In this tale I have left the battlefields of history, and have written
a story of adventure in Australia, in the early days when the bush
rangers and the natives constituted a real and formidable danger to the
settlers. I have done this, not with the intention of extending your
knowledge, or even of pointing a moral, although the story is not
without one; but simply for a change a change both for you and myself,
but frankly, more for myself than for you. You know the old story of
the boy who bothered his brains with Euclid, until he came to dream
regularly that he was an equilateral triangle enclosed in a circle.
Well, I feel that unless I break away sometimes from history, I shall
be haunted day and night by visions of men in armour, and soldiers of
all ages and times.
a story of adventure in Australia, in the early days when the bush
rangers and the natives constituted a real and formidable danger to the
settlers. I have done this, not with the intention of extending your
knowledge, or even of pointing a moral, although the story is not
without one; but simply for a change a change both for you and myself,
but frankly, more for myself than for you. You know the old story of
the boy who bothered his brains with Euclid, until he came to dream
regularly that he was an equilateral triangle enclosed in a circle.
Well, I feel that unless I break away sometimes from history, I shall
be haunted day and night by visions of men in armour, and soldiers of
all ages and times.
If, when I am away on a holiday I come across the ruins of a castle, I
find myself at once wondering how it could best have been attacked, and
defended. If I stroll down to the Thames, I begin to plan schemes of
crossing it in the face of an enemy; and if matters go on, who can say
but that I may find myself, some day, arrested on the charge of
surreptitiously entering the Tower of London, or effecting an escalade
of the keep of Windsor Castle! To avoid such a misfortune which would
entail a total cessation of my stories, for a term of years I have
turned to a new subject, which I can only hope that you will find as
interesting, if not as instructive, as the other books which I have
written.
G. A. Henty.
