ive viands to take the place of
plum-puddings and mince-pies, but it is not so easy to find
substitutes for the social circles in old England, and when the time
comes round for the Christmas dance Tommy's thoughts "Return again to
the girl I've left behind me."

Moreover, it sometimes falls to the lot of soldiers and war
correspondents to spend their Christmas in most outlandish places. Mr.
Archibald Forbes has left on record (in the _English Illustrated
Magazine_, 1885) an interesting account of his own Christmastide in
the Khyber Pass.

In his graphic style the intrepid war correspondent describes the
"ride long and hard" which Kinloch and he had through the Khyber to
Jelalabad plain to fulfil "the tryst they had made to spend Christmas
Day with the cheery comrades of Sir Sam Browne's headquarter staff."
They had an adventurous journey together from the Dakka camp to
Jumrood, where Forbes left Kinloch with Maude's division.

Further on, Mr. Forbes says: "I am not prepared to be definite, after
five years, as to the number of plum-puddings forming that little
hillock on the top of my dak-gharry between Jhelum and Peshawur, on
the apex of which sat the faithful John amidst a whirl of dust. At
Peshawur the heap of Christmas gifts were loaded into the panniers of
a camel, and the ship of the desert started on its measured solemn
tramp up through the defiles of the Khyber." Then Mr. Forbes tells us
how he joined Kinloch again at General Maude's headquarters at
Jumrood. Kinloch "had not forgotten his tryst, but meanwhile there
were military duties to be done." After the discharge of these
"military duties," which included a night march to surprise a
barbarous clan called Zukkur-Kehls, Forbes and Kinloch joined General
Tytler's column on its return march to Dakka, because at Dakka they
would be nearer to their friends of Sir Sam Browne's headquarters.
"Tytler determined to make his exit from the Zukkur-Kahl Valley by a
previously unexplored pass, toward which the force moved for its
night's bivouac. About the entrance to the glen there was a fine
forest of ilex and holly, large, sturdy, spreading trees, whence
dangled long sprays of mistletoe; the mistletoe bough was here indeed,
and Christmas was close, but where the fair ones whom, under other
circumstances, the amorous youth of our column would have so
enthusiastically led under that spray which accords so sweet a
license? The young ones prattled of those impossible j