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ing. In 1898 Harrow won a famous victory, and both sides gave us some first-rate play.

"But the game's guardian, mute nor heeding more
What suns may gladden and what airs may blow,
Friend, teacher, playmate, helper, counsellor

Lies resting now."

I. D. Walker, who had coached his old school team, was lying dead in his brother's house, not two hundred yards away, and the flags at Lords were flying half-mast high. "Thirty-six runs to make and thirty minutes to make them in!" It was preeminently an occasion for the nerve and judgment which on other fields win the Victoria Cross.

In 1900 Harrow went in for her second innings with 125 runs to win, and plenty of time to make them in. The game looked like a certainty for Harrow, but when G. Cookson (our Captain) was out, and when in the next over the Eton bowler, Whately, performed the "hat trick”, the game looked like a certainty for Eton. Then the tide turned again in Harrow's favour only to ebb once more, when Wilson was run out. Three more wickets fell with the score at 118; Eton cheers waxed in volume and confidence. The fate of Harrow hung on its last two batsmen, R. H. Crake and A. Buxton. Crake was our wicket-keeper, a good school for steadying nerves. His policy was a blocking game with hits to leg. Two out of the seven required to tie were made. Crake faced the bowler, looked round to square leg, saw no field there, had his opportunity, and made his four. He then made another run by a forward drive, and secured a tie. Crake then hit another four to square leg. To breathless stillness succeeded pandemonium garnished with some harmless boxing. Those who observed Crake's extraordinary sangfroid at Lords will watch his career in the army with interest. He belongs to that limited class—a happy twelfth man. He was our twelfth man in '99, a schoolfellow being preferred for the last place on account of his leaving the school that term. Had Crake got his flannels in '09, he too would have left, and thus would not have made

winning hit in the never-to-be-forgotten match of 1900.

However little some may regard the rules of the school, all boys respect their own unwritten code. The sacred number at Harrow is three, while every word ends in "er". For instance, the blue flannel coat he wears is called "bluer"; but no boy who has not been three years in the school is allowed to wear it in the House. It is only when you have been three years on the Hill that you begin to thoroughly enjoy yourself. You can then walk in the road and need not keep to the footpath, you can wear a flower in your button-hole, and can even roll up your “brolly" without committing the ineffable crime of "side"! In the sixties we objected to overcoats, disdained "brollies", but had perforce to have our trouser pockets sewn up. The only sumptuary law now in force is the great-coat question. Thanks to influenza a notice is now put up on the school gates, informing the boys when their great coats must be worn. The most interesting notices that appear on those gates for most of us are the announcements of the elevens, which at cricket or "footer" are to fight for their respective Houses in the inter-house matches. Dr. Butler's is, I believe, still the only house that ever produced a sixteen, who at "footer" played and beat a sixteen of the rest of the school. The elevens of other Houses have played and beaten an eleven of the rest of the school, but never a sixteen.

In the sixties no sight could have been more picturesque than that of the boys going down to "footer". The Middlemites wore their dark blue coats and blue stockings, the Tommyites (Steel's now Bowen's) their scarlet coats and red stockings, the "Monkeyites" their carnation striped coats, the Bradbyites their purple striped coats, while we Butlerites were content to play in our pink and white shirt with no coat at all. It was not considered good form in a Butlerite to wear a coat "down to footer", however hard it rained, unless you were in the school "footer" and then you might swathe yourself in magenta.

I will not attempt to describe the gorgeous plumage of the "Billyites", the "Harrisites", and the "Young Vaughanites". An hour and a quarter passes, and the same flanneled dandies walk up the hill bespattered with mud from head to foot.

