Part 23

And he has been with the Carys ever since, as cook. He receives $22 a month, having become an expert. Abel lives with the other servants in a detached house in the yard, and each receives the following rations: A half-loaf of bread per day; one can condensed milk per week; one quarter-pound of tea per week; two pounds of sugar per week; two pounds of corn-meal per week; fresh meat once a week. This meat consists of a shilling’s worth of “boy’s meat,” probably a pound and a half of beef, which is boiled with vegetables, usually carrots, which the Zulus love. The black servants here are known as “boys,” and the butchers sell a special kind of meat for them, which is called “boy’s meat.” Mrs. Cary serves out the servants’ rations once a week, and her grocer puts up the tea in quarter-pound packages, the sugar in two-pound packages, etc. The food is cooked in Mrs. Cary’s kitchen, but eaten in the detached house where the servants live.... While we were at the dinner table I expressed a desire to see Abel, the cook, and Mrs. Cary sent for him by Sampson, the waiter. Abel came, bowing and smiling, into the room, remained a few moments, and then disappeared in confusion. He is a single man, about thirty years old, and is now saving up his money to get married.... Sampson, the waiter, is a black man of about the same age, and has been married some time. He gave fifteen cows for his wife. She lives somewhere in Zululand, and Sampson sees her only once a year. Among the Zulus, a family of girls is valuable, as the father can always sell them at a good price. Sampson is one of the most capable waiters I have ever seen at a private dinner, or at a dinner of any other kind. He is very quiet in his movements, and, when he offers anything to the guests, he stands at a very respectful distance. While idle, and standing behind his mistress, he looks so respectful, and so concerned about the dinner, that all guests must admire him as much as I did. When I saw him, he wore a suit of white duck, made in American fashion. In addition to waiting on the table, Sampson does the washing and ironing, and assists the garden boy in caring for the flowers, the vegetables and the chickens. At the usual private dinner, you observe the lady of the house keeping a sharp eye on the waiter, although apparently engaging freely in conversation, but Sampson was so capable that Mrs. Cary was not at all nervous. When I am a guest at a private dinner, it makes me feel more natural and at home to see things go wrong occasionally, but Abel and Sampson did such excellent team work that there was not the slightest friction to comfort me.... The Cary servants are kept busy constantly, and they will cheerfully work until eleven o’clock at night, if necessary. They are entitled to a vacation of ten days every year, but Abel, the cook, has been away but once in six years. Every time they leave the house they must have a pass, certifying that they are good boys, regularly employed, etc. Every negro you see on the streets of Johannesburg has a pass; otherwise he is liable to arrest. The blacks pay two shillings a month to the government for this pass privilege, and when a white man employs a new servant from the country, he must have him registered at the office of the police. Mrs. Cary says her negro boys particularly dislike nagging; and I think this is a characteristic of every human male, white, black, red or yellow, that ever drew the breath of life.... Mr. Cary has in his employ a negro man who has six wives. This man works in Mr. Cary’s office down-town, but lives with the other servants at the Cary home. He says he often whips his wives, on general principles. He cheerfully takes orders from Mr. Cary, but it humiliates him to take orders from Mrs. Cary; having six wives of his own, it irritates him to be ordered around by a woman.... Sampson, the waiter, does the sweeping and scrubbing in the Cary home, but the beds are made and looked after by a white maid. Mrs. Cary has a very handsome flower garden, and a special boy is regularly employed to look after it. As it is in bloom summer and winter, he is kept very busy, even with the occasional assistance of Sampson. The Carys have an automobile, but the driver is a white man; blacks are not allowed to run automobiles here.... It is related that the negroes were once greatly excited in Johannesburg over a rumor of a Kaffir uprising. One woman said to her black boy:

“You wouldn’t kill your missus, would you?”

“Oh, no,” the boy replied; “boy next door kill you, and I kill his missus.”

The affair, it seemed, had all been arranged, and very delicately at that. This boy’s name was “Machinery.” The blacks take any name they hear used among the whites, and “Machinery” is a very common name in Johannesburg.... At the Cary home, when I was there, domestic ducks, baked, were a part of the dinner. A considerable quantity was left after all had been served.

