"Thanks--a thousand thanks! O Moon and little, little Stars! To
think that a man should so shamelessly . . . . Infamous liquor,
too. Ovid in exile drank no worse. Better. It was frozen. Alas!
I had no ice. Good-night. I would introduce you to my wife were I
sober--or she civilized."
A native woman came out of the darkness of the room, and began
calling the man names; so I went away. He was the most interesting
loafer that I had the pleasure of knowing for a long time; and later
on, he became a friend of mine. He was a tall, well-built, fair man
fearfully shaken with drink, and he looked nearer fifty than the
thirty-five which, he said, was his real age. When a man begins to
sink in India, and is not sent Home by his friends as soon as may
be, he falls very low from a respectable point of view. By the time
that he changes his creed, as did McIntosh, he is past redemption.
In most big cities, natives will tell you of two or three Sahibs,
generally low-caste, who have turned Hindu or Mussulman, and who
live more or less as such.
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