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
He had been so happy in the thought of "getting home by Christmas," and
so charmingly communicative as to the members of his family for whom
such and such gifts were intended, that the Englishman cut short the
record of fraud and soothed him by saying that he had not been so very
badly "done," after all. This consideration was misplaced, for, his
peace of mind restored, the Young Man from Manchester looked out of the
window and, waving his hand over the Empire generally, said: "I say.
Look here. All those wells are wrong, you know!" The wells were on the
wheel and inclined plane system; but he objected to the incline, and
said that it would be much better for the bullocks if they walked on
level ground. Then light dawned upon him, and he said: "I suppose it's
to exercise all their muscles. Y' know a canal horse is no use after he
has been on the tow-path for some time. He can't walk anywhere but on
the flat, y' know, and I suppose it's just the same with bullocks." The
spurs of the Aravalis, under which the train was running, had evidently
suggested this brilliant idea which passed uncontradicted, for the
Englishman was looking out of the window.
If one were bold enough to generalise after the manner of
Globe-trotters, it would be easy to build up a theory on the well
incident to account for the apparent insanity of some of our cold
weather visitors. Even the Young Man from Manchester could evolve a
complete idea for the training of well-bullocks in the East at thirty
seconds' notice. How much the more could a cultivated observer from, let
us say, an English constituency, blunder and pervert and mangle? We in
this country have no time to work out the notion, which is worthy of the
consideration of some leisurely Teuton intellect.
Envy may have prompted a too bitter judgment of the Young Man from
Manchester; for, as the train bore him from Jeypore to Ahmedabad, happy
in his "getting home by Christmas," pleased as a child with his Delhi
atrocities, pink-cheeked, whiskered, and superbly self-confident, the
Englishman whose home for the time was a dark bungaloathsome hotel,
watched his departure regretfully; for he knew exactly to what sort of
genial, cheery British household, rich in untravelled kin, that Young
Man was speeding. It is pleasant to play at Globe-trotting; but to enter
fully into the spirit of the piece, one must also be "going home for
Christmas."
II
SHOWS THE CHARM OF RAJPUTANA AND OF JEYPORE, THE CITY OF THE
GLOBE-TROTTER. OF ITS FOUNDER AND ITS EMBELLISHMENT. EXPLAINS THE USE
AND DESTINY OF THE STUD-BRED, AND FAILS TO EXPLAIN MANY MORE IMPORTANT
MATTERS.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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