air that General Townshend has gone home on parole and is arranging for us to be exchanged or go to a neutral country. One can't hope for that. We have heard in the bazaar that Kut once more is in our hands. Thank God! _May 1st._--At last the winter has gone, but it went slowly and fought a strenuous rearguard action up to quite recently. How jolly it is to have dismantled those wretched tin stoves and be able to write and read in one's room once more. Walks have been resumed, and lead us even further and further afield. Many changes have overtaken us--changes seemingly insignificant and yet to us very momentous. We started to run our own mess in February, the Turks taking away all our Turkish and Greek servants and making us rely on our own orderlies. They prove themselves more childish and more babyish every week. An inquiry was held into affairs here, and the old kaimakam was thrown out, but Sheriff Bey, the worst of all, lied his way into remaining. Our new kaimakam is a more decent fellow, speaks German, and has lived in Berlin for four years. We have had him up to dinner, and it fell to me to do all the talking to him about Berlin. He means well, and has done all he can to help us, but he is so dreadfully afraid of Sheriff Bey and his own restrictions. The band has made great strides. I'm now first violin and leader of the "Orchestra." We have five violins, two 'cellos and a double bass, besides the drums, two clarionettes, flute, and banjo, and the Human Crochet has made commendable progress in writing out our music from bits of anything we got through the post, piano solos, and many we have had to write from memory. We perform on Saturday evenings alternately at either house. Sometimes we sound almost like a seaside band at Home!!! I long for the old Queen's Hall Concerts again. To attend even those, I would willingly forget the London Symphony or Nikisch's at the Gewandhaus in Leipsig. The band is almost the only live thing here. One pines for music. Every evening I can get (so to speak) with my violin beyond these forests and mountains. My window overlooks the town and I have quite an audience of Turkish heads listening. I am told the sound carries as far as the muezzin. These people have not heard any music in their lives, and think my crude efforts quite divine. Books arrive slowly. Swinburne has never come. But we have Shakespeare and some of Thackeray and a lot of cheap stuff.