odern Dutch book, hardly even an Amsterdam newspaper. This
defect might give English a great advantage if the Boers wished to
express abstract ideas. But they have not this wish, for they have no
abstract ideas to express. They are a people who live in the concrete.

The rise of great fortunes, which I have noted, has been too recent and
too exceptional a phenomenon to have affected the generally tranquil and
even tenor of South African social life. Among both Dutch and English
months and years flow smoothly on. Few new immigrants enter the rural
districts or the smaller towns; few new enterprises are started; few
ambitions or excitements stir the minds of the people. The Witwatersrand
gold-field is, of course, a startling exception, but it is an exception
which tends to perpetuate the rule, for, by drawing off the more eager
and restless spirits, it has left the older parts of both the Colonies
more placid than ever. The general equality of conditions has produced a
freedom from assumption on the one hand, and from servility on the
other, and, indeed, a general absence of snobbishness, which is quite
refreshing to the European visitor. Manners are simple, and being
simple, they are good. If there is less polish than in some countries,
there is an unaffected heartiness and kindliness. The Dutch have a sense
of personal dignity which respects the dignity of their fellows, and
which expresses itself in direct and natural forms of address. An
experienced observer dilated to me on the high level of decorum
maintained in the Cape Parliament, where scenes of disorder are, I
believe, unknown, and violent language is rare. One expects to find in
all Colonies a sense of equality and an element of _sans gene_ in social
intercourse. But one usually finds also more roughness and more of an
off-hand, impatient way of treating strangers than is visible in South
Africa. This may be partly due to the fact that people are not in such a
hurry as they are in most new countries. They have plenty of time for
everything. The climate disinclines them to active exertion. There is
little immigration. Trade, except in the four seaports,[71] is not
brisk, and even there it is not brisk in the American sense of the word.
The slackness of the black population, which has to be employed for the
harder kinds of work, reacts upon the white employer. I have visited no
new English-speaking country where one so little felt the strain and
stress of modern l