Rhodes’s Prize Cemetery.

Gisborne Times, Volume VI, Issue 188, 16 August 1901, Page 3

Rhodes’s Prize Cemetery.

Mr Rhodes is ever full of resource and orginality. He once started a cemetery at Kimberley, and took a great deal of pains to make it perfect, chose the site carefully, had it elaborately planted with trees, and did everything possible to make it a brilliant success, if the phrase may pass in this connection. After it was completed he went away from Kimberley for some time, and when he returned after the declaration of war he went with his manager to look at his cemetery, and found it—empty. “ This won't do," exclaimed Mr Rhodes. “ What’s the meaning of it? Why is it empty?” His manager said he fancied it was because the women had an idea that being a new place it would be a little solitary. “ Oh, hut I can’t have that! I’ll offer them a premium for the first man buried here,” said Mr Rhodes, a little piqued at the bare idea of a scheme of- his verging on failure, and determined, at any cost, to bring about a success. He began by offering a bonus to widows who would bring their husbands to be buried in his cemetery, quite a large sum of money, but of no avail. Eventually one poor woman allowed her husband to. be buried there. He was interred with great pomp and state, and a handsome marble stone erected over his grave. But even then the scheme hung fire, the inhabitants passing the gates cf the beautiful cemetery. They would look through the railings and see the one gentleman lying there in solitary state and go away shaking their heads and thinking how lonely it must be. Then Mr Rhodes got so exasperated that he increased the bonus until it was a very large sum. Then the inhabitants gradually began to weaken, one after the other bringing their dead to the lonely cemetery.