1 The Homestead
2 April 19^20^ / 95
3
4 Dear Laddie
5
6 I am specially anxious that a letter should reach Seymour Fort the day
7he arrives. Will you please drop me a P. Card saying when he is
8expected if you know. If I don’t get the card I shall take it you
9don’t know. It’s rather important.
10
11 I wish I had fuller news of you. I have had an idea that if President
12Reitz’s health gave way, de Villiers might take his place & you
13become Chief Justice. I should like this. I should like to see you out
14of the world of party politics just as I should never like to see Cron
15in it. To me (perhaps I am mistaken) it always seems that your
16marvellous powers of mind & peculiarities of character would be put to
17their highest use, if you were at the head of some great commission
18bent on codifying the confused vast body of English law; or some
19colossal intellectual work of that kind. Cron I always think I should
20like to see British Resident over ^among^ some great body of barbarous
21people, a post like Clerk’s in Basutoland, for instance.
22
23 You never know the stuff thats in him till you see him among his
24dependents, such as his fifty servants at Krantz Plaats. He is a firm
25ruller, & consequently he rules without effort & without ^seeming^ force.
26 The pity in life, the grand wrong to me has always seemed, that we
27human folk can’t get into our right places. Here & there you find a
28man or woman, big or little quite in the right environment, & there is
29a sense of infinite satisfaction; but it doesn’t happen often.
30
31 It’s sorrowful to me that it will be so long before I can see you
32again, if ever. I am daily & hourly expecting to be taken ill; but
33have felt no ill effects from my fall.
34
35 Good bye my old Laddie.
36
37 Your little sis
38 Olive
39
40 Cron sends greetings. One of his great regrets is that you & he are
41not working shoulder to shoulder ^but it may come yet.^
42