Another thing--he lacks taste. His clothes never by any chance fit him
(in the eyes of more refined people), and his boots are always three
sizes too large; but then he thinks he is getting more for his money.
If he must needs buy boots, he takes care that he invests his money in
quantity, not quality, or style.




CHAPTER III


The Boer would like to lay hands on the man who invented ploughs. Not
that he has any aversion to ploughs as ploughs; he merely objects to
the labour involved by the introduction of these implements into the
market. He sees some sense in an ox, a sheep, a goat, and a horse. Put
these animals on a bit of green veldt, and they do the rest
themselves; they thrive and multiply, and enhance the position of
their owner. But a plough! It means that he requires to take off his
coat and stop doing nothing. The Boer would like to argue that if God
had meant the soil to be disturbed by ploughs and such like, He would
not have left the solution of this problem in the hands of mere
inventors: He would have ordained a means whereby the soil would have
of itself turned over once a year at springtime.

The Boers are a pastoral people--one can hardly say an agricultural
people. They have been that sort of people from the start, and they
will never change. They are used to waggons and oxen and sheep, and
the waggons and oxen and sheep have got quite used to them. There is
abundance of proof in the Dutch Republics to satisfy any ordinary