RUGBY MEMORIES.

Dominion, Volume 4, Issue 1097, 8 April 1911, Page 7

RUGBY MEMORIES.

' PIUNCIPAL IN''"TOM BROWN" 'FIGHT INTERVIEWED. . ; No Homeric combat lias half the invest for English hoy readers Hint the fight lietween "Torn. Brown and Slogger \\ 11liams" possesses. , ' Hwhes, who wrote Tom Browns Schooldays"; 'Dr. Arnold, whoso appear-' ance scattered .tho ring; the very echoes of tho practice of school lighting .itself, have long passed away, hut, wonderiul to relate, the two protagonists in the great (Hit are vet hale and strong. Ihe one is the Rev. Chancellor 0. .Tones, who celebrated liis ,87th birthday la=t week; and the other .the Rev. Augustus Orlebar. pi VViliington, Bedfordshire, who is still m active work., - ■ , -Mr Orlebar entered the.lowest form at Riigbv in 1838, when"Dr. Arnold was in his •' prime. As 'lie talked 'to a Daily News" reporter recently, in the Tectory library he was full of' reminiscences of life at the old school. # r) "No.man.who was at-Rugb.v in my day, lie said, "knows what it is to feel tlie cold. "We got, iiiured to it there. A fare at each end of a long corridor wns supposed to hent the vow of studies that lay between. Earlv roll-call. by. .candle light in winter was. a iitting preparation for an Arctic journey. At first, however, boys . used to swoon before they becamc accustomed to it." t To Mr. Orlebar, as to all old boys ot his day, Arnold was Rugby and Rugby was Arnold. "Hughes gives a better picture of him ai a'personality than Stanley, ho said. "I can. still see hi= strong athletic figure and fine head as ho walked with great •strides beside" the pony-carriage in which Mrs.. Arnold, who was an invalid, n»cd. to ride. At the end of my last term Dr. Arnold was strong and visomn* wV>n lie said good-bvo to me'the day before 1 west up to play for the'eleven in tho .standing fixture against Jlarvlebone. Just when "the match was over the news began to spread through Hie field that, the Dpctpr was doad;" • • In the description of the Mnrylobone match at the end of "Tom Brown' there i« a pillage in which Mr. Orlebar figures. He was the boy who at cover-point caught out the most formidable Mar.vlebone batter, and turned tho tide in favour of the school.-