. Tom Browns school-days . TOM BROWN S LAST MATCH Heaven grant the manlier heart, that timely, ereYouth fly, with lifes real tempest would be coping;The fruit of dreamy hopingIs, waking, blank despair. —CLOUGH, Amlarualia. HE curtain now rises upon the last act of ourlittle drama—for hard-hearted publishers warnme that a single volume must of necessity havean end. Well, well! the pleasantest thingsmust come to an end. I little thought lastlong vacation, when I began these pages tohelp while away some spare time at a watering-place, how vividly many an old scene, which had lain hid awayfor year
. Tom Browns school-days . TOM BROWN S LAST MATCH Heaven grant the manlier heart, that timely, ereYouth fly, with lifes real tempest would be coping;The fruit of dreamy hopingIs, waking, blank despair. —CLOUGH, Amlarualia. HE curtain now rises upon the last act of ourlittle drama—for hard-hearted publishers warnme that a single volume must of necessity havean end. Well, well! the pleasantest thingsmust come to an end. I little thought lastlong vacation, when I began these pages tohelp while away some spare time at a watering-place, how vividly many an old scene, which had lain hid awayfor years in some dusty old corner of my brain, would come backagain and stand before me as clear and bright as if it had hap-pened yesterday. The book has been a most grateful task to me,and I only hope that all you, my dear young friends who read it 1339]. TOM BROWNS (friends assuredly you must be, if you get as far as this), will behalf as sorry to come to the last stage as I am. Not but what there has been a solemn and a sad side to it. Asthe old scenes became living, and the actors in them became living,too, many a grave in the Crimea and distant India, as well as inthe quiet church-yards of our dear old country, seemed to openand send forth their dead, and their voices and looks and wayswere again in ones ears and eyes as in the old school days. Butthis was not sad; how should it be, if we believe as our Lordhas taught us ? How should it be, when, one more turnof the wheel, and we shall be by their sides again, learningfrom them again, perhaps, as we did when we were newboys. Then there were others of the old faces so dear to us once,who had somehow or other just gone clean out of sight—are theydead or living ? We know not; but the thought of them bringsno sadness with it. Wherever they are, we can well believe theyare doing Gods
Size: 1597px × 1565px
Photo credit: © Reading Room 2020 / Alamy / Afripics
License: Licensed
Model Released: No
Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1910, bookidtombrownsschoold00hugh4
