"Such were his crimes; so, of course, I wrote back and said that he was the boy for me.
"His father brought him down from town, a bright-eyed, fair-haired boy of twelve or thirteen, who had no suspicion that I knew all about his iniquities. When his father departed, I had a little of the usual talk with a new boy, about work and games and so on; and then I asked him what he meant to be. 'I mean to be like Livingstone,' he replied. I had seen Livingstone when he came to Cambridge, in 1857, I think, and spoke in the Senate House, appealing for a Universities Mission to Central Africa; so we talked Livingstone and Africa, and Natural History. I soon saw that he had the fire and the modesty of genius and was a delightful creature.
"He was quite exemplary as a young member of the House and School, so far as I knew. He was 'late' for chapel sometimes in long summer afternoons; how much late I did not inquire. I guessed what he was about and he did his lines like a man.
"He was extraordinarily acute in all his senses—sight, hearing, smell, taste. He asked me, for example, one day to some brook a few miles away to watch kingfishers. We crawled up warily when we got near the spot. He could see exactly what they were catching and carrying, from a distance at which I could only see a bird flying. His power of hearing was also more than acute. One day at our table in hall I told a lady who sat next me that a nightingale had been heard singing in somebody's spinney. We decided to drive down to it after dinner, and on reaching the spot, we found Selous already there, roaming about in the spinney. I called to him, and he came to the edge of the wood. 'What are you doing there?' 'Looking for a nightingale's nest, sir.' 'But why here?' 'I heard you say at dinner that one was singing here.' Now he was sixteen or eighteen feet away, at a different table, and we were fifty in hall, talking and clattering with knives and forks. And yet he heard me distinctly. He could disentangle the voices, and listen to one, as a dog can follow one scent among many. Then as to smell and taste. He told me that when he shot a new bird with his 'tweaker'—you will learn presently what the 'tweaker' was in his case—he always tasted its flesh.
"He was extremely accurate in his observation, and in his estimates of distance, size, number, etc.; in fact, he was the most truthful observer I can imagine; free from all exaggeration and egotism, and he retained this simplicity and accuracy and modesty all his life. He was a beautiful runner, a football-player with singular dash and a first-rate swimmer; but he left Rugby at seventeen, I think, so that he did not win any great athletic distinctions at school.
"But I must tell you some stories about him.
"On some great public occasion of rejoicing the streets of Rugby were decorated with flags. When my man called me at 7.0 a.m., he said, 'I think I ought to tell you, sir, that there is a broomstick and duster showing in every chimney in the house.' 'Very well,' I replied, 'go and tell Mr. Selous that they must be taken down by 12 o'clock.' He had let himself down at night out of the dormitory window that looks into the study quadrangle and had collected brooms and dusters from the studies. He had somehow clambered up waterpipes and gutters and roofs, broomsticks and all; and when I went out people in the road were admiring our extemporized decorations—duster flags and broom-handles sticking out of the chimney pots at all angles. There was another flag, of the same nature, perilously near the top of the taller of two poplars that stood close to the boys' entrance. They were all taken down by dinner-time; I never enquired how, or by whom.
"There used to be a vine, trained up the south face of the house, and one year, I think in 1868, it bore an extraordinary crop of grapes which ripened beautifully. One day at dinner I told the head of the dormitory on the second floor, over the drawing-room, that they might gather all that they could reach from the window. I forgot Selous as this was not his bedroom, but the dormitory did not forget him. An aunt of mine was sleeping in the bedroom below, and she remarked next morning at breakfast that she heard, or thought she heard, voices at night quite close to her windows. Had anything happened? I went out into the garden to look, the vine was stripped more than half-way down the windows of the first floor. It was Selous, of course; they let him down somehow. I was told that he filled a pillow-case with grape-bunches, and feasted the House. Mr. C. K. Francis, the well-known Metropolitan Police Magistrate, his contemporary in my house, has told this story of Selous to the readers of the 'Daily Telegraph' (January 15th), and says that they let Selous down in a blanket.
"Of course Selous was an active member of the School Natural History Society. I must tell you about a meeting of that Society. Dr. Walter Flight, who was in charge of the minerals of the British Museum, was staying with me, and I asked him whether he would like to come as a visitor to an ordinary meeting of our Society. I knew it would be an interesting one. Selous had shortly before raided the heronry on the island at Coombe Abbey. He swam the pond from the end distant from the house, climbed several trees, took one egg from each nest, swam back and was chased, but escaped by sheer speed. Lord Craven complained to the H.M. The H.M. warned our Society pretty plainly, and our committee censured Selous. At the meeting we were going to attend, Selous, as was widely known, was going to make his defence. The room, the old Fifth Form Room, next to the School House Dining Hall, was crowded. Flight and I squeezed in. 'Are your meetings always like this?' he asked. 'You will see,' I replied, 'that the school takes a great interest in natural history.' 'I am very glad to see this,' he said.
"Exhibits were made, a paper read, and then began the real business of the evening—the official condemnation by our president, Mr. Kitchener, and Selous' spirited defence.