Li’l Millet & his Creoles, ‘Rich Woman’
She said, ‘You don’t make enough to provide for me.’
I said, ‘What about the stuff that we quote ‘believe?”
She said ‘I’ve left that on the sands of history,
I’ve found a new man who’ll take care of me,
He dresses for success and emergency,
And he moves a lot of concrete on the QVC.’
I said, ‘What about the stuff that we quote ‘believe?”
She said ‘I’ve left that on the sands of history,
I’ve found a new man who’ll take care of me,
He dresses for success and emergency,
And he moves a lot of concrete on the QVC.’
“
| — | Silver Jews, ‘San Francisco B.C.’ |
Man, have you ever been out like that, alone in the veld, night and day, and not a soul to speak to? I have; and I tell you, if I’d been let there three days longer I’d have gone mad or turned religious. Man, it’s the nights, with the stars up above you, and the dead still all around. And you think, and think, and think! You remember all kinds of things you’ve never thought of for years and years.
“
| — | Olive Schreiner, ‘Trooper Peter Halket Of Mashonaland’ |
‘but it hesitated. - It might have been, that, had but some hand been there to move but one stone from its path, it would have forced its way past rocks and ridges, and found its way to the great sea- it might have been! But no hand was there’.
‘the turning of one stone might have caused it had run on and on, and mingled its song with the sea’s song for ever.’
“
| — | Olive Schreiner, ‘Trooper Peter Halket of Mashonaland’ |
‘All earth is ours. And the day shall come, when the stars, looking down on this little world, shall see no spot where the soil is moist and dark with the blood of man shed by his fellow man; the sun shall rise in the East and set in the West and shed his light across this little globe; and nowhere shall he see man crushed by his fellows. And they shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into prying hooks: nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more. And instead of the thorn shall come up the fir-tree; and instead of the brier shall come up the myrtle tree: and man shall nowhere crush man on all the holy earth… The ages have been young and they have grown old since they have lain here. Half that time shall not pass before that time comes; I have seen its dawning already in the hearts of men’.
‘Great Prince’s Daughter, take heed! You put your sword into the hands of recreant knights; they will dull its edge and mar its brightness, and, when your hour of need comes and you would put it into other hands, you will find its edge chipped and its point broken. Take heed! Take heed!’
”Mother-heart, Stand for us!’ It would be better for you that your wombs should be barred and that your race should die out; than that you should listen, and give no answer’.
“
| — | Olive Schreiner, ‘Trooper Peter Halket Of Mashonaland’ |
but let them leave this land they have tortured and ruined… when I see freedom passing from us, and the whole land being grasped by the golden claw, so that the generation after us shall be born without freedom, to labour for the men who have grasped all, shall I hold my peace? The Boer and the Englishman who have been in this land, have not always loved mercy, nor have they always sought after justice; but the little finger of the speculator and monopolist who are devouring this land will be thicker on the backs of the children of this land, black and white, than the loins of the Dutchmen and Englishmen who have been.’
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| — | Olive Schreiner, ‘Trooper Peter Halket Of Mashonaland’ |
The past is dead. It lives only for us to learn from. The present, the present only, is ours to work in, and the future ours to create. Is all the gold of Johannesburg or are all the diamonds in Kimberly worth, that one Christian man should fall by the hand of his fellows -aye, or one heathen.
Oh my wife, our land, our goodly land, which we had hoped would be free and strong among the peoples of earth, is rotten and honeycombed with the tyranny of gold! We who had hoped to stand first in the Anglo-Saxon sisterhood for justice and freedom, are not even fit to stand last… But, oh my wife, the strong men are silent! and shall I not speak, though I know my power is as nothing?… There is no man so small in the whole nation that he dares say, ‘I have no responsibility for this man’s action.’ We armed him, we raised him, we strengthened him, and the evil he accomplishes is more ours than his.
“
| — | Olive Schreiner, ‘Trooper Peter Halket Of Mashonaland’ |
