utation--untrammelled as he was by
bovine fractions--and injured trade agreeably. It kept off the folk who
had no dogs, and others who preferred to take the State Soup, with their
eyes shut. All the cattle slaughtered were exclusively for the Kitchen.
The "Law" decreed it; it was in the "Gazette," and was nothing if not in
equity. The quality of the soup was poorer than ever; the quantity
offered for sale was suspiciously large, and, oh! so inferior to the
article served out with a flourish of ladles a week before. Many took
the pledge against it (some of them broke it), but there were plenty
less aesthetically constituted who could dissipate on _two_ pints! We
could yet buy carrots, dry, tough little things; but they were
vegetables beyond question, and there is much in a _name_ where horses
are _cooked_. They (the carrots) were sold by the State at threepence a
bunch, and the people still made wild rushes to purchase them. A force
of police was always on duty at the vegetable, the carrot wing of the
market, and it was interesting to watch the human nature in everybody,
including strong men not ordinarily credited with much of it.

Thursday was uneventful. The _quasi_-official statement relative to the
relief of Mafeking was contradicted. The peculiarity of the
proceeding--of contradicting an _agreeable_ canard--not the
contradiction itself--occasioned surprise; it was so unusual. Some
people attributed it to a desire on the Colonel's part cheaply to
vindicate Official veracity in all things--not injurious to the
"Military Situation!" All our little troubles and kicks against the
pricks had to be subordinated to the "Military Situation." The quality
of the very horse we ate was due to the "Military Situation." The local
situation, with its alarming death roll, was a trifle light as air
beside the other. Had the Colonel in his wisdom seen anything in its
suppression advantageous to the "Military Situation," the truth anent
Mafeking would hardly have seen the light. The "Military Situation" was
sacrosanct, supreme, inviolable! It was a fetish, a sort of idol that
the "Law" commanded all creeds and classes to worship.

In the afternoon an occasional shell was jerked into the town.
Kenilworth was loudly barked at for an hour; and the correspondent of
the _London Times_, while driving in the suburb, narrowly escaped being
bitten. But no cattle were hit; that was the pity of it. We could have
forgiven the Boers much had the