Page:Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes.djvu/117

Rh secure the co-operation of the more public-spirited persons of our way of thinking in every constituency in the country, which formed the inspiration of the Association of Helpers.

“You have begun,” said he, “to realise my idea. In the and the Association of Helpers you have made the beginning which is capable afterwards of being extended so as to carry out our idea.”

We then discussed the persons who should be taken into our confidence. At that time he assured me he had spoken of it to no one, with the exception of myself and two others. He authorised me to communicate with two friends, now members of the Upper House, who were thoroughly in sympathy with the gospel according to the Pall Mall Gazette, and who had been as my right and left hands during my editorship of that paper.

He entered at considerable length into the question of the disposition of his fortune after his death. He said that if he were to die then the whole of his money was left absolutely at the disposition of “X.”

“But,” he said, “the thought torments me sometimes when I wake at night that if I die all my money will pass into the hands of a man who, however well-disposed, is absolutely incapable of understanding my ideas. I have endeavoured to explain them to him, but I could see from the look on his face that it made no impression, that the ideas did not enter his mind, and that I was simply wasting my time.”

Mr. Rhodes went on to say that his friend’s son was even less sympathetic than the father, and he spoke with pathos of the thought of his returning to the world after he was dead and seeing none of his money applied to the uses for the sake of which he had made his fortune.

Therefore, he went on to say, he proposed to add my name to that of “X.,” and to leave at the same time a letter which would give “X.” to understand that the money was to be disposed of by me, in the assured conviction that I should employ every penny of his millions in promoting the ideas to which we had both dedicated our lives.

I was somewhat startled at this, and remarked that “X.” would be considerably amazed when he found himself saddled with such a joint-heir as myself, and I suggested to Mr.