e than 8000 letters announcing the safe
arrivals of the men were dispatched, many hundreds of them being
written for the men by various members of the committee. This work was
most highly appreciated by General Buller; and Colonel Riddell of the
3rd K.R. Rifles left in Mr Lowe's hands L208, 18s. belonging to the
men of his regiment to be sent to the soldiers' relatives. Then, only
a few days before his death at Spion Kop, he wrote expressing his
personal thanks for the excellent work thus done on behalf of his own
and other battalions.

[Sidenote: _The other way about._]

About the same time that the Guards reached the Vaal their comrades on
the right, under General Ian Hamilton, arrived at Heilbron, and here
the Rev. R. Matterson at once opened his house and his heart to
welcome them. In face of the dire difficulty of dealing satisfactorily
with the sick and wounded in so inaccessible a village, Mr and Mrs
Matterson received into their own home two enteric patients belonging
to the Ceylon Mounted Infantry, one of them being a son of the
Wesleyan minister at Colombo; but here, as in so many another place,
while the civilians did what they could for the soldiers, the soldiers
in their turn did what they could for the civilians. At Krugersdorp,
so our Welsh chaplain told me, he arranged for a crowded military
concert, which cleared L35 for the destitute poor of the town, mostly
Dutch. So here at Heilbron the troops, fresh from the fray, and on
their way to further furious conflicts, actually provided an open-air
concert for the benefit of a local church charity in the very
neighbourhood, and among the very people they were in the very act of
conquering. It is a topsy-turvy world that war begets: but most of all
this war, in which while the kopjes welcomed us with lavish supplies
of explosive bullets, the towns and villages welcomed us with
proffered fruit and the flaunting of British flags; the troops, on the
other hand, seizing every chance of entertaining friends and foes
alike with instrumental music, comic, sentimental, and _patriotic_
songs. Even on the warpath, tragedy and comedy seem as inseparable as
the Siamese twins; in proof whereof here follows the programme of one
such soldierly effort to aid a local church charity in the Orange Free
State:--

POPULAR PROMENADE CONCERT
TO BE HELD ON
_SATURDAY, 22nd DECEMBER 1900, at 4.45_ P.M.

By the kind permission of Lieut.-Col. the Hon. A. E. DALZELL
and the