m and adherence to old
habits and customs, even in the matter of dress. President Krueger is one
of their prominent members and so is General Piet Cronje.

The devotional habits of the Boers form one of their national
characteristics. The family collect at dawn for morning worship, led by
the parent or else by the tutor--it consists of a hymn,
Scripture-reading, and prayer--similarly before retiring at night,
devout grace before and after each meal. These practices are not relaxed
when travelling with their wagons or when in the field. On Sundays an
extra (forenoon) service is added. Strangers and travellers receiving
hospitality are always courteously and unostentatiously admitted to
those family devotions. One may thus meet with one or more wagons camped
in the wilderness and find a cluster of men, women, and children
engaged in happy devotions and singing psalms or hymns in the familiar
old "Herrenhut" melodies, or one may come upon a scene where men just
returned to camp, begrimed and still perspiring from a day's hunt or
battle, join with husky voices an already assembled group in the
customary service.

Such practices of piety cannot fail to have a salutary effect upon the
young, nor can it be with justice said that the bulk of the people are
inconsistent in their conduct, though formality and insincerity are
sadly frequent enough, and in late years a decadence in seriousness and
an increase of frivolity instead have marked the present epoch,
especially among those who are exposed to the pernicious influences and
contaminations incidental to town life. The old Free Stater mentioned
before expressed the expectation that the present war and trials will
tend to check that declension, and in that way prove to have a
compensating character for good. During my frequent travels it had been
my privilege as a guest to make the acquaintance of numerous truly
Christian Boer families, both well-to-do and poor. On one occasion I had
to accept the hospitality at a farmhouse of one named Brits,[16]
nicknamed "vuil" or dirty Brits. This was an old blind widower; his
household was composed, besides himself, of an old brother, also a
widower, and the family of a son-in-law. After the evening meal the
service was led by the blind man, the daughter reading some chapters in
the Bible indicated by him. The two old men and I occupied separate cots
in one small side room. Happening to wake up at dawn the following
morning, I saw those