The Project Gutenberg eBook, The Hill, by Horace Annesley Vachell

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Title: The Hill
A Romance of Friendship

Author: Horace Annesley Vachell

Release Date: January 4, 2007 [eBook #20280]

Language: English

Character set encoding: ISO-646-US (US-ASCII)

***START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE HILL***

E-text prepared by Al Haines

THE HILL

A Romance of Friendship

by

HORACE ANNESLEY VACHELL

London
John Murray, Albemarle Street
First Edition . . . . . . . . . . . April, 1905
Thirty-second Impression (3/6) . . . April, 1928
Reprinted (2/-) . . . . . . . . . . November, 1928
Reprinted . . . . . . . . . . . . . September, 1930
Reprinted . . . . . . . . . . . . . June, 1935
Reprinted . . . . . . . . . . . . . October, 1937

To

GEORGE W. E. RUSSELL

I dedicate this Romance of Friendship to you with the sincerest
pleasure and affection. You were the first to suggest that I should
write a book about contemporary life at Harrow; you gave me the
principal idea; you have furnished me with notes innumerable; you have
revised every page of the manuscript; and you are a peculiarly keen
Harrovian.

In making this public declaration of my obligations to you, I take the
opportunity of stating that the characters in "The Hill," whether
masters or boys, are not portraits, although they may be called,
truthfully enough, composite photographs; and that the episodes of
Drinking and Gambling are founded on isolated incidents, not on
habitual practices. Moreover, in attempting to reproduce the curious
admixture of "strenuousness and sentiment"--your own phrase--which
animates so vitally Harrow life, I have been obliged to select the less
common types of Harrovian. Only the elect are capable of such
friendship as John Verney entertained for Henry Desmond; and few boys,
happily, are possessed of such powers as Scaife is shown to exercise.
But that there are such boys as Verney and Scaife, nobody knows better
than yourself.

Believe me,

Yours most gratefully,

HORACE ANNESLEY VACHELL

BEECHWOOD,

February 22, 1905.

CONTENTS

I. THE MANOR
II. CAESAR
III. KRAIPALE