hich he has not
yet learned to attach importance, are as revolting to the natives, as
the pleasant custom of spitting on the carpet, which some old-world
_Rajas_ still affect, is to Europeans. His manners, too, from the native
point of view, are as bad as his habits are unclean. He is respected for
his wisdom, hated for his airs of superiority, pitied for his ignorance
of many things, feared for what he represents, laughed at for his
eccentric habits and customs, despised for his infidelity to the Faith,
abhorred for his want of beauty, according to native standards of taste,
and loved not at all. The men disguise their feelings, skilfully as only
Orientals can, but the women and the little children do not scruple to
show what their sentiments really are. When he goes abroad, the old
women snarl at him as he passes, and spit ostentatiously, after the
native manner when some unclean thing is at hand. The mothers snatch up
their little ones and carry them hurriedly away, casting a look of hate
and fear over their shoulders as they run. The children scream and yell,
clutch their mothers' garments, or trip and fall, howling dismally the
while, in their frantic efforts to fly his presence. He is
Frankenstein's monster, yearning for love and fellowship with his kind,
longing to feel the hand of a friend in his, and yet knowing, by the
unmistakable signs which a sight of him causes, that he is indescribably
repulsive to the people among whom he lives. Add to all this that he is
cut off from all the things which, to educated Europeans, make life
lovely, and you will realise that his is indeed a sorry case. The
privations of the body, if he has sufficient grit to justify his
existence, count for little. He can live on any kind of food, sleep on
the hardest of hard mats, or on the bare ground, with his head and feet
in a puddle, if needs must. He can turn night into day, and sleep
through the sunlight, or sleep not at all, as the case may be, if any
useful purpose is to be served thereby. These are not things to trouble
him, though the fleshpots of Egypt are very good when duty allows him to
turn his back for a space upon the desert. Privations all these things
are called in ordinary parlance, but they are of little moment, and are
good for his liver. The real privations are of quite another sort. He
never hears music; never sees a lovely picture; never joins in the talk
and listens lovingly to conversation which strikes the answer