Another peculiarity that we noticed was that he would, by preference, carry forward two or three manuscripts at once and would write, now at one, and presently at another. The "Kopje-book maxims" reveal this breadth and variety of his mental processes to whoever is able to understand the fine shadings of the meanings of them all, and to those who can comprehend the fact that they were literally "dashed off" hot, like sparks under a smith's hammer. If these mere playthings of his pen, done as part of our merry and careless morning's work, were forced to stand as specimen products of the methods of this master writer, an injustice to him would follow. The point is that his methods are the same, and his mind works with similar freedom and celerity, at all times, and at whatever he does; at least so far as we were able to judge. But what he wrote for THE FRIEND was finished and published on the instant without the after-polishing and refinement of the flawless work which has made him world-famous. In this same number we printed an interesting forecast of the future of the Free State by Mr. Fred J. Engelbach. An officer sent us a jocular account of the amazingly plucky work being done by the Ordnance Survey--and particularly of one feat by Major Jackson, R.E. We also published, from my pen, a short warning to the soldiers not to drink the water out of certain wells which had for years been known to contain the germs of enteric. I learned the fact during my visit to my "sweetheart," Miss Bloemfontein, and as I look back, now, upon that paragraph I almost shudder to think how little we dreamed that in a few weeks 7,000 men of our force would be down with that dread disease. I have referred to the fact that Lord Stanley came every day at noon to overlook what we had done. I would ask for nothing more amusing than to have heard his gossip at the Residency upon the manner in which he found THE FRIEND to be conducted and produced. The truth was that we had finished everything for the day, except the interminable proof-reading, by the time he reached what the country editor grandiloquently refers to as "our sanctum sanctorum." In consequence he always caught us just as we were looking up from our desks and taking a deep breath of relief. We who have been bred in this profession may not realise just what applause is to an actor, or what there may be to a mariner in the movement and breath of the ocean; but we fully realise that journalism is perhaps the only calling that men find as full of fun as it is of hard work. The company of bright minds, certain to be sanguine and optimistic, the excitement produced by unexpected news, the rush to prepare it most attractively and against time, the thousand unpublishable conceits and views and arguments that leap to the mind and are discussed in council, the freaks and blunders of the reporters and contributors--all these elements are in the cup of joy that a journalist drinks off every day.