ur come
into play when Baden-Powell is fighting for the mastery with an
undisciplined horse.

But while he was proving himself a good sportsman, B.-P. was getting
to know about soldiering, paying great attention to regimental work
and loyally working to please his captains. Not only did he devote
himself to the ordinary routine of regimental work, but in spare
moments he began to read up special subjects, and it seems only
natural that one of the first of these subjects should be Topography.
The result of this labour was that in 1878 Baden-Powell passed the
Garrison Class, taking a First Class and Extra Certificate (Star) for
Topography. During the lectures he distinguished himself by making
inimitable caricatures, for which he was sometimes taken to task by
the authorities. Also he could not help poking fun at the examiners in
the papers themselves. Asked, "Do you know why so-and-so, and
so-and-so?" Baden-Powell would write an interrogative "No."

After distinguishing himself in this way, B.-P. came back to England,
in order to go through the Musketry Course at Hythe. Here he did
equally well, taking a First Class Extra Certificate, and a year after
we find him as Musketry Instructor at Quetta. But this book is not
intended to be a "biography" of Baden-Powell, and I shall beg leave to
relate no chronological record of his military career. We are telling
his story as a story, hoping to interest every English schoolboy who
has arrived at years of discretion, hoping to make them keen on sport,
keen on exercise, keen on open-air life, and hoping, in addition, to
be of real practical use to those whose eyes are now set hungrily on
Sandhurst.

In a later chapter it will be seen how Baden-Powell interested himself
in his men's welfare, and how he encouraged them to become real
soldiers--learned in things other than mere boot-cleaning and
button-polishing. Here we behold him as the gay and dashing Hussar, a
bold sportsman, a keen soldier, and one of the most popular men in
India.

His popularity, it is only fair to say, was earned very largely by
that gift for acting which had won him fame as a schoolboy. Whispers
that he was going to act in the _Area Belle_, or one of Gilbert and
Sullivan's operas, travelled with amazing rapidity from station to
station in India, and every performance in which he took part was
attended by all the Europeans for miles round. Indeed his fame as an
actor travelled so far afield that the man