honour, and the Russian field-post the most convenient mode of conveyance, put his despatches into the military post bags at Plevna. Then, "with a smile that was childlike and bland," did those Muscovite postal authorities receive them, stamp them officially—and—well, they were never seen again! Thus was a most daring Special, possessed of marvellous talent (I will not say if with pen or pencil) recalled to England, and, in that capacity, lost to the world. He lacked a diplomatic faculty, without which success is impossible to the war correspondent.
A case of a camp-kettle, too, comes vividly back to me, in which a man delayed his departure from London for three days in consequence of some fad about a peculiar commodity of this kind which was being specially made for him, and this when Europe was ablaze with war. Through that confounded camp-kettle he might lose the key to the position, yet the tinker came in facile princeps and that knight of the pen was nowhere. Happily, however, "fads " very seldom get to the front at all, or, if they do, change front themselves soon after their arrival.
It seems to me that the man who would win his spurs on the war-path must, by being ready to start at any moment, accept the inevitable in the light of "Kismit," and be prepared to turn circumstances, good, bad, or indifferent, to the best account possible; he will meet with fewer difficulties, and be better able to cope with those he does experience.
By the way, were you ever shadowed? The sensation, novel to begin with, is trying in the long run, and infinitely less endurable than being made prisoner of war, pure and simple.
I had this experience shortly after the entry of the Versailles troops into shattered, still burning, Paris.
"A substantial shadow."
My wandering propensities and the notes I from time to time made led to my being so persecuted that I would have done much to change places with Peter Schimmel, of shadowless fame. I think my nose, which, in polite society, might be called retroussé, must have suggested the tip-
tilted organ of the typical Teuton, and that hence suspicions of fresh complications were aroused. Suffice it to say I was shadowed by a hawk-eyed, hook nosed, beetle-browed, oily-looking, parchment-faced being, who seemed, by his very pertinacity, becoming my second self. I hurried from place to place in quest of incident, the pattering feet of my shadow—if I may so put it—announced his presence everywhere. I mounted an omnibus, and there was a double ascent up those spiral steps which led to the roof, that hawk-eyed shade was seated either by my side or with his back to me. In the evening I strolled down, say, the Boulevard des Capucines, while, with measured tread, smoking a cigarette the while, I was followed by the oily one; in short, through the many occupations of my life he was ever in my wake, till at last release came.
I was arrested and taken before the Commissary of Police, when it was discovered I had been mistaken for somebody else, and, with many apologies and regrets that I was not the rogue I might have been, I was released, my shadow being "unhooked," so to speak. And now, oddly enough, I had a morbid satisfaction in remembering the wild-goose chases I had taken that Government spy—up one street, down another, away into the suburbs of Paris, back to its centre, only to repeat the dose when I had time, till, more attenuated and cadaverous than ever, that hawk-eyed minion of the law could barely drag one leg after another. Strange as it may seem, when rid of him, I missed him, missed him awfully, I assure you; feeling quite lonely and incomplete without him, and should have been almost pleased to have had him tacked on again.
