ers that most white men lay claim to,--
vigour, muscle, energy, pluck, fun, humour, resolution. Only principle
is wanted to make them a respectable and useful portion of the human
family. Like all the rest of us they are keenly alive to the influence
of kindness and affection. Of course if your kindness, forbearance, or
affection, take the form of action which leads them to think that you
are afraid of them, they will merely esteem you cunning, and treat you
accordingly; but if you convince a Kafir, or any other savage, that you
have a disinterested regard for him, you are sure to find him grateful,
more or less.

One family with which I dined gave me to understand that this was the
result of their own experience. At that very time they had a Kafir girl
in training as a housemaid. Servants, let me remark in passing, are a
Cape difficulty. The demand is in excess of the supply, and the supply
is not altogether what it should be, besides being dear and
uncomfortably independent. I suppose it was because of this difficulty
that the family I dined with had procured a half-wild Kafir girl, and
undertaken her training.

Her clothes hung upon her in a manner that suggested novelty. She was
young, very tall, black, lithe as an eel, strong as a horse. She was
obviously new to the work, and went about it with the air of one who
engages in a frolic. But the free air of the wilderness had taught her
a freedom of action and stride, and a fling of body that it was not easy
to restrain within the confined precincts of a dining--room. She moved
round the table like a sable panther--ready to spring when wanted. She
had an open-mouthed smile of amused good-will, and an open-eyed
"what-next--only-say-quick--and-I'll-do-it" expression that was
impressive. She seized the plates and dishes and bore them off with a
giraffe-like, high-stepping action that was quite alarming, but she
broke or spilt nothing. To say that she flung about, would be mild. It
would not have been strange, I thought--only a little extra dash in her
jubilant method of proceeding--if she had gone head-foremost through the
dining-room window for the sake of bearing the mutton round by a shorter
route to the kitchen.

The family expected that this girl would be reduced to moderation, and
rendered faithful--as she certainly was intelligent--by force of
kindness in a short time.

Of course in a country thus circumstanced, there are bad servants. The
inde