E-text prepared by Charles Klingman
New York Agents
Longmans, Green & Co.
Fourth Avenue and 30th Street
South African Tales
by
Author of 'Faerylands Forlorn,'
'Lyra Evangelistica,' Etc.
Oxford
B. H. Blackwell, Broad Street
MCMXVIII
To C. H. CRIPPS
Grace me these veld spoils rude with name of thine!
Mine's been the luck not thine these long years now
To tread the veld. What other use had'st thou,
Hunter and Horseman, made of chances mine!
Nor horns nor heads have I to give to thee,
Yet spoils of sorts veld spoils I bring with me.
Eukeldoorn, Mashonaland.
October 11th, 1917.
Some fifteen years now I have been her guest,
For all this land's hers, tho' she does not reign.
She's but a ward, at what late age she'll gain
Her freedom and her kingdom, it were best
To risk no surmise rash. E'en now she's drest
Sometimes in skins. Give her ground-nuts and grain,
Cattle and thatch'd hut, then she'll not complain,
She's happier-hearted than her Sisters blest.
Her Sisters blest! Of them what shall I say?
I like them better when they keep away,
And toil in their own lands, not loll in hers.
They use her ill. She's not so old as they.
She drudges for them. But her youth confers
A charm on her they've lost these many years.
What's the good of him?' said the bar-tender to me. 'If he couldtell us how the Ruins came he might be worth a forty-pound chequeevery month, or at least a twenty one. But he can't.'
We were discussing the new appointment of a Government Curator atthe Mabgwe Ruins. I approved it, the bar-tender did not. Ipleaded that he was a bit exacting, that the Curator had a verycold scent to puzzle out, and that he had tried plodding aboutfrom rui