grills, who had calculated the results with lightning precision, "but not till after we are down. Three o'clock has struck, and service has started; no one will notice now till to-morrow." In another minute the horrible unbelievable thing was done. The whole Abbey clock with all its striking arrangements, instead of leading Big Ben by a comfortable two minutes, so as to get its quarterchimes finished before he could drown them with his booming notes, was now lagging hope lessly behind. The Old 'un showed distinct signs of funk. "It's leaving too much of a trail," he said. Oh, rot," said Martin with his cheerful grin; "think of the Head to-morrow at twelve o'clock prayers when the clocks strike all wrong." This reference to the headmaster was ill-omened in the opinion of the Old 'un, and his spirits fell considerably. They were duly restored when it was suggested that some one should walk out on the ledge under the east clock face, and write the names of the expedition on the hour-hand. The only thing that prevented this was that it was discovered that the hour-hand was too high at 3 P.M. for any ordinary boy to reach it. There being no minute-hand, this objection proved fatal. The feat was, however, successfully performed by the fearless Martin one evening a little later, when the hour-hand had reached the 6 o'clock position. "Here, let's go and listen to the service in the lantern," said the Old 'un, to whose cautious mind their position on the roof parapet was too exposed for safety, the place being in full view of the public and the police in Broad Sanctuary. He led the way beneath the roof again, and along the wooden stage that runs the whole length of the stone vaulting. At the eastern end an iron door opens into that dim, mysterious, and magic place where the nave and transept vaultings meet. It is lit by narrow corner-windows whose stained glass, looking out between the roofs, admits a soft uncertain light. Beneath the doors opening from the great roofs runs a widish stone ledge all round, and beneath the ledge is space, into which the massive fluted piers fade into the depths of the great church beneath. The door opened with clang, which startled them all for the moment. Then, as the immensity of the depth beneath them and the wonderful distant visions became apparent, each boy drew his breath in awe and delight. They heard the choir singing the last verses of the Psalms to one of those unique Abbey chants of Turle's, with the last high treble note that goes soaring and echoing into the vast spaces and seems to search out their very soul. There came up to them the rustle of the congregation sitting down, followed by the small distant voice of the canon reading the lesson. They listened and looked in silence. Then suddenly their beloved organist let loose the great organ in the opening phrases of the Magnificat, and the men's voices came up in the splendid opening bars of that grandest and surely most truly inspired of evening services, Walmisley in D minor. It would have been all the same to Paddy if it had been Rule Britannia or the Old |