Читать книгу Thoughts on South Africa онлайн

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No European who has not grown up in the Colony, being born of pure European parentage, can understand the full force of this Mother tradition.

Like the odour of an unknown plant or flower, it must be experienced to be comprehended. Nor does it die out with the first generation. The mother transmits it to her daughter, and the daughter to her child. It is the echo of this legend which goes so largely to form that curious body of sentiment with which the most commonplace colonist visits Europe for the first time. The most sensitive man, growing up in the original home of his race, does not understand this subtle and delicate emotion; and the most hard-shell man of business among us is not untouched by it when he sets his feet for the first time on the old-race shores.

"And this is England! And this is Europe!" It is as though he woke up in a kind of fairy land! The tile cottages with the moss upon them, the hedgerows, the village greens with the churches, the blue-bells in the woods—he has seen them all before—in a dream. In the roar of the great city curious emotions come to him. As he drives in the omnibus the conductor calls, "Shoreditch!" and he starts and looks out. Above him is the great church tower—