In a few instances the lyddite was far more harrowing than the shafts, and in the vast majority of instances both were born of ignorance.

There are unclean, uncouth, and unregenerate Boers, and I doubt whether any one will stultify himself by declaring that there are none such of Britons and Americans.

I have been among the Boers in times of peace and in times of war, and I have always failed to see that they were in any degree lower than the men of like rank or occupation in America or England.

The farmers in Rustenburg probably never saw a dress suit or a _decollete_ gown, but there are innumerable regions in America and Great Britain where similarly dense ignorance prevails.

I have been in scores of American and British homes which were not more spotlessly clean than some of the houses on the veld in which it was my pleasure to find a night's entertainment, and nowhere, except in my own home, have I ever been treated with more courtesy than that which was extended to me, a perfect stranger, in scores of daub and wattle cottages in the Free State and the Transvaal.