The sun. [volume] (New York [N.Y.]) 1833-1916, 1915-03-28
SUN" EACH SUNDAY, WHICH
REPRESENT HIS EARLIER STYLE,

the wet and the first little cold wind
tnat comes round the first corner after
the tonga Is clear of Kalka. There's
a wind you and know well. It's blow
ing over the grass at Dugshai this
very and there's n smell of
rot mr. trees all along ard along from
So!on to Simla. 4 some happy man
II lying w. that Dad with FRAGMENTS
or a tonga bar in his eye. his pit
terrier under his arm. his thick
clothes on the back seat and the GER
tainty of n months pure Joy I'm front
of him. Instead of which you're be-
ing slowed in Hakaiti. and I'm sitting
in n second hand atmosphere above a
sausage shop watching three SPAR
rows playing in a dirty green tree
and pretending that it's summer.
| have a view of very many
streets and a river. Except the ad-
Nertiscments on the walls. there isn't
n speck of color as far as my
eye can reach. The very cat. who is
an amiable beast. comes off black
under my hand, n I dare not open
the n d for fear of smuts. And
this is better than a soaked and
sobbl country, with the corr shocks
standing like plover's eggs in green
moss and the coats lying fiat in moist
Jumps. We haven't had any summer.
n yesterday | smelt the raw touch
Of the winter. Just one little Whit
to show that the year had turned:
oh, what a happy land is Eng
land!"
I cannot understand the white man
at home. You remember when we
went out together and landed at the
Apollo Bunder with all our sorrows
before MS, and went to Watson's Hotel
n saw the snake charmers? You
said: 'Itll take M all my lifetime
to distinguish one niger from an
other" That was eight years ago.
Now you don't call them niggers any
more. and you're supposed-quite
wrongly-to nave an insight into ma
tive character. or else you would
never have been allowed to recruit for
the K~umharsens. l feel as I fe.t at
Watson's. They are so deathly alike,
especially the more educated. They
all seem to cad the same books. and
the same newspapers telling 'em what
to admire in the same books, and they
all quote the same passages from the
same books. and they write books on
books about somebody else's books.
and they are penetrated to their boot
heels with a sense of the awful seri-
usnes of their own views of the
moment. Above that they seem to
be, most curiously and beyond the
right of ordinary people. divorced
from the knowledge or fear Of death.
OF course every man conCeives that
every man except himself is bound to
die (you remember how Hallatt spoke
the night before he went out). but
these men appear to be like children
in that respect.
I can't explain exactly, but 1t gives
an air of unreality to their most
earnest earnestnesses: and when a
young man of views and culture n
aspirations is in earnest the trumpets
of Jericho are silent beside him.. Be-
cause they have everything done for
them they know how everything ought
to be done: and they are perfectly
certain that wood pavements, police
men. shops and gas light come in the
regular course of nature. You
can guess with these convictions
how thoroughly and cocksurely
they handle little trifies like colo
NAL administration, the wants of the
army, municipal sewage, housing OF
the poor, and so forth. Every third
common need of average men is. in
their mouths, a tendency or a move
ment or a federation affecting the
world. 1t never seems to occur to
'em that the human instinct of get
ting as much as possible for money
paid or, falling money. for threats
and %fawnings, is about as old as Cain,
and the burden Of their bat Is: NJ
an a few mates o. mine are going
to make a new world"
As long as men only write ana