“Will you get what is left over?” I asked Mrs. Cary.

“You bet I will,” she laughingly replied, using an American expression to amuse the American guests. With our black servants at home, they always get what is left over from a dinner, but in a South-African home, the servants get only what is served out to them at the beginning of every week.... Everywhere in America, women believe that there is nothing better for a salad than a whole tomato on lettuce leaves, and Durkee’s yellow dressing poured over the tomato. Mrs. Cary had it, except that Abel made the dressing. We also had apple pie, and Abel’s crust, made of beef suet and butter, would have done credit to any cook.... Mrs. Cary says that when she announced her engagement to a man in South Africa, all her friends inquired:

“Is he a missionary?”

People at home have a vague notion that all the whites in South Africa are missionaries, but I have seen none, and heard little of their operations.... We went to the Cary home in a rain-storm, and it was still raining when we returned to the hotel at 10 o’clock at night. Four years ago, rain fell here forty-two days and nights, according to citizens of Johannesburg. This, it seems to me, breaks the record by two days. The rain here is very erratic, and usually falls at the wrong time. The rainfall for the past twenty years has averaged twenty-six inches, but the rainfall is nine inches short this season.... The rain continues at Durban, and when the warship “New Zealand” left for Australia late this afternoon, there was a downpour of rain, and the crowd on the docks was therefore small.... Four years ago, on the 17th of August, ten inches of snow, the first ever seen here, fell in Johannesburg, and all business was suspended while the people engaged in snowballing.

SUNDAY, MARCH 16.—This afternoon I attended a baseball game in Johannesburg; a deciding game between clubs which had won six games each. The players were nearly all miners from California and Colorado. There were probably seven hundred spectators present, and although most of them were Americans, only one of them wore an American hat. I was the one exception, and some were disposed to guy that when I passed in front of the grandstand. The hat generally worn by the men here is a fuzzy affair made in London, and many of them are of a greenish color. The hat can be wrapped up and put in a traveling-bag, and is generally worn with the brim turned down all the way ‘round. A great many caps are also worn.... The game was exactly like a very good amateur game in the United States, except that several of the players were elderly. One player, a doctor, was as old and fat as I am, and I’m in no condition to play baseball. I was told that this doctor is the enthusiast who keeps the game going in Johannesburg. Two of the grayheads were about the best players in the game; one of them was a man named Wilson, and he was a noted base-stealer. One player was called “Denver.” “Come to life, Denver,” a spectator cried, when he went to bat, and “Denver” didn’t do a thing but smash the ball on the nose for a home run. Another player was called “C. C.,” and I found that his nickname was “Cripple Creek,” the name of the American mining camp he came from. One of the pitchers was called “Texas,” and he won the game, 6 to 4. American baseball slang was constantly coming from the spectators, and I could have easily imagined myself in an American town had the men present worn different hats. I looked over the audience a good many times, and it seemed that every man present had in some way lost a little of his American identity. In the chaffing from the grandstand, English pronunciations could be detected, though every man around me was probably an American.... An unusual feature of the game was that almost no boys were present. When a foul went over the fence, some one would remark: “Another boy in,” but the only baseball enthusiasts here are grown men who have played the game, or seen fine exhibitions of it, in the United States. No admission was charged, but a man took up a collection to pay expenses, just as is done at games in the smaller country towns of the United States.... We ate lunch today with an American family, and they told us that the most famous girls’ school in South Africa is at Wellington, Cape Colony. It is run by two American women, and most of the better class girls in South Africa are educated there. All the teachers are American women, and the result is that all the students acquire many American ways, habits and pronunciations. It is generally said here that this Wellington school is doing more to Americanize South Africa than any other single influence.... American life insurance men stand very high all over the world. A South-African life insurance man told me today that every new feature of foreign companies is borrowed from America.... Possibly you will remember that years ago, Prince Napoleon, a son of the Empress Eugenie, was killed by savages. This occurred in Natal, of which Durban is the seaport. The young prince came out here with an English regiment, in a spirit of adventure. The Zulus cut this regiment to pieces; the catastrophe was almost as complete as was the Custer massacre on the Little Big Horn river, in Montana, in 1876.... The original Dutch who settled in South Africa were the same sort of people who settled in New York, and called the place New Amsterdam. The settlement of the Dutch in Cape Colony and in New York occurred at about the same time.... The word “Boer” means farmer, but it is applied to all descendants of the old Dutch stock.... American residents here greatly regret the exaggerated scandals constantly appearing in American papers. In America, a decent man is often abused unjustly and untruthfully, whereas in England the great scandals with plenty of foundation, are usually hushed up. The newspapers and magazines of England and its colonies are not as independent as the American press, and more generally owned by “the interests.” This statement will, I believe, be generally admitted by the English. The American press is not only free; it often carries freedom too far, and prints unjust and untruthful criticisms. These publications are read by Englishmen, and Americans living abroad never hear the last of them.... The tea habit being general in the English colonies, there are a great many tea-rooms. One was raided in Johannesburg last night, and a large number of arrests made. Think of a tea-room being raided by the police!... But here is something still more unusual: An Episcopal rector in Capetown attempted to introduce High Mass into his services, and the controversy has reached the newspapers. The vestrymen are against High Mass, but the pastor stands firm, and says he is within his rights.

