When You Depart, You Leave If
You Like A Little Present, Merely For A Memorial, With Your
Entertainer; He Would Be Offended If You Offered It Him Openly As A
Remuneration, And You Give
[P.37]some trifling sums to the servants.
Thus you will be welcome
wherever you go. If perchance you are detained perforce in such a
situation,-which may easily happen to you, medical man,-you have only
to make yourself as disagreeable as possible, by calling for all manner
of impossible things. Shame is a passion with Eastern nations. Your
host would blush to point out to you the indecorum of your conduct; and
the laws of hospitality oblige him to supply the every want of a guest,
even though he be a detenu.
But of all Orientals, the most antipathetical companion to an
Englishman is, I believe, an East-Indian. Like the fox in the fable,
fulsomely flattering at first, he gradually becomes easily friendly,
disagreeably familiar, offensively rude, which ends by rousing the
"spirit of the British lion." Nothing delights the Hindi so much as an
opportunity of safely venting the spleen with which he regards his
victors.[FN#11] He will sit in the presence of a
[p.38]magistrate, or an officer, the very picture of cringing
submissiveness. But after leaving the room, he is as different from his
former self as a counsel in court from a counsel at a concert, a sea
captain at a club dinner from a sea captain on his quarter-deck.
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