Tom Brown's School Days

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Hughes Thomas. Tom Brown's School Days

PREFACE. TO THE SIXTH EDITION

TOM BROWN'S SCHOOL DAYS. BY AN OLD BOY

CHAPTER I. THE BROWN FAMILY

CHAPTER II. THE VEAST

CHAPTER III. SUNDRY WARS AND ALLIANCES

CHAPTER IV. THE STAGE COACH

CHAPTER V. RUGBY AND FOOTBALL

CHAPTER VI. AFTER THE MATCH

CHAPTER VII. SETTLING TO THE COLLAR

CHAPTER VIII. THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE

CHAPTER IX. A CHAPTER OF ACCIDENTS

TOM BROWN'S SCHOOL DAYS. PART II

CHAPTER I. HOW THE TIDE TURNED

CHAPTER II. THE NEW BOY

CHAPTER III. ARTHUR MAKES A FRIEND

CHAPTER IV. THE BIRD-FANCIERS

CHAPTER V. THE FIGHT

CHAPTER VI. FEVER IN THE SCHOOL

CHAPTER VII. HARRY EAST'S DILEMMAS AND DELIVERANCES

CHAPTER VIII. TOM BROWN'S LAST MATCH

CHAPTER IX. FINIS

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THE Browns have become illustrious by the pen of Thackeray and the pencil of Doyle within the memory of the young gentlemen who are now matriculating at the Universities. Notwithstanding the well-merited but late fame which has now fallen upon them, any one at all acquainted with the family must feel that much has yet to be written and said before the British nation will be properly sensible of how much of its greatness it owes to the Browns. For centuries, in their quiet, dogged, homespun way, they have been subduing the earth in most English counties, and leaving their mark in American forests and Australian uplands. Wherever the fleets and armies of England have won renown, there stalwart sons of the Browns have done yeoman's work. With the yew bow and cloth-yard shaft at Cressy and Agincourt – with the brown bill and pike under the brave Lord Willoughby – with culverin and demi-culverin against Spaniards and Dutchmen – with hand-grenade and sabre, and musket and bayonet, under Rodney and St. Vincent, Wolfe and Moore, Nelson and Wellington, they have carried their lives in their hands; getting hard knocks and hard work in plenty, which was on the whole what they looked for, and the best thing for them; and little praise or pudding, which indeed they and most of us are better without. Talbots and Stanleys, St. Maurs, and such-like folk, have led armies, and made laws time out of mind; but those noble families would be somewhat astounded – if the accounts ever came to be fairly taken – to find how small their work for England has been by the side of that of the Browns.

These latter, indeed, have until the present generation rarely been sung by poet, or chronicled by sage. They have wanted their "sacer vates," having been too solid to rise to the top by themselves, and not having been largely gifted with the talent of catching hold of, and holding on tight to, whatever good things happened to be going, – the foundation of the fortunes of so many noble families. But the world goes on its way, and the wheel turns, and the wrongs of the Browns, like other wrongs, seem in a fair way to get righted. And this present writer having for many years of his life been a devout Brown-worshipper, and moreover having the honour of being nearly connected with an eminently respectable branch of the great Brown family, is anxious, so far as in him lies, to help the wheel over, and throw his stone on to the pile.

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"Ah, I see as you bean't quite so lissom as you was," replied the farmer with a grim smile, as he lifted the latch of his door; "we bean't so young as we was, nother on us, wuss luck."

The farmer's cottage was very like those of the better class of peasantry in general. A snug chimney corner with two seats, and a small carpet on the hearth, an old flint gun and a pair of spurs over the fireplace, a dresser with shelves on which some bright pewter plates and crockeryware were arranged, an old walnut table, a few chairs and settles, some framed samplers, and an old print or two, and a bookcase with some dozen volumes on the walls, a rack with flitches of bacon, and other stores fastened to the ceiling, and you have the best part of the furniture. No sign of occult art is to be seen, unless the bundles of dried herbs hanging to the rack and in the ingle, and the row of labelled phials on one of the shelves, betoken it.

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