Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell was born at 6, Stanhope Street, London, on the 22nd February, 1857. He was the seventh son of the late Rev. Baden-Powell, sometime Savilian Professor in the University of Oxford, and of Henrietta Grace, daughter of Admiral W.H. Smyth, K.S.F. Of his father the future defender of Mafeking can have known little; Professor Baden-Powell died when his seventh son was only three years old. He was a man of great talents, widely known as a profound student in the physical sciences and as an exponent of broad and tolerant theology, a frequent contributor of learned papers to the transactions of the Royal Society, and a whole-hearted lover of nature and of the sights and sounds of country life. One would like to know more of him, and of such intercourse as existed between him and his children. They, however, were separated from him at an early age and were left to the sole guidance and friendship of their mother. It is rarely that children have a mother so well equipped for the performance of a difficult task--Mrs. Baden-Powell is in all respects a great woman and eminently fitted to be the mother of a hero. She, like her husband, came of a stock eminent for its qualities. Her father, Admiral W.H. Smyth, was a well-known seaman of his day, and his children have all achieved eminence in one way or another. One of his sons, Warington, became Mineral Inspector to the Crown; another, Fiazzi, Astronomer Royal for Scotland; a third, General Sir Henry Smyth, after a distinguished military career, was Governor and Commander-in-Chief at Malta from 1890 to 1893. Of his two daughters, the younger, Georgina Rosetta, was married in 1858 to Sir W.H. Flower, the eminent scientist; the elder, Henrietta Grace, had previously married Professor Baden-Powell. [Illustration: A Merciful Man.]