From Sea to Sea; Letters of TravelKipling, Rudyard
General
From Sea to Sea; Letters of Travel
Kipling, Rudyard
Asia -- Description and travel; Kipling, Rudyard, 1865-1936 -- Travel; United States -- Description and travel; Voyages and travels
spoke, the spring of the tonga bar snapt "mit a harp-like melodious
twang." "What does it matter?" said Ram Baksh. "Has the Sahib never seen
a tonga-iron break before? Padre Martum Sahib and all the Officer Sahibs
in Deoli--" "Ram Baksh," said the Englishman, sternly, "I am not a Padre
Sahib nor an Officer Sahib, and if you say anything more about Padre
Martum Sahib or the officer in Deoli I shall grow very angry, Ram
Baksh."
"Humph," said Ram Baksh, "I knew you were not a Padre Sahib." The little
mishap was patched up with string, and the tonga went on merrily. It is
Stevenson who says that the "invitation to the road," nature's great
morning song, has not yet been properly understood or put to music. The
first note of it is the sound of the dawn-wind through long grass. It is
good, good beyond expression, to see the sun rise upon a strange land
and to know that you have only to go forward and possess that land--that
it will dower you before the day is ended with a hundred new impressions
and, perhaps, one idea. It is good to snuff the wind when it comes in
over large uplands or down from the tops of the blue Aravalis--dry and
keen as a new-ground sword. Best of all is to light the First Pipe--is
there any tobacco so good as that we burn in honour of the breaking
day?--and, while the ponies wake the long white road with their hooves
and the birds go abroad in companions together, to thank your stars that
you are neither the Subaltern who has Orderly Room, the 'Stunt who has
office, or the Judge who has the Court to attend; but are only a loafer
in a flannel shirt bound, if God pleases, to "little Boondi," somewhere
beyond the faint hills beyond the plain.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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