The Ready Reckoner Story. 273 



paid the farmer and dismissed him. The Boer on his way- 

 home, thinking he had been defrauded, worked out the sum 

 according to his Dutch almanack in which a ready reckoner 

 is always included. Finding that the total was a good deal 

 more than the amount he had received, the yokel retraced 

 his steps and demanded the difference. The Jew on hearing 

 this claim, asked for its explanation. When he was shown 

 the ready reckoner, he took up the almanack, and after 

 inspecting its title-page, handed it back to its owner with 

 the contemptuous remark that as it had been written for the 

 previous year, it did not hold good for the present one, and 

 that consequently its ready reckoner did not apply to the 

 case in point. The Boer thereupon acknowledged the justice 

 of the plea and departed. If only a tenth of these stories are 

 true, it is no wonder that the Boers hate the English, among 

 whom they include all English-speaking Jews. 



People in England pride themselves on the love which 

 they feel for their black brethren, and are willing to let the 

 blood of their officers and soldiers be shed in maintaining 

 equality between the respective descendants of Shem and 

 Ham. I admire the sentiment, although my experience has 

 been that Englishmen abroad do not treat black men any 

 better than do other nations ; the Boers, for instance. As a 

 case in point, I may mention that one afternoon while we 

 were staying at Johannesburg, my wife, who was in the hotel, 

 was informed by one of the Kafir servants that some people 

 were beating October in the backyard of the building. Hear- 

 ing this, she rushed to the spot, and found our Basuto boy 

 struggling with a constable and three or four other white men 

 who were vainly trying to drag him off to the police station. 

 She being a law-abiding Englishwoman, though knowing 

 nothing about the cause of the row, called out to October to 

 go quietly with the constable, which he instantly did. She 

 then drove off in hot haste to fetch me from the circus, where 

 I was breaking-in a horse, and we went off to the police 

 station together. Our first action was to deposit the neces- 



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