The Cathedral
The Great Day arrived, escorted sumptuously with skies of burning blue.
How many heads looked out of how many windows, the country over, that
morning! In Polchester it was considered as only another proof of the
esteem in which that city was held by the Almighty. The Old Lady might
deserve and did unquestionably obtain divinely condescending weather for
her various excursions, but it was nothing to that which the Old Town got
and deserved.
Deserved or no, the town rose to the occasion. The High Street was
swimming in flags and bunting; even in Seatown most of the grimy windows
showed those little cheap flags that during the past week hawkers had been
so industriously selling. From quite early in the morning the squeak and
scream of the roundabouts in the Fair could be heard dimly penetrating the
sanctities and privacies of the Precincts. But it was the Cathedral bells,
pealing, crashing, echoing, rocking, as early as nine o'clock in the
morning, that first awoke the consciousness of most of the Polcastrians to
the glories of the day.
I suppose that nearly all souls that morning subconsciously divided the
order of the festival into three periods; in the morning the Cathedral and
its service, in the afternoon the social, friendly, man-to-man
celebration, and in the evening, torch-light, bonfire, skies ablaze, drink
and love.
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