General Gordon once told Mr. Rhodes the story of the offer of a roomful of gold which had been made to him by the Chinese Government after he had subdued the Tai-Ping rebellion. “What did you do?” asked Rhodes. “Refused it, of course; what would you have done?” “I would have taken it,” said Rhodes, “and as many more roomfuls as they would give me. It is of no use for us to have big ideas if we have not the money to carry them out.”
When Dr. Jameson was Administrator of Rhodesia, he was one afternoon lying on his bed in his tent, when a burly, drunken prospector suddenly lurched inside, and, drawing his revolver, said:—“You are a good old doctor, but I am b——y well going to shoot you.” Jameson remained motionless (says his biographer, Mr. G. Seymour Fort), puffed a whiff of cigarette smoke through his lips, and coolly replied:—“Yes, that’s all right, but don’t you think you had better have a drink first?” The man agreed. Jameson called his servant and told him to take the man to the canteen, at the same time pointing with his finger not to the canteen but to the police camp. Off went the prospector, quite pleased, but soon discovered the ruse. A desperate struggle took place, the servant was thrown heavily to the ground, and the prospector was only just overtaken by the police as he was re-entering the tent, revolver in hand, and black murder in his heart.
When Cecil Rhodes was at Oxford, he looked so little like an Oxonian that he was able to deceive even the Proctor. “The Proctor,” related Mr. Rhodes, “took off his cap to me with the utmost politeness, and I did the same to him. ‘Well, sir,’ said the Proctor to me, ‘your name and college?’ ‘My name is Rhodes,’ I replied, ‘and I have just come here from the Cape of Good Hope, and am making a short stay in Oxford; and now, sir, may I ask your name and college?’” Whereupon the Proctor apologised for what he supposed to be his mistake, and Cecil Rhodes escaped unfined.
Mr. Louis Cohen, one of Mr. Barney Barnato’s earliest partners on the Diamond Fields, says that there was one man on the Fields whose business they both envied. He seemed to have a regular and large connection, and made constant rounds, riding one old yellow, rather lame, pony. The partners tried to follow him to see which way he went, but without avail. One day Barnato said to Cohen: “That chap —— has a rare good connection; we must get hold of a bit of it somehow.” “All right,” said Mr. Cohen, “we want it badly enough.” “I know what we have to do to get ——’s customers. I have seen him come home three days running.” Mr. Cohen thought Mr. Barnato was fooling, and replied rather sharply:—“If you had seen him go out and followed him up it would have been more to the purpose, I should think.” But Barnato soon convinced him that he was quite serious. “Look here,” said he, “I’ve seen him come back from his rounds three days running, and he always stops first at Hall’s canteen. Mind this, however, he does not guide the pony to the place, but just sits still all the while with loose rein, and the pony stops of his own accord. Now, it is my firm conviction that all day long he rides just the same way, and that the pony knows all the stopping places. I’ve known this for some days, but it didn’t help so long as he had the pony; to-day he has seen some other beast he likes better, and wants to sell the lame pony.” The partners bought the pony, with the successful results anticipated by Barnato. “I wonder,” says Mr. Cohen, “whether any other man than Barnato would have been so closely observant as to notice that the pony finished his rounds without guidance and so probably knew all the usual stopping places of each day.”
In his biography of Mr. B. I. Barnato, Mr. Seymour says that one evening Mr. Barnato and Mr. Louis Cohen went to the Court Theatre, London. No seats had been booked; Barnato, as usual, had no money on him, and Louis Cohen had only a sovereign. Barnato borrowed this, saying that he would engineer the other shilling for their stalls somehow. Under the portico of the theatre was a man not quite blind, but with defective sight, who solicited charity. Barnato turned to Cohen and said:—“Do you mind, Lou, if we go to the circle instead of the stalls?” “Oh, no; just as you please.” Barnato then went to the office and asked for two circle seats. “Very sorry, sir, but all are gone. I can give you two side stalls if they will do.” A huge smile broke over Barnato’s face. “I have not come prepared to pay for stalls,” said he. “Very well, sir. You can have stalls for circle prices.” Barnato took his vouchers for the seats, went out to the man, gave him the whole five shillings change, and, turning to Cohen, said: “Now that is what I call finance.”