Like all soldiers' sons, Gordon when young had plenty of opportunities of moving about and seeing different parts of the world. In many ways this roving life is disadvantageous to a lad, as in after years he can never look back to one spot as his home, and consequently he can never localise the charming associations connected with that word. A boy also suffers considerably by being moved from one school to another. On the other hand, his wits, as a rule, get sharpened by contact with new people and new circumstances. Before Gordon was seven years old, he had accompanied his father on successive moves to Dublin, and to Leith Fort. In 1840 he went to Corfu, where his father was in command of the Royal Artillery. It was here the Duke of Cambridge first made his acquaintance, as they occupied quarters next to each other, and His Royal Highness, just forty-five years afterwards, after Gordon's death, said in a speech at the Mansion House, that he remembered the little lad then. As Gordon returned to England with his mother at the age of ten, the fact that the Commander-in-Chief remembered him at all is another proof of the wonderful faculty of memory which the Royal Family are said to possess. How differently the Duke would have thought of that little fair-haired boy with the blue penetrating eyes could he have looked into the future! It was in 1843 that Mrs. Gordon brought her son to England for the sake of his education. He went to school at Taunton for a few years, and then to Mr. Jeffery's, Shooters Hill, Woolwich, preparatory to entering the Royal Military Academy. His father had been given an appointment at the Arsenal at Woolwich, so that his holidays, as well as much of his school life, were spent at that great garrison town. There was nothing about the youth at this time that indicated what his future would be. Indeed, the very energies which in after life made him undertake so much, finding no other vent, gave him a turn for mischief and fun of all sorts. Later in life, and even amid all his troubles in the Soudan, he would in his letters recall with pleasure the boyish days spent at Woolwich. * * *