allowed, the Psalms of the Old Testament alone being
sung. I could not help noticing that the Dopper
congregations were better and more neatly dressed, and
possessed that appearance of comfortable independence
as is observed among the Friends at home.
President Stephanus Johannes Paulus Kruger was
born on the 10th October, 1825, in the district of
Colesberg in the Cape Colony, and is without doubt
the greatest and most representative man that the
Boers have yet produced, Uneducated or self-educated,
he possesses a very large amount of that natural
wisdom so often denied to men of great learning and
of literary cultivation. With many prejudices he is
fearless, stubborn, and resolute, and he really understands
Englishmen little better than they understand
him. In his earlier days he has been a somewhat
ardent sportsman and a good shot; he has been
engaged and honourably mentioned in most of the Kafir
fights of his time, and at the end of a rough and stormy
life he fills the Presidential chair of a country that has
passed Boer aspirations, and attained a financial
character and position due to its mineral wealth and
the energies of its Colonists, in which Boer industry
and Boer influence have played but a small part.
Socially he has always lived in a somewhat humble
position, and it is to the credit of his nature as a man
that he bears not the slightest trace of the parvenu.
Plain and undistinguished in appearance, he combines
the advantages of a prodigious memory with a remarkable
aptitude for reading his fellow man, and this last
quality would be more valuable were it not leavened
by a weakness in resisting flattery and adulation. He
is very pious and self-reliant, which is provocative of
bigotry and hot temper; and surrounded and approached
on all sides by clever and often unscrupulous financiers
and speculators, his scutcheon has worn wonderfully
well, and his character and reputation passed through
many fiery ordeals; he is also a rough diplomatist of
no mean rank.
He has been twice married : by his first wife he had