fall, howling dismally the while, in their frantic efforts to fly his presence. He is
Frankenstein's monster, yearning for love and fellowship with his kind, longing
to feel the hand of a friend in his, and yet knowing, by the unmistakable signs
which a sight of him causes, that he is indescribably repulsive to the people
among whom he lives. Add to all this that he is cut off from all the things which,
to educated Europeans, make life lovely, and you will realise that his is indeed a
sorry case. The privations of the body, if he has sufficient grit to justify his
existence, count for little. He can live on any kind of food, sleep on the hardest
of hard mats, or on the bare ground, with his head and feet in a puddle, if needs
must. He can turn night into day, and sleep through the sunlight, or sleep not at
all, as the case may be, if any useful purpose is to be served thereby. These are
not things to trouble him, though the fleshpots of Egypt are very good when duty
allows him to turn his back for a space upon the desert. Privations all these
things are called in ordinary parlance, but they are of little moment, and are good
for his liver. The real privations are of quite another sort. He never hears music;
never sees a lovely picture; never joins in the talk and listens lovingly to
conversation which strikes the answering sparks from his sodden brain. Above
all, he never encounters the softening influence of the society of ladies of his
own race. His few books are for a while his companions, but he reads them
through and through, and cons them o'er and o'er, till the best sayings of the best
authors ring flat on his sated ears like the echo of a twice-told tale. He has not
yet learned that there is a great and marvellous book lying beneath his hand, a
book in which all may read if they find but the means of opening the clasp which
locks it, a book in which a man may read for years and never know satiety,
which, though older than the hills, is ever new, and which, though studied for a
lifetime, is never exhausted, and is never completely understood. This
knowledge comes later; and it is then that the Chapter of the Great Book of
Human Nature, which deals with natives, engrosses his attention and, touching
the grayness of his life, like the rising sun, turns it into gold and purple.
Many other things he has to endure. Educated white men have inherited an
infinite capacity for feeling bored; and a hot climate, which fries us all over a
slow fire, grills boredom into irritability. The study of oriental human nature
requires endless patience; and this is the hardest virtue for a young, energetic
white man, with the irritable brain of his race, to acquire. Without it life is a
misery—for
It is not good for the Christian's health
To hurry the Aryan brown,