PURPLE PASSAGES.

Hawke's Bay Herald, Volume XXXV, Issue 11562, 15 June 1900, Page 3

PURPLE PASSAGES.

South Africa has been the grave of many reputations, but it has brought to the front a band of brilliant journalists who, but for the war, might have lingered in obscurity till their natural end (writes a London correspondent) Among the -many who have made a name for themselves with the pen is the Australian Mr A. C. (otherwise " Smiler ") Hales, who is J now doing excellent descriptive work for

the Daily News. Hales is an impressionist gifted with alarge fund of Bulletin humor, and he mixeß the two things into an admirable salad. Sometimes he is very "high falutin," but always picturesque and effeotive. Here is a sample of his eloquence, describing a night attack at I Springf ontein :— " In the blaokness, where no eye but the eye of God could reach, we eaoh man stood faoe to face with his own soul, and few were there who did not wish some pages of his past had never been written in the book of life. It was a sermon in silence, yet so eloquent that every soul was stirred. Some of us thought of home, of wife, and ohild ; others let their fancy rove to her whose girlish lips had olung to theirs when the dear old home ties were broken by i the rude hand of war. Others in that . grim period thought fondly of a large I and healthy rock to hide behind ; and he i whose hand traces these lines owns ) readily that he was one of them. For l it had dawned upon him in that evil hour that all the fame and glory in I the world would not be big enough

to ping a tiny hole a Mauser bullet makes. Then came the shell, shrieking and wailing through the horrible clouds of night like devils driven for ever in hopeless horror from the gates of the eternal city- We knew not whence they came nor whither they were going. We only knew, and eared to know, that they were made of iron, whilst we were made of something not much harder than mud, and a voice within told ue that if there were a collision it would not damage the shells." 1 Jn pother passage Mr Hales says o£