MONDAY, MARCH 17.—We have spent this day in the old Dutch town of Bloemfontein, capital of the Orange Free State in the days before the Boer war. It has thirty thousand inhabitants, a little more than half of them negroes. Polly’s Hotel Cecil, where we are staying, is very comfortable, and the price is only $3 a day. I came to the Hotel Cecil on the recommendation of a Boer lawyer I met on the train. He lives somewhere in the interior, and is here to attend a sitting of the supreme court. The lawyer is the first Boer I have become acquainted with; he was a Boer soldier during the war, and, being taken prisoner, was sent to India, where he remained eighteen months. The Orange Free State had no grievance against the English, but went to war because it had a defensive alliance with the Transvaal. Although Oom Paul is a famous figure in history, he was quarrelsome and unreasonable; he made many demands of the English that a proud people could not decently grant. But when the war began, the Orange Free State became the centre of hostilities, and all the men between the ages of seventeen and seventy were drafted. The English couldn’t afford to lose, and they burned houses and destroyed fields as ruthlessly as did Sheridan in the Shenandoah valley. It was a terrible affair, but Oom Paul, with his excess of piety and patriotism, undoubtedly dragged an unwilling people to the slaughter. President Steyn was not as well known as President Krueger, but he was a better man, and better balanced. Steyn, who is still living here, but in ill-health, is a highly educated man, whereas Krueger could barely write his own name.... Owing to Easter, the railroads are now selling tickets at half-fare, so that we traveled here for two cents a mile each. This is the regular fare in Kansas, where we are not blessed, or cursed, with government-owned railways.... The Orange Free State, formerly a republic, is now a state in the South-African union. It has seventeen members of parliament, and sixteen of them are Boers. The seventeenth is a Boer, but a supporter of all English measures. Some of the sixteen Boer members are sons of English fathers, so that it will be seen that politics makes strange bedfellows in South Africa, too.... A Boer farmer does not pay his negro farm hand to exceed $2.50 a month. In addition, the farm hand receives enough corn-meal to keep him, and such other food as he can pick up. Corn-meal is the staple food on the farms here, for Boers as well as negroes. The Boers are always expressing indignation because the English are spoiling the negroes by paying them big wages. The Englishman who drove us about this morning in a Ford automobile, at $2.50 an hour, pays a negro man $10 a month, and the negro boards himself. Such liberality as this greatly irritates the Boers. And this town negro has almost nothing to do; he only cares for six horses, two carriages and an automobile. The Englishman who drove the automobile talked all the time, and his talk was mainly abuse of the Boers.... I have frequently remarked that the English are very unreliable in their pronunciations. Some of them refer to a horse as a ’orse, while others pronounce the word as we do. In London, there is a famous place, the Hotel Cecil. It is universally called the Hotel Sessil in London, but in Bloemfontein, the capital of an English colony, there is a hotel of the same name, and it is called Hotel Cecil; the word pronounced as it is spelled.... I don’t know how it is generally, but on Monday, March 17, 1913, Bloemfontein, Orange Free State, South Africa, was the dullest town I have ever visited. The handsome stores were empty, and I wondered that the merchants did not close up. In dull towns, pretty women are always numerous, and we saw more pretty women in Bloemfontein than in any other town in South Africa.... I believe I have frequently remarked in these letters that South Africa is the laziest country in the world for white people. Today I saw a negro driving a public carriage. Beside him sat a white man, who collected the fares, and managed things; but the white man would not consent to do the actual work of driving. When a white