Music took up her quarters in several scattered dwellings.
Wales is the home of song, and our musicians were very welcome to make
the cottage walls resound to violin or key-board. We remember well the
affectionate reverence with which one aged custodian spoke of the
"pianass" she was proud to house; she cherished them as if they had been
tame elephants. Several concerts were given during our stay--but in the
Assembly Rooms of Aberystwith; our wooden school-room was found, on the
first experiment, unfit for the purpose, from the want of resonance. The
makeshift gymnasium and carpentery, in the stables and coach-house, have
been mentioned before. If among "real studies" we may include the
cricket, this was, as we saw, well cared for; while the instructor in
swimming had nothing to complain of, with four miles of good beach, and
the Irish Channel before him.
If the accommodation during school hours was adequate, it was less easy
to find elbow-room for the boys at other times. It was well enough from
May to August under the ample roof of blue summer weather; but in the
rainy season (and at Borth, as elsewhere, that winter was a wet one) we
should have been sorely cramped but for relief afforded by the "studies"
noticed in a previous chapter.
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