Page:Heroes of the telegraph (IA cu31924031222494).djvu/151

 after Admiral Fleeming, one of his father's patrons. He was born on March 25, 1833, in a building of the Government near Dungeness, his father at that time being on the coast-guard service. His versatility was evidently derived from his mother, who, owing to her husband's frequent absence at sea and his weaker character, had the principal share in the boy's earlier training.

Jenkin was fortunate in having an excellent education. His mother took him to the south of Scotland, where, chiefly at Barjarg, she taught him drawing among other things, and allowed him to ride his pony on the moors. He went to school at Jedburgh, and afterwards to the Edinburgh Academy, where he carried off many prizes. Among his schoolfellows were Clerk Maxwell and Peter Guthrie Tait, the friends of his maturer life.

On the retirement of his father the family removed to Frankfort in 1847, partly from motives of economy and partly for the boy's instruction. Here Fleeming and his father spent a pleasant time together, sketching old castles, and observing the customs of the peasantry. Fleeming was precocious, and at thirteen had finished a romance of three hundred lines in heroic measure, a Scotch novel, and innumerable poetical fragments, none of which are now extant. He learned German in Frankfort; and on the family migrating to Paris the following year, he studied French and mathematics under a certain M. Deluc. While here, Fleeming witnessed the outbreak of the Revolution of 1848, and heard the first shot. In a letter written to an old schoolfellow while the sound still rang in his ears, and his hand trembled with excitement, he gives a boyish account of the circumstances. The family were living in the Rue Caumartin, and on the evening of February 23 he and his father were taking a walk