The Hill: A Romance of Friendship

ALSO BY HORACE A. VACHELL
QUINNEYS'
A ROMANCE OF FRIENDSHIP
LONDON JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET
Transcriber's Note: Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Greek text appears as originally printed, but with a mouse-hover transliteration, κραιπάλη.
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

Five hundred faces, and all so strange! Life in front of me—home behind, I felt like a waif before the wind Tossed on an ocean of shock and change.