wouldn't be denied. I've seen them come on and grab
at the muzzles of the rifles. We did a lot of fighting behind rough
breastworks, but sometimes they would rush us then. We lost thirty
officers out of thirty-four before we were finished. Well, when I came
home and went about among the clubs, the fellows used to say to me,
'What was this affair of yours up in the hills? We had no particulars
except the fact that you were fighting.' And that expedition cost ten
times as many men as your Egyptian one, besides causing six weeks of
almost constant fighting; yet not a newspaper had a word to say about
it! We never grumbled much--it was all in the day's work; but it shows
how men's luck varies."

There spoke the old fighter, "Duty first, and take your chance of the
rest." True; but could not one almost wish that those forlorn heroes who
saved our frontier from savage hordes might have gained just a little of
that praise so dear to the frivolous mind of man? It was not to be; the
dead men's bones have long ago sunk into the kindly earth, the wind
flows down the valleys, and the fighters sleep in the unknown glens and
on far-distant hillsides with no record save the curt clerk's mark in
the regimental list--"Dead."

When I hear the merry pressman chatting about little wars and proudly
looking down on "mere skirmishes," I cannot restrain a movement of
impatience. Are our few dead not to be considered because they were few?
Supposing they had swarmed forward in some great battle of the West and
died with thousands of others amid the hurricane music of hundreds of
guns, would the magnitude of the battle make any difference?

Honour to those who risk life and limb for England; honour to them,
whether they die amid loud battle or in the far-away dimness of a little
war!

_September, 1888._

_THE BRITISH FESTIVAL_.

Again and again I have talked about the delights of leisure, and I
always advise worn worldlings to renew their youth and gain fresh ideas
amid the blessed calm of the fields and the trees. But I lately watched
an immense procession of holiday-makers travelling mile after mile in
long-drawn sequence--and the study caused me to have many thoughts.
There was no mistake about the intentions of the vast mob. They started
with a steadfast resolution to be jolly--and they kept to their
resolution so long as they were coherent of mind. It was a strange
sight--a population probably equal to half that of Scotland