A YANKEE INTERVIEWS KING CETEWAYO.

Kumara Times, Issue 895, 13 August 1879, Page 2

A YANKEE INTERVIEWS KING CETEWAYO.

Having with great trouble sent a messenger to King Cetewayo, be transmits a report of his talk with the African potentate. His Majesty is a ready conversationalist,, but disagreeably plain in statement, and lacks tact and consideration for a white man’s feelings in making certain representations concerning civilized modes, manners, and fashions. Interviewer : Your Majesty, how is it that yon have succeeded in whiping tke best soldiers in the world, and armed with the latest improvements in man shooting machinery ? Old Get.; Well, you see, while you white folks have spent all your time learning to fight at long range, you have forgotten that there’s such a thing as fighting in close quarters. We managed to exhaust the British fire, and then we had ’em, , They had' no practice in hand-to-hand stabbing, and one of our spears is worth a dozen bayonets, because from our youth up, we hunt with the spear, fight with I it, and it’s as natural to us as your knives and forks are to you. Interviewer : But why can’t you be sensible and be civilized at the point of the British bayonet 1 Old Get. : Civilization brings too many lawyers. Don’t want any. Civilization brings to many religions. One’s enough for us. Civilization brings big cities full of dusty and bad air and dirty streets. Don’t want ’em. You’ve got ’em npw, and can’t get rid of ’em. Civilization brings big rich men who won’t pay their faxes. You’ve got ’em, and can’t get rid of ’em. Civilization brings t’>o many houses which burn down and banks bust up. You’ve got ’em, and can’t get rid of ’em. Yes, and too many policemen with clubs. You’ve got ’em, and can’t get rid of ’em. Interviewer: But look at our railroads and telegraphs, our Old Cet. : Telegraph monopoly and railroad chiefs who do as they please. Don’t want ’em. You’ve got both and can’t rid yourself of’em. Interviewer: Ignorant man, you have no trade, no commerce, no manufacture. Old Cet. : No! No strikes. No workmen grumbling, growling, and starving. No stunted and stinted generations growing up in cotton mills. No glorification because we can manufacture far less than our own kith kin across the water and ruin their business, No Interviewer : We would double your population in forty years if you’d only become civilized. Old Cet. : Don’t want it doubled. Got, as many as can live comfortable now. That’s, the trouble with you. You doable too often. No country ought to hold more than it can feed from its own soil. England has twice too many mouths and is always afraid

H starvutiol if die can’t tell in i' knives, Harts, hats, anti pantaloons for beef, Hh ? I don’t govern on no such pi'inciter viewer : But we have writers. and poets. ■Hid Get.: Away ! Away ! Get tlie gunnery ! Boastest thou to me of Ply poets When yon live on their life's bloody and then star\e ten to exist one ? Away with him. Get out of my kraal. What, ho ! Without! Bring me my Club and the fourth basket of snakes and a hived swarm of tsetse flies, and loose them on this bleached ape ! His sentiment is pernicious, his doctrine fallicious, his creed a snare, his practice hypocritical 1 (Our interviewer barely escaped with Hr life, and in now in Cape Town hosKal undergoing treatment for snake Htes, tsetse stings, and a royal clubIng).—New York Daily Graphic.