When Steve was fifteen years of age he was taken from school and placed in an office at a small—very small—salary.
His education was not completed yet by far. He could read well, write fairly well, of arithmetic he knew sufficient for the ordinary wants of business life; his grammar was only sufficient to help him to speak English fairly correctly, with a mistake only once in a while. In orthography he was proficient enough to write a fairly well spelled letter. In history he excelled—that was his favourite study, no matter whose history it was. Bible, secular, English, Dutch, Italian, but especially South African, French and American history, he studied; the latter two because they were Republics, for he was a thorough Republican, and wished to know everything about Republicanism.
He loved to read the story of Napoleon. He gloried in Napoleon’s genius, in his wonderful victories. But he grieved over the follies of the Emperor. The General Bonaparte, even the first Consul was his admiration—but the Emperor was a monster to him. He could not understand that a man, who had displayed such wonderful genius as Napoleon had done, could make such foolish mistakes as Napoleon had made as Emperor. He could not understand that such a man should care for the empty pomps and vanities of a throne. To his mind Napoleon would have been a greater man by far if he had remained only a Consul or President of the French Republic. Why a man who had done what he had done for France, and who had striven to the end to live and work only for the people, who wished to live for posterity as a man who had won the hearts of his people (such a man would be nobler and grander by far than one like Napoleon proved in the end) had only used his country and people to work for his own glory and vanity, puzzled Steve.
On the other hand, he considered George Washington by far a greater and nobler man than Napoleon. For Washington had lived and fought only for his country, and had proved to be nobly unselfish to the end. The States, in his opinion, really did “lick creation” as a great and free country.
The history of his own country he simply devoured. He never lost an opportunity of getting hold of a book which treated in any way of South Africa. If the book spoke favourably of his country and people, he was pleased and happy. If the book libelled his country—as so many books really do—he was grieved, but treated it with the contempt it deserved, and took his revenge by extracting any information he found in it.
CHAPTER X
OUT OF SCHOOL
As we stated in the last chapter, Steve was taken from school before his education was at all fairly completed and placed in an office. This was done against the wishes of his mother; but his stepfather said he could not have him eating the roof off the house and live a lazy, good-for-nothing life any longer—he must work and earn his living.
William Waitz (which was the name of Steve’s stepfather) wanted to make a mechanic of the poor boy, but his mother, who understood his nature, would not allow this. She knew this was altogether against the wishes and abilities of her son, and she insisted that he should be placed in an office. Her influence—and a good woman’s influence, even on a bad man, always makes itself felt—gained for Steve the victory, and he was not placed with a mechanic, which he would have hated. He desired opportunities to improve himself mentally, and how could he improve himself so as a mason or brick-layer?
Steve knew his education was by no means complete, but he did not mind leaving school, for he ardently desired to earn his own living and to be independent; besides, he did not intend to leave off studying, only now he could choose his own subjects for study. History—political and natural—astronomy, geography, books on agriculture, horticulture, tree culture, apiculture, all were welcome to him; he would as readily read and study the one as the other, and on many a night, when his stepfather sent him hungry and starving to bed as a punishment for doing nothing in particular, he would console himself and forget his hunger in reading some book or other. It was nothing unusual for him to be caught by the daybreak stealing into his little room, his candle still burning, and he deeply immersed in his book.