nd partly as the
result of prohibitory liquor laws, we became the most absolutely sober
army Europe ever put into the field. Prior to our coming, no liquor
might at any price be sold to a native; and there were in the whole
country no beer shops, but only hotels bound to supply bed and board
when required, and not liquor only, with the result that this fair
land has long been almost as sober as it is sunny.

The sale of intoxicants to the troops was equally restricted, and no
liquor could be obtained by them except as a special favour on special
terms. Absolutely the only concert or public meeting held in
Bloemfontein while the Guards were in the neighbourhood was in
connection with the Army Temperance Association, Lord Roberts himself
presiding; and concerning him the soldiers playfully said, "He has
water on the brain." Through all this weary time of waiting our troops
were as temperate as Turks, and much more chaste; so that the
soldiers' own pet laureate is reported to have declared, whether
delightedly or disgustedly he alone knows, that this outing of our
army in South Africa was none other than a huge Sunday School treat;
so incomprehensibly proper was even the humblest private and so
inconceivably unlike the Tommy Atkins described in his "Barrack-room
Ballads," Kipling discovered in South Africa quite a new type of Tommy
Atkins, and, as I think, of a pattern much more satisfactory.
Nevertheless, in one small detail the laureate's simile seems gravely
at fault. In the homeland no Sunday School treat was ever yet seen at
which the girls did not greatly outnumber the boys; but on the African
veldt the only girl of whom we ever seemed to gain even an occasional
glimpse was--"The girl I left behind me."

[Sidenote: _All Fools' Day._]

During our stay in Bloemfontein a part of the Guard's Brigade was sent
to protect the drift and broken railway bridge across the Modder River
at "The Glen"; which was the first really pretty pleasure resort we
had found in South Africa since Table Mountain and Table Bay had
vanished from our view. Here the Grenadier officers had requisitioned
for mess purposes a little railway schoolhouse, cool and shady, in the
midst of the nearest approach to a real wood in all the regions round
about; and here I purposed conducting my usual Sunday parade, but
with my usual Sunday ill-fortune. On arrival I found the whole
division that had been encamped just beyond the river had suddenly
moved fur