ray, who have now feared to speak? Do not
think I wish for punishment upon these men. Let them take the millions
they have wrung out of this land, and go to the lands of their birth,
and live in wealth, luxury, and joy; but let them leave this land they
have tortured and ruined. Let them keep the money they have made here;
we may be the poorer for it; but they cannot then crush our freedom with
it. Shall I ask my God Sunday by Sunday to brood across the land, and
bind all its children's hearts in a close-knit fellowship;--yet, when I
see its people betrayed, and their jawbone broken by a stroke from the
hand of gold; when I see freedom passing from us, and the whole land
being grasped by the golden claw, so that the generation after us shall
be born without freedom, to labour for the men who have grasped all,
shall I hold my peace? The Boer and the Englishman who have been in this
land, have not always loved mercy, nor have they always sought after
justice; but the little finger of the speculator and monopolist who are
devouring this land will be thicker on the backs of the children of this
land, black and white, than the loins of the Dutchmen and Englishmen who
have been.'

"And she said, 'I have heard it said that it was our duty to sacrifice
ourselves for the men and women living in the world at the same time as
ourselves; but I never before heard that we had to sacrifice ourselves
for people that are not born. What are they to you? You will be dust,
and lying in your grave, before that time comes. If you believe in God,'
she said, 'why cannot you leave it to Him to bring good out of all this
evil? Does He need YOU to be made a martyr of? or will the world be lost
without YOU?'

"He said, 'Wife, if my right hand be in a fire, shall I not pull it out?
Shall I say, 'God may bring good out of this evil,' and let it burn?
That Unknown that lies beyond us we know of no otherwise than through
its manifestation in our own hearts; it works no otherwise upon the sons
of men than through man. And shall I feel no bond binding me to the men
to come, and desire no good or beauty for them--I, who am what I am,
and enjoy what I enjoy, because for countless ages in the past men have
lived and laboured, who lived not for themselves alone, and counted no
costs? Would the great statue, the great poem, the great reform ever be
accomplished, if men counted the cost and created for their own lives
alone? And no man liveth to himself, and