r, for whom I suppose the poor President, who is hardly worth
more than a million or so, had taken one of his simple-hearted fancies.
And then I was introduced to his Honour, and we sat down opposite to
each other. By the President's side, and on his right hand, sat W----,
who was to interpret my barbarous English into the elegant _taal_.

If few of our caricaturists have done Mr Kruger justice, they have
seldom been entirely unjust. He is heavy and ungainly, and though his
face is strong it is utterly uncultivated. He wears dark spectacles, and
smokes a long pipe, and uses a great spittoon, and in using it does not
always attain that accuracy of marksmanship supposed to be
characteristic of the Boer. His whiskers are untrimmed, his hands are
not quite clean; his clothes were probably never intended to fit him.
And yet, in spite of everything, he has some of that dignity which comes
from strength and a long habit of getting his own way. But the dignity
is not the dignity of the statesman, it is that dignity which is
sometimes seen under the _blouse_ of an old French peasant who still
remains the head of the family though his hands are past work. I felt
face to face with the past as I sat opposite him. So might I have felt
had I sat in the kraal of Moshesh or Lobengula or the great Msiligazi.
Though the city about me was a modern city, and though quick-firers
crowned its heights, here before me was something that was passing away.
But I considered my audience, and told the President and his listening
Boers that I was glad to meet a man who had stood up against the British
Empire without fear. And he replied, as he puffed at his pipe, that he
had doubtless only done so because he was a simpleton. And the Boers
chuckled at their President's favourite joke. He added that if he had
been a wise man of forethought he would probably have never done it. And
so far perhaps he was right. All rulers of any strength have to rely
rather on instinct than on the wisdom of the intellect.

Then we talked about Johannesburg, and the President puffed smoke
against the capitalists, and led me to infer that he considered them a
very scandalous lot, against whom he was struggling in the interests of
the shareholders. I disclaimed any sympathy with capitalists, and
declared that I was theoretically a Socialist. The President grunted,
but when I added that he might, so far as I cared, act the Nero and cut
off all the financial heads at one blow