This is the life which has most attractions for Baden-Powell, and if he had not been locked up in Mafeking all through those precious months at the beginning of the war, it is no idle guesswork to say that we should have lost fewer men and fewer guns by surprise and ambuscade.
In this flannel-shirt life, however, Baden-Powell is not always on the serious emprise of soldiering.

Most of his holidays, at any rate while he is abroad, are spent in shirt-sleeves.

His periods of rest from the duties of soldiering are given over to expeditions which carry him far away from the smooth fields and trim hedges of civilisation; he is for ever trying to get face to face with nature, living the untrammelled romantic life of a hunter, independent of slaughterman, market-gardener, and tax-collector.

In his boyhood, as we saw, he loved few things more than "exploring," and now he has but exchanged the woods of Tunbridge Wells for the Indian Jungle and the Welsh mountains for the Matopos.
Happy the man who carries with him into middle-age the zest and aims of a clean boyhood.

There is something invigorating, almost inspiring, in the contemplation of Baden-Powell's meridian of life.