n of untidiness so
far as his own dress was concerned and doggedly became a model
for still younger officers. Not that his dress was fine. While
there were others to help he would not spend his small means on
himself, and he would arrive home in frayed garments that he had
grown out of and in very tarnished lace. But neat as a pin. In
the days when he returned from
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his first voyage in the Antarctic and all England was talking of him,
one of his most novel adventures was at last to go to a first-class
tailor and be provided with a first-class suit. He was as elated by
the possession of this as a child. When going about the country
lecturing in those days he traveled third class, though he was
sometimes met at the station by mayors and corporations and red
carpets.

The hot tempers of his youth must still have lain hidden, but by
now the control was complete. Even in the naval cadet days of which
unfortunately there is so little to tell, his old friends who remember
the tempers remember also the sunny smile that dissipated them. When
I knew him the sunny smile was there frequently, and was indeed
his greatest personal adornment, but the tempers never reached
the surface. He had become master of his fate and captain of his
soul.

In 1886 Scott became a middy on the _Boadicea_, and later on various
ships, one of them the _Rover_, of which Admiral Fisher was at
that time commander. The Admiral has a recollection of a little
black pig having been found under his bunk one night. He cannot
swear that Scott was the leading culprit, but Scott was certainly
one of several who had to finish the night on deck as a punishment.
In 1888 Scott passed his examinations for sub-lieutenant, with
four first-class honours and one second, and so left his boyhood
behind. I cannot refrain however from adding as a conclusion to
these notes a letter from Sir Courtauld
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Thomson that gives a very attractive glimpse of him in this same
year:

'In the late winter a quarter of a century ago I had to find my
way from San Francisco to Alaska. The railway was snowed up and
the only transport available at the moment was an ill-found tramp
steamer. My fellow passengers were mostly Californians hurrying off
to a new mining camp and, with the crew, looked a very unpleasant lot
of ruffians. Three singularly unprepossessing Frisco toughs joined
me in my cabin, which was none too large for a single person. I was
then told that yet ano