Success in Life

The characters in which I first knew Canon T Farrar is one in which I think he is not familiar to his American admirers, —that of the author of a series of charming stories for boys, which, like “Tom Brown”, while they are inspired by the loftiest spirit, have the virile glow of actual boyhood. They were written, as such books must be, from actual experience, and were a part of the fruits of many years of intimate and sympathetic association with boys in a great English public school.Born in Bombay, Canon Farrar himself was educated at King Williams College in the Isle of Man, and at Kings College, London; and he not only had his own career as a schoolboy to draw on for these stories, but, becoming an assistant master at Harrow under Dr Vaughan and Dr Butler, the life of that foundation was opened to him in all its varieties.Harrow is, perhaps, more typical than Eton. It was to it that a distinguished American in London sent his sons, because it is, he said, the only school where no special honour is attached to rank; and there is an old story that when a scholar happens to be a duke he receives three extra kicks from his fellows. Later Canon Farrar became head master of Marlborough College; and he held this post with great distinction from February, 1871, till April, 1876...FRO THE BOOKS.