I Am Aware That I Was A Disgrace And Opprobrium To
Your House, Sir, Last Time I Was There, Sir.
No, sir, I shall
sleep in my cart, and not come into the presence of ladies.'
Hereupon he
Departed, and I was informed that he had been drunk for
seventeen days, sans desemparer, on his last visit to Caledon.
However, he kept quite sober on this occasion, and amused himself
by making the little blackies scramble for halfpence in the pools
left in the bed of the river. Among our customers was a very
handsome black man, with high straight nose, deep-set eyes, and a
small mouth, smartly dressed in a white felt hat, paletot, and
trousers. He is the shoemaker, and is making a pair of
'Veldschoen' for you, which you will delight in. They are what the
rough boers and Hottentots wear, buff-hide barbarously tanned and
shaped, and as soft as woollen socks. The Othello-looking
shoemaker's name is Moor, and his father told him he came of a
'good breed'; that was all he knew.
A very pleasing English farmer, who had been educated in Belgium,
came and ordered a bottle of champagne, and shyly begged me to
drink a glass, whereupon we talked of crops and the like; and an
excellent specimen of a colonist he appeared: very gentle and
unaffected, with homely good sense, and real good breeding - such a
contrast to the pert airs and vulgarity of Capetown and of the
people in (colonial) high places.
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