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Almost a Hero, Or, School-days at Ashcombe
Almost a Hero Or Schooldays at Ashcombe Author:Robert Richardson Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IIL HARD TO STAND. " For boys are complex things, With ways as various and intricate As those of statesmen or philosophers." JlSHCOMBE HOU... more »SE was situated in the midst of a country than which our island can show few scenes whereon the eye rests with fuller satisfaction—a happy, smiling English landscape. The ground in front of the house sloped slowly to the bright smooth waters of the river Wenderley, which, as every one knows, flows into the harbour of Porthaven. The surrounding country is softly undulating; rounded grassy hills, on which the sheep depasture; still little valleys, shadowed by copses of elm andoak; breadths of rich meadow-land, where the dark red Devon kine stand knee-deep in the sweet grass; a wide prospect of waving corn-fields; here and there a hamlet snuggled in a cleft between infolding hills; here and there a snug homestead, a white speck amid the green; in the distance the line of the Dartmoor hills, dim against the horizon, rounding in the landscape. Ashcombe House was about two miles from the town of Porthaven. It was a boarding and day school. Most of the boarders remained at school from the Monday till the Friday, returning home on the afternoon of that day, and remaining with their friends till the following Monday. All these of course lived in Porthaven. There were a few of the boarders whose homes were at some distance, and these lived at the school during the whole quarter. The day scholars walked to and from the town daily. Dennis Kavanagh, as the reader will have gathered from the foregoing chapter, was a day scholar atAshcombe House. After he had been a week at school he had had a pretty good opportunity of judging of how he was going to like it, and the week's experience was not reassuring or hopeful. He w...« less