The continuance of the war must strike
you as a renewal, but there was never a lull really.
People who think the war can be ended by farm-burning, &c., mistake the
Boer temper. I scarcely know how to convey to you any idea of the
spirit of determination that exists among them all, women and even
children as well as men. The other day I picked up at a farmhouse a
short characteristic form of prayer, written out evidently by the wife
in a child's copybook, ending thus: "Forgive me all my sins for the sake
of your Son Jesus Christ, in whom I put all my trust for days of sorrow
and pain. And bring back my dear husband and child and brothers, and
give us our land back again, which we paid for with blood from the
beginning." Simple enough as you see, and no particular cant about it,
but very much in earnest. At another farm a small girl interrupted her
preparation for departure to play indignantly their national anthem at
us on an old piano. We were carting the people off. It was raining hard
and blowing--a miserable, hurried home-leaving; ransacked house, muddy
soldiers, a distracted mother saving one or two trifles and pushing
along her children to the ox-waggon outside, and this poor little wretch
in the midst of it all pulling herself together to strum a final
defiance. One smiled, but it was rather dramatic all the same, and
exactly like a picture.
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