Sad about 91; very bad.
599, 602, 606, 16, 238, 327, all new tents, with great affliction; must go soon again.
Called to 117; Nel; young wife; just received tidings of her husband's death in Ceylon; desperately stricken; hard, hard case.
Called to hospital; Annie Bothma[19]; strong young girl (twenty); very bad; just struggling to live; mother holding hand. Foeitog! (alas!) So well and strong; horrid pneumonia; have visited her again, and cannot get reconciled that she should die. And yet she yearns to be "ontbonden" (loosed), and begs of me to pray to that effect. Now, God forgive me, but this dying girl's request I cannot, cannot accede to. Humanly speaking, she simply cannot live; it is only her abnormally strong constitution that fights so grimly. I have wrestled with God for her life. Oh, she must not, may not, die! Think of the weak, frail mother—of the father far, far away in Ceylon! "O ye of little faith"; and yet I firmly believe God can still spare her life.
Yesterday, row about the miserable meat[20]. Some women rather violent and loose with tongue; to-day committed to imprisonment. Yesterday my letters were returned by the Censor. I boiled over for some time; such a little snob, who is too big for his boots! Pinpricks; will fight it out to-morrow.
Thursday, August 29.—Went back to hospital after writing above, and then I did indeed pray as the sick girl desired. God took her home at about two this morning. Poor child! she did suffer so very much, and yet withal so patiently; "Die doctor het mij gif ingespuyt en gif ingege daarom lei ik zoo zwaar" ("The doctor injected poison into me, and gave me to take poison; that is why I suffer so bitterly"); very likely morphia had to be injected. Whenever I repeated a verse to her she would say the lines in advance.
After breakfast I went to village for first time; saw Magistrate; obtained residential pass; hunted high and low for boards for coffin for Annie Bothma. At last, after despairing search, succeeded in getting six boards and two boxes; hope they will be enough wherewith to fashion some sort of a coffin.
Deaths last night—8, 129, 401, 52, 427, 213, 239, and one in hospital.