NOTEBOOK

Smythe says of Browning: A man asked him the mean-
ir.21 of a passage in Sordello. Browning puzzled over it
awhile then said—"Once there were two who knew"—
glancine skyward, then touching his own breast—"Now
there is only One."—glancing again skyward.

Miss Rhodes, middle-aged sister of Cecil and the Colo-
nel (one of the four) told Smythe in the hotel in Pretoria
that the prisoners were furious because I praised their
lodeings and comforts; Smythe said the Colonel said—
either he was a damn fool or / was. He seems to be in
doubt. I'm not. We are all fools at times; this is his time.
The prisoners ought to have had a policy and stuck to it.
But no—Butters and others were for conciliating the
Boers (which was wise). Col. Rhodes and others were for
driving them—which wasn't.

In the train, bound for East London, Brown, whom I
last saw in prison in Pretoria, says the brutalities of the
jail guards were awful. They've had an African chief in
there, and some of his people, since last August—never
brought to trial yet—no shelter from rain or sun. Put a
big black in the stocks for throwing his soup on the
ground; stretched his legs too far apart and set him with
his back downhill. He couldn't stand it and put back his
hands on the ground to support himself. Guard ordered
him to stop it—and kicked him in the back. The powerful
black wrenched the stocks asunder and went for the
guard; a Reform prisoner pulled him off and thrashed the
guard himself.

Queenstown, Cape Colony, June 4. Arrived 7 this
morning i6ji hours from Bloemfontein.

"All that a man hath will he give for his life." To save
it he will. But ask a man of 50, "If you were dead now