nd food as I have here--to give away I mean,
for it was something wonderful to see what it meant to them. Three
troopers came into the dining room yesterday and asked if they could
buy some tea and were turned out so rudely that it seemed to hurt them
much more than the fact that they were hungry: I followed them out and
begged them to come back to my verandah and have tea with me but they
at first would not because they knew I had witnessed what had happened
in the hotel. They belonged to a very good regiment and they had been
starved for four months. But in spite of their independence I got them
to my porch. I had just purchased at awful prices a few delicacies
like sugar and tobacco, marmalade and a bottle of whiskey. So I gave
them to them and I never enjoyed anything so much-- The poor yellow
faced skeletons ate in absolute silence still fighting with their pride
until I told them I was an American and was a canteen contractor's
friend-- Then I gave them segars and it was too pitiful-- In our
column, if you give a man something extra he says a lot and swears it's
the best drink or the best segar or that you're the best chap he ever
met-- Just as I say it to them when they give me things. But these
starved bodies tried to be very polite and conversational on every
subject except food--when I offered them the segars which could only be
got then at a dollar twenty-five a piece (they had not cost me that as
I had bought them in Cape Town for two cents apiece!) What has Dad to
say to that for economy? They accepted them quite as though it was in
Havana--and then leaned back and went off into opium dreams-- Imagine
the first segar after three months. I am out here now on a bluff, with
two trees in front and great hills with names historical of the siege
of Ladysmith--names which I refuse to learn or remember--I am perfectly
comfortable and were it not for Cecil perfectly content-- If she were
only here it would be perfectly magnificent-- I have a retinue that
would do credit to the Warringtons in the Virginians-- Three Kaffir
boys who refuse to yield to my sense of the picturesque and go naked
like their less effete brothers, two oxen and three ponies, a little
puppy I found starved in Ladysmith and fed on compressed beef tablets.
I call her Ladysmith and she sleeps beside my cot and in my lap when I
am reading--I have also a beautiful tent with tape window panes,
ventilators, pockets inside, doors that loop up an