formed an idea that the Boers were under the
direct control of Providence, and it displeased him greatly to learn that
many petty thefts were committed by some of the burghers at the front. In
many of the speeches to the burghers he referred to the shortcomings of
some of them, and tried to impress on their minds, that they could never
expect the Lord to took with favour on their cause if they did not mend
their ways. He made a strong reference to those sins in the oration he
delivered over Joubert's body, and never neglected to tell the foreign
volunteers that they had come into the country for fighting and not for
looting. When an American corps of about fifty volunteers arrived in
Pretoria in April he requested that they should call at his residence
before leaving for the front, and the men were greatly pleased to receive
and accept the invitation. The President walked to the sidewalk in front
of his house to receive the Americans, and then addressed them in this
characteristically blunt speech: "I am very glad you have come here to
assist us. I want you to look after your horses and rifles. Do not allow
any one to steal them from you. Do not steal anybody else's gun or
horse. Trust in God, and fight as hard as you can."

Undoubtedly one of the most pathetic incidents in Kruger's life was his
departure from Pretoria when the British army was only a short distance
south of that city. It was bitter enough to him to witness the conquest of
the veld district, the farms and the plantations, but when the conquerors
were about to possess the capital of the country which he himself had seen
growing out of the barren veld into a beautiful city of brick and stone,
it was indeed a grave epoch for an old man to pass through. It hurt him
little to see Johannesburg fall to the enemy, for that city was ever in
his enemy's hands, but when Pretoria, distinctly the Boer city, was about
to become British, perhaps for ever, the old man might have been expected
to display signs of the great sorrow which he undoubtedly felt in his
heart. At the threshold of such a great calamity to his cause it might
have been anticipated that he would acknowledge defeat and ask for mercy
from a magnanimous foe. It was not dreamt of that a man of almost four
score years would desert his home and family, his farms and flocks, the
result of a lifetime's labour, and endure the discomforts of the field
merely because he believed in a cause which, it seemed, was