A DUTCHMAN ON PATRIOPISM.

Otago Witness, Issue 1851, 30 March 1904, Page 46

A DUTCHMAN ON PATRIOPISM.

At the firet annual dinner of the Johannesburg Burns Club, a noteworthy speech was delivered by Mr H. J. Hofmeyr, who,

replying to the toast of " The Land We Live In," said: "They were there to do honour to a great poet, and he felt proud to be in their mid=t. It had leaked out that he had some sort of a claim to be a Scotsman — (laughter) — at all events he was three-quarters Scotch, for his grandfather wae George Morgan, and if that was not Scotch enough for them he would

like to know what was — (laughter) ,=-and, as to the balance, his father was a Dutchman. — (Loud applause.) To his mind, the term Scot=man and Dutchman were synonymous, and therefore they would see he was wholly Scotch. — (Loud laughter,) Now, to them, the toast was ' The Land We Live In'; to him, responding, it w?s the land he was born and bred in, and in which

he hoped his dust would be laid There w&5 a bond of sympathy between old colonists and old Dutchman. The influence that Scotsmen had oveT this country, and more especially over the Dutch popu'at'on, was wonderful. Their most honoured names foT the last half-century were Scotsmen, such as the Murrays, the M'Carters, the Pvoss's, the M'Gregors, who had done much

for South Africa — indeed, the names of the famous Scotsmen were household words with thpm ; there were, for instance, their Burns, the ir Sir Walter Scott, lan Mac- < Lnre.n, Crockett, Stevenson, their Carnegie, ' Hector Macdonald — (applause), — Professor | Drummond, Alexander "Whyte, vnd many ' others. Anj one who understood the charac- | toristics of the old Dutch population, their [ I

peculiar habits, and modes of thought and — A letter sent fo a native prince in idiosyncrasies, would, on picking up a book India is often a very elaborate affair. The like lan Maclaren's ' Beside the Bonnie ' paper is especially made for the purpose, Briar Bush,' if l*e would substitute Van and is sprinkled with gold leaf. Only the Rynsdorp for Drumtochty and Prinsloo for last few lines of the somewhat lengthy Drumsheuk, see a similarity. Scotsmen had i document contain the purport of the letter, been called dour and reticent and sus>- while the remainder is made \vp of the usual picious. He was afraid it applied much roundabout and complimentary phrases. It the same to Dutchmen, but ' both nationt= is folded in a peculiar way, with the flaps

at heart were sympathetic, warm-hearted, and hospitable.' — (Applause.) The two languages were very similar. They would find that Scotsmen above all other men would be soonest able to comprehend and xmderstand tho Dutchman, whioh was because he could understand the Dutch expressions. They had their famous national instrument, which after all he never oould understand — (laughter) ; — they would thus see hie was lacking in one of their chief characteristics — they would know the instrument he meant — (laughter) ; — they had their ' doodlesaok.' their 'kirk,' their 'ben.' and ether words which wore simi'ar in both Scotch and Dutch — indeed, a book of Scotch dialect never caused the slightest d fficulty to a man who understood Dutch. Therefore the Scotch books wore followed by tho Dutch with interior, interest. Another point of interest was that all their soni? who went away to study medicino proceeded to Edinburgh — (appliuse), — and Edinburgh was, therefore, the alma mater of the majority of medical men practicing in South Africa, and most of them, too, brought back with them from Edinburgh a Scotch lassie. — (Laughter and applause.) For all these reasons he* thought it a pity iho civil service did not contain more Scotsmen. He believed if more Scotsmen had been appointed to positions of trust they would have had the settlement and re-con-c:liation of the country very much hastened. — (Applause ) He a<occxl them if, in future, they could not drink to ' Our Country.' " Concluding. Mr Hofmcyr said it would bo when they did away with all bitterness and 1 ate, and dealt mercifully in criticising thoso who did not sco eye to eye with them: it rtould be- when they made up their minds to call no longer the oountrv of their origin "home"; when they tried to get near the great heart of the people of this country, and read their aspirations and thoughts, and not to destroy ideals graven in their hearts in the same way ns they had been chipping off inscriptions on their monuments ; it would be when they determined to educate their children here so as to imbue, them with the love of the country in which they were born ; it would be when they made up their mind* to make these sacrifices for the good of the whole country, emulating the example of their great Carnegie, and spend a proportion of their wealth for the good of tho country — it would be only then that they would no longer speak of the country as "the land we live in," but they would hail it as " our country," as Providence had destined it to be. — (Applause.)

outward, and placed' in a muslin bag, and this latter into one of crimson and gold tint, with a shp-knot of gold thread, attached to which is a ponderous seal. The address, written on a clip of parchment, is attached to the outside bag. These details are very important for polite letter-writiug* in India, and if any one of them were omitted it would be an insult to the person addressed.