To appreciate this book readers must grasp the symbolism of its title and front page depicting the author's life story, sometimes in rough seas. At three/four years old he was strongly aware of a call into the Christian ministry, inspiration for a long, fruitful life - growing up and helping on their South African farm, commuting to grammar school on horseback - together enough miles to ride three times from New York to California; struggling financially to become a clergyman. His autobiography is interspersed with short unbelieveable biographies of several classmates and what life was like. Read The Sturdy Warrior (Chapter V) and Albert Schweitzer of the Bush Veld Chapter X. With several appropriate degrees he migrated to Princeton Theological Seminary, United States of America, and became a learned professor. But then the delicate call that had driven him since a small boy was smashed beyond repair. Versility enabled him to commute to Wall Street for a new career, finding that nobody can smash a genuine call to those designated to belong to God's universal Kingdom. Symbolic pulpits and lecturns are hidden everywhere. He sought, find, and applied them with the eagerness of the Roman saying age quod agis - do what you are doing. How did it go? Please find the sequel to this book FAITH, HOPE, AND DETERMINATION and read it.

To appreciate this book readers must grasp the symbolism of its title and front page depicting the author's life story, sometimes in rough seas. At three/four years old he was strongly aware of a call into the Christian ministry, inspiration for a long, fruitful life - growing up and helping on their South African farm, commuting to grammar school on horseback - together enough miles to ride three times from New York to California; struggling financially to become a clergyman. His autobiography is interspersed with short unbelieveable biographies of several classmates and what life was like. Read "The Sturdy Warrior" (Chapter V) and "Albert Schweitzer of the Bush Veld" Chapter X. With several appropriate degrees he migrated to Princeton Theological Seminary, United States of America, and became a learned professor. But then the delicate call that had driven him since a small boy was smashed beyond repair. Versility enabled him to commute to Wall Street for a new career, finding that nobody can smash a genuine call to those designated to belong to God's universal Kingdom. Symbolic pulpits and lecturns are hidden everywhere. He sought, find, and applied them with the eagerness of the Roman saying age quod agis - "do what you are doing." How did it go? Please find the sequel to this book FAITH, HOPE, AND DETERMINATION and read it.

Readers will greatly benefit reading this book's forerunner SO MUCH WATER SO LITTLE WOOD for they play in contrasting milieus of maladministration and usually well administered milieus of the financial and other worlds. The American Association of Universty Professors deserves praise for its penetrating light on that book's milieu benefitting employees and other educational institutions for future years. Professions have their unique vocabulary and idioms of wisdom as does the investment business. Its truth will be summarized. Business flourished for me. Ruth and I could vacation and travel - a more pleasant life. Sorrow struck. Ruth had developed small brain aneurysms and died within four days. Two and a half years later I married Janice Seybolt Morton, a widow with two young daughters. Life went on. And Princeton Seminary? Purposely locked in a forget corner. Then my phone rang. The same student who wanted a copy of my prayer decades ago, now Seminary Archivist, looked for my file, but it was forever assigned to trash. "I still have your prayer," he said. He came for three days, asking questions and recording my answers. He unlocked the corner. I had portraits of five deceased, outstanding former colleagues at Princeton painted for the Seminary, and eventually established endowments for scholarships and distribution of Bibles in South Africa, together with liberal contributions for a new library. Graciously the Seminary dedicated a lecture room in the new library for me on October 22, 2013. This book fulfills my dream of tribute to several of my friends at Pretoria University dedicating their lives to the Kingdom of God. They are all long gone now, one fifty years ago in 2013, but to all applies the inscription on Johannes Petrus Potgieter's grave stone at his mission station Rivoni: "THOU THEY WERE DEAD, YET SHALL THEY LIVE."

This book covers a concise history of South Africa to the present beginning with unintended colonization by Holland due to a shipwreck near the southern tip of Africa. Between these two markers it touches just briefly on subjects covered more extensively by the author in his book Out of Ashes, the Boers' Struggle for Freedom During the English War 1899-1902. Then it proceeds with the country's political developments. In South Africa, as all over the world where possible, settlements began with husbandry and agriculture. Having been born on and grown up on a farm, the author is salvaging the history of farming methods with the ox, the horse, the mule, and farming implements, all of which have now long ebbed away into the distant past. The apartheid era is covered. The impractical aspect of the theory is well understood, but the author is fair, and also exposes the frequently distorted and ignorant opinions that took hold in the western world, lasting until today. The world did not know, and if it did, it ignored the massive educational programs for millions, and that, were it not for the apartheid governments, South Africa with all its mineral riches, needed in the world, with Russian involvement would be another Cuba today. Throughout pictures, that are indeed worth much more than a thousand words, highlight what is beyond words alone.