f those
people who, from utter lack of knowledge upon the subject, believe that
with the exception of a certain difference in the pigment which
embellishes the skin, the lowest type of Hottentot has the same ideals,
desires, and outlook on life as the highest born, or, as I think to be
more correct, I should say, the cleanest living individual in the
Western Hemisphere.

She did not approve of the promiscuous mingling of the white and black
as is so often and so unhappily seen in London, where a servant girl
maybe, will ecstatically spend her evening out under the protection of
some ebony hued product of Africa and, labouring under the delusion
that the dusky swain is the direct descendant of Cetewayo, also totally
lacking all knowledge of African history, will fondly imagine herself a
queen in embryo, instead of which she is merely the means to feed the
lustful longing for the white in some Cape boy, who believes he hides
the roll of his native walk under an exaggerated skirt to his
over-padded coat.

And she equally hated to see the social butterfly smile upon the
high-born native of India, angling for his lakhs with the bait of a
fair white skin upon which to fasten a string of priceless pearls,
gathering her fastidious skirts about her at the sign of any feeling
more human than that which she would allow from a respectable bank
manager, recoiling disdainfully from a man whose ancestors were mighty
in the land, when hers were just beginning to break through the crust
of serfdom, as a toad will crack and throw back the caked mud under
which it has blissfully slept.

As a preventative to social and racial mishaps she thoroughly endorsed
the theory that "East is East and West is West, etc." But in her
heart, or rather in her somewhat searching brain, she had often
wondered if there could be no exception to the ruling, if half of the
East and half of West could never combine to make a perfect whole.

All smiles the dragoman ran forward, saluting her with hands to
forehead, mouth, and breast.

"Do you know who that man is?" she asked, indicating with a scarcely
perceptible movement of the head the Arab who had not moved a muscle
since she had turned away from him to look at his homeland, the desert.

"'Im! My lady!" replied the native, eyes and white teeth flashing as
he essayed in his best Anglo-French to please the beautiful foreigner
who so graciously spoke to him. "'Im? Oh, 'im! is Hahmed the Camel
King.