plosion.
We can think of nothing else. All the tragic stories we hear from
friends and read in the papers fill our days with sadness.

A friend of my cook's was visiting a neighbour at Fordsburg. She stood
on the threshold, an infant in her arms, and a three-year-old boy at
her side. The explosion came. Her baby was killed outright, and the
child clinging to her skirts dropped with one leg ripped entirely from
the socket. The mother was not even scratched. Another woman was
sewing on a sewing machine. After recovering from the shock, she found
herself unhurt, her house collapsed, and the sewing machine entirely
disappeared. Most of the houses fell outward and not inward, and
those persons near the explosion describe their experience of the
shock as falling asleep or going off in a trance.

The society women of Johannesburg are doing noble work. Dr. Murray
says it is astonishing how intelligently alert and self-sacrificing
they are proving themselves to be. A story has been told me of a Boer
woman who was fearfully mangled; she bore the necessary surgical
operation with fortitude, but wept copiously when a green baize
petticoat, which she had recently made out of a tablecloth, was taken
off. Only a solemn promise from Mrs. Joel, her lady nurse, to keep the
garment safe until her recovery, appeased her outcries.

I asked the officer in charge yesterday if I might see some of my
friends who called, the sentinels having thus far denied them
entrance. 'Yes, but there are some women in the place whom I do not
care to have come here.' 'And who might they be?' I asked. 'The wives
of the Reformers,' he answered. 'Then,' I flashed out, 'I do not care
to accept _any_ favours at your hands; those women are my personal
friends, and the only persons under existing circumstances whom I wish
to see.'

(We were under this gentleman's surveillance for some time, and he
afterwards proved very friendly, _so my husband says_, but I never
spoke to him again. I did not like him. His voice was unpleasant and
he had a high, hard nose, and I do not fancy people with hard, high
noses.)

A poor little two-year-old baby was found wandering among the ruins at
Fordsburg, with only a slight scratch on her wrist. It is supposed
that she has been lying unconscious under the debris.

A Malay woman was discovered cowering over the ruins of what was once
her home, crooning to a dead child at her breast.

The Netherlands Railroad Company, _under wh