The happiest section of the community was the composite collection of
human units that constituted the Town Guard, and lived in the camps.
There were to be found representatives of all nationalities--English,
Dutch, Irish, Scotch, German, Norwegian, French, etc. With the local
(Kimberley) variety there intermingled all sorts and conditions of
refugees. Men of wealth, of high social standing and education were
there, sleeping in the same "bed," playing cards and competing in
"anecdotage" with the sons of toil. From the very beginning of the siege
the Town Guard had had to "rough it" in rations. It was black tea or
blacker coffee for breakfast; sorry soup and meat (the osseous joints
that made the soup) for dinner; the breakfast again for tea--that made
up from day to day the dreary _menu_. The Mayor, indeed, had for a
little while managed to administer currant buns (it was not easy always
to find the currant) for supper; but even prior to the official
proclamation of their indigestibility they had gone the way of all
luxuries. The generosity of the public, however--the female portion of
it especially--must not be forgotten. Substantial presents, which were
always acknowledged through the columns of the Press, came frequently to
the camps. The cynics detected astuteness in this rush into print; but
while they mourned the frailty of human nature, as instanced by the
vanity competitions in the papers, they humbled themselves to the Greeks
so far as to partake of such gifts as were offered. Tobacco, cigarettes,
and other dainties were received, and consumed with rude rapidity. Every
man was supposed to be responsible for the safety of a tin pannikin, out
of which to scald himself drinking hot tea (for it had the merit of
being hot--if a black draught has any). But there were soldiers who
denied having been supplied with "cups"; whose appeals for pannikins
were persistently flouted by the military utensil-keeper-in-chief. The
"tape" of the Service could not tie up mendacity! The lives of honest
martyrs were thus spent in an eternal borrowing quest, and the petty