PREFACE

A school has been very correctly termed a little world of itself. Within it the temptations and struggles and triumphs are as real as those in the larger world outside. They differ in form, not in character, and become for many a man the foundation upon which later success or failure has been built.

It is perhaps wise for me to explain that the boys whose lives in the Weston school have been outlined in this book are "real" boys, and that every fact recorded actually occurred much as it has been described. If the results of the struggles and successes shall prove to be a stimulus to other boys who may be facing similar problems, and if the failures shall serve the purpose of a warning word and teach the younger readers what things are to be avoided and how they are to be overcome, the author will certainly feel well repaid for his labor.

Unfolding life is ever a marvelous sight, and the interest with which we follow those who are trending now the paths once familiar to us never fails those still young in heart while old in years.

The recently developed interest in the work and lives of the younger people, is one of the marvels of this closing century. Greater than any of the discoveries of science, nobler than any of the great movements of the times is that renewed interest in the possibilities of the young life all about us, undeveloped it is true, but filled with the promise of power.

So many times our eyes are opened when it is too late to behold the vision. We may preach, and warn, and urge, and exhort, and scold, but nothing will take the place of actual experience. It is natural for each young heart to wish to learn and test life for itself.

However, I am not without hope, that the friendship and sympathy for Ward Hill and his friends may not be entirely without their unspoken lessons, and that before my readers there may arise for each one the vision of the man who is yet to be.

When all our platitudes are ignored or forgotten it is still true that youth is the seed-sowing time, and what a man sows, as well as the measure of his sowing, determines the character and the abundance of the harvest he will reap. We do well, then, to strive at least to scatter the seed at the time when the seed can be sown. The soils may vary, the seed is the same.

I trust that the interest, the pride, the sorrow, and pleasure which the writer has felt, as he has followed the courses of these boys, may in a degree, at least, be shared by his readers, and also may not be entirely without their effects in inspiring a desire to profit by their examples.

Elizabeth, N. J.

EVERETT T. TOMLINSON.