"Well," said the first, "if they do start bombardin' of us, there ain't only one 'ymn I'll sing, an' that's 'Rock of Ages, cleft for me, Let me 'ide myself in thee.'" It was spoken in the broadest Devon without a smile.

The British soldier is a class apart.

One of the privates in the Liverpools showed me a diary he is keeping of the war.

It is a colourless record of getting up, going to bed, sleeping in the rain with one blanket (a grievance he always mentions, though without complaint), of fighting, cutting brushwood, and building what he calls "sangers and travises." From first to last he makes but one comment, and that is: "There is no peace for the wicked." The Boers were engaged in putting up a new 6 in.

gun on the hills beyond Range Post, and the first number of the _Ladysmith Lyre_ was published.
_November 27, 1899._ The great event of the day was the firing of the new "Long Tom." The Boers placed it yesterday on the hill beyond Waggon Hill, where the 60th hold our extreme post towards the west.