An
office-box on his writing-table an office-box is to him, and it is
something more: it holds cigarettes. No one knows what sweet thoughts
are his as Chloe flutters through the room, blushful and startled, or
as a fresh beaker full of the warm South glows between his amorous eye
and the sun.
"I have never known
Praise of love or wine
That panted forth a flood of twaddle so divine."
I never tire of looking at a Viceroy. He is a being so heterogeneous
from us! He is the centre of a world with which he has no affinity. He
is a veiled prophet. [He wears many veils indeed.] He who is the axis
of India, the centre round which the Empire rotates, is absolutely and
necessarily withdrawn from all knowledge of India. He lisps no
syllable of any Indian tongue; no race or caste, or mode of Indian
life is known to him; all our delightful provinces of the sun that lie
off the railway are to him an undiscovered country; Ghebers, Moslems,
Hindoos blend together in one indistinguishable dark mass before his
eye, [in which the cataract of English indifference has not been
couched; most delightful of all--he knows not the traditions of
Anglo-India, and he does not belong to the Bandicoot Club, St.
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