*U\K ®tber Uom Smitb' iss 



Eton, whence it was intended that he should proceed to 

 Oxford with a view to taking clerical orders. But Tom 

 Smith, whilst undoubtedly endowed with good natural 

 abilities, showed such a decided preference for sport over 

 scholarship, that his father, himself an enthusiastic sports- 

 man and a bold rider to hounds, recognised that the 

 Church was not Tom's vocation, and wisely abandoned 

 the intention of making his eldest son a parson. 



Young Smith's early life seems to have been mostly 

 spent in narrow escapes from death. He was left once 

 suspended by one arm from the roof of his father's cart- 

 house at a distance of over thirty feet from the ground, 

 owing to the ladder, on which he had climbed up to 

 get a sparrow's nest, slipping away from under him. 

 But he had the presence of mind to sidle along from 

 rafter to rafter, till he reached a waggon half full of 

 hay, into which he dropped. 



On another occasion his head got in the way of a 

 sportsman aiming at a rabbit, and down went Tom, 

 apparently dead. He recovered, however, but his escape 

 from death was marvellous, for a full charge of shot was 

 taken out of his head and afterwards shown to him in a 

 wine glass. 



At the time when Napoleon's threatened invasion of 

 England sent a great wave of patriotism surging over 

 the country, Tom Smith was bitten with militar}- 

 ambition, and at thirteen was in a cadet corps of 

 volunteers, whilst two years later he became an ensign 

 in his father's company of the Loyal Hampshire 

 Fencibles. From that moment Thomas Smith was so 

 keen to enter the army that his father promised to use 

 all his influence to procure him a commission. And a 

 soldier Tom would certainly have become had not his 



