I remember we had to write a composition on the poem, and having decided that it was the wolf that had killed the hound--just as one says, "The scanty bone the beggar picked"--I had to square matters so as to explain how the hound died a second time at the hands of Llewellyn. It's all misty now, but I at least remember propounding the theory that the Welsh chieftain, in his terror, must have mistaken the wolf for the hound, and consequently did _him_ in for murdering the lost child. It was this incident, I believe, that induced my parents to select for me a career at the Bar. That incident recalls another one later on. At school we had a delightful master who hated using chalk. He informed us that we were to write an essay on-- "_Beneath the rule of men entirely great The pen is mightier than the sword._" One promising fellow misheard the last word as "saw." He was rather an authority on saws, and treated us to a delightful treatise on saws in general, band-saws, hand-saws, rip-saws, fret-saws, and circular saws. As far as I remember, the drift of his argument was that a pen could merely write, whereas a saw could cut a piece of wood. Once more, "Eheu! _Fugaces postumi----_" I wonder where that lad is now. I should think he must be a large saw-miller somewhere--possibly asleep on a "pallet of straw" in France, and seeing "visions" of his beloved saws. Why not! God bless him. I've forgotten his name and even what he was like. Well, well, these frivolities must come to an end for it's ten o'clock. I had intended to set out more details of our starvation methods, but we talk enough of it and I'm sick of the subject. Besides, what is happiness but a big digression? _March 27th._--The day's bulletin is that the Churches in England are praying for us. How we hope they pray hard. There is, we understand, to be a last forward movement of all arms to the relief of Kut. The position down below seems to have developed into something like that in France, as the Turkish forces are dug deep and well flanked with impassable swamps. It is difficult to force such a position against the clock, but we easily outnumber the enemy, so it is said, and then our heavy guns may do a great deal.