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Our flannel coats remind me of a singular incident. X. Z., who was Head of his House, was a squatter in New South Wales. His home was besieged and taken by a gang of bushrangers. The police pursued and captured them. One of the men had taken a great fancy to our old schoolfellow's striped footer coat; in fact, he would not part with it and was hanged in it. These coats of many colours have disappeared into the limbo of the past, but many who wore them have since conferred distinction on the Queen's uniform. "Blood goes by quality as well as quantity; who can tell what future deeds we lost, when we lost Gordon, and Stewart, and Earle, Burnaby who rode to Khiva, and Owen who rode Father O'Flynn? By shot and steel, by sunstroke and pestilence, by sheer wear of work, the Soudan has eaten up our best by hundreds." Every name mentioned by G. W. Steevens (except that of Gordon) is that of a Public School boy, and they formed the flower of the British Army. Two out of the four (Earle and Burnaby) came from the Hill, Stewart was a Wykehamist, and Owen an Etonian. In a sense it is true that there is nothing now under the sun. In 1758 Lady Howe issued an address to the electors of Nottingham, asking their suffrages on behalf of her son William, who was then fighting for his King and Country in North America. The appeal was not made in vain. William Howe was returned for Nottingham in his absence, and in the place of his brother, who had fallen in action at Ticonderoga. In 1900 several soldiers were elected to Parliament in their absence at the Front, but only one candidate has, I believe, during the last 200 years been, in his absence, twice elected to the House of Commons. That exceptional experience befell an Old Harrovian Capt. J. B. Seely, M.P., now serving with the Hants Carabineers in South Africa. The war in South Africa has sadly increased the number of our school heroes. The names of those who have fallen are given in an Appendix.

What strikes you most sadly in perusing the roll is the *reme youth of our Old Boys; one only of them, C. B.

Childe, played at Lords in the early seventies, the majority left the Hill in the nineties.

And the boy-beauty passed from off the face

And thoughts beyond their thoughts the Spirit lent,
And manly tears made mist upon their eyes,

And to them came a great presentiment

Of high self-sacrifice.

Of those happily still with us, where all have been brave, it is impossible to select, but no Englishman will blame me for mentioning the names of W. N. Congreve, who received the Victoria Cross for his bravery in attempting with that gallant Etonian, F. H. S. Roberts, V.C., to recover the lost guns at Colenso; of Sir John Milbanke, who won the V.C. by taking up a man on his own horse under a most galling fire and bringing him safe into camp, and of W. F. H. S. Kincaid, Eric Wilson and Herbert Musgrave, three of the four officers commanding the Royal Engineers, who (with the 1st Royal Canadians) within 100 yards of the Boer trenches received the messenger with the white flag and tender of Cronje's surrender. Lord Roberts on parade specially commended those Canadians and Engineers. We have stormed many Albueras in Natal, but the dauntless courage displayed by General Cole and the soldiers he led up the Hill of Albuera has been consistently shown by the soldiers of the Queen in the present campaign. Some Napier of the future will again describe how nothing could stop that "astonishing infantry," and will relate with what a strength and majesty the British soldier fought in South Africa. But if our priyates know how to fight, our officers know how to lead. They are not distinguished only by their uniforms. They have led "by example, rather than by command."1 Faithful to their Queen, their Country and their colours, our Old Boys have quitted themselves like men in "our right and great cause." On the Veldt they sleep well.

1 "Duces exemplo potius quam imperio, si prompti, si conspicui, si ante faciem agant, admiratione presunt." Tacitus.

CHAPTER XII.

1

MERCHANT TAYLORS' SCHOOL.

IN its numbers, its studies and its antiquity Merchant Taylors' is entitled to rank with Public Schools, though in two circumstances-the absence of endowment and of the boarding system-it differs from all others. There is no boarding system recognized by the school, but boarders are received by some of the assistant masters. Merchant Taylors' was one of the nine referred to the Public School Commissioners of 1864 and is included in their Report. The School was founded in 1561 by the Merchant Taylors' Company. Sir Thomas White, the founder of St. John's College, Oxford, was a member of the Court of the Merchant Taylors' Company at the time, and three years after its foundation endowed the School with thirty-seven Life Fellowships in his own College. Thus St. John's became to Merchant Taylors' what New College was to Winchester, King's College to Eton, and Christchurch to Westminster. Another member of the Court generously contributed towards the founding of the School £500, a sum sufficient in those days to secure the site in the parish of St. Laurence Pountney. These worthy Merchants drew up the Statutes which provided for the teaching of "children of all nations

"The History of Merchant-Taylors' School," by H. W. Wilson, Second Under-Master (1812 Edition). I have adopted the modern spelling of Merchant Taylors' and dropped the hyphen used by Mr. Wilson.

The fellowships of St. John's have been thrown open to general competition, but the School has twenty-one scholarships at the College of £100 a year, tenable for seven years.

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