But At The End Of
That Time My Patience Was Thoroughly Exhausted.
My host had become a
civilised man, who sat on chairs, who ate with a fork, who talked
European politics, and who had learned to admire, if not to understand,
liberty-liberal ideas!
And was I not flying from such things? Besides
which, we English have a
[p.36]peculiar national quality, which the Indians, with their
characteristic acuteness, soon perceived, and described by an
opprobrious name. Observing our solitary habits, that we could not, and
would not, sit and talk and sip sherbet and smoke with them, they
called us "Jangli"-wild men, fresh caught in the jungle and sent to
rule over the land of Hind.[FN#9] Certainly nothing suits us less than
perpetual society, an utter want of solitude, when one cannot retire
into oneself an instant without being asked some puerile question by a
companion, or look into a book without a servant peering over one's
shoulder; when from the hour you rise to the time you rest, you must
ever be talking or listening, you must converse yourself to sleep in a
public dormitory, and give ear to your companions' snores and
mutterings at midnight.[FN#10]
The very essence of Oriental hospitality, however, is this family style
of reception, which costs your host neither coin nor trouble. I speak
of the rare tracts in which the old barbarous hospitality still
lingers. You make one more at his eating tray, and an additional
mattress appears in the sleeping-room.
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