Part 14

This was Jeypore with the gas-jets and the water-pipes as was shown at the beginning of these trivial letters; and the Globe-Trotter and his wife had not been to Amber. Joyful thought! They had not seen the soft splendour of Udaipur, the night-mare of Chitor, the grim power of Jodhpur and the virgin beauty of Boondi--fairest of all places that the Englishman had set eyes on. The Globe-Trotter was great in the matter of hotels and food, but he had not lain under the shadow of a tonga in soft warm sand, eating cold pork with a pocket-knife and thanking Providence who put sweet-water streams where wayfarers wanted them. He had not drunk out the brilliant cold-weather night in the company of a King of loafers, a grimy scallawag with a six days’ beard and an unholy knowledge of native States. He had attended service in cantonment churches; but he had not known what it was to witness the simple solemn ceremonial in the dining-room of a far away Residency, when all the English folk within a hundred-mile circuit bowed their heads before the God of the Christians. He had blundered about temples of strange deities with a guide at his elbow; but he had not known what it was to attempt conversation with a temple dancing-girl (_not_ such an one as Edwin Arnold invented), and to be rewarded for a misturned compliment with a deftly heaved bunch of marigold buds on his respectable bosom. Yes, he had undoubtedly lost much, and the measure of his loss was proven in his estimate of the Orientalism of Jeypore.

But what had he who sat in judgment upon him gained? One perfect month of loaferdom, to be remembered above all others, and the night of the visit to Chitor, to be remembered even when the month is forgotten. Also the sad knowledge that of all the fair things seen, the inept pen gives but a feeble and blurred picture.

* * * * *

Let those who have read to the end, pardon a hundred blemishes.

End of Project Gutenberg's Letters of Marque, by Rudyard, (1865-1936) Kipling