"Most Honored Sir:--I most humbly beg to inform you this to your
kind consideration and generousitee and trusting which will submit
myself to your grant benevolence for avoid the troublesomeness to
you and your families, that the servant Ram Zon you have been so
honorable and benovelent to engage is a great rogue and conjurer.
He will make your mind buzzling and will steal your properties,
and can run away with you midway. In proof you please touch his
right hand shoulder and see what and how big charm he has. Such
a bad temperature man you have in your service. Besides he only
grown up taller and looks like a dandee as it true but he is
not fit to act in case not to disappeared. I beg of you kindly
consult about those matters and select and choose much experienced
man than him otherwise certainly you could be put in to great
danger by his conjuring and into troubles.
"Hoping to excuse me for this troubles I taking, though he is my
caste and countryman much like not to do so, but his temperature
is not good therefore liable to your honourablesness, etc., etc."
When I told Ram about this indictment, he stoutly denied the
charges, saying that it was customary for envious "bearers" to
say bad things of one another when they lost good jobs. We did not
feel of his right arm and he did not try to conjure us, but his
temperature is certainly very bad, and he soon became a nuisance,
which we abated by paying him a month's wages and sending him off.
Then, upon the recommendation of the consul we got a treasure,
although he does not show it in his looks.
The hotels of India have a very bad name. There are several good
ones in the empire, however, and every experienced traveler and
every clubman you meet can tell you the names of all of them.
Hence it is not impossible to keep a good hotel in India with
profit. The best are at Lucknow and Darjeeling. Those at Caucutta
are the worst, although one would think that the vice-regal capital
would have pride enough to entertain its many visitors decently.
Bombay at last has such a hotel as ought to be found in Calcutta
and all the other large cities, an architectural monument, and
an ornament to the country. It is due to the enterprise of the
late Mr. J. N. Tata, a Parsee merchant and manufacturer, and it
is to be hoped that its success will be sufficient to stimulate
similar enterprises elsewhere. It would be much better for the people
of India to coax tourists over here by offering them comforts,
luxuries and pleasures than to allow the few who do come, to go
away grumbling. The thousands who visit Cairo every winter are
attracted there by the hotels, for no city has better ones, and
no hotels give more for the money. Hence they pay big profits,
and are a source of prosperity to the city, as well as a pleasure
to the idle public.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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