In one of the cavalry fights in the late war, a lancer was about to attack an old Boer, when the latter cried out: “Moe nie! moe nie!” (Don’t, don’t). The lancer, however, not being conversant with the taal, replied: “I don’t want your money, I want your life.”
The Officer Commanding the troops at Modder River issue an order prohibiting men from bathing in the river, and a flying sentry was stationed there to see that the order was not disobeyed. Noticing someone in the river, the sentry unceremoniously asked him to “clear out,” whereupon the bather, who happened to be an officer in the Guards, approached the bank in all his nakedness, and indignantly asked the man: “Can’t you see I am an officer?”
Mr. Barnato was one of the first on the Diamond Fields to realise that the blue ground was far richer than the yellow surface ground, although an opinion to the contrary was held by the majority of the diggers. In connection with this matter (says his biographer, Mr. Harry Raymond), Mr. Barnato used to tell the following story:—
“There was one man who, from the time I first began to know anything of the mines, I envied. He had some of the best placed claims in Kimberley and did splendidly until he got through the yellow ground and struck the blue ground, the bedrock as most people believed it to be. He was a clever man and sharp—perhaps some people would call him ‘sharper’—so he obliged a friend by finding a dumping ground in his claims for some worthless yellow. He then sold his claims for whatever he could get—four hundred pounds, I think it was—and cleared before the expected storm could burst on his head. But these claims were among the first to prove that the blue was the true diamond ground, and he could not have bought them back for forty thousand pounds. The man is still living, and very poor, after a life’s hard work; but, Oh! he was so clever and so sharp! What? You suppose that I bought those claims for the four hundred pounds? No, I am sorry to say I never had the chance. I knew that the blue had been reached there, that the yellow ground had been dumped in to cover up, and I wondered what was coming next. The acts of an able man can be foreseen when his surroundings are known, but who can fathom the folly of a fool? I would have given eight thousand pounds for those claims, and they went to a new comer for four hundred pounds!”
An actor who visited the Rand in the early days relates the following anecdote:—
“As we came to Johannesburg from Kimberley by coach, we met the returning coach at some miserable stopping place with an unpronouncable name, and found it crowded with Lionel Brough and his company. We fraternised, of course, at once, and amongst the questions asked and answered as to prospects of business, theatre accommodation, etc., we learnt that Brough had with him a quantity of scenery and props which he did not want, but had been unable to sell at Johannesburg. At that moment Mr. “Barney” Barnato drove up on his way back to Kimberley, and at once joined us. He was always a good friend to the profession, and out there with the heavy travelling expenses between the mining camps, the hard work, and the other uncertainties, we often wanted such a friend then. When he heard of the scenery, he said: ‘Come on, Brough, I’ll put it up to auction.’ We all adjourned to the open veld, all the cloths and props were spread out to view, and the sale commenced. It was one of the most amusing things I ever saw. Barnato made of it a monologue, in the style of Charles Mathews, even to that ‘now let me get a word in edgeways’ in ‘My Awful Dad,’ and bought in everything himself. We all enjoyed the joke tremendously, but, to our great surprise, he paid Brough the really good prices at which he had knocked the lots down, and made them a present to us in the most kind manner at the very last moment as he drove away. Many a professional has been indebted to Barnato for personal kindness that the world will never know of.”