an this, when we light the fire and, while the
kettle boils, watch the dark shadows of the hills take form,
perspective, and finally colour, knowing that there is another whole day
begun, bright with chance and interest, and free from all cares. All
cares--for who can be worried about the little matters of humdrum life
when he may be dead before the night? Such a one was with us
yesterday--see, there is a spare mug for coffee in the mess--but now
gone for ever. And so it may be with us to-morrow. What does it matter
that this or that is misunderstood or perverted; that So-and-so is
envious and spiteful; that heavy difficulties obstruct the larger
schemes of life, clogging nimble aspiration with the mud of matters of
fact? Here life itself, life at its best and healthiest, awaits the
caprice of the bullet. Let us see the development of the day. All else
may stand over, perhaps for ever. Existence is never so sweet as when it
is at hazard. The bright butterfly flutters in the sunshine, the
expression of the philosophy of Omar Khayyam, without the potations.

But we awoke on the morning of the 25th in most gloomy spirits. I had
seen the evacuation of Spion Kop during the night, and I did not doubt
that it would be followed by the abandonment of all efforts to turn the
Boer left from the passages of the Tugela at and near Trichardt's
Drift. Nor were these forebodings wrong. Before the sun was fairly risen
orders arrived, 'All baggage to move east of Venter's Spruit
immediately. Troops to be ready to turn out at thirty minutes' notice.'
General retreat, that was their meaning. Buller was withdrawing his
train as a preliminary to disengaging, if he could, the fighting
brigades, and retiring across the river. Buller! So it was no longer
Warren! The Commander-in-Chief had arrived, in the hour of misfortune,
to take all responsibility for what had befallen the army, to extricate
it, if possible, from its position of peril, to encourage the soldiers,
now a second time defeated without being beaten, to bear the
disappointment. Everyone knows how all this, that looked so difficult,
was successfully accomplished.

The army was irritated by the feeling that it had made sacrifices for
nothing. It was puzzled and disappointed by failure which it did not
admit nor understand. The enemy were flushed with success. The opposing
lines in many places were scarcely a thousand yards apart. As the
infantry retired the enemy would have commandi