Page:Travel letters from New Zealand, Australia and Africa (1913).djvu/335

 prominent American manufacturer, who certainly deserves well of his country, has been sentenced to jail and fined $50,000, on a charge that seems trifling. I read of a case wherein a negro assaulted a worthy white woman in the South. The papers are determined to make out that the woman was assaulted and cut with a knife by her husband, who caught her flirting with another man. The woman and her husband, and all their friends who were about them at the time, swear in court that the assault was committed by a mulatto, whom none of them knew; there is no sworn evidence whatever to the contrary. It was rumored for months before the trial began that a newspaper reporter was smuggled into the office of the prosecuting attorney when the husband and wife were examined, soon after the assault, and that the reporter heard the husband say incriminating things to his wife, during the temporary absence of the prosecuting attorney; but at the trial, the reporter was a witness, and swore to no such incident. At this distance, it looks as though the gossips have the assistance of the courts and the newspapers in making good their vicious and untruthful tales Is this boasting? Is it not, on the contrary, making ourselves mean when we are usually creditable and decent? To a hurried visitor, Bulawayo seems even handsomer, and duller, than Bloemfontein, the old Dutch town in the Orange Free State which I admired so much. The Grand Hotel here is excellent, and the town clean and handsome, but I see little business going on. It may be that the farmers come in some other day in the week, but I wonder at and enjoy the quietness in Bulawayo. So