e are other absent beggars in the everlasting fight,
And not the least of these your Yeoman, please.
He's a casual sort of Johnnie, and his casualties are great,
And on the veldt and kopjes you will find him,
For he's still on active service, eating things without a plate,
And thinking of the things he's left behind him.

I'll spare you the chorus.

The accompanying sketch, perhaps, needs a little explanation. To be
brief, the British Army feels aggrieved at the praise bestowed on the
C.I.V. Regiment, and its early return to England. To hear a discussion
on our poor unoffending and former comrades is to have a sad exhibition
of envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness.

Any amount of fellows have got bad teeth, and when one considers the
trek-ox and the army biscuit, one cannot be surprised. A lance-corporal
of ours went before the doctor last week on this score; he had
practically no teeth, and has been _sent into Pretoria on a month's
furlough_. It is generally circulated in the squadron that the
authorities expect fresh ones to grow in that time.

_Tuesday, January 1st, 1901._

I saw the New Year in--in bed. There is little or no news, when we do
get some it is usually unsatisfactory. I suppose you know we have no
paper in Pretoria; the best they can do for us is to let us buy for a
tikkie the _Bloemfontein Post_, always four days old, and its contents!
The same brief, ancient and censored war news, the inspired leading
article, a column on a cricket match between two scratch Bloemfontein
teams, a treason trial, advertisements for I.L.H. and other recruits,
and that is about all. Well, here's "A Happy New Year to us all."

There are some terrible dunder-headed beings in this world of ours. I
saw one the day I came through Pretoria to this hospital. We were
acquaintances in London, and with the eye of a hawk he picked me out of
a load of dirty, khaki-clad wretches, and pounced on me with "What on
earth did you come out here for?" I told him "to play knuckle bones."

In the tent next to this is a quiet man with a gun-shot wound in his
knee. He is Vicary, V.C., of the Dorset Regiment. You may remember he
won it in the Tirah campaign for a deed immeasurably superior to that of
Findlater's; he saved an officer's life by killing five Afridis,
shooting two and bayoneting and butt-ending the rest--a messy job. He is
a small, quiet man, and wild horses could