FREE BOOKS

Author's List




PREV.   NEXT  
|<   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51  
52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   >>   >|  
riends, and devoted the rest of the time to social life and the Indian museum. One should spend a month in the museum, an enchanted palace of Indian antiquities. Indeed, a person might spend half a year among the beautiful and wonderful things without exhausting their interest. It was winter. We were of Kipling's "hosts of tourists who travel up and down India in the cold weather showing how things ought to be managed." It is a common expression there, "the cold weather," and the people think there is such a thing. It is because they have lived there half a lifetime, and their perceptions have become blunted. When a person is accustomed to 138 in the shade, his ideas about cold weather are not valuable. I had read, in the histories, that the June marches made between Lucknow and Cawnpore by the British forces in the time of the Mutiny were made weather--138 in the shade and had taken it for historical embroidery. I had read it again in Serjeant-Major Forbes-Mitchell's account of his military experiences in the Mutiny --at least I thought I had--and in Calcutta I asked him if it was true, and he said it was. An officer of high rank who had been in the thick of the Mutiny said the same. As long as those men were talking about what they knew, they were trustworthy, and I believed them; but when they said it was now "cold weather," I saw that they had traveled outside of their sphere of knowledge and were floundering. I believe that in India "cold weather" is merely a conventional phrase and has come into use through the necessity of having some way to distinguish between weather which will melt a brass door-knob and weather which will only make it mushy. It was observable that brass ones were in use while I was in Calcutta, showing that it was not yet time to change to porcelain; I was told the change to porcelain was not usually made until May. But this cold weather was too warm for us; so we started to Darjeeling, in the Himalayas--a twenty-four hour journey. CHAPTER LV. There are 869 different forms of lying, but only one of them has been squarely forbidden. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. --Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar. FROM DIARY: February 14. We left at 4:30 P.M. Until dark we moved through rich vegetation, then changed to a boat and crossed the Ganges. February 15. Up with the sun. A brilliant morning, and frosty. A d
PREV.   NEXT  
|<   27   28   29   30   31   32   33   34   35   36   37   38   39   40   41   42   43   44   45   46   47   48   49   50   51  
52   53   54   55   56   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   64   65   66   67   68   69   70   71   72   73   74   75   76   >>   >|  



Top keywords:

weather

 
Mutiny
 
showing
 

change

 

Calcutta

 

porcelain

 

February

 

things

 
museum
 

person


Indian
 
Himalayas
 

necessity

 

phrase

 

started

 

Darjeeling

 

conventional

 
twenty
 

observable

 

distinguish


vegetation

 
changed
 
brilliant
 

morning

 

frosty

 

crossed

 
Ganges
 

Calendar

 

squarely

 

journey


CHAPTER

 

forbidden

 

neighbor

 

Wilson

 

witness

 

officer

 

common

 

managed

 
expression
 

people


travel

 

accustomed

 

valuable

 
blunted
 
lifetime
 
perceptions
 

tourists

 

enchanted

 

palace

 

riends