P.
sacrifices his bath to hustle upon paper. The spectacled people
embalmed in secretariats alone among Anglo-Indians continue to see the
gay visions of griffinhood. They alone preserve the phantasmagoria of
bookland and dreamland. As for the rest of us:--
Out of the day and night
A joy has taken flight:
Baboos and Rajas and Indian lore
Move our faint hearts with grief, but with delight
No more--oh, never more!
It is strange that one who is modest and inoffensive in his own
country should immediately on leaving it exhibit some of the worst
features of Arryism; but it seems inevitable. I have met in this
unhappy land, countrymen (who are gentlemen in England, Members of
Parliament, and Deputy Lieutenants, and that kind of thing) whose
conduct and demeanour while here I can never recall without tears and
blushes for our common humanity. My friends witnessing this emotion
often suppose that I am thinking of the Famine Commission.
[I am an Anglo-Indian cherishing many a burning Anglo-Indian
prejudice, and I should be sorry if from what I have written here it
does not sufficiently appear that I cherish a burning prejudice
against the British Tourist in India, who comes out to get up India
and to do India; not against the tourist who comes out to shoot or to
play the fool in a quiet unostentatious way.
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