The M’Korio Delta lies, as its name implies,[5] at the mouth of the
M’Korio river.
This protracted and beneficent stream was first seen on the 10th July
1863, by the noble-hearted Garry, who, coming across it in the rainy
season, and mistaking the character of the waterway, christened it
“Lake Coburg.” He crossed it, and pursued his way without discovering
his error.
It was next visited (unless we accept the very doubtful story of
Van Arlst two years before) by the intrepid Matherson in 1867.
Matherson had the misfortune to cross it in the middle of the dry
season, and was wholly unaware of its importance. On his historic
map, which is still preserved by the Royal Geographical Society in
Burlington Gardens, the spot is marked with the words “pools here”;
and there is a marginal reference to a carrier, recently converted to
Christianity, but devoured in this neighbourhood by a crocodile.
The true discoverer of the river, the first to recognise its nature
and to map its course was the saintly Basingstoke, a pupil of the
N.K.C.B.
Basingstoke was very probably born in Murphy county, N.S.W., on the
river Thames a few miles above Tarára. On reaching England he did
what his right hand finded to do and displayed in several houses a
devoted and God-fearing manner which earned him a written character
from his last master, Mr Heck, of the Lindens, Fulham. Armed with
this he passed to the Continent, worked for some time in what is now
the Grand Hotel at Assisi and so encountered the chief adventure of
his life.
It was due to a recommendation from this hotel that Basingstoke
started from Naples in March 1873, in the company of an Italian named
Mucciani, who boasted some foreign title or other, and was possessed
of ample means.
This man died; how and where will never be known, for in the awful
days of fever that followed nothing but a most exceptional valour
saved Basingstoke himself from destruction. We have it in his own
hand that “he had no conception where he was or what he did,” and
that the clothes and personal effects of Mucciani (which it had
been his business to brush and clean) were “lost in the period of
delirium.” But, he finely adds, “I must succeed; I know when God is
on my side.” The phrase is typical of the man’s true humility, and
helps us to understand his power.
The blacks put an absolute trust in him. Just above the Harra rapids
(below which point the Italian notes on the map are first misspelt
and then cease altogether) he was compelled to shoot two of his
carriers for prevarication—to call it by no harsher name. The whole
company fled into the woods, and he was left alone with one man,
Mahmoud, whose devotion had in it something of hero worship. They
had no weapons left, save one rifle, fifteen cartridges, and a heavy
whip; all these Basingstoke, as the stronger of the two men, carried
without complaint to the journey’s end. Roped together, lest they
should lose touch in the thick brushwood, these gallant fellows
stumbled on, till they emerged at Háli (or Gambetta as the place is
now called) more dead than alive, and received aid from a friendly
tribe who knew and trembled at the English name.
Miracles, if one may use the term with reverence, were worked for
them upon their journey down the river from this spot to the coast, a
hundred and fifty miles away. At one place their canoe was surrounded
by a clamorous horde of natives, who were silenced by the reading of
that magnificent passage, Genesis xxxvi. 22-28 inclusive. At another
they were pursued by a she-hippopotamus of enormous dimensions; at
a third they dared not land for fear of lions; at a fourth they
touched at a native village in the very nick of time barely three
hours after the death of a mighty serpent. Upon reaching the mouth
of the river they had every reason to fear that they would be fired
upon by a Portuguese gunboat. Basingstoke quietly stretched his white
handkerchief upon a reed; the emblem was recognised and he passed in
safety. Three days at sea exhausted their provisions. Basingstoke has
recorded the generous struggle between himself and Mahmoud and told
us in unforgettable language how the servant slid into the water by
night to save his master.
Many of us can still remember his reception in Europe, his plea at
Exeter Hall for those millions whom he had found in darkness, his
decoration by the King of Italy, and his successful lawsuit against
the family of Mucciani.
The end of this great man is less well known. Years after, when
unfortunate speculations had dissipated his considerable fortune,
he returned to Gambetta, but he only returned to die. His life was
wasted. The valuable deposits of mineral oil, upon which he had
pinned his hopes were already in the hands of a foreign concession.
