vestrymen are against High Mass, but the pastor stands firm, and says he is within his rights.
Monday, March 17.—We have spent this day in the
old Dutch town of Bloemfontein, capital of the Orange
Free State in the days before the Boer war. It has
thirty thousand inhabitants, a little more than half of
them negroes. Polly's Hotel Cecil, where we are staying,
is very comfortable, and the price is only $3 a day.
I came to the Hotel Cecil on the recommendation of a
Boer lawyer I met on the train. He lives somewhere
in the interior, and is here to attend a sitting of the supreme
court. The lawyer is the first Boer I have become
acquainted with; he was a Boer soldier during
the war, and, being taken prisoner, was sent to India,
where he remained eighteen months. The Orange Free
State had no grievance against the English, but went
to war because it had a defensive alliance with the
Transvaal. Although Oom Paul is a famous figure in
history, he was quarrelsome and unreasonable; he
made many demands of the English that a proud people
could not decently grant. But when the war began,
the Orange Free State became the centre of hostilities,
and all the men between the ages of seventeen and
seventy were drafted. The English couldn't afford to
lose, and they burned houses and destroyed fields as
ruthlessly as did Sheridan in the Shenandoah valley.
It was a terrible affair, but Oom Paul, with his excess
of piety and patriotism, undoubtedly dragged an unwilling
people to the slaughter. President Steyn was