mechanic accepts a job here, he asks, “Where are the boys?” meaning, “Where are the negroes to do the work under my direction?” The labor problem has solved itself in South Africa. When a tolerably good man will work for thirty-seven cents a day, and board himself, an employer really has no room for complaint.... In Bloemfontein, negro women are employed as chambermaids at our hotel; elsewhere we have seen only chamber-men, who worked under the direction of white maids. The negro men are more industrious in South Africa than the women, now that they are civilized, but in the old days of savagery, the women did most of the work.... Near Bloemfontein is a fort large enough to accommodate four thousand English soldiers, but the place is almost deserted; England no longer fears war in South Africa.... The window in my room looks into an open-air theatre; I can see everything that goes on on the stage, and hear everything that is said. I went to bed tonight before the show was half over. Educational films of great value may be had, but manufacturers of films say the people prefer the foolish melodramas with which you are all familiar in connection with moving-picture shows. Sometimes I fear that the general run of the people have wretchedly poor taste. The main show tonight was built around a woman tight-rope walker. This woman was a society queen, but her father met with reverses, and she became a tight-rope walker in a circus, refusing to marry a high-born and wealthy lover because of the change in her fortunes. The high-born and wealthy lover was entrusted with an important mission; to carry certain valuable papers, and a girl clerk of an opposition concern was employed to follow him and secure the papers. The girl clerk fell in love with the man, and refused to rob him, but became a fury when he met his former sweetheart, the tight-rope walker, in a circus. The girl clerk caused the high-born man to be kidnapped, and locked in a top room in a fourteen-story building, but the tight-rope walker rescued him by rigging up a rope to the building opposite, and carrying him on her back. It was an idiotic performance an hour and a half long, but the people in the audience greatly enjoyed it.... My friend, the Boer lawyer, says the Orange Free State is much more prosperous now than before the war, although for two years afterwards it seemed hopelessly wrecked. But the British government loaned the people money, and they soon recovered. The Boer lawyer made another statement that surprised me; he said that taxes are lower now than when the Orange Free State was a republic, and that every citizen has as many liberties as he had then, and more opportunities to prosper. This is rather an unusual statement for a captured subject of a republic to make about a government headed by a king.... I never knew until the Boer lawyer told me that a good many Boers—possibly forty—have been given titles by the English king. The chief justice of the South-African supreme court, which meets at Bloemfontein, is a “Lord,” and there are many inferior titles, such as “Sir.”... The negroes of Bloemfontein are compelled to live in what the English call “locations;” that is, in villages where there are no whites. We visited one of these today, and found the blacks had all kinds of shops, restaurants, hotels, etc. In front of one of the grocery stores was about the biggest pile of watermelons I have ever seen.... The vegetable market of Bloemfontein is in the public square of the town, and the vegetables are hauled in with ox teams. Negro women pick up the droppings of the cattle, and take the stuff home in baskets and pans carried on their heads. Reaching home, they plaster it against the sides of their houses to dry, and afterwards use it for fuel. Every negro woman I saw engaged in this unusual occupation carried a baby on her back. The negroes breed like rabbits, but the infant mortality among them is large.

TUESDAY, MARCH 18.—This morning at 9 o’clock we left Bloemfontein by train for Kimberley. The hotel porter carried our baggage into a compartment for four, and said:

“You are to have this to yourselves all day. I have arranged it.”