His heart broke. He lies buried in a field just outside the limits of
Gambetta, under a fine monument bearing the simple inscription:
_C. M. Basingstoke,
Born at Beatrice, N.S.W., on the 6th July 1841,
Educated at the Mason’s Orphans’ College, Clapham,
Died Jan. 6th, 1895._
“_I shall be a fugitive and a wanderer upon the earth._”
It is to Mr Barnett’s honour that he paid for the monument, which is
of Cornish granite inlaid with plain black. The whole is of British
workmanship, designed in Battersea by one of the Chelsea artists,
executed in Camberwell, transported by the well-known firm, B. L.
Jowel & Co. of Holborn Viaduct, shippers, etc. It was set up by
Burroughs. Photographs of the same are to be obtained of Mr Gale,
742 Strand, and a tablet has been erected in Westminster Abbey by
American subscription.
After Basingstoke’s great effort, several travellers appeared in
succession in the M’Korio valley, and completed his work. Each
entered after incredible exertions through the Kuru gorge; each
descended the river to its mouth, bearing his life in his hands, each
survived, and each published a book upon his return to England.
Bayley Pasha in 1876, the indomitable Higgs in the same year, poor
Lord Charles Hampton in 1878-79, and “Hell or Glory” Powell, in 1880,
achieved the exploration of the country. These, together with a few
rather noisy continental claimants to similar honours, were the
pioneers. Sir Henry Jeorz signed the first treaty with the Noyo of
Naya in 1882, thereby overriding the previous arrangement which that
sovereign had signed with some German adventurer. Next year a similar
footing was obtained in the town of Saràka and the surrounding
district by the genius of Captain Ronald, who deposed and exiled the
Alemami, forbade polygamy, put down the slave trade with a rigorous
hand, publicly burned the Sacred Umbrella, and was on the point of
executing a Belgian botanist, when news of his exploits reached
England, and he was suddenly recalled by the Secretary of State for
War, a personal friend who had long mourned him as dead.
Ronald was given an excellent post, and has since enjoyed all that
public repute and a wealthy marriage can afford, but the error of his
recall was the beginning of a series of official blunders, which all
but forfeited the fruit of so much private heroism.
[Illustration: CAPTAIN RONALD (BY THE KIND PERMISSION OF THE AUTHOR
AND PUBLISHER OF “RULERS OF MEN”)]
So long as Mr Gladstone continued by his marvellous personal
influence to concentrate English opinion upon parochial matters,
the valley of the M’Korio remained upon the map as British
territory; it was taken by our neighbours and rivals to be in some
vague way attached to the British Empire, the Portuguese claim to
the settlement at the mouth of the river was tamely submitted to
arbitration, upheld, and finally bought out for the monstrous sum
of eighty-three thousand seven hundred and forty-six pounds. A few
stations scattered along the eleven hundred miles of the stream,
each occupied by a mere handful of troops—these and the missionary
enterprise peculiar to our race alone maintained the prestige of
Great Britain.
With the great national movement of 1886, this dangerous and unworthy
state of affairs came to an end. A Government which comprehended the
meaning of the word Imperial proceeded to the partition of Africa.
So far as the M’Korio was concerned, that partition was marked by
a majestic simplicity. The whole of the right bank was recognised
as falling within the sphere of influence of the French, with whose
acknowledged possessions in Africa these districts ultimately merged.
The whole of the left bank, right up-country as far as the Cameroons,
was similarly adjudged to Germany. We retained for our portion no
useless shadowy sovereignty over the immense spaces of the interior,
but the solid and tangible possession of the Delta. The future may
yet show that we there established our power over one of the most
valuable territories of the earth.
This Delta has a frontage upon the sea of some 145 miles. It is
contained between two main branches of the river, which meet at a
distance of about ninety miles from the coast; but, as is nearly
always the case in such formations, the M’Korio also finds its way to
the ocean by a very great number of smaller channels.
[Illustration: A “MORO-KANU,” OR MEMBER OF THE UPPER CLASS OF THE
YABA. THIS CLASS POSSESSES MOST OF THE LAND, AND OBTAINS ALL THE
POLITICAL DIRECTION OF THE DELTA. INDEED IT IS FROM THEIR DOMINATION
OF A CLOSELY ARISTOCRATIC POLICY THAT THE PRINCIPAL HOPES OF AN
IMPERIAL EDUCATION OF THAT PROVINCE DEPEND]
By no means the whole of this province is permanently under water.
