difficulty of procuring anything pretty here, the cost
and risk of its carriage up from D'Urban if you send to England for it,
and partly from the want of servants accustomed to anything but the
roughest and coarsest articles of household use. A lady soon begins to
take her drawing-room ornaments _en guignon_ if she has to dust them
herself every day in a very dusty climate. I speak feelingly and with
authority, for that is my case at this moment, and applies to every
other part of the house as well.

I must say I like Kafir servants in some respects. They require, I
acknowledge, constant supervision; they require to be told to do the
same thing over and over again every day; and, what is more, besides
telling, you have to stand by and see that they do the thing. They are
also very slow. But still, with all these disadvantages, they are far
better than the generality of European servants out here, who make their
luckless employers' lives a burden to them by reason of their tempers
and caprices. It is much better, I am convinced, to face the evil boldly
and to make up one's mind to have none but Kafir servants. Of course one
immediately turns into a sort of overseer and upper servant one's self;
but at all events you feel master or mistress of your own house, and you
have faithful and good-tempered domestics, who do their best, however
awkwardly, to please you. Where there are children, then indeed a good
English nurse is a great boon; and in this one respect I am fortunate.
Kafirs are also much easier to manage when the orders come direct from
the master or mistress, and they work far more willingly for them than
for white servants. Tom, the nurse-boy, confided to me yesterday that he
hoped to stop in my employment for forty moons. After that space of time
he considered that he should be in a position to buy plenty of wives,
who would work for him and support him for the rest of his life. But
how Tom or Jack, or any of the boys in fact, are to save money I know
not, for every shilling of their wages, except a small margin for coarse
snuff, goes to their parents, who fleece them without mercy. If they are
fined for breakages or misconduct (the only punishment a Kafir cares
for), they have to account for the deficient money to the stern parents;
and both Tom and Jack went through a most graphic pantomime with a stick
of the consequences to themselves, adding that their father said both
the beating from him and the fine fro