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. I had been for the usual time an "oppidan" at Eton; but, though standing high in favor of the Reverend M. A. with whom I was boarded, of the Vice Provost, and other functionaries, I had, unfortunately and unwisely, spent too much of my time with the boxing gloves and fencing foils; at cricket in the playing fields; in rowing on the river-that old traditional amusement of our Etonians; in training for the great 4th of June, the College Regatta day; and in erratic excursions to Windsor and elsewhere-to hope for transference to Cambridge. This had long been the dearest wish of my father, poor man! but in his letters to me the names of Walpole, Canning, Fox, Wellington, Hallam, and other alumni of our great seminary, were rehearsed again and again without effect; and he never failed to remind me, in the words of old Lembarde, that it is always to Cambridge "the scole of Eton sendeth her ripe fruite."