lasses of
the two races seems to be for the present out of the question.

Very sincere and creditable efforts are now, it is true, being made on
both sides to diminish the gulf that divides English and Indian society,
and I have been at various gatherings which were attended by Englishmen
and Englishwomen and by Indians, among whom there was sometimes even a
sprinkling of Indian ladies. But the English host and hostess invariably
found it difficult to prevent their Indian guests forming groups of
their own, and each group seemed to be as reluctant to mingle with other
Indian groups of a different class or caste as with their English
fellow-guests. Indian society has been for centuries split up by race
and caste and creed distinctions into so many watertight compartments
that it does not care for the Western forms of social intercourse, which
tend to ignore those distinctions. It is Indians themselves who regard
us, much more than we regard ourselves, as a separate caste. Moreover,
for the ordinary and somewhat desultory conversation which plays so
large a part in Western sociability the Indian has very little
understanding. He always imagines that conversation must have some
definite purpose, and though he has far, more than most English men, the
gift of ready and courteous speech, and often will talk for a long time
both discursively and pleasantly, it is almost always as a preliminary
to the introduction of some particular topic in which his personal
interests are more or less directly involved. A question which causes a
good deal of soreness is the rigid exclusion of Indians from many
Anglo-Indian clubs. But though a little more elasticity as to the
entertainment of Indian "guests" might reasonably be conceded to Indian
susceptibilities, a club is after all just as much as his house an
Englishman's castle, and it is only in India that any one would venture
to suggest that a club should not settle its rules of membership as it
thinks fit. In the large cities at least there should, however, be room
for clubs which, like the Calcutta Club at Calcutta, serve the very
useful purpose of bringing together by mutual consent the higher classes
of Indians and Englishmen, official and non-official. Yet even there the
exigencies of caste observances, especially in the case of Hindus,
militate against the more convivial forms of intercourse which the
Englishman particularly affects. There are not a few Hindu members who
will talk