Then he inquired: “Is not that creating a class feeling and a spirit of caste?” This touched my tenderest spot. I instantly grew hot, and abruptly asked: “Who began this class feeling? Who created this caste? It ill becomes you, one of the dominant race that is responsible for the creation of these people, who always sneer at them and oppress them in every possible way, to ask such a question. Take myself, for you called me an Eurasian. I am one, a half caste, but who made me such? An Englishman, a member of your church, took a Mussalmani, my mother, not as his wife, but as his mistress, deceiving her with a promise of marriage. When he saw fit, he threw her aside to die of a broken heart, and left two of us, his children, to starve for all he cared. Who made me a half caste, who started this class feeling in me, but that distinguished gentleman, my father?” He stopped me suddenly by saying that he had no intention to be personal or cast any reflection by using that word. Such gentlemen are always innocent after the mischief is done. “’Tis like a pardon after execution.” I concluded to say nothing more. He had listened to me with that bland suavity of manner, that assumed superiority of race, as if he was dealing with a simpleton, or a truant school boy, or that anything I might say was not worthy of his notice. I waited with repressed scorn while he continued to talk of the church, its divine origin, its divine ordinances, as if God was shut up within its walls, and nobody could have access to Him except through its doors or through the mediation of its priests. It was the church, and nothing but the church, as if it was the only divine infallible thing on earth, and he was one of its infallible popes. Had he been a really spiritual, noble-minded man, working among the poor, my feelings would have been somewhat different. He was high church, so very high that he never came down to common humanity, a ritualist of the rankest kind, and cared more outside of the church walls, for good living, and inside of it, more about his intoning, the singing of his choir, the folds of his gown, and for the order of his services, than for the moral or eternal welfare of anybody. Could he have got our association to be as a tag in the tail of his church kite for his own glorification, he would have been a happy man, not that he cared the value of a pin for the soul of any of us. He went on with his church rhetorical parade until my breakfast bell rang, when he took his clerical hat and himself away, to my great relief. This was the last I ever saw of the Chaplain. CHAPTER XLI.