comes to our land, we realize what, perhaps, we were but dimly
conscious of before, that we are Africans, that for this land and
people we could live--if need be, we could die?
Is it strange we should feel this? The Scotchman feels it for his
heathery hills, the Swiss for his valleys. All men who are men feel it
for the land of their birth!
What is strange is not that we have this feeling, but that, side by
side with it, we have another. We love Africa, but we love England
also. It is not merely that when for the first time we visit the old
nesting place of our people it is rich for us with associations, that
we tread it for the first time with something of the awe and reverence
with which men tread an old cathedral, rich with remains of the great
dead and past; it is not merely that the associations of language and
literature bind us to it, nor that in some city or country churchyard
we stand beside the graves of our forefathers, and trace on mould-eaten
stones the names we have been familiar with in Africa, and bear as our
own; nor is it that we can linger yet on the steps of the church where
our parents were united before they moved to the far South, and made
of us South Africans. Beyond all these impersonal, and more or less
intellectual ties, we form a personal one with England. Whether we
have gone home as students to college or university, or for purposes of
art, literature, or professional labor, as time passes there springs up
around us