Page:Last Will and Testament of Cecil Rhodes.djvu/197

Rh it seemed as if he had lost everything for which he had striven, and had nothing to look forward to but punishment and disgrace, he burst into Lord Grey’s room one morning and exclaimed—

“Do you know, Grey, I have just been thinking that you have never been sufficiently grateful for having been born an Englishman. Just think for a moment,” he went on, “what it is to have been born an Englishman in England. Think how many millions of men there are in this world to-day who have been born Chinese or Hindus or Kaffirs; but you were not born any of these, you were born an Englishman. And that is not all. You are just over forty (which was about Rhodes’s own age at that time), and you have a clean, healthy body. Now think of the odds there are against anyone having those three things—to be born an Englishman, to be over forty, and to have a clean, healthy body. Why, the chances are enormous against it, and yet you have all three. What enormous chances there are against you having drawn all these prizes in the lottery of life, and yet you never think of them.”

“I could have hugged the poor old chap,” said Lord Grey, “for it was so evident that he had been doing the comparative by way of consoling himself, and reflecting that in the midst of all his misfortunes there were some things which no one could take away from him; and then he would burst into my room to pour out his soul to me in that fashion.”

Mr. Rhodes was very much given to musing, and even talking to himself upon the most serious subjects. Mr. Rudd told me that in Mr. Rhodes’s early days nothing delighted him more than, when the day’s work was done, to get a friend or two into N