Free The Willows and Beyond by Kenneth Grahame, William Horwood, Patrick Benson Page A

arrival. But then one morning, after a second helping of scrambled eggs and black pudding in his bedroom, Toad dipped into one of the tomes, and was fascinated by what he found there.
    Stories of hikes through the Pyrenees (child’s play), accounts of the ascent of Mont Blanc (easy) and climbs in the Zillertaler in Austria (more problematic), and a race against a killer blizzard up the north face of the Eiger (nigh impossible).
    All this, and a great deal more, Toad found he could achieve over an extended breakfast while seated in the comfort of a padded chair by his bedroom window, gazing out from time to time at the advance of autumn across the River Bank.
    “Yes, yes!” he would sigh, resting his book on his plump and contented stomach, and imagining himself leading an expedition to. .
    “Everest! I shall be its conqueror!”

    “Sir?” his butler would interrupt him. “Would you care for some fresh coffee before partaking of your midmorning bath?”
    “Yes, yes!” cried the ecstatic Toad, returning to his book. Though thus now persuaded that in theory at least hiking had a lot to commend it, Toad might very easily have got no further in his examination of the expensive equipment so impulsively bought and now safely stowed in the gun room, had his eye not alighted one day upon a book somewhat slimmer than the others, and of more austere aspect.
    “Hmmm, what’s this then?” Toad said to himself. “I don’t seem to have seen it before.”
    Even as he read the title and the author’s name, he felt a thrill of vocation and purpose, and knew at once this was the light in the hiking darkness he had been seeking.
    “Yes, O yes!” he whispered as he turned the pages, reading every word and each terse chapter with mounting speed and excitement, for here at last was a book that told him in terms he could understand how to deal — exactly how to deal — with those who refused to follow a leader’s command in matters of educational exercise: in short, those like Master Toad.
    The book was entitled Hiking For Leaders With Novices: Do’s, Don’t’s and Definitely Not’s, by Colonel J. R. Wheeler Senior, Member of the Alpine Club and Hiking Adviser to the Royal Marines School of Music (Yachting Section).
    It was that felicitous phrase “Leaders With Novices that so appealed to Toad, for a leader he felt himself to be, and with a novice he would be venturing forth. Wheeler, an ex-Indian Army officer and conqueror of the Nangha-Dhal in the Himalaya, had a good deal to say on all aspects of hiking, and was especially strong on boots, maps, thorn-proof breeches and hunting knives. He had a good section on protective headgear (against falling rocks) and goggles (against sand and snow), which he felt should be worn at all times, and an invaluable few pages on certain technicalities often overlooked in lesser tomes upon the subject, namely rope work, compass work and night-craft. But it was in his excellent writing on the art of effective leadership, about which Toad already felt himself to know a good deal, that Wheeler won his latest reader’s heart and mind.
    Wheeler’s notion of leadership was clear and to the point:

The leader is leader , and must at all times be on his guard against insubordination and the dangers of paying too much attention to the weak and feeble in his group. These must be weeded out and made an example of.
Where native porters are concerned, the leader is advised always to hire two or three extra (on my Nangha-Dhal Expedition I took on an extra porter for every four days of the journey, but conditions were extreme) so that they might be disposed of en route to encourage the others not to slacken.
The good leader will always remain in front and not allow another to take his place there, otherwise, like the African pack lion, he is done for.

    Wheeler’s advice on a range of matters was of a kind that appealed especially to one such as Toad:

It will frequently happen, and a leader should