sticks soon made the water boil, and the Quaker oats made--tea!


=The Men in Khaki.=

As regards dress he was a picture! He started khaki-clad, and no one
could tell one regiment from another, but he was only allowed to take
the suit he wore to the front, and before long, what with marching and
sandstorms and fighting, that suit became unrecognisable as a suit. Bit
by bit it went. Tailors of the most amateur description plied their
needles and thread upon it in vain. It went! and Tommy's distress
occasionally knew no bounds. We hear of one man who at last marched into
Ladysmith with two coat sleeves but no coat; of another with not a bit
of khaki about him, but garments of one sort and another 'commandeered'
as he went along. One of the facts that impressed them most as they
marched into Ladysmith was that the garrison were clean and neatly
dressed in khaki, but that _they_--bearded, dirty, ragged--looked rather
the rescued than the rescuers!

Mr. Lowry tells how when at last he determined to have his khaki suit
washed, and retired to his tent to wait the arrival of his clothes from
the amateur laundry on the banks of the Modder, it seemed as though they
would never come, and he was fearful lest the order to advance should
arrive before his one suit returned from the wash!

But through it all our men kept cheerful. One Christian man who had
earned among his comrades the nickname of 'Smiler,' and who was wounded,
signs himself, 'Still smiling, with a hole in my back.' And this was
typical of all. During that dreadful march to overtake Cronje, the
officers of the Guards had as their mess-table on one occasion a