28 THE WAR IN THE SOUDAN.

This sounds very nice ; but Thomas Carlyle’s ‘ ‘ great man is so great that Carlyle can see nothing else. He forgets that the dryness of the sticks

is one factor in the creating of a great man. If there were no dryness there were no need perhaps of a great man. It is the seeing the dryness and then

holding to them a lighted torch that makes the man great.

The sticks were very dry indeed in the Soudan, and there was a man

there who knew it. Of him let us now take notice.