When that day comes, as come it will, when the waves of modern material civilizations with their vast burden of mingled good and evil shall break round the walls of the most solitary up-country farmhouse in Africa--when the Boer woman finds her old field of labour slipping from her; when the roof of her old brick-oven falls in for ever, because a man-driven cart brings round her bread every morning; when the needle with which for generations she had stitched the clothing of her household slips from her fingers or is used only for amusement and luxury; when her husband orders his trousers from the man-tailor, and the old bombazine kapje she stitched so carefully for herself is replaced by a Paris bonnet; when her children almost from infancy pass into the hands of trained teachers and as soon as youth is reached leave her roof altogether to gain higher instruction; when her husband complains at the birth of each new child after the sixth that he does not know how to pay for its education and rearing; when he with whom she has shared every business and interest from the selling of a sheep to the sowing of a field, and who sat in the heat of the afternoons on the sofa opposite her discussing his plans for to-morrow's work, goes out every morning to return only at night occupied with callings and business of which she has no understanding and can take no share; when, if she complains of loneliness and the emptiness of her life, he tells her to go out and buy balls and knock them through arches in her back yard or over a net, as children and youths do, or put a few flowers in vases--when this day comes and she sits alone, her children at school, her husband gone and absorbed in business of which she knows nothing, and she hears the flies buzz in the stillness, as African flies will still buzz when all else is changed; and when she looks down at the face of the girl-child still at her breast and realizes that out of every six girls she bears one will most likely never know the joys of motherhood; when she knows that of women born of her race and blood thousands stand at the street corners because no higher use in life is to be found for them: as she sits there alone she will begin to reflect, to wonder why these things must be, and to ask herself of what value her life is, and what she makes of it; and with this thought the new time will have come. She who has sat still so long will rise from her chair, she will push aside her coffee-table and knock over her stove, and will demand of life the right to experiment and see if these things be inevitable and unchangeable.