CHAPTER VII

THOUGHTS AND FLOWERS

While thus lying on his back, gazing up into the bright South African sky, with the sun seemingly floating as an atom in all the immensity of space; and the sun he had learned in his books was ever so many times larger than our earth, and yet it seemed only a speck in space. ‘Space, space, what is space? Where does it begin? Where does it end?’ And then he would fly on in imagination from world to world, from star to star, from sun to sun, but his imagination could not find even a probable ending for space. He had never read anything on the subject to help him. He had never read any book in which he had seen what others thought of the subject, so he had to puzzle his own poor brain, eternally thinking, thinking ever on it. _Surely_, SURELY there must be some answer to this problem. Surely there MUST be a beginning to space as well as an end, otherwise how can it be, and yet it _cannot_ have beginning or end. He felt as if he should get mad trying to think it out; and when he got so far as to feel his brain reeling in endeavouring to pierce beyond the mystery of space, he would jump up and shout and laugh, and run about looking for his favourite wild flowers in order to forget this maddening thought, but it would come back to him whenever he was alone and thinking.

Speaking about flowers--that was another of his passions. He was never so happy as when tending his few flowers. He was famous for the beauty of the wild flowers he generally gathered in the mountains when he had time. He used to think a half-holiday well spent if he could take a walk into the mountains to gather a beautiful bouquet of his favourite wild flowers. As has been suggested before, he was of a retiring nature, and greatly disliked crowds. At any festival in town, when everybody, including his own family, would all eagerly gather together to enjoy themselves by seeing and being seen, he would rather go for a walk in the veld, where his thoughts were his only company--and good company he always found them. Or he would find a comfortable nook and read a book, during which occupation he would forget the rest of the world and be happy.