nded
for the fight which never came.

In the Matabele campaign he was quick to notice the manner in which
private soldiers tended some wounded nigger children. "It did one
good," he says, "to see one or two of the Hussars, fresh from
nigger-fighting, giving their help in binding up the youngsters, and
tenderly dabbing the wounded limbs with bits of their own shirts
wetted." During that haunting march with the Shangani Patrol, when the
rice was cut down to a spoonful, and a horse had been killed to supply
the men with food, Baden-Powell found time to note that "the men are
singing and chaffing away as cheerfully as possible while they scoop
the muddy water from the sand-hole for their tea." And he loves the
soldier for all his little oddities. How he laughed over the man who
carried skates in his kit through India, and the man in the African
desert with a lot of fish-hooks in his wallet! And how he likes to
chaff them out of their failings. At Aldershot one of his most popular
pieces as an entertainer is that in which he impersonates the
barrack-room lawyer. While the audience is waiting for the next
singer, there is a noise heard in the wings, and then a loud voice
cries, "I tell yer I will go on. It's no use of you a-stoppin' of me,
I'm agoin' to tell 'em all about it, I am," and then with a great
clatter a private soldier comes bungling on the stage, tunic open,
hair all over the place, and cap at the back of his head. "Beg
parding, sir," he says to the officer in the front row, "but these
here manoeuvres has all been conducted wrong, they have, and I
warn't to tell the company how they ought to have been managed. Now if
I had had the runnin' of this concern, and not the Field-Marshal, I
should have first of all"--etc. etc. The audience yells with delight,
and if Baden-Powell really should show up, in his own inimitable
fashion, the mistakes of a general (which, by the way, he is quite
capable of doing), the audience and the general too, if he is there,
laugh all the more.

Men go to him with their private cares and troubles. They know that
the man who can make them laugh till the tears stream down their
faces, can at the right moment show a serious face, and give ear to
the humblest tale of trouble. He makes it his business--and surely it
is part of an officer's business--to know all about his men's lives,
their families, their favourite sports, their objects in life, and the
way in which they spend their leave. W