Note 77 — Chapter VIII · THE ENGLISHMAN

We remember in our childhood to have heard an improved version of this statement to the effect that one Boer might equal four niggers, but one Englishman would lick fifty Boers. We remember lying in our bed at night and pondering over this problem—why with such terrible partiality the God who loves all equally, should have confined all courage and fighting power to the inhabitants of Great Britain—and we had before us a vivid picture of the one solitary British soldier standing on a kopje waving his gun, while before him fled frantically fifty powerful Boers armed to the teeth but making no endeavour to secure him. The adventure of Majuba Hill came strangely to terminate this vision, nor have we ever been able to recall it save as an exploded nightmare.