leathery grilled beef-steak; and the apex is a
metal pill-box containing pepper and salt."

The first thing we did, when the guard was
properly relieved, and an unfortunate Highland
ensign was imprisoned in the place of Lieutenant
Hongwee, was to visit Truefitt's. Truefitt's is
a living example of how a good fight may be
won by combination, courage, and determination.
Who would care to live without his "toilet
club?" The great barber has got his hut—his
little oasis of luxury—firmly planted in the desert,
under the constant patronage of military men,
far more than the constant regulation of military
law. Faithful camp-follower—true and reliable
as the Hansom cabman, he is found, in the hour
of danger, at his post. What would the
regulators of the British Army do without such a
comforting retreat?

Why are private soldiers warned off from this
agreeable lounge by a notice outside the door
which says, "For officers only?"  The private
soldier is not in the habit of having his hair
worried with strange and varied brushes, nor of
having it pacified afterwards with alchemical
ointments. The private soldier is not in the
habit of paying half-a-crown to have his hair
clipped at the back, washed with egg-flip,
watered with a watering-can, his beard shaved,
.and his pocket-handkerchief scented with the
latest perfume known. Perhaps it was thought
that private soldiers sometimes come in for
legacies, and go in for the genteel thing, vastly,
and the notice was meant to provide against
such a contingency. Many officers would have to
be excluded, too, if they had no property, and
were compelled to live on their pay. Five
shillings a-day for an ensign, and six shillings for a
lieutenant, will not go far in mess-dinners and
tailors' bills, much less in toilet clubs.

Passing out of this fragrant warehouse in the
desert, on our way to visit one of the encampments,
we came upon half a dozen artillerymen,
who were undergoing the punishment of "pack-
drill." They were the drunken prisoners of last
night, who, after being tried before their superior
officers in the orderly room, were condemned
for a certain time to walk the day in the full
heat of the sun, in their heaviest marching
clothes, and with their full marching "kit"
upon their backs. They had now been walking
up and down for some time, and their legs
seemed to give way in their heavy jack-boots.

Going across the black lines of huts, our ears
were suddenly saluted with a terrific outburst of
military melody, and looking in one of the
quartermasters' store-rooms, we found about
thirty men and boys of all sizes, furnished with
sax-horns of curious shape, and ophicleides as
large as pumps, blowing up the roof with a
popular quick-step march. The conductor, with
the most vigorous action, was endeavouring to
keep them in order, as they stood amongst the
boxes and packages of their temporary practising-
room. One short-necked, full-blooded
performer, whose back was towards me, caused his
neck to contract and expand in such an extreme
manner, while supplying his unwieldy instrument
with air, that I expected every moment to
see him burst, and his head drop out of sight
into his opened body. I never saw anything like
it, except the left cheek of an old trumpeter,
which from long use, and from being nothing but
thin skin, used to sink into a hole when his
instrument was at rest, and blow out in an almost
transparent bladder when he began to play.

Leaving this close-packed hall of harmony, we
made our way to the theatre, a building that
stood fairly in our road to the canvas quarters
of the artillery. A wooden hut, with several
entrances, looking like a travelling show that
has squatted upon common land; an audience
portion, capable of seating about a hundred
persons; an orchestra, like a large tank; a stage
such as is generally run up during a violent
private theatrical fever in a back drawing-room;
and a property-room, in which the hollow
mockeries of the drama are combined with the
solid realities of a habitation and a laundry,
comprise nearly all that need be described of the
well-known Theatre Royal, South Camp,
Aldershott. It was manned, during the day, by one
male attendant, who managed it as if it had been
a ship, hauling up the scenes like sails, and
putting it in trim working-order for the
performance of the evening.

A quarter of an hour's walk brought us, at
last, to the Royal Artillery encampment. There
was a large square enclosure full of horses, like
a horse fair, railed in with ropes and stakes, and
surrounded by an irregular line of tents. A man
in military trousers and a dirty shirt—the
amateur blacksmith of the regiment—was
hammering out a horse-shoe upon an anvil, which
stood full and unprotected on the sand, under
the noon-day sun. Not far from this workman
was a camp fire, over which was cooking the
dinner of the men. A couple of narrow ditches,
first cut in the earth in the form of an equal
cross, and then filled full of wood, furze, or any
dry rubbish about, that will burn; a covering of
sheet iron strips placed over these ditches; a peat
chimney built in the centre, for the purpose of
drawing the fire below; the wood or furze set
alight, and the kettles, like pails, placed along
the iron plates on the side where they are most
likely to avoid the smoke and boil the quickest;
and the rough and ready camp oven is complete.
When the lids of the pail-kettles are lifted up,
bushels of potatoes, spungy masses of cabbage,
and irregular blocks of heavy pudding, like lumps
of clay, are boiling and bubbling away; and one
glance of the glaring mid-day sun seems to stir up
the broth as much as the hidden, choking fire below.

"That is the elegant kind of pic-nic," said
Lieutenant Hongwee, "which we are often
required to assist at: with this difference, that we
are marched twenty miles away to some solitary
spot, kept out for several days and several
nights under canvas, and made to kill our own
meat before we eat it, or feed upon
blackberries, like the Children in the Wood."

I saw that this was a tender subject, and I
made no reply, but contented myself with
observing the other features of the camp.