I’d not be a shareholder, or Hold Atlas’s or Frere’s; I am not even pining for The scrip of great Be Beer’s. In Kimberley the debts expand, The loan, it isn’t lent; So I’d rather be a nigger, and Get 25 per cent. I would not be a Chairman, or Director of a Board, For then I could not buy nice pipes, Nor good Cape Smoke afford; I might get nasty writs perhaps When all my coin was spent; I’d rather be a nigger, and Get 25 per cent. I wouldn’t be a Searcher, and I wouldn’t be the Chief; I wouldn’t hold the contract for Removal of the reef; I wouldn’t be Izdebski,[39] and I wouldn’t crimes prevent; I’d rather be a nigger, and Get 25 per cent. I wouldn’t be a Secretary nor a Manager, To be a toiling Overseer I’d very much demur; I wouldn’t build a crusher, Nor such paltry things invent; I’d rather be a nigger, and Get 25 per cent. I wouldn’t be proprietor Of far-famed Kamfer’s Dam.[40] Nor even Chairman of the French, For all’s not real jam, I’d scarcely purchase Centrals, But I never should repent If I only was a nigger, and Got 25 per cent. * * * * * [No, ladies and gentlemen, many and many a time my mother has said: “’Arry, my angel-hearted boy, don’t let nothing never persuade you to be a Prime Minister of the Cape Colony, or a digger, or an England’s Only General, or a writer of novelettes in the “Independent,” or a Duke or a Marquis, or an Admiral of the Blue, or a Grand Old Man, or a President of the United States of America. Don’t you ruin yourself by being a Mayor or a Banker, or throw away your chances by marrying a Baroness Burdett-Coutts—or purchasing a 900 carat diamond found by an unknown Dutch farmer on an unknown Dutch farm when there is no secrecy about the matter from beginning to end.” “No, my beaming boy,” said the old lady, bless her heart! “You be a Christy Minstrel, and go work in the claims for your wages and 25 per cent.” I took the old lady’s advice, and—all together, if you please, gentlemen]