t we thought perhaps we ought to go
back-- As we have no news since except that the British are in Pretoria
we still do not know what to think. Personally I am glad I came away
as I can do just as much for the Boers at home now as there where the
British censor would have shut me off from cabling and mails are so
slow. With the local knowledge I have, I hope to keep at it until it
is over. But when I consider the magnitude of the misrepresentation
about the burghers I feel appalled at the idea of going up against it.
One is really afraid to tell all the truth about the Boer because no
one would believe you-- It is almost better to go mildly and then you
may have some chance. But personally I know no class of men I admire
as much or who to-day preserve the best and oldest ideas of charity,
fairness and good-will to men.

DICK.

June 29th, 1900.

DEAR MOTHER:

We are now just off Crete, and our next sight of the blue land will be
Europe. It means so many things; being alone with Cecil again, instead
of on a raft touching elbows with so many strangers, and it means a
shop where you can buy collars, and where they put starch in your
linen. Also many beautiful ladies one does not know and men in evening
dress one does not know and green tables covered with gold and little
green and red bits of ivory where one passes among the tables and
wonders what they would think if they knew we two had found our
greatest friends in the Boer farmers, in Dutch Station Masters who gave
us a corner under the telegraph table in which to sleep, with Nelson
who kept the Transvaal Steam Laundry, Col. Lynch of the steerage who
comes to the dividing line to beg French books from Cecil, and that we
had cooked our food on sticks, drunk out of the same cups with Kaffir
servants and slept on the ground when there was frost on it. It will
be so strange to find that there are millions of people who do not know
Komali poort, who have thought of anything else except burghers and
roor-i-neks-- It seems almost disloyal to the Boers to be glad to see
newspapers only an hour old instead of six weeks old, and to welcome
all the tyranny of collar buttons, scarf pins, watch chains, walking
sticks and gloves even. I love them both and I can hardly believe it
is true that we are to go to a real hotel with a lift and a chasseur,
where you cannot smoke in the dining-room. As for Aix, that I cannot
believe will ever happen-- It was just a part of one'