Whisper greetings soft and low, Pour the whisky, deal the bun, Only Bell and Buckle know All the evil he has done. * * * * * FOR WIDOWS AND ORPHANS. In accordance with the public notice printed in this journal, a meeting of war correspondents was held yesterday afternoon at the Free State Hotel, Bloemfontein, when the arrangements for a concert to be given in the Town Hall "in aid of widows and orphans" were discussed. Messrs. Bennet Burleigh (_Daily Telegraph_), Pearse (_Daily News_), Maxwell (_Standard_), and Haarburgher, were appointed members of the Executive Committee with power to add to their number, and it was decided that the proceeds of the concert should be divided equally between the London and Bloemfontein funds. The date, which remains to be fixed, will probably be Friday of next week, and the prices of admission 5s., 3s., and 1s., the latter for soldiers in uniform. * * * * * A REALISTIC COMEDY. I haven't often been really defeated, but I felt very like it that Black Monday. My convoy consisted of self and Jimmy (my subaltern), two conductors, 100 native drivers, about 500 oxen, and 40 waggons. We were hundreds of miles from the front so had no escort, and were fifteen miles from anywhere. The country was simply a succession of kopjes as like each other as a pair of ammunition boots, the map was much too small a scale to be of any use, and our native guide had lost the way! We ought to have struck water about dawn, after trekking all night, but there wasn't a sign of it. The heat was awful as we toiled our dusty way between those glaring kopjes, until about noon we sighted a stagnant dam, half full, and we went for it like savages, men, oxen and all. It must have been absolute rank poison. In a couple of hours two men were writhing on the ground, a score more, blue and shivering, were feeling touched, and the whole lot were thoroughly funked. It was just like a native cholera camp in India, and to those who have experienced that I need say no more.