CHAPTER IX

FAVOURITE HEROES

When Steve was fifteen years of age he was taken from school and placed in an office at a small--very small--salary.

His education was not completed yet by far. He could read _well_, write fairly well, of arithmetic he knew sufficient for the ordinary wants of business life; his grammar was only sufficient to help him to speak English fairly correctly, with a mistake only once in a while. In orthography he was proficient enough to write a fairly well spelled letter. In history he excelled--that was his favourite study, no matter whose history it was. Bible, secular, English, Dutch, Italian, but especially South African, French and American history, he studied; the latter two because they were Republics, for he was a thorough Republican, and wished to know everything about Republicanism.

He loved to read the story of Napoleon. He gloried in Napoleon’s genius, in his wonderful victories. But he grieved over the follies of the _Emperor_. The General Bonaparte, even the first Consul was his admiration--but the Emperor was a monster to him. He could not understand that a man, who had displayed such wonderful genius as Napoleon had done, could make such foolish mistakes as Napoleon had made as Emperor. He could not understand that such a man should care for the empty pomps and vanities of a throne. To his mind Napoleon would have been a _greater_ man by far if he had remained only a Consul or President of the French _Republic_. Why a man who had done what he had done for France, and who had striven to the end to live and work only for the people, who wished to live for posterity as a man who had won the _hearts_ of his people (such a man would be nobler and grander by far than one like Napoleon proved in the end) had only used his country and people to work for his own glory and vanity, puzzled Steve.

On the other hand, he considered George Washington by far a greater and nobler man than Napoleon. For Washington had lived and fought _only_ for his country, and had proved to be nobly unselfish to the end. _The States_, in his opinion, really did “lick creation” as a great and free country.

The history of his own country he simply devoured. He never lost an opportunity of getting hold of a book which treated in any way of South Africa. If the book spoke favourably of his country and people, he was pleased and happy. If the book libelled his country--as so many books really do--he was grieved, but treated it with the contempt it deserved, and took his revenge by extracting any information he found in it.