"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. But it is not often that you can get to know them. As McIntosh himself
used to say:--"If I change my religion for my stomach's sake, I do not seek to
become a martyr to missionaries, nor am I anxious for notoriety.
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