There was in Johannesburg a man who, having arrived there with twenty-five pounds in his pockets--as he liked to relate with evident pride in the fact--had, in the course of two years, amassed together a fortune of two millions sterling.

One day during dinner at Groote Schuur he enlarged upon the subject with such offensiveness that an English lady, newly arrived in South Africa and not yet experienced in the things which at the time were better left unsaid, was so annoyed at his persistency that she interrupted the speaker with the remark: "Well, if I were you, I would not be so eager to let the world know that I had made two millions out of twenty-five pounds.

It sounds exactly like the story of the man who says that in order to catch a train at six o'clock in the morning he gets up at ten minutes to six.

You know at once that he cannot possibly have washed, whilst your story shows that you could not possibly have been honest." I leave the reader to imagine the consternation produced among those present by these words.

But what were their feelings when they heard Rhodes say in reply: "Well, one does not always find water to wash in, and at Kimberley this happened oftener than one imagines; as for being honest, who cares for honesty nowadays ?" "Those who have not lived in South Africa, Mr.Rhodes," was the retort which silenced the Colossus.
This man of the get-rich-quick variety was one of those who had mastered the difficult operation of passing off to others the mines out of which he had already extracted most of the gold, an occupation which, in the early Johannesburg days, had been a favourite one with many of the inhabitants of this wonderful town.