Life in Afrikanderland as Viewed by an Afrikander: A Story of Life in South Africa Based on Truth

A death-bed is always a sad scene, but doubly so when it is that of a parent surrounded by his or her children, and trebly so when those children are young and helpless.

Let me introduce the reader to such a scene for a moment, for ’tis good now and again to be drawn near to death, if only for a moment, for it brings us face to face with the fleeting and uncertain nature of life, and admonishes us to be prepared.

Behold, then, a pale weak figure, in a white draped, old-fashioned, four-post bed; that figure is the figure of a dying man, that man the father of three children, a boy and two girls, who are standing around the bed clinging to their mother.

‘But if father is going away, where is he going to, mother?’ said the boy, the eldest of the three. Alas! he did not realise what was taking place. He had been told that his father was going away; but he could not realise that he would see him no more on earth, and that he would be left alone to fight the battle of life, with only a poor, poverty-stricken mother to stand between him and starvation.