it is always tiresome and distressing to watch precocious children of
twelve aping their elders. One feels all the time that the whole
performance scarcely rises above an exhibition of highly-trained cats or
monkeys, and that the poor mites ought all to be in bed long ago.
Nevertheless, this dreary theatre was, in default of anything better,
visited again and again by British officers and others. A friend of mine
in the Guards told me with a sigh that he had actually watched the
performances of these accomplished infants for no less than seven
nights.

There are several music halls in Capetown. I have visited similar
entertainments in Constantinople, Cairo, Beyrout and other towns of the
East, but I never saw anything to match some of these Capetown haunts
for out-and-out vulgarity. There was, it is true, a general air of
"patriotism" pervading them--but it was frequently the sort of
patriotism which consists in getting drunk and singing "Soldiers of the
Queen". On one occasion I remember a curious and typical incident at one
of these music halls. Standing among a crowd of drunken and half-drunken
men was a quiet and respectable-looking man drinking his glass of beer
from the counter. One of the _habitués_ of the place suddenly addressed
him, and demanded with an oath whether he had ever heard so good a song
as the low ditty which had just been screamed out by a painted woman on
the stage. The stranger remarked quietly that it "wasn't a bad song, but
he had certainly heard better ones," when the bully in front without any
warning struck him a violent blow in the face, felling him to the
ground. A comrade of mine, a Welshman, who was standing near the victim,
protested against such cowardly behaviour, and was immediately set upon
by some dozen of the audience, who savagely knocked him down and then
drove him into the street with kicks and blows. These valiant
individuals then returned and were soon busy with a hiccuping chorus of