CHAPTER III.
HOME LIFE AND HOLIDAYS Baden-Powell is now called either "B.-P." or "Bathing Towel." To his family he has always been Ste.

This name, a contraction of Stephenson, was found for him by his big brothers in the days when home-made soldiers and birds'-nesting were life's main business.
Ste, who we must record was born at 6 Stanhope Street, London, on the 22nd February 1857, and had the engineer Robert Stephenson for one of his godfathers, was educated at home until he was eleven years of age.
His parents had a great dread of overtaxing young brains, and lessons were never made irksome to any of their children.

Ste learned to straddle a pony very soon after he had mastered the difficult business of walking, and with long hours spent in the open in the lively companionship of his brothers he grew up in vigorous and healthy boyhood.

He had an enquiring mind, and never seemed to look upon lessons as a "fag." He was always "wanting to know," and there was almost as much eagerness on the little chap's part to be able to decline _mensa_ and conjugate _amo_ as he evinced in competing with his brothers in their sports and games.

Such was his gentle, placid nature that the tutor who looked after his work loved to talk with people about his charge, never tiring in reciting little instances of the boy's delicacy of feeling and his intense eagerness to learn.