"THE FRIEND" was an afternoon paper published at three or four or five o'clock in the evening, according as the Dutch compositors chose to get it out. We editors went to our tiny editorial room between nine and ten o'clock in the morning, and worked until lunch time--one o'clock--writing, seeing visitors, correcting proofs, and reading manuscripts. What I have called "seeing visitors" mainly consisted in turning away private soldiers who came for copies of the paper. Though we posted notices that ours was the editorial room, and that papers were to be had at Barlow's stationery shop, "Tommy" would insist upon coming to us; therefore we gave up a large part of our time to sending him away, now yelling at him, now bursting into expletives, and anon pleading most politely that we were neither newsboys nor railway bookstall keepers. What I have called "reading manuscripts" was largely the work of examining the poetry of this same Mr. Atkins, who, fired by the genius of Mr. Kipling, is sometimes a better poet than you would think, sometimes a worse poet than you can imagine, but is generally a poet--of one sort or another. We had good "Tommy" poets in our ranks; wherefore, when Mr. Kipling came, he insisted that all soldier poetry should be religiously read, and the best of it published. He pored over miles of it. At the idea of re-writing and improving Tommy's verse he was pained, and when Mr. James Barnes, on one occasion, spent half a day in putting a "Tommy" poem into Queen's English, Mr. Kipling was righteously indignant, and spent an hour in getting it back to Tommy's vernacular. But we are coming to Mr. Kipling presently. The rest of the time of all except the man who wrote the leader of the day was spent in correcting the typographical errors of the Dutch compositors, who, by the way, could make more numerous and more dreadful mistakes in type than ever an intelligence officer made in getting news of the enemy. The consequence was that we often took up the first paper that reached us from the presses, and with a sigh assured each other that it was almost wholly given up to bad verse and printers' errors.