The beginning of Rhodes’ fortune, if we are to believe what we are told, was an ice machine which he started in partnership with another settler.  The produce they sold to their companions at an exorbitant price, but not for long; whereafter the enterprising young man proceeded to buy some plots of ground, of whose prolificacy in diamonds he had good reason to be aware.  It must be here remarked that Rhodes was never a poor man; he could indulge in experiments as to his manner of investing his capital.  And he was not slow to take advantage of this circumstance.  Kimberley was a wild place at that time, and its distance from the civilised world, as well as the fact that nothing was controlled by public opinion, helped some to amass vast fortunes and put the weaker into the absolute power of the most unscrupulous.  It is to the honour of Rhodes that, however he might have been tempted, he never listened to the advice which was given to him to do what the others did, and to despoil the men whose property he might have desired to acquire.  He never gave way to the excesses of his daily companions, nor accepted their methods of enriching themselves at top speed so as soon to be able to return home with their gains.

From the first moment that he set foot on African soil Rhodes succumbed to the strange charm the country offers for thinkers and dreamers.  His naturally languid temperament found a source of untold satisfaction in watching the Southern Cross rise over the vast veldt where scarcely man’s foot had trod, where the immensity of its space was equalled by its sublime, quiet grandeur.  He liked to spend the night in the open air, gazing at the innumerable stars and listening to the voice of the desert, so full of attractions for those who have grown to discern somewhat of Nature’s hidden joys and sorrows.  South Africa became for him a second Motherland, and one which seemed to him to be more hospitable to his temperament than the land of his birth.  In South Africa he felt he could find more satisfaction and more enjoyment than in England, whose conventionalities did not appeal to his rebellious, unsophisticated heart.  He liked to roam about in an old coat and wideawake hat; to forget that civilisation existed; to banish from his mind all memory of cities where man must bow down to Mrs. Grundy and may not defy, unscathed, certain well-defined prejudices.

Yet Cecil Rhodes neither cared for convention nor custom.  His motto was to do what he liked and not to trouble about the judgments of the crowd.  He never, however, lived up to this last part of his profession because, as I have shown already, he was keenly sensitive to praise and to blame, and hurt to the heart whenever he thought himself misjudged or condemned.  Most of his mistakes proceeded from this over-sensitiveness which, in a certain sense, hardened him, inasmuch as it made him vindictive against those from whom he did not get the approval for which he yearned.  In common with many another, too, Cecil Rhodes had that turn of mind which harbours resentment against anyone who has scored a point against its possessor.  After the Jameson Raid Rhodes never forgave Mr. Schreiner for having found out his deceit, and tried to be revenged.