God bless you all and dear Nora God bless her and Chas and the Lone Fisherman.
DICK.
Outside Ladysmith.
5th March, 1900.
DEAREST MOTHER: I was a brute to write as I did last night.

But I was so blue in that miserable town!!! It was so foul and dirty.

The town smelt as bad as Johnstown.

My room in the so called hotel stunk, the dirt was all over the floor and the servants had to be paid to do everything even to bring you a towel--and then I had no place to write or be alone, and nothing to eat-- The poor souls at my table who had been in the siege, when they got a little bit of sugar or a can of condensed milk would carry it off from the table as though it were a diamond diadem-- I did the same thing myself for I couldn't eat what they gave me and so I corrupted the canteen dealer and bought tin things-- I've really never wanted tobacco so much and food as I have here--to give away I mean, for it was something wonderful to see what it meant to them.

Three troopers came into the dining room yesterday and asked if they could buy some tea and were turned out so rudely that it seemed to hurt them much more than the fact that they were hungry: I followed them out and begged them to come back to my verandah and have tea with me but they at first would not because they knew I had witnessed what had happened in the hotel.