Dick Rodney; or, The Adventures of an Eton Boy

OR,
THE ADVENTURES OF AN ETON BOY.
JAMES GRANT.
PHILADELPHIA: J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER

DICK RODNEY;
OR,
THE ADVENTURES OF AN ETON BOY.
In the relation of the following adventures I do not mean to illustrate the principle maintained by some writers, that by an inevitable course of events in life, that becomes fate, which at first was merely choice ; but rather to show how, by a remarkable combination of circumstances (to a great extent beyond my own control), I was involved in a series of perils and perigrinations, such as rarely fall to the lot even of those who have the most restless of dispositions.
That my temperament was, and is still, something of this nature, I must confess; and the reading of my leisure hours—books of wild adventure by field and flood (I have devoured them all from the volumes of dear old Daniel Defoe, to those of the Railway Library ), filled my mind with vague longings and airy fancies, for greater achievements than our periodical regatta, or the ranks of our Eton Rifle Volunteer Corps were likely to afford, although I deemed myself by no means an undistinguished member of the latter.