United States or Hong Kong ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
The whole thing looks more like Arcady than revolution. The only sign of movement is that eight young Boers, theological students of the Dopper or strict Lutheran college here, left last night for the Free State for active service. The Boers across the Orange river so far make no sign of raiding.
This remarkable man, who stood for the future of South Africa as clearly as the Dopper Boer stood for its past, had, both in features and in character, some traits which may, without extravagance, be called Napoleonic. The restless energy, the fertility of resource, the attention to detail, the wide sweep of mind, the power of terse comment all these recall the great emperor.
"This" was the hard, cold, polished business-end of a condemned Martini poked violently out of the blackness into the Slabbertian thorax. "Not in such a 'urry by 'arf, you perishin' Dopper," spluttered the ghastly little man in bandoliers behind the weapon. "Put up them dirty big 'ands o' yours, or, by Cripps! I'll let 'er off, you sneakin', match-talkin' spy!"
And at this moment Burghersdorp is out-Bonding the Bond: the reverend gentleman who edits its Dutch paper and dictates its Dutch policy sluices out weekly vials of wrath upon Hofmeyr and Schreiner for machinating to keep patriot Afrikanders off the oppressing Briton's throat. I went to see this reverend pastor, who is professor of a school of Dopper theology.
"To oblige, bein' begged to by Keyse as a fyvour. 'E didn't know 'is own mind them d'ys!" explained Mrs. Keyse, sweeping her husband's scorching countenance with a glance of withering scorn. "Nor did you," retorted W. Keyse, stung to defiance. "Walkin' out with a Dopper you was if it comes to that." He spun round, mid-ankle deep in sand, to finish.
And their ungainly hurry and awkward gestures of terror somehow reminded the peering Bough Van Busch of an engraving he had seen by chance in a Dopper Bible, in which Lot and his two daughters, fearfully foreshortened by the artist, scuttled in as grotesque an insect hurry from the doomed vicinity of Sodom, Queen City of the Plain.
And when one realizes the old Dopper President hemmed in once more by the hurrying tide of civilization, from which his people have fled for generations trying to fight both fate and Nature standing up to stem a tide as resistless as the eternal sea one sees the pathos of the picture. But this is as another generation may see it.
The personality of Paul Kruger stands out mournfully at this moment on the page of history. Mr. FitzPatrick wrote of him in 1896, as follows: "L'Etat c'est moi, is almost as true of the old Dopper President as it was of its originator; for in matters of external policy and in matters which concern the Boer as a party, the President has his way as completely as any anointed autocrat.
An imposing space called Church Square was pointed out to us with great pride by the Dutch gentleman who kindly did cicerone. There we saw the little primitive "dopper" church where the President always worshipped, overshadowed and dwarfed by the magnificent Houses of Parliament, built since the Transvaal acquired riches, and by the no less grand Government Offices.
The last of the old-world Puritans, he departed poring over his well-thumbed Bible, and proclaiming that the troubles of his country arose, not from his own narrow and corrupt administration, but from some departure on the part of his fellow burghers from the stricter tenets of the dopper sect. So Paul Kruger passed away from the country which he had loved and ruined.
Word Of The Day