The daily morning journal and courier., 1902-04-14
RHODES THE MAN.
sELFISH, BUT NOT 4T ALL SOR-
 DID.
Would Live on Shilling II Day and
 Throw Away Il Million


 Throw Away Il Million,
 Ii is characteristic of the whole per sonal position of Cecil Rhodes that the men who made his fortune in the pro- cess of making their own, seldom grudged their labor in his service, He took it as right; and they I think, had quite honest admiration for him.
 Rhodes said one of the great Afri- can millonaires to the present writer, lis different from the rest of us. You see, we" and he cautiously balanced a four ur-and-siXpenny cigar on the edge of Dresden table, and went on, almost with sigh we all want to make as much money as we can, and spend it. But Rhodes doesn't care about it one way or the other. He would live on shilling a day, and throw away mil lion over one of those ideas of his.
 l suppose that was one main source of his attraction. People in all ages and in all times are impressed by a man with great purpose, who may be selfish, but is not sordid.
 This apart, there was undoubtedly something extraordinarily impressive and fascinating about MT. Rhodes which even the casual acquaintance found it difficult to resist. It was not exactly what is called charm of man. ner for his bearing was rough, his voice curously thin and high for his broad chest and big throat, his address by no means polished.
 But the leonine head with it's hedge of tumbled hair and his height and size (which somehow always seemed greater than they were), made him com manding figure. One of his attractions was a smile of singular and appealing sweetness, which now and again would break over the stern, brick-red face, and go straight to your heart
 But he was also talker of extraor dinary plausibiity. He spoke in abrupt, rather jerky sentences, but his conversation carried conviction. You might approach him full of skepticism and opposition, but you were apt to be carried away in spite of your better Judgment
 I saw him on the day of his return to London, after the Jameson raid, and was struck by the change which that catastrophe had produced in him. He seemed to have grown gray, old, almost feeble, and he talked with an almost in credible lack of reticence.
 Next year I sat in the committee room at Westminster and watched MT. Rhodes before his judges in the South 1 African inquiry He had quite recov- | cred by that time, and was much at his | ease. It was a strange spectacle. | Lo i,,ko pf he empire were ranged around that horse shoe table-Sir William Harcourt, MT Chamberlain, Sir Michael Hicks Beach, | Sir Henry Campbell Zimmerman, Sir Richard Webster, MT. Cripps and Mr. Bigham, MT. Wyndham. MT. Blake MT. abouchere--mas sters, some of them, of controversy and dialectic, old parla- mentary hands or skilled and subtle lawyers.
 The big man with the bad case sat in the witness chair, and at first we thought he would do poorly enough. His memory was so uncertain, his grasp of details was so deplorably loose; his rough, vague manner of meeting the searching questions put to him seemed like parrying a rapier with bludgeon. But presently the old influence asserted Itself.
 He waved the questions aside instead of answering them; he lectured the committee on the ethics of the empire, he pointed warning finger at MT. La bouchere, he passed from that matter of the raid and the plot as if they were be- low his notice; and the vuturine eye frightened and the smile, now sweet now scornful came out as he talked ear nestly, and quite irrelevantly, about Rhodesia and Germany, and the road to the north; and the cabinet ministers, the great lawyers. the angry radical members of parliament, listened meekly and with genuine interest. Long before the end MT. Rhodes had completely dominated the committee. He entered practically as a criminal under trial; he remained az sort of patron and instructor of his own judges every one of them, perhaps, an abler . man, so far as mere ability goes, than himself. It was a most astonishing il- Iustration of the triumph of character over intellect and of personal force and energy over ceverness and knowledge and accomplishments London Stand ! ard.