Whitley Stokes.
Nigrorum memor, dum licet, ignium,
Misce stultitiam consiliis brevem:
Dulce est desipere in loco.
But besides being a man of pleasure and a capital billiard player, he
was a Collector in the North-Western Provinces--a man who sat at the
receipt of custom under a punkah, and read his _Pioneer_. The Lord
High Cockalorum at Nynee Tal, Sir Somebody Thingmajig,--I am speaking
of years ago--did not like him, I believe; but nobody thought any the
worse of him for this; and although he continued to be a Collector
until the shades of evening, when all his contemporaries had retired
into the Dreamland of Commissionerships, he still loved and was loved;
and to the very last he read his French novels and quoted Horace,
sitting peacefully on the bank while the stream of promotion rolled
on, knowing well that it would roll on _in omne aevum_, and not caring
a jot whether it did, or did not. What was a seat at the Sadr
Board[BB] to him, a seat among the solemn mummies of the service? He
would not object to lie in the same graveyard with them; but to sit at
the same board while this sensible warm motion of life still continued
was too much; this could never be.
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