ith my father, which was
signalised by the walk and talk among the bracken in Richmond Park.

I ought to say that I had always had a great admiration for my father.
He seemed to me clearly superior in a thousand ways to other men. But
never before the Richmond episode had there been personal sympathy,
nor yet any loyal feeling of fellowship, mingled with this admiration.

I remember very distinctly the pride I felt in my father's personal
appearance. He was not a dandy, I think; but there was a certain quiet
nicety and delicacy about his dress and manner which impressed me
greatly. The hair about his ears and temples was silvery grey; one of
the marks of his superiority, in my eyes. He always raised his hat in
leaving a shop in which a woman served; his manner of accepting or
tendering an apology among strangers was very grand indeed. In
saluting men in the street, he had a spacious way of raising his
malacca stick which, to this day, would charm me, were it possible to
see such a gesture in these rushing times. The photograph before me as
I write proves that my father was a handsome man, but it does not show
the air of distinction which I am assured was his. And, let me record
here the fact that, whatever might be thought of the wisdom or
otherwise of his views or actions, I never once knew him to be guilty
of an act of vulgar discourtesy, nor of anything remotely resembling
meanness.

In these days it is safe to say that the very poorest toiler's child
has more of schooling than I had, and, doubtless, a superior sort of
schooling. I spent rather less than a year and a half at the Putney
Academy, and that was the beginning and the end of my schooling.
Before being introduced to the Academy, I was a fairly keen reader;
and that remained. At the Academy I was obliged to write in a copy-book,
and to commit to memory sundry valueless dates. There may have
been other acquisitions (irrespective of ear-tweakings and various
cuts from a vicious little cane), but I have no recollection of them;
and, to this day, the simplest exercises of everyday figuring baffle
me the moment I take a pencil in my hand. If I cannot arrive at
solution 'in my head' I am done, and many a minor monetary loss have I
suffered in consequence.

I trust I am justified in believing that to-day there are no such
schools left in England as that Academy for the Sons of Gentlemen, in
Putney. As a training establishment it was more suitable, I think, for