ell's score as a schoolboy-marksman,
how much greater interest should there be in Baden-Powell's hit as
orator? It is not always the ready actor who makes the best polemical
speech, but Baden-Powell had a reputation at Charterhouse as a debater
as well as fame as a mimic. That the boy was more than ordinarily
intelligent may even be seen in the abbreviated report of one of his
speeches preserved in the school magazine. The subject of debate was
that "Marshal Bazaine was a traitor to his country," and Baden-Powell
spoke against the motion. The report says that he "appeared to be
firmly convinced that the French plan of the war was to get the
Prussians between Sedan and Metz, and play a kind of game of ball with
them. By surrendering, Bazaine saved lives which would be of use
against the Communists. As there was only a government _de facto_ in
Paris he was compelled to act for himself." But even eloquence of this
order was not sufficient to persuade Charterhouse that Bazaine
deserved no censure. The motion was carried by a majority of 1.

In those days, too, Baden-Powell was famous as an artist, and his
sketches, with the left hand, were admired and commented upon by
masters as well as boys. One can fancy with what great reverence B.-P.
the caricaturist must have looked upon Thackeray's pencil in the
Charterhouse Library--the pencil of the great man whose shilling he
was then hoarding with the jealousy of a miser.

Baden-Powell's quality as a schoolboy may be judged by his later life.
Few things are so pleasant about him as his intense loyalty to his
old school. Before leaving India for England in 1898, he wrote to Mr.
Girdlestone, asking his old House Master to send to his London address
a list of all the interesting fixtures at Charterhouse, so that he
might see what was going on directly he arrived in England. Whenever
he is in the old country he pays a visit to Godalming, and one of his
last acts before leaving for South Africa was to call on Dr.
Haig-Brown at the Charterhouse, where he first went to school, to bid
his old Head a brave and cheerful farewell. And what was more English,
what more typical of the public-school man, than the letter B.-P. sent
to England from bombarded Mafeking, saying that he had been looking up
old Carthusians to join him in a dinner on Founder's Day? In India he
never allowed the 12th of December to pass unhonoured, and whether he
be journeying through the bush of the Gold Coast Hinterl