Ernest Jenkins

“ Every day scores of women and children are leaving the Isle of Wight for the mainland. Gunboats and cruisers are passing and repassing before its shores, by order of the Admiralty; strong, silent men are doggedly pursuing the business they have in hand. In the very heart of the island some of the flower of the youth of our country is being trained in the art of naval warfare, while the thunders of gun-practice are heard every hour around the coast. Yet, search where you will in the Ginger-beer Press during the last few weeks, you will find practically no reference to these things. ”

“ Then, gently but firmly, the "boom, boom" of the guns assailed the ear, telling of battle not far distant.
One's fountain-pen becomes quickly clogged amid the conditions of warfare, for the dust blows freely over the plains across which the troops have marched. For comfort in writing there is nothing like an indelible pencil, and paper whose surface is slightly rough. The quantity of ink carried among the stores of a modern army is negligible. ”

“ I am a professional man. For the past five-and-twenty years, with only one exception (the year following the Diamond Jubilee of the late Queen Victoria) , I have fallen a victim during the first days of November to an attack of bronchial catarrh. In this distressing complaint, as you may be aware, an early symptom is a fit of sneezing, with other manifest discomfort which I need not here particularise.
For the past twenty-five years (with the one exception to which I have alluded) my first sneeze has been the signal for alarm among the women-folk of my household. ”