words that belonged only to the long ago sprang to his lips.  A year’s savings had gone.  The promised trip to the old home could not be taken.  And a vision of the old mother waiting for her boy, and waiting in vain, brought a big lump in his throat which it was difficult to choke down.  The lads stood and looked at him.  What would he do?  And then that strange fire died out of his eyes, and his hands relaxed their grasp, and with the light of love shining out from his face he said, ‘Praise the Lord,’ and came into the meeting to tell how God was flooding his soul with His love.

But the number of such as he in comparison with those who still pollute the air with their oaths is small indeed, and we have sorrowfully to admit that ours has been a swearing army upon the veldt.

Gambling, too, has been very rife, and if there was a penny to spin Tommy would spin it.  This, of course, is not by any means true of all regiments, and as one of French’s cavalry naively put it, ’You see, sir, we had not even time to gamble!’

There are some brutes even among our British soldiers, and sad stories reach us of men who have robbed the sick in hospital, and stripped the dead upon the battlefield.  But swearing and gambling apart, and these horrible exceptions left out of the reckoning, what noble fellows our soldiers have proved themselves!

=The Patience of our Soldiers.=

Their patience has been wonderful.  We have all heard of the patient ox, and away there on the veldt he has patiently toiled at his yoke until he has laid down and died.  But the patience of the private soldier has exceeded the patience of the ox.  He has undergone some of the severest marches in history.  He has endured privations such as we can hardly imagine.  He has lain wounded upon the veldt sometimes for three or, at any rate in one case, for four days.  He has in his wounded state borne the terrible jolting of the ox-waggon day after day.  If you talk to him about it, he will not complain of any one, but will make light of all his dreadful sufferings and merely remark that you cannot expect to be comfortable in time of war!

And how much he has endured!  The difficulties of transport have made it impossible for him to receive more than half rations, and sometimes not more than a quarter rations for days together.  On the march to Kimberley, for instance, General French’s troops for four days had nothing to eat but what they could pick upon the hungry veldt.  Stealing has been abolished in South Africa—­it is all commandeering now!

‘Where did you get that chicken, my lad?’ asks the officer in angry tones.

‘Commandeered it, sir,’ says Tommy, and the officer is appeased.

And there was plenty of commandeering done during that dreadful march, or the men would have died of starvation.  A strange spectacle he must have presented as he rode along.  His kettle slung across his saddle, a bundle of sticks somewhere else, a packet of Quaker oats fastened to his belt, and a tin of golden syrup dangling from it.  These he had provided for himself from the last dry canteen he had visited, and often even these could not be obtained.