T the commencement of another year of editorial duties and responsibilities, we wish to thank all those kind friends who by their help have rendered our continued existence possible. Their names are to be found on the next page. For sometime indeed that existence has been most precarious and often has it seemed that we must sit down and write the epitaph of The Oldhallian "died from lack of nourishment." But somehow or other we have scrambled on and now at last we hope that the turn of the tide has come for us. But, and herein lies the point of our discourse, it is only just turning and whether it will lead on to fortune' remains to be proved. To speak plainly, we have received sufficient to wipe out the debt which, as a reference to our Balance Sheet will show, was owing from last year. We have also a little capital in hand. But unless we are to be still more deeply in debt at the end of this year we must still have a greatly increased circulation, though we should be content with something less than what an old boy has wished for us, viz., a circulation only equalled by the Daily Telegraph or TitBits. Therefore we ask all our friends to do their best to get us new subscribers, and if they will do this we shall enter on the year with light hearts. We are sorry not to be able to give, as promised, a photograph of the Old Boys' team. But we have two excuses to offer. First only seven old boys turned up for the match, and secondly the weather was so unpropitious as to put photography altogether out of the question. We have therefore had to fall back upon the Schoolroom, our view of which is from a negative kindly taken by Mr. Woodcock. For our next number we are preparing photographs of Mr. Weston. Since our last notice the football eleven have added three more to their list of successes. scoring seventeen goals to one. We hope that these easy victories over very weak teams will not make them too confident in their powers. The result would be simply disastrous when they came to play a good team. Of late the football games on Tuesdays have been discontinued and hockey introduced in their place. It was thought that football might get rather stale towards the end of the season, and that the interest in it would be better kept up by only playing three days a week. It would be a thousand pities were our exceptionally good record to be spoiled just at the end by lack of interest, carelessness, indolence or kindred causes. We hope the eleven will play up hard right to the very end. We acknowledge with thanks the receipt of the Henley House School Magazine for December, 1884 and the Novaportan for February, 1885. The following appeared in the Wellington Journal for December 20th, 1884 : : "The Oldhallian, the journal of the Old Hall School, Wellington, a remarkably well conducted little gazette, has recently introduced one or two novel features which make it prominent and well deserving of notice. A photograph now appears in each number, that in the present number being a very fair likeness of Dr. Cranage, and in the next there is to be an ambitious attempt to represent "The Old Boys' Team," while the text of the production receives, in "Our Oxford Letter," a decided acquisition." Most back numbers of The Oldhallian may still be obtained. Those for 1884 are sixpence each; all previous ones are threepence. The following are subscribers for 1885. Stanley Fletcher, Esq. T. Leake, Esq. Mrs. Kidley Mrs. Truss J. C. Lloyd, Esq. T. Radcliffe, Esq |