Excerpt from General Gordon and Lord Dundonald: The Story of Two Heroic Lives In childhood, Charles Gordon resided for a time in succession at Dublin, Leith, and the island of Corfu. Young Gordon showed few signs of remarkable promise in boyhood he was not strong, yet always ready for any kind of fun. At the time his father was Director of the Carriage Department in the Royal Arsenal, their home was overrun with mice a number of these were caught by the merry boy and placed in the commandant's house next door. His brother, Sir Henry William Gordon (1818 has related some stories of his boyish fondness for fun: In after-life - that is, in 1879, when in the Soudan Charles Gordon writes to one of his nieces, who was born and lived twenty years in the Royal Arsenal: I am glad to hear the race of true Gordons is not extinct. Do you not regret the arsenal and its delights? You never, any of you, made a proper use of the arsenal workmen as we did. They used to neglect their work for our orders, and turned out some splendid squirts - articles that would wet you through in a moment. As for the crossbows we had made. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.