they might get the wrong half!  The meat man did not like the boycott at all; he wanted to get rid of his surplus sirloins, and the asceticism of those who preferred to thrive on black tea enabled him to invite the unparticular people to pick and choose the rib—­the equine rib—­they liked best.  The authorities, to do them justice, had acted straightforwardly in differentiating between the two animals; no deception in the way of palming off the one for the other was permitted.  But in the confusion things got mixed; and the poor butcher, who was only human, succumbed in spite of himself to strong temptation.  Whether he was governed by the motive of doing a little wrong for sake of a great right is beside the question.  The great right was done.  In veterinary circles the meat dispenser was relished as a rather daring “perverter,” while hundreds of smart people began to enjoy their pseudo-beef.  And when afterwards informed of the “mistake” they did not seem to care, but went on serenely pandering to the butcher’s genial ambidextrousness.

On Thursday a good many shells fell in the neighbourhood of Scholtz’s Nek.  With an energy which few had hitherto been disposed to give him credit for possessing, the enemy continued to engross himself in establishing, as it were, a fixity of tenure.  This growing feeling of security which animated our friends was most depressing.  True, it was something to hear that the Boers at Ladysmith had been repulsed with heavy loss—­if it were true.  It was something; but it was not much.  Privations had developed our bumps of Provincialism; the claims of Empire took a secondary place, as also did the fortunes of Ladysmith.  One authority stated that forty-five thousand Boers had been killed or wounded in Natal.  But these figures, to be correct, would necessarily have embraced the warriors outside Kimberley—­who were much alive!  The figures were afterwards reduced to four, and eventually to two.  But these important amendments were not proposed and carried for weeks after the events to which they related, by which time we were so deep in the slough of despond over something else that we could not sink deeper.  We were still in the dark as to the progress of the campaign.  No accurate accounts of the disasters, mishaps, and reverses that marked its opening stages were placed before us.  Brief and garbled references to Stormberg, Colenso, and Nicholson’s Nek were allowed by “Law” to illumine the columns of the Press—­getting lightly treated as trifles of no consequence.  There existed a small, astute minority who hazarded unpleasant opinions of these “trifles.”  Our Teutonic friends candidly expressed the view that England, to save her Empire, must shortly sue for peace; but though they were just as anxious as anybody else to see the Column come in, too much weight was not attached to what foreign fellows said.  The Advertiser, too, though ever sanguine in its editorial columns, was sometimes indiscreet in its humour.  It gave