There are several considerable islands of firm earth, sufficient
to afford sustenance for a sparse but combative population which
is split up into some five or six distinct tribes, but is known to
the surrounding natives under the collective name of the Yaba. The
reduction of these our fellow-citizens, “half devil and half child,”
would probably have proved too heavy a task for any troops save those
who had been trained in our own magnificent and permanent school of
colonial warfare. As it was, a short campaign sufficed to establish
that _Pax_ which the commander in his despatches cleverly termed
_Britannica_. Before the month of December 1887, the army was able
to re-embark upon the _Princess Mary_; its task was accomplished.
The rising of 1888 was more difficult to deal with, and that of 1889
(which may be regarded as one with the disturbances of 1890) put the
local resources of our power to a very severe strain. Three officers,
seven white non-commissioned officers, and no less than 120 native
troops perished of fever before order could be finally restored.
The rebellion of 1891 was a small matter, purposely exaggerated
by the unpatriotic section of the House of Commons, and by the
jealousy or ignorance of the Continental press; indeed, for three
full years no military operations were necessary, and even the armed
disaffection which appeared in 1894 could hardly be dignified with
the name of a rising; while the obscure movement of 1897, of which we
heard so much in this country, appears to have been little more than
an outbreak of intertribal bickering, which it was our easy duty to
suppress.
The general upheaval, which began in January 1900, was a far more
serious matter. The temporary difficulties which we were then
experiencing in the south of the African continent were not without
their re-echo in the central north, and, ludicrous as it seems, the
Yaba may have thought, in company with more serious competitors,
that a term had come to our national mission. They were undeceived.
Difficult as it was to spare men, a sharp campaign, lasting into the
first months of 1901, and unfortunately neglected in the noise of
greater events, finally pacified the country. At the same moment the
Delta was formally annexed and a governor appointed.
With the rebellion of 1902 it is not my purpose to deal. The event
is too near us in time to permit of an impartial estimate, while
the disturbances of 1903 have not yet been reported upon, and those
of 1904 are but their sequel. Moreover, the events with which this
chronicle has to deal date from an accident prior to this last
campaign. That accident was the presence upon this coast of Mr I. Z.
Barnett.
It is time that I presented to my readers a presentment of this
remarkable man with whom so much of the following pages are concerned.
It may seem an impertinence in me to do so. His name is familiar
enough to the whole world for such a description to seem superfluous.
It must be remembered, however, that I have frequently come into
personal contact with his genius, that he was for some months
the financial guide of the dear friend whose record I desire to
establish, and that he would—had that friend’s weakness permitted
it—have remained his guide to the end. Indeed, the just description
of this great Builder of Empire is a duty which I owe, not only to
the memory of Mr Burden, but to Mr Barnett himself. He has furnished
me with many of the materials of this work, and he will be the first,
not only to endorse, but to applaud my confidences.
Mr Barnett’s offices in Broad Street are well known to everyone in
the City. Under the name of the M’Korio Delta Development Co., they
are, as Mr Barnett has himself strikingly put it in the _Intellectual
Review_, “a household word.” They occupy, of course, Nos. 73, 75, 77,
79 and 81 of Golden Square House. It is not so generally known that,
under the business name of the “British and Levantine,” they stretch
over Nos. 83, 85, 87, 89, 91, 93, 95, 97 and 99 of the same building.
Five rooms of the ground floor (under the name of Bury & Co.) and a
considerable part of the basement devoted to the XXth Century Wine
Company are in the same hands.
But this position was not immediately reached. The brain and the
manhood which were capable of such an achievement merit a brief
biography, were it only to show by what virtues of steadfastness and
application our country has come to stand where she does.
Mr Barnett was born at Frankfort a/M., somewhere between June 1840
and March 1845. In youth he must have been strikingly handsome. A
photograph, taken at Mayence in 1863, shows us a mass of black crisp
hair, glittering eyes, promising a singular depth and power; full and
somewhat sensuous lips, comprising between them a mouth of immense
tenacity; a broad, high forehead of a startling paleness; and a nose
of that full pendulous type which is invariably associated with
organising ability and staying-power. The prominence of the cheek
betrays some strong potentiality for emotion; but it is especially
the attitude of the whole figure that indicates the mind within.
[Illustration: LORD LAMBETH (MR BARNETT) FROM THE PORTRAIT BY SIR
HENRY MOSELEY, R.A., K.V.O.]
