Communications Cut 



people who sit at home and have your post three 

 times a day, and your morning and evening paper, 

 with Reuters telegrams at your clubs, try and 

 imagine yourselves for two months sitting down 

 peaceably while a host of black Shensi natives 

 were seizing all your luxuries and making mince- 

 meat of them. It was heart-sickening. Thirty- 

 five pages of my precious diary, which I had kept 

 so zealously, absolutely destroyed ; letters to and 

 from dear friends and relations scattered to the 

 four winds ; presents and purchased necessaries un- 

 delivered; and worse than all, food, that ever neces- 

 sary adjunct to one's existence, growing scarcer and 

 scarcer. The Officer Commanding the Troops ran 

 out of boots ; the Officer Commanding the Political 

 Mission ran out of paper on which to make his 

 reports; I ran out of "Gillette" blades, a packet 

 of which I had been long expecting, and had to 

 grow a parson's beard. All my sketching materials, 

 with my filter, had fallen into the hands of the 

 natives, besides a huge caravan of food, and last, 

 but not least, my pass-books for both the home and 

 colonial banks — a sad occurrence, as it prevented 

 me paying any more of my bills. Having thus 

 depicted a picture somewhat devoid of colour, I 

 can now, with more pleasant fervour, relate how, 

 after an exhibition of patience, wrongly supposed to 

 be an entirely feminine virtue, a dilapidated mail- 

 bag eventually percolated through. I snatched up 

 the three letters of my bag. One was a bank 

 receipt, the second from a man asking payment of 



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