General Gordon lived at Woolwich, long noted for its arsenal. It is only nine miles out from St. Paul's, and is an object of interest at any time. But in times of war it fairly bristles with activity. Small wonder, then, that a boy coming from such a line of ancestors and born, almost, in a gun-carriage should have chosen to become a soldier. With any other environment Chinese Gordon would have become a preacher. Of course, the name "Chinese," was not the way he was christened. "Charles George" are his baptismal names--but few people know that fact now. He was the youngest child in a large family, five sons and six daughters. This calls to mind other large families from which sprang famous soldiers--Napoleon, for example. Charles was born in 1833, after his father had reached middle age, and had settled down in the piping times of peace. The elder Gordon had won his spurs in the Napoleonic Wars. We know very little of the boyhood of Charles Gordon, beyond the fact that during the first ten years of his life he lived at the Pigeon House Fort, in Dublin Bay, next in the Fort of Leith, and later on the Island of Corfu. All these places are spots of great natural beauty--a vista of stretching sea or mountain-top which the frowning fortress only aided in romance and charm. Many a long ramble must the boy have had, storing his memory with these quiet, sylvan pictures. Not far from Leith was the famous battlefield of Prestonpans, where, nearly a century before, his great-grandfather had been taken prisoner. From his father or brothers he must have heard many a wild tale of the Highlanders and their exploits. As a child, however, this did not appeal to him. He loved nature in her quiet moods best. He was timid and nervous, to such an extent that the firing off of the cannon, when the colors were lowered at sundown, would make him jump half out of his boots. It was only by the sternest sort of self-control that he obtained the mastery of himself. Not that Charles Gordon was ever a coward. Morally he was ever-unflinching. He abhorred a lie, and was always ready to stand up for his convictions. But his physical frame was made of weaker stuff--much to his own vexation. One of the few early stories related of him is that he had difficulty in learning to swim. He could not get the stroke and he had a horror of being in water over his head. So he made a practise of deliberately throwing himself into deep water, when out with his mates, knowing that it was "sink or swim," or a case of getting pulled out. He was then only nine.