But now the founder has all these examples before his eyes, and is grandly courageous in his determination to avoid the evils of which he has heard and perhaps seen so much. Of course he is sanguine. A founder of cities is necessarily a sanguine man, or he would not find himself employed on such a work. He pegs out his streets and his squares bravely, being stopped by no consideration as to the value of land. He clings to parallelograms as being simple, and in a day or two has his chief thoroughfare a mile long, his cross streets all numbered and named, his pleasant airy squares, each with a peg at each corner, out in the wilderness. Here shall be his Belgravia for the grandees, and this his Cheapside and his Lombard Street for the merchants and bankers. We can understand how pleasant may be the occupation and how pile upon pile would rise before the eyes of the projector, how spires and minarets would ascend, how fountains would play in the open places, and pleasant trees would lend their shade to the broad sunny ways.
Then comes the real commencement with some little hovel at the corner of two as yet invisible streets. Other hovels arise always at a distance from each other and the town begins to be a town. Sometimes there will be success, but much more often a failure. Very many failures I have seen, in which all the efforts of the sanguine founder have not produced more than an Inn, a church, half a dozen stores; and twice as many drinking booths. And yet there have been the broad streets,—and the squares if one would take the trouble to make enquiry. Pretoria has not been a failure.
