" So Mellish
went up to Simla, with eighty-four pounds of Fumigatory in his
trunk, to speak to the Viceroy and to show him the merits of the
invention.
But it is easier to see a Viceroy than to talk to him, unless you
chance to be as important as Mellishe of Madras. He was a six-
thousand-rupee man, so great that his daughters never "married."
They "contracted alliances." He himself was not paid. He
"received emoluments," and his journeys about the country were
"tours of observation." His business was to stir up the people in
Madras with a long pole--as you stir up stench in a pond--and the
people had to come up out of their comfortable old ways and gasp:--
"This is Enlightenment and progress. Isn't it fine!" Then they
gave Mellishe statues and jasmine garlands, in the hope of getting
rid of him.
Mellishe came up to Simla "to confer with the Viceroy." That was
one of his perquisites. The Viceroy knew nothing of Mellishe
except that he was "one of those middle-class deities who seem
necessary to the spiritual comfort of this Paradise of the Middle-
classes," and that, in all probability, he had "suggested,
designed, founded, and endowed all the public institutions in
Madras.
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