" 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." Which proves that His Excellency, though dreamy, had experience of
the ways of six-thousand-rupee men.
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