ferent thing
when I lived there twenty years later, and though port and Madeira were
generally on the table, the only man whom I saw habitually drink them
was Robert Browning! Possibly this is the reason the British got such a
thrashing in South Africa the other day.

After dinner at Rock Park--or, if it were to be a late affair,
before--we would have family prayers, in which the servants joined. This
was in deference to English custom; not that we were irreligious, but we
had not before been accustomed to express our religious feelings in just
that manner. All being grouped in a semicircle, my father would open the
Bible and read a chapter; then he would take a prayer-book containing
thirty or forty well-considered addresses to the Almighty, and everybody
would kneel down and cover their eyes with their hands. The "Amen"
having been reached, and echoed by every one, all would rise to their
former positions, and the servants would file out of the room. It
must have been somewhat of an effort for my father to go through
this ceremony; but I think he did it, not only for the reason above
mentioned, but also because he thought it right that his children
should have the opportunity of gaining whatever religious sentiment such
proceedings might inculcate. But I do not think that he had much faith
in the practice as an English institution. Indeed, he has somewhere
written that the English "bring themselves no nearer to God when they
pray than when they play cards."

[IMAGE: ROBERT BROWNING]

I understood long afterwards, as I did not at the time, how closely my
father and mother studied in all things the welfare and cultivation of
their children. They were not formal or oppressive about it; all went
pleasantly and with seeming spontaneity, as if in accordance with our
own desire; but we were wisely and needfully guided. We were never sent
to school during our seven years in Europe; but either we were taught
our lessons by our parents at home or by governesses. In addition to the
constant walks which I took with my father, he encouraged me to join
a cricket club in the Park, and sent me to Huguenin's gymnasium in
Liverpool, to the Cornwallis swimming-baths, and to a dancing-academy
kept by a highly ornamental Frenchman, and he bought me an enormous
steel hoop, and set me racing after it at headlong speed. Nor did he
neglect to stimulate us in the imaginative and aesthetic side. From the
date of our settlement in England to