We can congratulate the friends of THE FRIEND that they shall read his work again in these columns before he sails for home. They have not lost him, but we have lost his company, we who knew his genius so well yet could not conceive it possible that to his talent he joined a personality so rich in varied charms as we have found it. For we have learned that he is sweet to the core, lovable, magnetic, modest, and sincere. He has the crystal frankness and the tireless enthusiasm of ever fresh and unsullied youth. Great as our readers know him to be in literature, we know him to be even greater as a man. Good luck to RUDYARD KIPLING, always, everywhere, to the end--and, then, to eternity. J. R. * * * * * THE LATE COLONEL HON. G. GOUGH. BY BENNET BURLEIGH. And thou also hast gone over to the majority! To God's rest, most honest English gentleman. I saw thy bier go by but the other day in the streets of Bloemfontein. They gave thee, rightly, a soldier's funeral, and for love of thee many sorrowed and followed afoot to God's acre. Troopers with arms reversed were thine escort, our band played the "Dead March in Saul," and behind thy coffin, covered with the Union Jack and set upon a gun-carriage, walked that British Paladin, Field Marshal Lord Roberts, accompanied by a long concourse of all ranks--comrades of thine, men of distinguished service. Veterans and juniors were there, and besides these, for further token of the affection and esteem in which thou wert held by all who knew thee, a throng of the rank and file of the army. All was as it should be, for we had come to say our English "Goodbye; God be with thee." Sprung from the loins of a race of soldiers, thou wert all a true soldier should be, tender, brave, and true, a gentleman above gentlemen. It seems but a breath or so that I was wont to meet thee almost daily in London at the War Office. Lord Wolseley will miss thee, for he will never find a better Military Secretary than thou. Thy courtesy was uniform to all, thy frankness beyond question, as was thy readiness to do kindnesses; whilst thy fidelity to thy Military Chief was to thee a sacred duty. Cheery and pleasant, Gough of the 14th Hussars was a "beau sabreur," a man who inspired friendship and commanded respect. I could recall many incidents in all of which thou acquitted thyself like a Gough. There was the morning of Abu Klea in the Soudan, after the night of alarms that found thy fortitude undisturbed. I stood beside thee by the screw guns when the Dervish bullet smote thee upon the head and thou wert felled to earth as with the blow of a hammer. None who saw thee as thou lay unconscious doubted but that thou had been killed outright. Even when we learned that thou survived we held to the conviction that to the weight of such a stroke thou must succumb. But thou recovered and we rejoiced. Yet such a blow must have left its impress.