The humour which is Baden-Powell's great characteristic is of much variety and shows itself in the most astonishing ways. It is wonderfully whimsical, and sometimes appears when one would never dream of seeing it. What a whimsical notion, for instance, to assemble the European children, on joining his regiment in India, and march them through the streets to the tune of "The Girl I left behind me," played upon an ocarina! Or to send a dispatch from Mafeking which laconically said, "All well, FOUR hours' bombardment--one dog killed." Or to present himself at a picture exhibition, and on being informed that he must leave his stick outside, to turn away and return a moment later limping so badly that the tabooed stick was perforce allowed to accompany him. Or to seat himself, a full-grown English officer, upon a kerb-stone and pretend to sob bitterly until a constable inquired as to his woes, and then to inform the astonished man that he had just fallen out of his nurse's arms, and that the unfeeling woman had gone on and left him. This sort of thing is not merely whimsical, but in the last two cases closely allied to practical joking. But it is characteristic of the man who, when Commandant Eloff surrendered to him at Mafeking, said, "How do you do?--come and have some dinner." That strong, saving sense of humour--which really means a total lack of miserable, morbid self-consciousness--must have been strong in Baden-Powell at a very early age. There is a story told of him in his very youthful days which shows that when little more than a baby his sense of humour was already strong. While staying at the seaside he had the ill-luck to fall into a somewhat deep hole in the rocks, just when the tide was coming in, and was promptly treated to a ducking, which, as he phrases it, "comed up all over my head," and made him think that he should never "tum out adain." But he fought, tooth and nail, to "tum out adain," and was met a few minutes later, a dripping and bedraggled figure, by a lady to whom he coolly explained what had happened. There was no howling and crying about the thing now that it was over--that was Baden-Powell's sense of humour. Many a long year after that we find him jotting down in his journal some particulars of a narrow escape from sudden death, or at least from serious injury. When the mule battery moved off from Beresford's position, after the fight of August 5th, 1896, during the proceedings of the Matabele Campaign, one of the mules carried a carbine strapped on its pack-saddle. The carbine had very carelessly been left loaded, and at full cock, and in passing a bush it was discharged, the bullet nearly hitting Baden-Powell, who was close behind. Most men would have made this incident the text for nauseous thankings of Providence, for self-reflection, and the like--Baden-Powell merely remarks: "Many a man has nearly been shot by an ass, but I claim to have been nearly shot by a mule." It