We lived, in the days that I can first recall, in the Manor House on Barnes Common, a picturesque old-fashioned building that still remains, though shorn of the larger grounds which were our delight as children. The garden and fields, now partly built over, formed then a little earthly paradise to a large family, and the open Common covered with gorse and bracken served as a part of our wider playground. There we roamed at will, and it was there, with each returning October, that we used to gather the material for a great bonfire with which we annually celebrated the fifth of November. Sallying forth from our field-gate that abutted upon the Common, armed with a bill-hook surreptitiously filched from the gardener’s tool-basket, there we used to pile up our wheelbarrow with the gorse we had no right to cut, keeping a careful eye the while, lest the sudden approach of the policeman should set us within the grip of the law. These raiding expeditions sometimes brought us into collision with the boys of the village, whom we only knew under the generic title of “the cads,” and with whom we waged unceasing warfare. Especially did we dread their onslaught as the fifth of November approached, for we knew well it was ever their malignant purpose to fire the pile before the appointed night had arrived. It was our custom, therefore, to keep watch and guard for several preceding nights, and sometimes when we heard sounds heralding the approach of the enemy across the fields we would send rockets whizzing along the grass--a defensive operation we discovered to be greatly dreaded by even the boldest of “the cads.” The choice of an appropriate Guy was always an important point of consideration. One year, I remember, it was Bomba, and during the days of the Indian Mutiny a great effigy of Nana Sahib was consigned to the flames, which gathered added intensity by the insertion into the midst of the huge pile of gorse and dried wood of a seasoned tar-barrel annually purchased by my father as his contribution to the revels of this well-loved day. The valorous deeds of our soldiers in the Crimea and the nameless horrors of the Mutiny which followed so closely at its heels stand among my most vivid recollections of those earlier days. I was born in the year 1849, and I can still remember an elder cousin in his scarlet uniform taking his way across the foot-path that leads to Barnes station, to start for the war in the Crimea. With the events of the Mutiny our sympathies were even more actively engaged. We were closely allied at that time with a family, one of whom, General Henry Marshall, but lately commanded the Artillery in South Africa. They had lived in India, and had relatives still there at the time of the outbreak, and the terrible news as it reached England had therefore an enthralling interest for us all.