O. Douglas

“ Our own servants are with us—Autolycus and Bella. When we arrived very early in the morning and the coolies were carrying up our luggage, a servant sleeping outside his master's door held up his hand for quietness, saying something quite gently about not waking his master, "Beat him," said Autolycus to the coolies quite without heat, as he hurried on.
The air gets hotter, and everything looks more and more tired every day. Even proud-pied April dressed in all its trim can't put a spirit of youth into anything. ”

“ I am no more capable of describing it than I would have been capable of building it; you must see it for yourself. It alone is worth coming to India to see.
Leaving the Taj Mahal dazed and dizzy with beauty, I was hailed by a voice that sounded familiar, and turning round I saw—an incongruous figure in that Arabian Nights garden—our old friend of the Scotia, the Rocking Horse Fly. ”

“ India has given me the best of good times. I have lacked for nothing—"howbeit let me go in any wise." You needn't think I am changed. I'm not. I'm afraid I'm not. One would think that a new environment would make a difference, but it really does not. A person with a suburban mind would be as suburban in the wilds of Nepal as in the wilds of Tooting. The illuminating thought has come to me that it isn't a man's environment that matters, it's his mind. ”

“ Once inside, the long day at the office over, and the door shut on the world, an arm-chair drawn up to the fire and his books around him he is as happy as a king, for his mind to him is a Kingdom. He may be a puny little man, in bodily presence contemptible, but he will feel no physical disabilities as he clambers on the wall of Jerusalem with Count Raymond, or thrills as he sets forth with Drake to fight Spaniards one against ten. ”

“ I know that my own land is the best land, that the fat babu with his carefully oiled and parted hair and his too-apparent sock-suspenders can't be mentioned in the same breath as the Britisher; that our daffodils and primroses are sweeter far than the heavy-scented blossoms of the East; that the "brain-fever" bird of India is a wretched substitute for the lark and the thrush and others of "God's jocund little fowls" ”

“ Life will see to it that there are tears—at least I'm told so. But suppose in years to come, after we have grown used to each other (though it does amaze me that people should talk about things losing their charm because one gets used to them. Does a child tire of its mother because it is used to her? Is Spring any the less wonderful because we are used to her coming? God grant we have many years to get used to each other!) ”

“ Tea makes one feel better, and then there is tennis and a drive in the cool of the evening.
Mosquitoes are a great trial. They don't worry so much through the day, but at night—at night, when one with infinite care has examined the inside of the mosquito-curtains to make sure none are lurking, and then, satisfied, has dived into bed and tucked the curtain carefully round, and is just going off to sleep—buzz-z-z sounds the hateful thing, and all hope of a quiet night is gone. ”

“ I can't write what I would like, I can't weave pretty things, I can only speak straight on, but oh, my dear, I am so glad that in this big, confusing world we have found each other. Poor Rocking Horse Fly! poor fat friend! how dull for them, how dull for all the rest of the people in the world not to have a you! ”

“ The place you happen to be in is where all interest centres. Every minute of the time as I go through my days, laughing, talking, enjoying myself vastly, away at the back of my mind the thought of you lies "hidden yet bright," making for me a new heaven and a new earth. ”

“ I know that you too "think nobly of the soul." He will be home in a year, and I am trying to tell myself that a year isn't long. Well, the Indian trip is over, and I have a lot, learned a few things, and made some friends—best of them my faithful G. It is rather astonishing that I should have the joy of her company home again. Many people, I am sure, expected she would remain in India, but I think she took the precaution to leave her heart at home, wise G. One thing you should be thankful for, there will be no more letters. What a blessing people are nicer than their letters! ”

“ Boggley says I can make an hotel room look home-like, and, indeed, it is almost my only accomplishment, this talent for home-making. There is one thing I want to say to you. You know what Robert Louis says about married men?—that there is no wandering in pleasant bypaths for them, that the road lies long and straight and dusty to the grave. It dulls me to think of it. Don't feel that. Don't let it be true. We mustn't let our lives get dusty and straight and narrow. We shall love whimsies and we shall laugh. So long as laughter isn't heartless and doesn't hurt anyone it is good to laugh. ”

