I fancy that I owe an apology to some whom I have answered rather shortly when they have scolded me for not making a longer stay in their own peculiar spots. “You have come to write a book about South Africa and you have no right to go away without devoting a day to my ----” sugar plantation, or distillery, or whatever the interesting enterprise may have been. “You have only been three days in our town and I don’t think you are doing us justice.” It has been hard to answer these accusations with a full explanation of all the facts,--including the special fact,--unimportant to all but one or two, that South Africa with all its charms is not so comfortable at my present age as the arm-chair in my own book room. But in truth the man who has an interesting enterprise of his own or who patriotically thinks that his own town only wants to be known to be recognized as a Paradise among municipalities would, if their power were as great as their zeal, render such a task as that I have undertaken altogether impossible. The consciousness of their own merit robs them of all sense of proportion. Such a one will acknowledge that South Africa is large;--but South Africa will not be as large to him as his own mill or his own Chamber of Commerce, and he will not believe that eyes seeing other than his eyes can be worthy of any credit. I know that I did not go to see this gentleman’s orchard as I half promised, or the other gentleman’s collection of photographs, and I here beg their pardons and pray them to remember how many things I had to see and how many miles I had to travel.