ing sparks
from his sodden brain. Above all, he never encounters the softening
influence of the society of ladies of his own race. His few books are
for a while his companions, but he reads them through and through, and
cons them o'er and o'er, till the best sayings of the best authors ring
flat on his sated ears like the echo of a twice-told tale. He has not
yet learned that there is a great and marvellous book lying beneath his
hand, a book in which all may read if they find but the means of opening
the clasp which locks it, a book in which a man may read for years and
never know satiety, which, though older than the hills, is ever new, and
which, though studied for a lifetime, is never exhausted, and is never
completely understood. This knowledge comes later; and it is then that
the Chapter of the Great Book of Human Nature, which deals with natives,
engrosses his attention and, touching the grayness of his life, like the
rising sun, turns it into gold and purple.

Many other things he has to endure. Educated white men have inherited an
infinite capacity for feeling bored; and a hot climate, which fries us
all over a slow fire, grills boredom into irritability. The study of
oriental human nature requires endless patience; and this is the hardest
virtue for a young, energetic white man, with the irritable brain of his
race, to acquire. Without it life is a misery--for

It is not good for the Christian's health
To hurry the Aryan brown,
For the Christian riles and the Aryan smiles,
And he weareth the Christian down;
And the end of that fight is a tombstone white,
With the name of the late deceased,
And the epitaph clear, A fool lies here
Who tried to hustle the East.

Then gradually, very gradually, and by how slow degrees he shudders in
after days to recall, a change comes o'er the spirit of his nightmare.
Almost unconsciously, he begins to perceive that he is sundered from the
people of the land by a gulf which _they_ can never hope to bridge over.
If he is ever to gain their confidence the work must be of his own
doing. They cannot come up to this level, he must go down to the plains
in which they dwell. He must put off many of the things of the white
man, must forget his airs of superiority, and must be content to be
merely a native Chief among natives. His pride rebels, his prejudices
cry out and will not be silenced, he knows that he will be misunderstood
by his race-m