Rudyard Kipling

Letters of Marque Rudyard Kipling

EXCEPT for those who, under compulsion of a sick certificate, are flying Bombaywards, it isgood for every man to see some little of the great Indian Empire and the strange folk who moveabout it. It is good to escape for a time from the House of Rimmon-be it office or cutchery-and to go abroad under no more exacting master than personal inclination, and with no moredefinite plan of travel than has the horse, escaped from pasture, free upon the country side. Thefirst result of such freedom is extreme bewilderment, and the second reduces the freed to a stateof mind which, for his sins, must be the normal portion of the Globe-Trotter-the man who"does" kingdoms in days and writes books upon them in weeks. And this desperate facility is notas strange as it seems. By the time that an Englishman has come by sea and rail via America, Japan, Singapore, and Ceylon to India, he can-these eyes have seen him do so-master in fiveminutes the intricacies of the Indian Bradshaw, and tell an old resident exactly how and wherethe trains run. Can we wonder that the intoxication of success in hasty assimilation should makehim overbold, and that he should try to grasp-but a full account of the insolent Globe-Trottermust be reserved. He is worthy of a book. Given absolute freedom for a month the mind, as Ihave said, fails to take in the situation and, after much debate, contents itself with following inold and well-beaten ways-paths that we in India have no time to tread, but must leave to thecountry-cousin who wears his pagri tail-fashion down his back, and says "cabman" to the driverof the ticca-ghari. Now Jeypore from the Anglo-Indian point of view is a station on the Rajputana-Malwa line, on the way to Bombay, where half an hour is allowed for dinner, and where there ought to bemore protection from the sun than at present exists. Some few, more learned than the rest, knowthat garnets come from Jeypore, and here the limits of our wisdom are set. We do not, to quotethe Calcutta shopkeeper, come out "for the good of our 'ealth," and what touring we accomplishis for the most part off the line of rai