At Aboukir and Acre | Page 3

spoken all
these languages with equal facility. He had never learned them, but
they had come to him naturally as his English had done. His mother,
never an energetic woman, had felt the heat of the climate much, and
had never been, or declared she had never been--which came to the
same thing--capable of taking any exercise, and, save for a drive in her
carriage in the cool of the evening, seldom left the house.
Edgar had, from the first, been left greatly to his own devices. His
father was a busy man, and, as long as the boy was well and strong,
was content that he should spend his time as he chose, insisting only on
his taking lessons for two hours a day from the Italian governess, who
taught his twin sisters, who were some eighteen months younger than
himself; after that he was free to wander about the house or to go into

the streets, provided that one of the grooms, either Hammed or Abdul,
accompanied him. When at thirteen he was sent to England to stay with
an uncle and to go through a couple of years' schooling, he entered a
world so wholly unlike that in which he himself had been brought up,
that for a time he seemed completely out of his element.
His father had an excellent library, and during the heat of the day the
boy had got through a great deal of reading, and was vastly better
acquainted with standard English writers than his cousins or
school-fellows, but of ordinary school work he was absolutely ignorant,
and at first he was much laughed at for his deficiencies in Latin and
Greek. The latter he never attempted, but his knowledge of Italian
helped him so greatly with his Latin that in a very few months he went
through class after class, until he was fully up to the level of other boys
of his age. His uncle lived in the suburbs of London, and he went with
his cousins to St. Paul's. At that time prize-fighting was the national
sport, and his father had, when he sent him over, particularly requested
his uncle to obtain a good teacher for him.
"Whether Edgar will stay out here for good, Tom, I cannot say, but
whether he does or not, I should like him to be able to box well. In
England every gentleman in our day learns to use his fists, while out
here it is of very great advantage that a man should be able to do so.
We have a mixed population here, and a very shady one. Maltese,
Greeks, Italians, and French, and these probably the very scum of the
various seaports of the Mediterranean, therefore to be able to hit quick
and straight from the shoulder may well save a man's life. Of course he
is young yet, but if he goes regularly for an hour two or three times a
week to one of the light-weight men, I have no doubt that when he
returns he will be able to astonish any of these street ruffians who may
interfere with him.
"Even if he is never called upon to use his fists, it will do him a great
deal of good, for boxing gives a quickness and readiness not only of
hands, but of thought, that is of great service; and moreover, the
exercise improves the figure, and is, in that respect, I think, fully equal
to fencing. Please put this matter in hand as soon as he arrives. As to

his studies, I own that I care very little; the boy speaks half-a-dozen
languages, any one of which is vastly more useful to a resident here
than Latin and Greek together. Naturally he will learn Latin. Of course
his Italian will facilitate this, and it is part of a gentleman's education to
be able to understand a quotation or turn a phrase in it. Still, it is not for
this that I send him to England, but to become an English boy, and that
your Bob and Arthur and his school-fellows will teach him."
Edgar was quite as much surprised at his cousins and school-fellows as
they were with him. The fact that he could talk half-a-dozen languages
was to them amazing, while not less astonishing to him was their
ignorance of the affairs of Europe except, indeed, of the French
Revolution--their vagueness in geography, and the absolute blank of
their minds as to Egypt. It was not until three months after his arrival
that he had his first fight, and the instructions he had received during
that time sufficed to enable him to win so easy a victory, that it was
some months before he had again occasion to use his fists in earnest.
This time it was