Concerning Animals and Other MattersAitken, Edward Hamilton
History
Concerning Animals and Other Matters
Aitken, Edward Hamilton
Animal behavior; India -- Social life and customs; Natural history
"But not less certainly will every earnest effort to bring the life into
unison with what we perceive to be right bring its own reward in a
clearer and more joyful perception of what is right, and a keener
sensitiveness to every discord in ourselves. How all such discord may be
removed, how the chords of the heart may be tuned and the life become
music,--these are questions of religion, which are quite beyond our
scope. But I take it that every religion which has prevailed among the
children of Adam is in itself an evidence that, however debased and
perverted the moral sense may have become, the painful consciousness
that his heart is 'like sweet bells jangled' still presses everywhere
and always on the spirit of man; and it is also a conscious or
unconscious admission that there is no blessedness for him until his
life shall march in step with the music of the 'Eternal Righteousness.'"
Mr. Aitken's name will be kept green among Anglo-Indians by the
well-known series of books published by Messrs. Thacker & Co., of London
and Calcutta. They are _The Tribes on my Frontier, An Indian
Naturalist's Foreign Policy_, which was published in 1883, and of which
a seventh edition appeared in 1910. This book deals with the common
birds, beasts, and insects in and around an Indian bungalow, and it
should be put into the hands of every one whose lot is cast in India. It
will open their eyes to the beauty and interests of their surroundings
in a truly wonderful way, and may be read again and again with
increasing pleasure as one's experience of Indian life increases.
This was followed in 1889 by _Behind the Bungalow_, which describes with
charming insight the strange manners and customs of our Indian domestic
servants. The witty and yet kindly way in which their excellencies and
defects are touched off is delightful, and many a harassed _mem-sahib_
must bless Eha for showing her the humorous and human side of her life
surrounded as it is by those necessary but annoying inhabitants of the
Godowns behind the bungalow. A tenth edition of this book was published
in 1911.
_The Naturalist on the Prowl_ was brought out in 1894, and a third
edition was published in 1905. It contains sketches on the same lines as
those in _The Tribes_, but deals more with the jungles, and not so much
with the immediate surroundings of the bungalow. The very smell of the
country is in these chapters, and will vividly recall memories to those
who know the country along the West Coast of India southward of Bombay.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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