him to offer me the unique felicity of bringing a draft to this merry
land, has promptly gazetted my promotion, and antedated it to April
2nd, so that I find myself a Double Coy. Commander and no end of a
blood. My importance looks more substantial on paper than on parade:
for of the 258 men in "A" Double Coy. I can never muster more than
about thirty in the flesh. You see so many have overeaten themselves
on the ice and fresh vegetables which Austen dwelt upon in the H. of
C. or have caught chills from the supply of punkahs and fans (_ib._)
that 137 have been invalided to India and twenty-five more are sick
here. Then over fifty are on jobs which take them away from the Coy.
and from ten to twenty go on guards every day. However my dignity is
recognised by the grant of a horse and horse allowance.

Unless it is postponed again, the great battle up-river should be
coming off to-day. I hope it is, as it is the coolest day we've had
since April. In fact it is a red-letter day, being the first on which
the temperature has failed to reach 100° in this room. You wouldn't
believe me how refreshing a degree 96° can be.

We have also heard fairy-tale like rumours of an advance of Four
Thousand Yards in France, but I have not seen it in black and white
yet.

Having so few men available there are not many parades, in fact from 7
to 8 a.m. about four times a week is all that I've been putting in.
And as a tactful Turk sank the barge containing all my Company's
documents sometime in July there is an agreeable shortage of office
business. So I am left to pass a day of cultured leisure and to
meditate on the felicity of the Tennysonian "infinite torment of
flies." I read Gibbon and Tennyson and George Eliot and the _Times_ by