Such noble women as that grand matron, Mrs. Joubert, widow of the late Commandant-General Piet Joubert, would redeem any land or people. She is one of thousands of Africander mothers whose sons may forgive much, because they are Christians but will forget nothing because they are men. They will not have any of the amiable sentimentality of the Irish whose soft hearts and heads prompt them too often to let bygones be bygones. Nor will they have any of the vulgar admiration of success which makes the American parvenu cringe to the Englishman of rank or station, until the Yankee to-day is more despised in Great Britain than his independent father was ever hated there—which is saying a good deal.
The bible-loving Africanders may enjoy the following poem, with its Hebraic language of fierce denunciation. It is by an Irish-American without any Anglo "virus" in his system, James Jeffrey Roche, editor of the Pilot.
With it I conclude this story trusting and believing that it is anything but the concluding chapter to the Boer fight for freedom, the bravest and noblest ever fought since God taught men to love liberty.
Her robes are of purple and scarlet,
And the kings have bent their knees
To the gemmed and jewelled harlot
Who sitteth on many seas.
They have drunk the abominations
Of her golden cup of shame;
She has drugged and debauched the nations
With the mystery of her name.
Her merchants have gathered riches
By the power of her wantonness,
And her usurers are as leeches
On the World's supreme distress.
She has scoured the seas as a spoiler;
Her mart is a robber's den,
With the wrested toll of the toiler,
And the mortgaged souls of men.
Her crimson flag is flying,
Where the East and the West are one;
Her drums while the day is dying
Salute the rising sun.
She has scourged the weak and the lowly
And the just with an iron rod;
She is drunk with the blood of the holy,—
She shall drink of the wrath of God!