The allusion is, of course, to "Bill," the Harrow term for the
roll-call. These lines, for me, embody all that is best in the so-
called "Public School spirit."
In my time the distant view from the chapel terrace was
exceedingly beautiful, whilst the immediate foreground was
uncompromisingly ugly. A vegetable garden then covered the space
where now the steps of the "Slopes" run down through lawns and
shrubberies, and rows of utilitarian cabbages and potatoes
extended right up to the terrace wall. But beyond this prosaic
display of kitchen-stuff, in summer-time an unbroken sea of green
extended to the horizon, dotted with such splendid oaks as only a
heavy clay soil can produce. London, instead of being ten miles
off, might have been a hundred miles distant. Now, for fifty years
London, Cobbett's "monstrous wen," has been throwing her tentative
feelers into the green Harrow country. Already pioneer tentacles
of red-brick houses are creeping over the fields, and before long
the rural surroundings will have vanished beyond repair.
"Ducker," the Harrow bathing-place, has had scant justice done to
it.
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