I remember how one, otherwise most brilliant Special, whose talent won for him a reputation which he continues to enjoy, came utterly to grief through want of that tact which enabled others, during the siege of Plevna, to get their articles and sketches through. Between the slowly, very slowly contracting girdle of Muscovite steel which encircled that place and the Danube, there was a perfectly free communication. The historic bridge of boats was crossed without difficulty, and, Roumania being thus reached, one was in direct, uninterrupted correspondence with the street beloved of Doctor Johnson. The Special in question, however, being assured by suave, courteous, and in many cases English-speaking officers, that the Russian Bear was the soul of honour, and the Russian field-post the most convenient mode of conveyance, put his despatches into the military post bags at Plevna. Then, "with a smile that was childlike and bland," did those Muscovite postal authorities receive them, stamp them officially--and--well, they were never seen again! Thus was a most daring Special, possessed of marvellous talent (I will not say if with pen or pencil) recalled to England, and, in that capacity, lost to the world. He lacked a diplomatic faculty, without which success is impossible to the war correspondent. A case of a camp-kettle, too, comes vividly back to me, in which a man delayed his departure from London for three days in consequence of some fad about a peculiar commodity of this kind which was being specially made for him, and this when Europe was ablaze with war. Through that confounded camp-kettle he might lose the key to the position, yet the tinker came in _facile princeps_ and that knight of the pen was nowhere. Happily, however, "fads" very seldom get to the front at all, or, if they do, change front themselves soon after their arrival. It seems to me that the man who would win his spurs on the war-path must, by being ready to start at any moment, accept the inevitable in the light of "Kismit," and be prepared to turn circumstances, good, bad, or indifferent, to the best account possible; he will meet with fewer difficulties, and be better able to cope with those he does experience. By the way, were you ever shadowed? The sensation, novel to begin with, is trying in the long run, and infinitely less endurable than being made prisoner of war, pure and simple. I had this experience shortly after the entry of the Versailles troops into shattered, still burning, Paris.