“Let’s see. I first took to the road twenty years ago, just after the alluvial petered out at old ‘Pilgrim’s,’ and I’ve been on it ever since pretty well, except for a few years in the Transvaal when I was working on the Boers’ farms before the war, helping them to build. I’m a mason by trade; leastwise I never was in my articles, but I picked it up natural like. I used to get a job that would keep me on a farm sometimes for two or three months, and when I got my money, swag it to the nearest town. Then drunk for a fortnight, and the road again until I’d found another job.”
(“Pilgrim’s Rest,” an alluvial gold-field in the north of the Transvaal, rushed in 1873.)
“Well, I suppose ’most every man has something special to look back upon; mine, I never talk about. However, you’ve given me a good feed and a shake-down, and you don’t seem to suspect I’m going to try and steal your spoons or cut your throat, so I don’t see why I shouldn’t tell you about it; anyhow I’ll try. Just let me light my pipe, and then you sit sideways so’s you can’t see my face, and I’ll be able to talk better.
“It came about this way: me and a mate left ‘Pilgrim’s’ together, meaning to tramp to Kimberley, but of course we had to get work on the road. I was just twenty-four years old, and as strong as a horse. I’d not been drinking long, and you couldn’t see by me that I’d ever touched a drop.
“At Lydenburg we met a Dutchman who told us of a farm about two days’ journey away, where there was some building wanting to be done, so for there we started. The place was a little way off our course to the right, but that didn’t matter. Well, we reached it on the second day, and we were at once taken on. The Boer wanted a ‘lean-to’ built, and the bricks and mortar were ready. The man who’d agreed to do the job had hurt his hand and been obliged to go away to a doctor, so the Boer was right glad to see us.
“You know, sir, what life is like on a Boer’s farm—coffee and biscuit first thing in the morning, early dinner of meat and pumpkin, and late supper of bread and dripping; lots of coffee, of course, in between. This Boer was a good sort and treated us well. We took the job on as a piece, so we worked hard. We grubbed with the family, listened without understanding a word when the old man read the Bible and prayed, and helped them (leastwise I did) to sing hymns. I soon began to pick up a little of their lingo, learning a few words every day, but my mate didn’t know a word of it, and wouldn’t learn.
“There were lots of children, mostly small, and a young nephew of the old woman’s who lived in the house. His name was Jacob, and he’d long, black hair and a cock-eye. The two eldest children were boys, and the next one was a girl of twelve. She and I became great chums. She used to come out and sit near where I was at work, asking questions about the bricks and mortar, and teaching me Dutch words. She used to laugh like the dickens at my way of saying them. Often, when visitors came, or when the old woman made coffee between meals, as she did three or four times a day, Hessie (that was her name) would bring me out a cup, and watch me drink it. She didn’t like my mate, who was a surly old bear, so she would never bring him any, and if I gave him a swig out of mine, she’d get as mad as cats, and swear she’d never bring me any more.
“Sometimes she’d ask me all about my people, and get me to describe the place I’d come from. To hear me describing Manchester in my Dutch would have made a cow laugh. She’d want to know all sorts of things, whether I’d any sisters, and what they were like, and if I’d a sweetheart, and whether I’d ever come back again to the farm after the job was finished. She always used to call me ‘Vellum.’
“Well, the job was finished at last, and me and my mate left the farm with about ten pound each, meaning to go straight to Kimberley. Hessie took on a powerful lot when I said good-bye to her, crying and sobbing. I was very sorry to say good-bye too, and I sent her back a present of a red leather belt with a big steel buckle from Middleburg, where we dossed down the first night after leaving the farm.
“I don’t know how it was, but although I met four or five of my old chums, I never touched a drop of drink at Middleburg, and what’s more, I didn’t want to. My mate wanted to, sure enough, but I wouldn’t let him; and to be quite safe we went and slept just outside the town, where we couldn’t see the lights in the bars, nor hear the boys shouting.