1 May 26th 1898
2
3 Dear Laddie
4
5 I wrote you a letter just after I returned from Johannesburg telling
6you how much I liked old Hudson Findlay, & how feelingly he had spoken
7of you & all you had done for them. But I had visitors, & had no time
8to finish it, & now I can’t find it. This explains my long silence.
9I’ve not been writing to any one hardly of late.
10
11 My dear Boy has gone up to Johannesburg to look for work, very full of
12hope sure he should get it ^& that it would bring him in four or five
13hundred a year^ & that I would soon be able to come up & join him.
14
15I do not think he will find it so easy as he hoped. But Lloyd &
16several friends will help him to find it all they can. He has a hope
17of getting work on the Standard & Diggers News; I personally would die
18sooner than have have any-thing to do with Van Gelder, the Editor, but
19Cron thinks he will be able to get on with him - so I just wait & see
20what will turn up! Johannesburg is the last place on earth I should
21choose to live in, but the fates are resolved to drift me there. I
22should like to have a long talk with you over many things, but writing
23is not my line now.
24
25 Thy small sister, who loves thee
26 Olive
27
28 I should like to write an article, if I had time, showing how
29completely the Raid has altered the political face of matters at the
30Cape & broken up all parties which must be formed again entirely anew,
31in the face of absolutely changed social & political condition. If
32Noah & his sons when they came out of the ark after the deluge, had
33resolved to go & sit again at the old spot at which their house used
34to be situated, they would have been fools! It would not have been the
35old spot at all, but quite a new one, with a brand new country of mud
36& slime & all the old land marks gone! The Raid & all it revealed &
37brought into being, has entirely altered the entire body of South
38African problems. The questions of Bond or not Bond, Progressive
39farmer or non-progressive &c, have all been swept away. They were
40all-important – they are nothing now. We want new men & a new party
41based on the new conditions.
42
43 The owners of the Standard & Diggers news Mendelsohn & Bruce told
44Lloyd when he called on them about Cron, that they would have taken
45Cron on at once, but they have just secured the services of a ^new^ man
46in London: they said however they would think the matter over, & let
47Lloyd know in a few days.
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