How can one's heart remain hard? Can one be unmoved when you see weeping, stricken mothers kneeling in anguish beside their infants' graves?
Love, after all, is the greatest and most mysterious of all things.
Explain it that a mother can cling to a helpless, idiotic, deformed boy for fourteen years, and feed him mouth to mouth! Explain that a mother can sit up night and day, day and night, with a sick child! Look at those deep-set eyes, sorrow-sunken, their care-wornness, and tell me what is this Love that endureth all things!
Two things have I learnt during these fourteen days which till now to me were "all fancy"—the meaning of Love and the thing called Religion.
Thursday, September 5th.—Tent overhauled; floor rubbed and "smeered" (coated); very miserable, windy day; dust; dirt; towards evening cold south winds; fear it will work havoc with the children to-night.
Hospitals; so sorry about Miss Snyman; quite delirious to-day; wonder if she will live.
Hysterical one[32] quite tame; "Ach, minheer zijn hand is tog zoo koud; ik wens, minheer, wil die heele dag mij kop hou" ("Ah, sir, your hand is so very cold, I wish you would hold it to my head the whole day").
Found things cleaner at 35; still great misery.
Fear old Mrs. Van Zyl will die.