I was browsing through a bookdealers list (I collect books) from a bookshop in Denver, Colorado, USA, when I spotted:
Ernest Young - Adventures Among Hunters and Trappers, 1912. Prize Bookplate.
Ernest Young was, of course, our first headmaster, and was already a travel writer and geographer - his classic book "Kingdom of the Yellow Robe" about Siam was first published in 1898 and has been reprinted up to modern times.
I wrote back and gently enquired if the "Prize Bookplate had a motto 'virtus non stemma' " - and indeed it had, and so I purchased the book.
It arrived, bound in half leather, in Harrow County green, with the school crest and motto in gold on the outside front cover. Inside is the bookplate, printed THE COUNTY SCHOOL, HARROW. Virtus non Stemma. Prize. It is inscribed "Head Boy (Form IIb) A. E. Amor July 25th 1913."
After the title page - ADVENTURES AMONG HUNTERS & TRAPPERS - ROMANTIC INCIDENTS & PERILS AMONGST ANIMALS BIG & SMALL IN ALL PARTS OF THE WORLD BY ERNEST YOUNG, B.Sc., F. R. G. S Author of "The Kingdom of the Yellow Robe" &c. &c. &c. with sixteen illustrations ... 1912" - is a page printed "Dedicated to the boys of the County School, Harrow."
Ernest Amor, it will be remembered, became Chairman of Kodak. How his prize ended up in a bookshop in Colorado, USA is a mystery.
Jeff Maynard