or cricket, or if he has
run an exhausting race. The Englishman hates to be fussed over, says
that his injury is nothing, and that he can walk home quite easily,
when perhaps his leg is broken; and he feels dreadfully ashamed of
himself if he collapses at the finish of a race. The Indian, on the
contrary, makes extraordinary demonstrations over a slight injury; he
flings himself on the ground, and is apparently at the point of death.
His friends rush for water, and chafe his hands and legs, and they
think the Englishman unfeeling if he ventures to say that he thinks
the sufferer will soon be better. After these performances have gone
on for a sufficient time, the injured man quietly gets up and resumes
the game.

Almost invariably, at the end of any race, the winner thinks it
necessary to put on the appearance of great exhaustion as long as
anyone is looking at him. But when interest is diverted by
preparations for the next race, the fit of exhaustion is easily
concluded, and the sufferer joins the crowd as if nothing had
happened.

CHAPTER XXI

BOOKS IN INDIA

India in fiction. Vernacular prayer books. Indian letters.
Indian advertisements. Mistaken method of education. Slang
expressions. Swearing. Indians possess few books. Want of
respect for books. Cheapness of Christian books. Indian
printing and binding.

There are a few writers of fiction who depict Indian native life and
talk faithfully. But many readers get an entirely false idea of India
and its people from certain popular novels, which are supposed to
paint a true picture, but in which the description even of cities, and
villages, and scenery are often as unlike the reality as the
circumstances and conversations. Indian people talk much in the same
way as ordinary folk in other parts of the world, except that unseemly
allusions are freely admitted into general conversation in a way which
would not be tolerated in a Christian country. The absurd, high-flown
conversational rhapsodies in the average Anglo-Indian novel are purely
imaginary. "Kim's" talk fairly represents the ordinary talk of the
Indian, although he was not one himself.

A missionary, newly arrived in the country, asked whether the Prayer
Book, translated into the vernacular, suited the Indian people, or
whether its sober language failed to satisfy the Easterns' desire for
rhapsody. But the high flights such as he had in mind are only to be
found in nove