front door and no hall; but I never entered a room in which I felt myself more inclined to "rest and be thankful." I made various calls, and always with similar results. I found internal prettinesses, with roses and weeping willows outside which reconciled me to sardine boxes, paper collars, and straw liquor-guards.
In the middle of Pretoria is a square, round which are congregated the public offices, the banks, hotels, and some of the chief stores, or shops of the place, and in which are depastured the horses of such travellers as choose to use the grass for the purpose. Ours, I hope, were duly fed within their stables; but I used to see them wandering about, trying to pick a bit of grass in the main square. And here stands the Dutch Reformed Church,—in the centre,—a large building, and as ugly as any building could possibly be made. Its clergyman, quite a young man, called upon me while I was in Pretoria, and told me that his congregation was spread over an area forty miles round. The people of the town are regular attendants; for the Dutchman is almost always a religious father of a family, thinking much of all such services as were reverenced by his fathers before him. But the real congregation consists of the people from the country who flock into the Nichtmaal, or Lord's Supper, once in three months, who encamp or live in their waggons in the square round the Church, who take the occasion to make their town purchases and to perform their religious services at the same time. The number attending is much too large to enter the church at once, so that on the appointed Sunday one service succeeds another. The sacrament is given, and
