But such recklessness would ill comport with the ant-like
hiving quality which paid back, within I forget how few years, the German
war indemnity.
After dinner, therefore, a short promenade about the streets and oasis, to
court that illusive phantom, sleep, and to replenish the mind with new and
peaceful images. I found a cloudless and relatively warm night. The wind
had died down, and there was a brilliant comet (the Johannesburg comet) in
the sky. Knots of natives were gazing at it with disfavour: I listened,
and heard one of them attributing the Franco-Tripolitan frontier incident
to its baleful fires. "And there is more to come," he added, "unless it
goes away." Townspeople, of course; the cultivators are asleep long ago.
Why don't you settle down and make yourselves at home? With those words
Dufresnoy had put his finger on the spot. The same idea must occur to
every one who compares the French method of colonization with that pursued
in English dependencies. Even our most ephemeral civil servants take
pleasure in "settling down"; they acquire local interests in golf, or
native folklore, or butterflies; they manage to surround themselves with
an atmosphere of home.
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