All this made Wednesday an interesting day, but the gallant Colonel had yet to crown it with his quota. Having previously omitted to fix a charge for meal and flour, he now brought back to their normal modesty the prices of the two commodities. The two hardly provided sufficient material for a proclamation, but with some stretching they were made to do so. It was easy to discover a disparity in the relative quantities of the two foodstuffs in Kimberley; we had a great deal of the one, and comparatively little of the other. Thus when Kekewich in his wisdom deemed it prudent to take precautions, the populace did not object. We knew in _our_ wisdom that precautions were superfluous, but we approved, in a general way, the principle of prudence. The proclamation accordingly ordained that every loaf baked in future should be three parts meal and one part flour. The bakers were given the recipé gratis, with instructions to sell it (the bread, not the recipé) cheaply, namely, at three pence per loaf. Theoretically, the new loaf was to prove a palatable change; practically, the wry expression of countenance it evoked in the process of mastication demonstrated the contrary. The bread was light "khaki" in colour, and only in this respect was it fashionable;--not too fashionable, because "Boer meal" was its chief ingredient, and racial prejudice was strong. The sweetness of the old-fashioned white loaf was wanting, and we soon clamoured for its restoration. But the brazen baker would talk of colour-blindness, and insist that yellow was white. And when we hit upon the plan of demanding brown bread, the fellow would argue that yellow was brown! When black was asked for--well, we did not ask for that. But there was no option in the matter; the Colonel's prescription had to be accepted. The sensible course was to try to acquire a taste for it; and we did; we succeeded--too well!--until at last we could not get _enough_ of the dough. The unkindest cut of all, however, did not come until pies, pastry, and sweet cakes of all kinds were pronounced indigestible. The refined cruelty of this revolutionary decree was bitterly resented; not only by the confectioners, whose shop windows were works of art, but also by the public, who loved art. Even gouty subjects and folk with livers protested. As for the ladies, the war on sponge cakes almost broke their hearts. Pastry was to many of them a staple sustenance, and conducive--besides being nice--to a, wan complexion. Five o'clock teas lost prestige; the tarts were gone. It was a case of Hamlet without the Prince of Denmark. The propriety of a deputation to the Colonel, to test his gallantry, was mooted; but the proposal, strange to say, found no seconder. Meanwhile, he (the Colonel) was on the trail of the butcher again. Prior to the promulgation of the eight-penny regulation the butcher had been in his element, charging what he liked, and liking generally a shilling. The small people in the trade had sold their