ll, sometime member of Parliament for
Liverpool, had already entered upon a distinguished career when, to
the regret of all who had marked his untiring devotion to Imperial
affairs, his early death robbed the country of a loyal son. The other
brothers of our hero are Frank Baden-Powell, who took Honours at
Balliol, and is a barrister of the Inner Temple, as well as a noted
painter, and Baden F.S. Baden-Powell, Major in the Scots Guards, whose
war-kites at Modder River enabled Marconi's staff to establish
wireless telegraphy across a hundred miles of South Africa. Among
this family of young lions there was one little girl, Agnes, as keen
about natural history as the rest, to whom her brothers were as
earnestly and as passionately devoted as ever was Don Quixote to his
Dulcinea.

And now to little Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell in
knickerbockers and Holland jerkin.

CHAPTER III

HOME LIFE AND HOLIDAYS

Baden-Powell is now called either "B.-P." or "Bathing Towel." To his
family he has always been Ste. This name, a contraction of Stephenson,
was found for him by his big brothers in the days when home-made
soldiers and birds'-nesting were life's main business.

Ste, who we must record was born at 6 Stanhope Street, London, on the
22nd February 1857, and had the engineer Robert Stephenson for one of
his godfathers, was educated at home until he was eleven years of age.
His parents had a great dread of overtaxing young brains, and lessons
were never made irksome to any of their children. Ste learned to
straddle a pony very soon after he had mastered the difficult business
of walking, and with long hours spent in the open in the lively
companionship of his brothers he grew up in vigorous and healthy
boyhood. He had an enquiring mind, and never seemed to look upon
lessons as a "fag." He was always "wanting to know," and there was
almost as much eagerness on the little chap's part to be able to
decline _mensa_ and conjugate _amo_ as he evinced in competing with
his brothers in their sports and games. Such was his gentle, placid
nature that the tutor who looked after his work loved to talk with
people about his charge, never tiring in reciting little instances of
the boy's delicacy of feeling and his intense eagerness to learn. Mark
well, Smith minor, that this is no little Paul Dombey of whom you are
reading. B.-P., so far as I can discover, never heard in the tumbling
of foam-crested waves on the level sands