dly and
mean, he is a bad representative of a gentle and intellectual race,
that for its heroic traditions, its high thoughts, its noble language
and its exquisite urbanity has been the wonder of the whole world
since the dawn of history.

10.

A cocked hat, a tailcoat with gold buttons and a rapier:--"See'st thou
not the air of the court in these enfoldings? Hath not his gait in it
the measure of the court? Receives not thy nose court-odour from him?
Reflects he not on thy baseness court-contempt?" Observe how
mysterious he is: consider the secrets burning on his tongue. He is
all asides and whispers and winks and nods to other young popinjays of
the same feather. He could tell you the very brand of the pills the
Raja is taking: he receives the paltriest gossip of the Nawab's court
filtered through a lying vakeel. Ten to one he carries in his pocket a
cipher telegram from Simla empowering him to confer the title of
_Jee_[CC] on some neighbouring Thakor. Surely it is no wonder that he
believes himself to be the hub of creation. Within a radius of twenty
miles there is no one even fit to come between the wind and his
nobility. If he should ever catch hold of you by the arm and take you
aside for a moment from the madding crowd of a lawn-tennis party to
whisper in your ear the arrival of a complimentary _Kharita_ and a
pound of sweetmeats from the Foreign Office for the Jam of Bredanbatta
you should let off smiles and blushes in token of the honour and glory
thus placed at your credit.

11.

All Assistant-Magistrates on their first arrival in this country,
stuffed like Christmas turkeys with abstracts and notes, the pemmican
of school-boy learnings, are more or less a weariness and a bore; but
the youth who comes out from the admiring circle of sisters and aunts
with the airs of a man of the world and the blight of a premature
_ennui_ is peculiarly insufferable. Of course he has never
known at home any grown-up people beyond the chrysalis stage of
undergraduatism, except to receive from them patronising hospitalities
and little attentions in the shape of guineas and stalls at the opera,
such as good-natured seniors delight to show to promising young
kinsmen and friends. Yet his talk is of the studio, the editor's room,
and the club; it is flavoured with the _argot_ of the great world, the
half world and Bohemia; he flings great names in your face, dropping
with a sublime familiarity the vulgar prefixes of "M