The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-07-26

tu which they were ordered. At last possible when the captain became inn pressed by the impudence of the enemy he said to his men: We will stop those fellows. They are too cheeky. Forward, men. and roll them out of their holes" The Guardsmen dashed ahead and the Boers retired.
 It was so with Captain Bowen. of the Kimberley volunteer forces. In lively skirnish fight a Boer picked him out from among his men, and shot and shot and shot at him until it seemed to the captain like a persecution. He grew vexed-not angry, because that implies losing self-control-but annoyed. He said to himself, That fellow is shooting at no one but me. Does he think l am like a wooden target, with no self-re- spect or ability to answer back?' He lay down on the veldt and devoted his most careful and ardent efforts to rid ding the world of that insolent Boer. He made the Boer's hiding place so hot that the man could not move without exposing himself, and therefore stopped shooting.
 Captain Bowen knew he had not hit the man, and was obliged, reluctantly, to get up and mount and ride after his men. A half hour later, when he was returning and had forgotten the inci- dent. the Boer again opened fire at him, and this time shot the captain in the | mouth.
 Brave men were plenty in the army. | The truth is of course. that men settled with themselves whether they were or were not towards before they entered either the army or the war. There were a few correspondents-and espeC- | ially men of leisure pretending to be l journalists-who aroused doubts as to their courage by disappearing when battle was on and reappearing after it | was over. But to-day we are reconsid- i ering our first judgment, because seve- ral of these very men were either | wounded or taken prisoner, or jointed forces and fought with the best before the war ended.
 | We had an artist with us who talked very like timid man, and continually vowed that he would never go under | fire again; yet in every battle he was sure to be caught in some highly dan gerous corner or plight, and it became l impossible to think him a coward. One | day another artist, who had been al- most foolhardy with his bravery up to this time, was suddenly seized with what the English call "funk"-or fright. This was at DreifOntein-a terrible bat tie, whose flerceness has not had the celebrity it deserves.
 The artist was standing beside his horse holding the reins and sketching. Suddenly the Boers opened every sort of fire upon bunch of horses just be- hind him, bullets sang their high-keyed, insistent notes beside his ears, and pom-pom shells screamed and burst closer than any one would care to have then-all without a moments warning, when he had fancied himself quite apart from the battle that had been raging in another part of the field.
 There came to him such rush of impulses that he was staggered. First he was frightened. and next he had to put away his pencil, close and strap his notebook. calm his horse, get its bridle over its head, mount it and be off. For fifteen seconds he could do nothing; but the spasm of alarm and confusion passed, and presently he was dashing away with lead and steel dropping and screeching all around him.
 Would you imagine that, if you were thus surprised, you could leap up and run with peal of laughter. precisely as you would do if some one at home sud- denly turned a hose or flower spray upon you? I have seen it done and have done it-been surprised by a down. pour of bullets from behind, when some BOers were unexpectedly making a charge, and have leaped up and run for all I was worth laughing aloud at the ridiculousness of my undignified haste. may say that without appearing to boast, for am no more fond of danger than any other ordinary man.
 So various and peculiar are mems emotions on the field of battle that it would not seem possible that men like Zola, Hugo, Dumas and Stephen Crane in the book he wrote before he had seen real war-could have hit upon any phase of them that would be untrue. Yet what these writ CTS dwelt most upon is the one thing I never saw or heard of in actual war-the one thing that all with whom have talked agreed in say ing was far, far from realism and the truth. That thing is the consciousness of danger and the mental preparation for death.
 The men whom I have known in war go into battle believing, as a rule, that they will come out of it all right. They advance or lie down and direct an~at- tack, saying to themselves or their neighbors: There's Billy down. He's hit, I think. Our fellows on the right are falling like leaves. By love! this is hot fight. I would not mind sharing that heap of rocks with Charlie Calvert
 If we get a chance we will run oyer there where he is" Sometimes men get 1 excited and throw away all concern
 whether they are hit or not. Then again, you can always get volunteers to
 make a dash into what seems to you
 certain death but it does not seem SC to them, for they believe in what they call their lucky stars" and the more often they risk death and escape it the
 more they believe themselves what
 George Washington was said to be-tht
 bearer of a charmed life.
 In the first war I reported I said tc | ny-