ide our best.

[Illustration: _From a photograph taken at Pretoria, June 1900_

Rev. T. F. Falkner, M.A. Chaplain to the Forces.

Chaplain to the First Division and to the Guards' Brigade, South
African Field Force, 1899-1900]

To relieve the pressure thus created almost every public building in
the town was requisitioned for hospital purposes; schools and clubs
and colleges, the nunnery, the lunatic asylum, and even the stately
Parliament Hall with its marble entrance and sumptuous fittings. The
presidential chair, behind the presidential desk, still retained its
original place on the presidential platform; but,--"how are the mighty
fallen!" I saw it occupied by an obscure hospital orderly who was busy
filling up a still more obscure hospital schedule. The whole floor of
the building was so crowded with beds that all the senatorial chairs
and desks had perforce been removed. The Orange Free State senators
sitting on those aforesaid chairs had resolved in secret session, only
a few eventful months before, to hurl in England's face an Ultimatum
that made war inevitable, and brought our batteries and battalions to
their very doors. But now they were fugitives every one from the city
of their pride, which they had surrendered without striking a solitary
blow for its defence; while the actual building in which their lunacy
took final shape, and launched itself on an astonished Christendom,
I beheld full to overflowing with the deadly fruit of their doing. In
the very presence of the president's chair of state, here a Boer,
there a Briton, it may be of New Zealand birth or Canadian born,
moaned out his life, and so made his last mute protest against the
outrage which rallied a whole empire in passionate self-defence.

Among the more than thousand victims the Bloemfontein fever epidemic
claimed, few were more lamented than a sergeant of the 3rd Grenadier
Guards, who, according to the _Household Brigade Magazine_, had a
specially curious experience in the assault on Grenadier Hill at the
battle of Belmont, for "he was hit by no less than nine separate
bullets, besides having his bayonet carried away, off his rifle, by
another shot, making a total of ten hits. He continued till the end of
the action with his company in the front of the attack, where on
inspection it was found he had only actually five wounds; but besides
some damage to his clothing had both pouches hit and all his
cartridges exploded. He did not go to hosp