" FRODDY " 77 



mud and require three or four people to pull them out. You can 

 imagine the miserable state everybody gets into before the end. 



Readers who are not old Rugbeians may need the 

 explanation that the brook in question winds about so 

 much that it can be crossed again and again in a point-to- 

 point line, and the school steeplechases used to be run 

 over it. 



Referring to my remarks on my letters which demanded 

 food, I may quote the following, written on i5th October 

 1865: 



Send me a hamper when you get home, with anything in it 

 that will keep. Of course you can send a few things that won't, 

 as we can eat them first. If you send a pie, it had best be in a 

 pie-dish, as they so soon go mouldy without, being kept in rather 

 a damp place. We have got quite sick of jam, since we have had 

 so much of it lately. 



I should add here that we used to be given very small 

 beer, known as " swipes," for dinner and supper, but my 

 trusty Doctor Ryott would not hear of it for me, and. I 

 always had my own special cask of Rhodes's beer from 

 Thirsk, as well as the morning glass of Port which used to 

 be administered to me by the matron, Mrs Lee. This, 

 no doubt, seems rather dreadful to modern educationists, 

 but it happened as I write, and I am alive and well to tell 

 the tale. 



It may be thought that I should ere now have written 

 something of our headmaster, Dr Temple, but at that 

 early period I regarded him simply with awe and had not 

 come to know him as I did in later years. His voice was 

 alarmingly harsh, but his eyes were always very kind, 

 and " Froddy," as he was called, was really one of the 

 most successful headmasters ever known, Arnold not 

 excepted. My first meetings with him were when I had 

 to take up copies of Latin verses or other composition, 

 recommended for inscription in his album, and for every 

 three of such copies he gave you a guinea prize at 

 Billington's, the booksellers. He would always read 



