t patience. You must ask again plainly and kindly. The poorer
classes are easily flurried; they will always give what information
they have if kindly spoken to, but you must not fluster them. You must
rouse their minds to think, and let them fairly grasp the purport of
your inquiry, for they are very suspicious, often pondering over your
object, carefully considering all the pros and cons as to your motive,
inclination, or your position. Many try to give an answer that they
think would be pleasing to you. If they think you are weary and tired,
and you ask your distance from the place you may be wishing to reach,
they will ridiculously underestimate the length of road. A man may
have all the cardinal virtues, but if they think you do not like him,
and you ask his character, they will paint him to you blacker than
Satan himself. It is very hard to get the plain, unvarnished truth
from a Hindoo. Many, indeed, are almost incapable of giving an
intelligent answer to any question that does not nearly concern their
own private and purely personal interests. They have a sordid,
grubbing, vegetating life, many of them indeed are but little above
the brute creation. They have no idea beyond the supply of the mere
animal wants of the moment. The future never troubles them. They live
their hard, unlovely lives, and experience no pleasures and no
surprises. They have few regrets; their minds are mere blanks, and
life is one long continued struggle with nature for bare subsistence.
What wonder then that they are fatalists? They do not speculate on the
mysteries of existence, they are content to be, to labour, to suffer,
to die when their time comes like a dog, because it is _Kismet_--their
fate. Many of them never strive to avert any impending calamity, such,
for example, as sickness. A man sickens, he wraps himself in stolid
apathy, he makes no effort to shake of his malady, he accepts it with
sullen, despairing, pathetic resignation as his fate. His friends
mourn in their dumb, despairing way, but they too accept the
situation. He has no one to rouse him. If you ask him what is the
matter, he only wails out, 'Hum kya kurre?' What can I do? I am
unwell. No attempt whatever to tell you of the origin of his illness,
no wish even for sympathy or assistance. He accepts the fact of his
illness. He struggles not with Fate. It is so ordained. Why fight
against it? Amen; so let it be. I have often been saddened to see poor
toiling tenants st