The young man is shown supported by a small pilaster, in the German
manner of the period. The right hand is thrust negligently into the
pocket of the trousers; the left grasps, in fingers of a certain
obesity, a book which we believe to be an English Bible.... There is
something further—something which a written description can hardly
convey, but which carries one away as one gazes at the magnificent
coloured enlargement which hangs to-day in the hall of Mr Barnett’s
house in Charles Street.... It is an impression—a conviction
rather—that this man is in some inscrutable way linked with the
fate of England. Such an assertion in cold print means little;
made in the presence of the man or his emblem, it has the force of
prophecy.
To-day the figure and the face are changed. Forty-five years do
not pass without leaving their mark, even upon the Heroes of our
strenuous epoch. An increasing stoutness—the hereditary enemy of his
family—has affected the gait and figure of Mr I. Z. Barnett. His
once luxuriant black curls are fallen. His head is surrounded by a
short ring of reverend grey hairs, still crisp, however, and still
admirably barbered. The clean-shaven face of the Mayence photograph
boasts the whiskers of later middle age that meet above the mouth in
a manner luxuriant, but quaintly foreign still. The chins are heavier
and more rumpled, and the whole face softer and more drooping.
Failing eyesight, coupled with a keen regard for dignity, have
compelled Mr Barnett to the use of plain gold eye-glasses held by
a simple tape. These, with a couple of rings upon the left hand, a
heavy signet, a bunch of curious old family seals at his watch chain,
some large pin or other, a well-chosen stud, and two cuff links
of Russian opals, comprised the whole of his ornament. In dress,
however, he is careful and even scrupulous—a habit that accompanies
the excessive personal self-respect which is an only, and a most
forgivable, weakness. In colour he affects the maroon; in pattern,
a quiet check; and he is careful to hide the ungainly join between
the trouser and the boot by a pair of snowy spats. Gloves he rarely
wears. His hat is modish.
His philosophy and manner are perhaps of greater import. Himself
an agnostic, he has ever extended his religious sympathies beyond
the narrow boundary of creed. His spiritual outlook from of old was
frank and tedious at times, yet always genial and always helpful in
intention. His deeper conviction was best expressed by the phrase he
invariably used upon completing the complicated formulæ of some legal
document: “My word,” he would say upon such occasions, “is as good as
my bond.” At some considerable distance one would have recognised the
man who had succeeded and who had deserved success.
But that success had not come easily. Indeed, until the last
magnificent piece of daring upon the M’Korio it could not be said to
have come permanently at all.
His birth was a continual drawback: the change of name necessary
to his career in England was another: the slight accent which he
retained throughout his career a third. We are a conservative and
jealous people, and it is with difficulty that we will admit the
genius of an alien, even when that genius flatters or would enrich us.
That Mr Barnett should suffer from such a prejudice was in his case
a peculiar hardship. His mother, the daughter of an Englishman
settled in Lisbon, was related in some way to Admiral Sir J. Cowen.
His father, though technically a German, was one to whom our fullest
sympathy should extend. A patriot and idealist of the noblest type,
he saw in the occupation of Frankfort in 1866, the advent at once
of militarism and of foreign rule. He determined to abandon a town
still dear to him, but intolerable since it supported an oppressor.
Too just, however, to enforce this decision upon his two sons, he
gave them the choice: he that remained should continue the business
subject to a half-charge upon all discount and advances, the other
might accompany him to freedom and to England. David elected, with
reluctance, to accept the Prussian domination; Mr I. Z. Barnett, the
younger son, departed with his father to this country, to the no
small delight of his mother, who intended, if possible upon their
arrival to renew the family ties with Admiral Sir J. Cowen.
This legitimate purpose she did not live to fulfil. She died soon
after her establishment in London, and her husband did not long
survive her.
Mr Barnett has often pointed out to me the little room in the Albany
where he began his long and difficult struggle with fortune. He spent
little, he lived laboriously; within ten years he had accumulated
a sufficient capital to devise and launch the Haymarket Bank. The
scheme of this speculation, risked by a comparatively poor man,
yet in the early thirties, should be enough to stamp the genius of
its creator. The Bank depended upon a principle which, had it but
proved successful, would have revolutionised the financial world.
