4 Early Tears and Cheltenham College [1884

given to him in skinning- and stuffing-tools, took
his first lessons in taxidermy. He much preferred
a country ramble to school games, and the wel-
fare of the occupants of his cabinet and aquarium
was more absorbing than any lessons. Yet he
appreciated the discipline of his preparatory school
at Clifton where he says that he was * made to
work and not allowed to look about him.' So
anxious was he to learn that he chose to sit with
his back to his favourite c beasties * which included
not only the usual collection of silkworms, mice,
butterflies, eggs, shells and fossils, but curiosities
of all kinds such as grass-snakes, newts, frogs,
beetles and other insects, with ingenious devices
for housing them. The masters fortunately looked
with lenient eyes on the scientific vagaries of their
boys, with the result that there was a regular
menagerie in the schoolroom.

He took kindly to the sports, however. As he
wrote long afterwards, at the start of the great
Southern Journey in 1902, * my strength is in my
legs,* A letter home at the end of a term, when
he had won prizes in the high jump and long
jump, is characteristic:

the chap who might have beaten me has measles. Pm
sorry he's got them because he's rather a jolly chap*
, , . Every fellow finds that when he is here he can
think of such a lot to do in the hols, but when they come
he never does anything; and I feeling the same have

written down a lot of things jthat I can do very easily

• i i ~

indeed,

(K

Though he was quite definite in the matter of
his special wants, they were even in his boyhood
simple and never extravagant, and he took pleasure