‘Letters of Marque’, in Works, 15 vols. (New York: Lovell, 1899), XII, pp. 5–9
2020
Except for those who, under compulsion of a sick certificate, are flying
Bombaywards, it is good for every man to see some little of the great Indian
Empire and the strange folk who move about it. It is good to escape for a
time from the House of Rimmon—be it office or cutchery—and to go abroad
under no more exacting master than personal inclination, and with no more
definite plan of travel than has the horse, escaped from pasture, free upon
the countryside. The first result of such freedom is extreme bewilderment,
and the second reduces the freed to a state of mind which, for his sins,
must be the normal portion of the Globe-trotter—the man who “does” kingdoms
in days and writes books upon them in weeks. And this desperate facility is
not as strange as it seems. By the time that an Englishman has come by sea
and rail via America, Japan, Singapur, and Ceylon, to
India, he can—these eyes have seen him do so—master in five minutes the
intricacies of the Indian Bradshaw, and tell an old
resident exactly how and where the trains run. Can we wonder that the
intoxication of success in hasty assimilation should make him overbold, and
that he should try to grasp—but a full account of the insolent Globe-trotter
must be reserved. He is worthy of a book. Given absolute freedom for a
month, the mind, as I have said, fails to take in the situation and, after
much debate, contents itself with following in old and well-beaten
ways—paths that we in India have no time to tread, but must leave to the
country cousin who wears his pagri tail-fashion down his
back, and says “cabman” to the driver of the
ticca-ghari.
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