As a boy, Charlie was
remarkable for his high spirits, pluck, and love of mischief.
Destined for the Artillery, he was sent to the Academy at
Woolwich, where some other characteristics made their appearance.
On one occasion, when the cadets had been forbidden to leave the
dining-room and the senior corporal stood with outstretched arms
in the doorway to prevent their exit, Charlie Gordon put his head
down, and, butting the officer in the pit of the stomach,
projected him down a flight of stairs and through a glass door at
the bottom. For this act of insubordination he was nearly
dismissed-- while the captain of his company predicted that he
would never make an officer. A little later, when he was
eighteen, it came to the knowledge of the authorities that
bullying was rife at the Academy. The new-comers were questioned,
and one of them said that Charlie Gordon had hit him over the
head with a clothes-brush. He had worked well, and his record was
on the whole a good one; but the authorities took a serious view
of the case, and held back his commission for six months. It was
owing to this delay that he went into the Royal Engineers,
instead of the Royal Artillery.
He was sent to Pembroke, to work at the erection of
fortifications; and at Pembroke those religious convictions,
which never afterwards left him, first gained a hold upon his
mind.
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