All depositors were paid interest yearly upon the average of their
current accounts at the rate of eight per cent. At first it was
difficult to persuade a public wedded, wherever money was concerned,
to formal routine; but when, at the end of the first year, the eight
per cent. was duly paid (for Mr Barnett would accept no more than his
original capital could meet), timidity gave place to enthusiasm, for
eighteen months the institution increased as though by magic. If ever
the ordinary operations of the bank failed, on occasion, to earn the
stipulated interest, fresh depositors could always be depended on:
their accounts furnished the funds necessary for the satisfaction
of the yearly dividend. These in turn received at the end of twelve
months, the eight per cent., which yet another band of new investors
had delightedly furnished.
Upon lines so original and so daring, a new system of banking seemed
destined to arise. No limit threatened the expansion of the business,
till a venomous article, inspired perhaps wholly by political hatred,
suggested that the interest already paid could only come out of the
new capital daily furnished to the concern. A panic followed this
abominable insinuation (the scoundrel had not the courage to set it
down for a fact), and within twenty-four hours, the Haymarket Bank
was ruined.
Had Mr Barnett alone suffered by this underhand attack, he would have
felt it less; he was still a young man and might retrieve his own
fortunes. But the thought of decent middle-class ladies, of poor and
struggling clergymen ruined, not through their own fault, but because
they had trusted too thoroughly in him, was more than he could bear.
I have often heard him speak of those painful days, and he has never
failed to point out that the same hands which wantonly destroyed the
Haymarket Bank are responsible for the pestilent Little-Englandism
which would (if it could) drag him down from the great place he holds
to-day. The same spite that blasted the high promise of his ambitions
in pure finance, would—had it the power—wither that climax of applied
finance which is but another word for Imperial endeavour: but the
M’Korio Delta and all it means is now beyond the power of such
enemies.
For years Mr Barnett lay silent and obscure under the stigma of
this failure. He visited Vienna, Constantinople, and Calcutta: he
was concerned with the Anatolian Railway extension: it failed, and
he again withdrew. Passing through Cairo he enjoyed the simple
hospitality of the devout Harburys, and learnt from the morning,
noontide, and evening prayers of that secluded household, a peace
he had not yet known. He attached the younger Harbury to himself as
secretary, and set out with a higher heart to retrieve his fortunes.
He was instrumental in procuring a very necessary sum of money for
the Vidame de Sorral: that nobleman, with the careless generosity
of his rank, disbursed a considerable portion of his new found
wealth upon a yacht, wherein, overcoming a senseless and unchristian
repugnance, he took his benefactor for a short cruise upon the
African coast.
It was in these circumstances that Mr I. Z. Barnett, these few short
years since, first set eyes upon the land he was to render famous.
They were anchored off the western mouth of the M’Korio. The morning
was intensely hot, without a breath of wind. The trees that marked
the swampy edge of the Delta shimmered in a kind of mirage, and to
the left, on the high land some three miles away, a few white dots
marked the settlement and the governor’s house.
How often has not Mr Barnett told the story! His idle curiosity, the
two days’ shooting which his host and he took in the marshes, the
slight fever, the British flag at morning, and then suddenly, an
inspiration wholly new, the vision of what this place was to be!
The yacht was welcome to sail without him—he was closeted day
after day with officials and such travellers as were waiting for
the English mail. He travelled: in a fashion he surveyed. He even
obtained an interview with the governor, who, sceptical as he is,
has recently confessed how impressed he was with the enthusiasm of
this strange man, and has himself largely invested in the Company.
Mr Barnett was convinced—he knew not how: it was a kind of faith—he
was convinced of the presence of gold. He saw the banks dyked, the
marshes drained, a province immensely fertile, teeming with wealth,
standing at the door of the vast M’Korio valley, the very key of
Africa: and all that for England!
He stayed as long as his health would permit, Harbury by his side,
meeting the native chiefs, questioning old hunters, obtaining
options, and using such legitimate influence as lay in his power with
the local agent of Reuter. Almost bereft of capital, he yet secured
some few concessions (for they were thought worthless)—he so disposed
them that their sites commanded the best of the territory. Above all,
he learnt that the paltry trade of the place, its reputation in the
City, and in some sense its economic future, were in the hands of two
men, two friends, a shipowner and an importer of hardware. He learnt
that of all men they were most contemptuous towards the M’Korio. He
learnt that the shipowner thought to know it more thoroughly than any
other man, and was not to be persuaded of its great destiny: that the
merchant, who had never visited it, had for years driven so weak a
trade as to give him the smallest opinion of its chances: that they
were both men old, hard in routine, and difficult. He learnt their
names. The shipowner was a Mr Abbott; the name of Mr Abbott’s friend,
the hardware merchant, was Burden.
