ted, it tends to sanctify in their eyes a state
of repose. When removed from this world of care, their highest hope is
to become a part of the great Quiescent. It will naturally appear to
them the best preparation for the repose of a future life to cultivate
repose in this." Therefore, if your kitmudgar, nodding behind your
chair, permits his astonished fly-flapper to become a part of the great
Quiescent, or if your punka-wallah, having subsided into a comatose
beatitude, suddenly invites his compliant machine to repose in himself,
in a dream of absolute stagnation, with the thermometer at 120 deg. outside
the refrigerator, you must not say, "Damn that boy,--he's asleep
again!"--but patiently survey and intelligently admire the spiritual
processes by which an exalted sentient force prepares itself for the
repose of a future life. But our reckless Karlee took no thought for the
everlasting rest into which his soul should enter "when removed from
this world of care," according to the ingenious psychological system of
the amiable Kerr Sahib; for when he had anything to do, he kept on doing
it until it was done, and when he caught the punka-wallah reposing in a
dream of absolute quiescence, he bumped his head against the wall, and
called him a _sooa_, and a _banchut_, and a _junglee-wallah_.[23]

Though possessed of a lively imagination and all his race's sympathy
with what is vast, though he saw nothing extravagant in the Hindoo
chronology, nor aught that was monstrous in Hindoo mythology, Karlee yet
served to illustrate the arguments of those who contend that Hindoos
need not necessarily be all boasters, servile liars, and flatterers. He
was not forever saying, "Master very wise man; master all time do good;
master all time ispeak right." He never told me that my words were
pearls and diamonds that I dropped munificently from my mouth. He never
called me "your highness," or said I was his father and mother, and the
lord of the world; and if I said at noonday, "It is night," he did not
exclaim, "Behold the moon and stars!" He never tried to prove to me that
the earth revolved on its axis once in twenty-four hours by my favor.
"What! dost thou think him a Christian that he would go about to deceive
thee?" No, he was as proudly truthful as a Rajpoot, as frank and manly
as a Goorkah, and as honest as an up-country Durwan.

Good by, my best of bhearers. To the new baby a good name, and to the
faithful ayah enviable enlargement