flowers don't smell, the "blooming" birds don't
sing, and the "blooming" fruit don't taste (this latter charge is not
quite correct), and he wants to get back to the "blooming" fog and smoke
of London; all this, and he has only been at it five months.

THE CAREER OF AN UNTRUTH.

Clements is not dead, and Delarey and his friends are not captured.

I am telling you the latest rumours and anti-rumours, as this letter
progresses.

And yet the man I had the first version from had had it from an R.A.M.C.
Sergeant, who had it on the most reliable authority of the commandant's
orderly, who had heard the commandant tell it to the P.M.O. He had also
been corroborated by a man who had seen the man who took it down from
the heliograph. Also one of the hospital runners had heard Dr. ---- tell
Dr. ----, and a friend of his had a friend who knew a man on the
officers' mess, who had seen it up in orders, distinctly.

A Tommy came in just now and said "Hullo, Corporal!" I shook his flipper
weakly and tried the dodge of pretending to recognise him. But I had to
give it up, and admit I could not for the moment recognise him, and
thought he had made a mistake. To which he replied he had not, and
didn't I remember the soap. I did.

About two months or more ago, having halted at mid-day at some fontein
or other _en route_ for Rustenburg, Whiteing and I went down to the
nearest stream to have the usual wash. There we found heaps of fellows
washing; but, alas! there was a great dearth of soap. A Northumberland
man asked me if I could sell him some, and I gave him a small chunk. The
demand was great, and there was practically no supply. When we got back
to our lines, Whiteing, ever forgetful, discovered he had left his
precious brown Windsor behind. It was too late to go back to try and
find it, so he gave up all hopes of ever seeing it again. The next day,
as we were riding through the infantry advance guard of the Border
Regiment, one of the fellows shouted to me, asking if I had lost any
soap the day before. I replied "No," and then recollected Whiteing's
loss added that a friend of mine had. My infantry friend thereupon
promised to bring it round in the evening, which he did. In this manner
we became acquainted with him. I mention this incident just to show what
a really good sportsman the true Thomas is. Here was soap in great
request: we were strangers to him, having merely chatted with him and
the others as we washed in the mud a