He learnt that without them nothing could be done: this he learnt
thoroughly: this of all the things most impressed him.
He returned to England, and for one year or two he perfected his
plans.
* * * * *
Those who will deny the working of a conscious Providence in human
affairs, are led into their errors through an inability to grasp the
complexity of the world around them. They would have each good deed
immediately rewarded, and rewarded after its own kind; they would
have every evil punished in some direct and manifest way, forgetting
that such a punishment would not complete the episode, but would
itself originate a chain of further effects.
It is not thus that Immanent Justice informs and balances the lives
of men. But if we observe a group of human activities for any length
of time, we discover a network of reactions in which is soon manifest
an astonishing unity of design. This charity, that heroism will bear
far off, and in some wholly unexpected portion of the scheme, a fruit
which is also its compensation; such and such a piece of cruelty or
weakness, seemingly unrequited, may be traced through a succession of
consequences, ever creating of itself its own retribution until at
last it has paid, just where the payment was most needed, the full
debt incurred to whatever governs the world.
This novel and illuminating thought, for which I am indebted to
Dr M’Manus’ “Persecution of the Irish Protestants,” has thrown a
religious light over all the chief experiences of my life. The
learned divine exemplifies his philosophy by references to James II.
and the history of his own romantic Belfast: I prove its truth by a
consideration of the only considerable political movement with which
I have been brought into touch, I mean the Development of the M’Korio
Delta.
Mr Barnett, meeting Mr Harbury years ago in his father’s quiet
Oriental vicarage, had recognised his talents, and had attached him
to his fortunes. It was an accident, but an accident of kindness.
Mr Burden, my friend, acquired long ago, with little thought of gain,
the control of such small trade as could be driven with the naked and
debased aborigines of a fetid African river. It barely affected the
considerable profits of his business; he gave it little thought. It
was an accident, but that accident had in it a vein, however slight,
of patriotic motives destined in time to yield, even in this life, a
thousandfold.
Mrs Burden had ever desired that Cosmo should be sent to the
University. Before his fifth birthday, she had discovered in her
child aptitudes of no common order. His father had nourished a
secret design to put him at once from school into the business;
during his wife’s last illness he had abandoned his own will, and
promised her that the boy should enjoy the advantages she implored.
That also was an active, if a slight, example of self-denial and of
love.
Lastly, and most especially, Mr Harbury, by one fine act of
enlightened good nature, had bound in gratitude the reserved and
somewhat difficult affections of the lad upon whom so much depended.
Observe how great an issue lay in these little things: these little
and obscure good deeds! What man save Mr Barnett had understood, or
could understand, the full meaning of the M’Korio? What chances had
any vision of his against the opposition of all that limited, monied,
hard “good sense” whereby Mr Burden despised the wealth latent in
the colony with which he alone traded? And yet Mr Burden’s voice in
this matter would certainly lead the city! What ambassador could have
been found to persuade a merchant of Mr Burden’s kind that the future
of a great province depended upon such a man as Mr Barnett, whose
character could not but have affected him as alien, and perhaps as
repulsive?
Cosmo alone could bridge that gulf. His lethargy, if I may use the
term, would have proved an insuperable obstacle, and all that he had
heard from his young associates of “honour” would have confused his
judgment, had not that closer tie been created in a few predestined
hours by Mr Harbury’s trained, courteous, and ready heart.
Each of us to-day in whatever way we have immixed with that
Imperial adventure as shareholders or plain citizens; as preachers,
journalists, or perhaps in some sweet womanly way; every soldier
who has returned without stain from the Delta; every administrator
of every grade, nay, every holder of every salaried office in the
M’Korio, owes something to that half hour when so considerable a sum
as £1250 was lent without any kind of fee or troublesome inquiry at
a nominal rate of fifteen per cent. to rescue a fellow-being from
dishonour.
How truly does not the poet put it in a verse, the sense of which I
shall always retain, though many of its words escape me:—
“_Let others ...
... or play the meaner part;
But the little seed of one good deed
Can...._”
I remember no more than the last word, which is “_heart_.”
FOOTNOTES:
[5] “... As its name implies,” Butterworth’s “Geography of the
Empire,” p. 224.