Love goes towards love, as schoolboys from their books;

and the man is regarded almost as un-English who would have the world believe that there are British boys for whom the acquisition of knowledge has almost the same attraction as for their heroes in fiction has the acquisition of somebody’s apples, or the tormenting of helpless animals.

The fault is not with the world but with the silly writers of goody-goody stories, who have so emasculated and effeminated the boy who works hard and holds his head high that it is now well-nigh impossible to hear of such an one in real life without instantly setting him down as an intolerable prig.  These writers have committed the greatest crime against their creations that authors can commit—­they have made them non-human.  If the stories about George Washington had narrated how on one occasion he laughed uproariously, or how he once ate too many mince-pies, he might have escaped the lamentable and unjust reputation which seems likely to be his fate for another aeon or two.  That boys can be good and human everybody knows, and the man who loves Tom Sawyer and sneers at Eric would be the first to flog and abuse his son if he bore a closer resemblance to the former than to the latter.

Baden-Powell as a boy was delightful.  A grin always hovered about his face, and the Spirit of Fun herself looked out of his sharp, brown eyes.  He was for ever making “the other chaps” roar; keeping a football field on the giggle; sending a concert-audience into fits.  But he was just the sort of schoolboy of whom there would be no incidents to record.  Men who knew him and lived with him in those days remember him, perhaps, more distinctly than any other boy of their time, and at the merest mention of his name their eyes twinkle with delight.  “Oh, old Bathing Towel.  George! what a funny beggar he was.  Remember him?  I should think I did.  Stories about him?  Well, I don’t remember any just now, but dear old Bathing Towel——!” and off they go into another roar of laughter.  All they can tell you is how he used to act and recite, and play all manner of musical instruments, or, if you drag them away from the stage, how he used to rend the air with his terrible war-whoop at the critical moment in a football match.

But although this is how it strikes a contemporary, Baden-Powell was in deadly earnest when it was a matter of books and ink-pots.  He might be the funny man of the school, but he was also one of the most brilliant.  He gave his masters the impression of a boy who really delighted in getting on; who was really keen about mastering a difficult subject.  His vivacity and freshness, his energy and vigour, helped him to take pleasure in work which to another boy, less physically blessed, would have been an irksome toil; but though his body may have projected him some distance upon his way, it was his soul that really carried him triumphantly through.  The spirit of Baden-Powell in those days was what it is now—­supremely intent upon beating down obstacles in his path, and resolute to do well whatever the moment’s duty might be.  So the boy who was setting a football field on the roar at one moment, at the next would be sitting with fixed eyes and knit brows, “hashing” at Latin verses, as serious as a leader-writer hurling his bolts at the European Powers.