The morning news. [volume] (Savannah, Ga.) 1887-1900, 1900-05-22
WITH RHODES AT KIMBERLEY.
Incidents of the Siege by n Trooper
who Now Finds London Tame.


From the London Mail.
1t seems a strange thing to have a sufI1-
cheney of good food, to walk about the
streets of London lodging hanson cabs
in place of Boer shells, to go to bed o
nights without the ring of a bugle in
ones ears and to wake up in the morning
to the clang of clocks instead of the
Shrek of Boer shrapuel.
All this l say, is strange TO me, who
has just returned from Kimberley, where
for four months l never knew what min
ute might be my last, where a scrap of
real beef was a luxury and a spoonful of
jam only obtainable by Doctors orders
l have been in London a week, and al
ready l find life here uneventful and mo-
notonous. There is nothing a all for an
ex-beleaguered citizen to do-no Boer
trenches to rush. no cattle to "skoff, no
early morning alarms to send you scurry-
ing TO your place in the redoubt your rifle
in your hand, your eyes peering painfully
through the scarcely broken darkness to
where a CLINT of flame lightens black
patch of kopje and prefaces a hideous,
tearing, rending Shrek over your head.
After four months of that sort of thing
/ feel out of my element here in Lon
don.
Kimberley, that 1 have known so long,
presented a strange spectacle when 1 left
il few days after that eventful evening
when the unexpected arrival of Rimng-
tons Tigers told us that the long-wait-
editor relief had arrived. Dutoitspan
road, the principal street, irresistibly sug-
gested a row of teeth with many of the
teeth knocked out.
A huge slice had been cut off Cuth-
berts boot stores, where everybody in
Kimberley used to buy his footgear: the
GOOD Templars Han adjoining had also
iose It's upper story. Both buildings had
been set on fire by Boer shells
Very eccentric had been the behavior of
one shell. II had first struck a photo
grapher shop on the left-hand side of the
road; splinter had flown at right angles
across the street, dug a lump out of the
kimberley Club-where on ordinary nights
Mr.. Cecil Rhodes was a frequent visitor
and then rebounding had fiicked off the
cross on the apex of the Roman Catholic
Church. Another she'll had buried itself
IN the curbstone right under the window
of tobacco Dealers shop, but had not
in the least damaged the building The
roadway itself was like rabbit warren.
so fun of holes was 1t.
/ found pathetic interest in this last
look round the town where 1 had lately
witnessed such stirring scenes. There was
my own home, whose roof having been
carried away by Boer shell, was re-
placed a. some cost and not a little dan
ger, only to be smashed in again.
My next-door neighbor had a thrilling
experience. shell entered near the bed
room window tore down the curtains over
four-poster bed, crashed through two
walls, careered along the passage down.
stairs, and buried itself IN the piano in
the front sitting room. My neighbor-an
old feeble man-was standing in the pas
sage aforementioned, with his three
daughters, when that grim messenger
flew screaming past them. 1t passed so
close that they could have touched it. and
yet strange to say st did not harm them
in the least.
Another neighbor of mine lost his daugh-
ter-a bright, intelligent girl of Thunder
very sad circumstances. She had been
in the bomb-proof shed from O'Clock m
the morning until s. when, remarking tina I
she felt very untidy, she returned to the
house TO dress her hair. She was standing
before the mirror In her bedroom as a shell
came and struck her in the back INJECTING
injuries from which she died Immediately
Such incidents as these saddened the
lives of those who were cooped up in the
town, but We who spent our days and
nights in the redoubts Il have omitted to
mention that | was early enrolled a mem
Der of the Kimberley Light Horse had
not much time to brood over misfortune.