taste life in our great Eastern possession, and shove on
the weighty wheels of empire.
Dull those Indian chaps are,” is the remark
one hears too often at home; “ the only thing
they know anything about is that beastly country,
and even that they won’t talk of.” And no
one realises that these men, rushing home for their
precious ninety days’ leave, cannot make “ small talk ”
of what is the one reality of their lives. I t is easier for
them to pretend to the home folk that life in India is a
mere ante-chamber, a waiting for the real thing, which
will only begin when frock coats and top hats are once
more donned and the London pavements are under foot,
a period of pony riding and big game shooting, sauntered
through, while a vast fortune is accumulating,
which will enable the happy possessor to return and
enjoy himself in the land of his fathers.
If any of the home folks do come out it is
for a cold weather tour, and they kindly accept
the best room in the bungalow, ride the only
trained pony in the stable, lounge in the most comfortable
chairs, and chaff lightly about the small duties
and large pay of an Indian official. They do not
understand the silence about the other seasons of
the year, that there is a terrible dark tunnel called
the hot weather, which men do not care to think of
when once passed through, that there are days of long-
drawn tension when plague or famine duties demand
all attention, and it is useless to speculate whether heat,
apoplexy, or sunstroke will give the final quietus,
because no speculation can stave it off, and meanwhile
some one must see the work done. I t is easy, no doubt,
when at home to talk of the joys of early retirement,
and of India as a sickening hole, and as men do not
care to discourse of that innermost shrine that nearly
all of us possess hidden away, silent, secret, adorned
with our best thoughts, hung with out highest resolves,
brightened only by hopes, so these will not admit to
any save themselves that they would not exchange for
all the “ fleshpots of Israel,” nor for all the “ little
village ” could offer, their acreage of sand and scrub,
their battalions of white turbaned, black-eyed natives,
their charge of weak-kneed folk.
Yes, silence is best about such subjects, for to
talk is to think, and thinking leads to brooding
over sufferings and difficulties, and may ultimately
tend to shakiness of nerve and incapacity for
work. “ Strength” is the one thing necessary where
many depend on one man to stand upright. Sometimes,
may be in the charged, eleotrically-laden hush before a
thunderstorm, or in the calm coolness of a starlit night,
surrounded by the speechful silence of still jungles,
hearts are opened and hidden streams uncovered, and
strange tales go round of difficulties and dangers, contests
with native cruelty and corruption, cunningliy-
laid traps eluded, evils and powers of evil but dimly
comprehended, and then the Indian Empire becomes
a very real thing, and Imperialism seems different to the
Westminster product: a thing of blood and sinew, a
strength put out by the noblest and best of the sons of
our little northern isle to support the unwieldly mass
that demands all the energies evinced to keep life in
itself!
As I sat talking that day, and noted the sad, weary
expression of the eyes, the exhausted frame, India
seemed some terrible vampire, sucking the energies