FROM THE ATBARA TO WAD HAMED 73 as possible as long as his comforts don’t interfere with other people’s ? Indeed, so far from this being the case, the “comfortable ” correspondent—as far as my experience goes—is often a really kind and generous fellow, who never grudges a friend a share in his good things ; and as to his picturesque costume and careful toilette, a man preserves his self-respect all the better when he is clean and nicely dressed. The hospitality, too, which, when camels and servants abound, can be generously dispensed to agreeable and communicative officers, is a most valuable factor in the success of a war correspondent’s career ; its quality is like that of mercy—it blesses him that gives as well as him that takes.

Another type meets us in the veterans, the self-constituted doyens of the pressmen, who claim to regulate the camp and lay down the law generally. Some old persons of this sort, on the strength of their own antiquity and their experience of half a dozen campaigns, are loud in their denunciation of all ‘‘interlopers,” as they are pleased to call all gentlemen who pay their own expenses and do literary work in connection with the campaign.