“ You learn, he says, to look upon death in a different way in India, but I am sure I never could learn to regard with equanimity the thought of being quite well one day and being hurried away to the Circular Road Cemetery early the next. It is sad to die in a foreign land, and it is somehow specially sad, at least I think so, for a home-loving Scot to lie away from home. ”

“ The other night I woke and found G. springing all over her bed like a kangaroo. At first I thought she had gone mad, dog-like, with the heat, but it turned out she was only stalking a mosquito.
Yesterday we all went—Mrs. Townley, Sister Anna Margaret, G., and I—to the Calcutta Zoo. We fed the monkeys with buns, watched the loathly little snakes crawl among the grass in their cages, and then G. began gratuitously to insult a large fierce tiger by poking at it with her sunshade. ”

“ Agra, April 11. ... from a chapter in the Arabian Nights; from the middle of the most gorgeous fairy-tale the mind of man could invent, I write to you to-night.
Often I have heard of the Taj Mahal, read of its beauty, dreamed of its magic, but never in my dreams did I imagine anything so exquisite, so perfect.
Boggley thought I should not leave India without seeing this "miracle of miracles—the final wonder of the world," so we left Calcutta on Monday night by the Punjab mail and came to Agra, and we have done it all in proper order. ”

“ It is too hot to go out much except very early in the morning and again after tea. We read and write and work till luncheon, then go to bed and try to sleep till tea-time. We waken hot and very cross, and it is the horridest thing to get up and get into a dress that seems to fasten with millions of hooks and buttons. My old Bella is back with me, but she has found a mistress whose temper has shortened as the temperature has risen. ”

“ Haven't you often noticed in an evening in London all the City men hurrying home like rabbits to their burrows (not the prosperous City men, but the lesser ones, whose frock-coats are rather shiny and their silk hats rather dull) , and haven't you often thought how narrow their lives are, how cramping their environment? ”

“ Calcutta, April 1 (Monday) . ... The flesh-pots of Calcutta are wonderfully pleasant after jungly fare, and there is something rather nice about a big airy bedroom with a bathroom to correspond, hot water at will, and an ayah to look after one's clothes, after the cramped space of a tent, a zinc bath wiggling on an uneven floor, and Autolycus fumbling vaguely among one's belongings. I am staying with G. in her sister's, Mrs. Townley's, very charming house. Boggley had to go off at once on another short tour, and I was only too pleased to come to this most comfortable habitation. ”

“ I am not going to write any more, not because I haven't lots to say, but because writing much or talking much about a thing—being queer and Scots, it is hard for me to say love—seems somehow to cheapen it, profane it. ”

“ I know that all men—men who are men—at times hear the Red Gods call them (women hear them too, you know, only they have more self-control; they find their peace in fearful innocence and household laws) , and I shall be waiting on the doorstep when you return from climbing Kangchenjunga, or exploring the Bramahputra Gorges, ready to say, "Come away in, for I'm sure you must be tired." ”

“ He will never do anything great in the world, he will never lead a forlorn hope, or marry the Princess, or see far lands; he will never be anything but a poor, shabby clerk, but he is of such stuff as dreams are made of, and God has given to him His fairyland. ”

“ This afternoon, when we were having tea in the garden and enjoying Peliti's chocolate-cake, a great outcry arose from the house, and we saw the servants running and looking up to the verandah. Mr. Townley called out to know what was the matter, and received such a confused jumble of Hindustani in reply that he went to investigate. He came back shrugging his shoulders. "It's some nonsense about a 'spirit,' They say it's been appearing suddenly, then disappearing for some time. Now the chokra swears he saw it go up the verandah into a bedroom. ”

“ Calcutta, April 21. ... Only three more days in India, and I don't know whether I am horribly sorry to go or profoundly relieved to get away. There is no doubt it is a sudden and dangerous country. Three people we knew have died suddenly of cholera, and two others have had bombs thrown at them. I shall be thankful to find myself safely on board the steamer, but even if I escape I am leaving Boggley in the midst of these perils. ”

“ I never like to sit or sleep exactly underneath one, they look so insecure; besides, they make one so untidy. At a dinner-party it is really dreadful to have the things flap-flapping above one's carefully done hair. ”