their butter.  Speaking generally, the ’Xmas breakfast consisted of black tea, khaki bread, and golden syrup—­an appetising rainbow on a “merry” morning.  The menu at dinner was little better; it stirred up sad recollections of the past.  Pudding (worthy of the name) was nowhere.  We had imitations; apologies for puddings, plain—­and hard—­as a pikestaff, were everywhere.  They were not essentially cheap, because eggs, the chief ingredient, were fabulously fresh.  As for the geese that laid not, well, they did not cackle either; their bones had long since been mumbled.  But there were self-denying citizens who actually preserved some beer and stout for Christmas Day!  These good stoics—­stoical only to be epicurean—­were proud of their will-power.  Indeed they ostentatiously affected intoxication and horrified everybody—­with their bad acting.

For the men who were obliged to spend the day in camp there was not much to live for in the eating line.  So everyone thought, at least, when the fight for leave of absence had begun.  But Mr. Rhodes, with characteristic thoughtfulness, sent a lot of nice things to the camps, which changed the situation and made men regret their anxiety to spend Christmas at home.  The quantity of what was styled Cape brandy consumed in camp baffles computation.  The effects of the swim were bad, too—­not because there were so many drunk—­Christmas comes but once a year—­but because of the awful aftermath.  Numbers were ill, very ill, indeed; and it was a blessing, all things considered, that none were dead.  In the camps, life, although boisterous, was not exactly merry; but it was a Christmas, as was afterwards declared with chivalrous unanimity, than which nobody had ever spent a better.  Nobody had ever felt so sick the next morning, and that was most likely the standard by which the measure of the merriment was gauged.

His Excellency’s congratulations were the innocent cause of a little friction.  Had it not been for his example the “compliments of the season” might have been left unsaid; good taste and good sense would have conspired to let them lapse.  There was something incongruous about wishing a man a happy Christmas.  Let a man be ever so sympathetic and cordial; let him mean—­not wisely but too well; let his accents ring true as steel:  it was still difficult to convince one that there was no suggestion of sarcasm in the greeting.  But the Governor had changed the situation; he had set the fashion—­had reminded us that the fashion with its conventions and courtesies was an element, a blessing, of our civilisation; and that we were not permanently outside the pale.  It was nevertheless trying to be taken by the hand and wished “a merry Christmas” by every brazen Napper Tandy in the town.  It was, as I have said, all the fault of the Governor; the custom was adhered to in deference to His Excellency rather than with malice prepense on the part of a friend to indulge in