The little star on your shoulder saves you from all that.  You can tell the new commissioned man by the way he has of constantly looking over his shoulder.  Poor fellow! he likes to catch the pretty glitter—­the “twinkle, twinkle, little star”—­that lifts privates’ hands to him as they pass.  Some one else cooks for him now, and there is the officers’ mess cart with a few welcome extras and a merry gathering at meals and a batman to tend the pony (though you keep an eye on that yourself too), and extra clothes and blankets, and a shelter of some sort to sleep under, and a Kaffir boy to put out his washing things when he comes in hot and tired, and altogether life seems, by comparison, a very luxurious and pleasant affair.  I am a bit of a democrat, as you know, and all for equality and the rights of man; but now I say, like Mesty, when they made him a butler, “Dam equality now I major-domo.”

Bloemfontein is a pretty little place, but it takes you by surprise.  The country round is, for endless leagues, so barren, a mere grassy, undulating expanse of prairie land, with a few farms at ten-mile intervals, that the appearance of a town seems incongruous.  All of a sudden you come to a crowd of low bungalow-like roofs under the shadow of some flat-topped kopjes and realise the presence in this void of the Free State capital.

The place is suggestive, in its low single storey houses and pretty gardens, of quiet ease, and has a certain kindliness about it.  It is pleasant to see the creeper grown fronts and flower patches, and few shady trees after our long sojourn in the veldt.  But the one memorable sight of the place, the scene of a special and unique interest, is the Bloemfontein Club.  This is the first time that the great army under Lord Roberts has found itself in occupation of any town, and the first time, therefore, that all its various contingents have had a chance of meeting together in one place.  At the Bloemfontein Club the chance has occurred, and certainly never before, in any time or place, could you have seen such representative gatherings of the British race from all parts of the world as you will see if you stroll any day into the verandah and smoking-room and bar of the Bloemfontein Club.  From the old country and from every British colony all over the world these men of one race, in a common crisis, here for one moment meet, look into each others’ faces, drink, and greet and pass on; to be drawn back each to his own quarter of the globe and separated when the crisis is passed and not to meet again.  But what a moment and what a meeting it is, and what a distinction for this little place.  Organise your mass meetings and pack your town-halls, you never will get together such a sample of the British Empire as you will see any afternoon in this remote pothouse.  What would you give for a peep at the show; to see the types and hear the talk?  You would give a hundred pounds, I daresay.  I wish I could take you one of these afternoons:  I would do it for half the money.