FAVOURITE HEROES
When Steve was fifteen years of age he was taken from school and placed
in an office at a small--very small--salary.
His education was not completed yet by far. He could read _well_,
write fairly well, of arithmetic he knew sufficient for the ordinary
wants of business life; his grammar was only sufficient to help him to
speak English fairly correctly, with a mistake only once in a while.
In orthography he was proficient enough to write a fairly well spelled
letter. In history he excelled--that was his favourite study, no matter
whose history it was. Bible, secular, English, Dutch, Italian, but
especially South African, French and American history, he studied;
the latter two because they were Republics, for he was a thorough
Republican, and wished to know everything about Republicanism.
He loved to read the story of Napoleon. He gloried in Napoleon’s
genius, in his wonderful victories. But he grieved over the follies
of the _Emperor_. The General Bonaparte, even the first Consul was
his admiration--but the Emperor was a monster to him. He could not
understand that a man, who had displayed such wonderful genius as
Napoleon had done, could make such foolish mistakes as Napoleon had
made as Emperor. He could not understand that such a man should care
for the empty pomps and vanities of a throne. To his mind Napoleon
would have been a _greater_ man by far if he had remained only a Consul
or President of the French _Republic_. Why a man who had done what he
had done for France, and who had striven to the end to live and work
only for the people, who wished to live for posterity as a man who had
won the _hearts_ of his people (such a man would be nobler and grander
by far than one like Napoleon proved in the end) had only used his
country and people to work for his own glory and vanity, puzzled Steve.
On the other hand, he considered George Washington by far a greater and
nobler man than Napoleon. For Washington had lived and fought _only_
for his country, and had proved to be nobly unselfish to the end. _The
States_, in his opinion, really did “lick creation” as a great and free
country.
The history of his own country he simply devoured. He never lost an
opportunity of getting hold of a book which treated in any way of South
Africa. If the book spoke favourably of his country and people, he
was pleased and happy. If the book libelled his country--as so many
books really do--he was grieved, but treated it with the contempt it
deserved, and took his revenge by extracting any information he found
in it.