ety-matches," which but yesterday, alas! they would have paid us to
bury somewhere! Of course there were wide possibilities of economy in
this direction--the one match often putting the kettles to boil in half
a street. The waste in the matter of pipe-kindling had to be modified,
and the mediaeval makeshift of flint and steel restored. The fierce rays
of _Sol_, through the _media_ of our monocles, were also utilised to
light cigars. What else on Saturday? Yes, Mafeking, they said, was
fighting on still; and Generals Buller and Warren had forded the Tugela,
_en route_ to Ladysmith. That their plunge might stimulate Methuen to
burn his boots and brave the turgid waters of the Modder, was the
fervent wish of Kimberley at the end of fourteen weeks of irksome,
emaciating duress.

CHAPTER XV

_Week ending 27th January, 1900_

The whirligig of the enemy (time, not the Boer, not the "Law") had again
carried us to the beginning of another week. The Sundays were now
exceedingly dull, and on the particular Sabbath with which I am dealing
little worthy of record came within the sphere of my observations. I
shall therefore--in the absence of matter of graver import--take
advantage of its Sunday silence to say a word or two about the _Diamond
Fields' Advertiser_. The views of the besieged in regard to their local
print had undergone a change. They had at one time been proud of their
paper. It had formerly been conducted on well-defined principles; and it
was its departure from these principles to the _status_ of an "Organ"
that preached, but which at the frown of a Draconic Colonel practised
not its articles--it was this that brought down upon its head the wrath
of the local democracy. The authorities had for a while permitted the
paper to publish war-scraps; but whether it was due to a tendency on the
Editor's part to expand these allowances, the privilege was withdrawn
and scraps were proscribed. Even the fiction in the columns of our
journal was subjected to a rigid censorship; and when the Public had
expected it to be voicing their protests against the Russian government
of the day, the paper was virtually in Slavonic hands and controlled by
the _Czar_ himself. Its eight large pages had been reduced to four
small ones, which became better known as the "Official Gazette" of the
district. But though we read in it garrison orders from time to time,
the three-penny novelette of the town would have been a more fitting
desig