Balliol, and is a barrister of the Inner Temple, as well as a noted
painter, and Baden F.S. Baden-Powell, Major in the Scots Guards, whose
war-kites at Modder River enabled Marconi's staff to establish
wireless telegraphy across a hundred miles of South Africa. Among
this family of young lions there was one little girl, Agnes, as keen
about natural history as the rest, to whom her brothers were as
earnestly and as passionately devoted as ever was Don Quixote to his
Dulcinea.

And now to little Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell in
knickerbockers and Holland jerkin.




CHAPTER III

HOME LIFE AND HOLIDAYS


Baden-Powell is now called either "B.-P." or "Bathing Towel." To his
family he has always been Ste. This name, a contraction of Stephenson,
was found for him by his big brothers in the days when home-made
soldiers and birds'-nesting were life's main business.

Ste, who we must record was born at 6 Stanhope Street, London, on the
22nd February 1857, and had the engineer Robert Stephenson for one of
his godfathers, was educated at home until he was eleven years of age.
His parents had a great dread of overtaxing young brains, and lessons
were never made irksome to any of their children. Ste learned to