The last days of British statesman and colonial leader Cecil Rhodes were marked by grave disappointment. He died from heart disease at a time when he was beset by personal scandals and discredited by unwise political decisions. Lewis Mitchel, who was at Rhodes’s bedside in his cottage near Cape Town, South Africa heard the dying man murmur, “So little done, so much to do.”

Yet there’s more than this to the story of Cecil Rhodes. He migrated to South Africa from Britain for health reasons. It was there that Rhodes made a vast fortune in gold and diamond mining. Even though he died feeling he had much more to do, he has left a lasting legacy because he used part of his fortune to endow the famous Rhodes scholarship program.

Today in the Word, July 28, 1992