the Agricultural Show Yard. The Relief Committee are doing all
possible to assuage their sufferings. Poor people! many of them are
utterly crushed, and sit about dazed and listless; while the little
children, unconscious of the despair surrounding them, frolic about
with the chickens, and make mud-pies as if nothing had happened. But
for the thoughtless elasticity of childhood, how few of us could live
to grow up!




VIII


The preliminary trial dragged its undignified course through the
Courts with a fortnight's interruption, because a youth named
Shumacher refused to give his opinions on a certain subject to the
Attorney-General, and was committed to prison for contempt.

The High Commissioner was going through genuflexions before the Boer
President. Peace, peace, at any price! at the cost of broken promises,
humiliating compromises, and the lives of sixty-four Reformers, if
need be.[8]

Mr. Chamberlain had caught the infection, and was salaaming across the
world to Mr. Kruger, like a marionette out of a box. Thoughtful people
began to wonder if he were swung by a heavy weight, which was unknown
to us. Sir William Harcourt was giving the House of Commons, in
England, ill-founded and flippant assurances that 'the Uitlanders
desired no interference from the outside, whether British or other,