Reminiscences of a South African Pioneer Part 16

After careful consideration, I have come to the conclusion that so long as the official collar galls my neck, I cannot adequately deal with the period during which I have been a public servant; I would have to walk too delicately. [I have since modified this decision.] For one of the disadvantages of being in the public service lies in the circ.u.mstance that it is impossible to speak or write of experiences gained therein, without embarra.s.sing reserve.

But the days of my retirement are rapidly drawing nigh; when they arrive, and the collar drops, I shall have much to say about many things, for my life as a public servant during six-and-thirty years has been an interesting one. Most of it has been spent in places as far as possible from centers where conventionality reigns.

My still unrecorded experiences include, inter alia, war, hunting, the administration of native tribes in remote areas, rovings under special commission in those waterless regions to the north-west through which the boundary common to British and German territory runs and perhaps most interesting of all, a microscopic study of human infusoria inhabiting isolated and therefore stagnant towns and hamlets.

I intend to retire soon with a typewriting machine and some beehives, to a little farm I have acquired in a sleepy locality on the south coast. There I hope to be spared for some few years to develop the economic products of the honey-bee, to meditate on the Universal Postulate, and to watch, from afar, my children cultivating the difficult fields of Experience. May their task be easier than mine has been!

Having thus taken the public into my confidence, I will say

AU REVOIR.

L'ENVOI

As a pack of wolves is the hungry Past; It hunts Man laden with hopes and fears; Its bay swells loud with the hasting years, Till the red fangs sink in his flank at last.

The bay grows louder, the flame ringed een Glow with greed as the night sinks, black; Swerve and double still o'er your track The pitiless, questing nostrils lean.

Mark, O brothers, before I fall, I fling this sheaf of script to your care; Take and read it; I fain would share My scanty gatherings with you all.

With all with the hunted, whose eyes search mine In vain for the hint of a 'scaping clue; With those still tranc'd, where the skies bedew The half-op'd blossoms that round them s.h.i.+ne.

Take my sheaf it was gleaned with toil From fields now dimm'd in a long-sped day; In a clime where naught but dim shadows stray Yet its grain may sprout from a kindly soil.