for showing, as one obituary notice remarked, that the progress of
modern scientific discovery, although necessitating modifications in
many of the still prevailing ideas with which the Christian religion
became encrusted in the times of ignorance and superstition, is in no
way incompatible with a sincere and practical acceptance of its great
and fundamental truths,--I like, I say, to picture this Oxford
professor on one of his walks bending over pebbles, birds' eggs, and
plants, with a troop of bright-eyed boys at his side. One begins to
think of the scent of the hedgerow, the shimmering gossamer on the
sweet meadows, the song of the invisible lark, the goodly savour of
the rich earth, and then to the mind's eye, in the midst of it all,
there springs the picture of the genial parson, tall and spare,
surrounded by his olive-branches, and perhaps with our hero, as one of
the late shoots, riding triumphant on his shoulder. It was his habit,
too, when composing profound papers to read before the Royal Society,
to let his children amuse themselves in his book-lined study, and who
cannot see the beaming face turned often from the written sheets to
look lovingly on his happy children? But, as I say, the memory of this
lovable man is blurred for his children, and the clearest of their
early memories are associated with their mother, into whose hands
their training came while our hero was still in frocks.

[Illustration: Mrs. Baden-Powell.
From a Painting by Hartmann.]

Mrs. Baden-Powell's maiden name was Henrietta Grace Smyth. Her father
was a sturdy seaman, Admiral W.H. Smyth, K.S.F., and fortunately for
her children she was trained in a school where neither Murdstone
rigour nor sentimental coddling was regarded as an essential. She was
the kind of mother that rears brave men and true. For discipline she