I do not know that I need say more about my personal appearance, to me not a very attractive subject, but the fact remains that they called me "handsome Humphrey" at the University, and I was the captain of my college boat and won many prizes at athletic sports when I had time to train for them.
Until I went up to Oxford my father educated me, partly because he knew that he could do it better than anyone else, and partly to save school expenses.

The experiment was very successful, as my love of all outdoor sports and of any small hazardous adventure that came to my hand, also of associating with fisherfolk whom the dangers of the deep make men among men, saved me from becoming a milksop.

For the rest I learned more from my father, whom I always desired to please because I loved him, than I should have done at the best and most costly of schools.

This was shown when at last I went to college with a scholarship, for there I did very well indeed, as search would still reveal.
Here I had better set out some of my shortcomings, which in their sum have made a failure of me.

Yes, a failure in the highest sense, though I trust what Stevenson calls "a faithful failure." These have their root in fastidiousness and that lack of perseverance, which really means a lack of faith, again using the word in its higher and wider sense.