An Autobiography of an Ancient Athlete & Antiquarian

PREFACE I had printed the following pages, which are really a digest of the old diaries which I have kept since my schooldays, for the use of myself and my family, but, my doing so having got wind, several of my friends have asked me to let them have copies. The following pages nominally justify the title of "An Autobiography of an Ancient Athlete and Antiquary" which have placed on the cover, but they are practically only a mass of details of a busy life now fast drawing to its close. If the· book had got into the hands of reviewers, much mild sarcasm would, no doubt, have been wasted on it, and it probably would have been referred to as a small~beer Chronicle and as another " Diary of a Nobody," without the wit of the Grossmiths' version, but I decided to send out no copies for review, and the subscribed-for copies are issued on the understanding that the work 1s not to be reviewed. I shall be blamed for giving petty details, which they will rightly say, can be of little interest outside my own family, but I hope that some of the facts as to athletic and local matters which I give may be useful to future generations, just as the minor details of Pepys are to us nowadays. WALTER RYE. December, 1916.