Book-bot.com - read famous books online for free

Modern India by William Eleroy Curtis
page 5 of 506 (00%)
so that they can be together. Americans and English do not mix
as readily as you might expect, although there is nothing like
coolness between them. It is only a natural restraint. They are
accustomed to their ways, and we to ours, and it is natural for
us to drift toward our own fellow countrymen.

In the afternoon nettings are hung around one of the broad decks
and games of cricket are played. One day it is the army against
the navy; another day the united service against a civilian team,
and then the cricketers in the second-class salon are invited
to come forward and try their skill against a team made up of
first-classers. In the evening there is dancing, a piano being
placed upon the deck for that purpose, and for two hours it is
very gay. The ladies are all in white, and several English women
insisted upon coming out on the deck in low-cut and short-sleeved
gowns. It is said to be the latest fashion, and is not half as
bad as their cigarette smoking or the ostentatious display of
jewelry that is made on the deck every morning. Several women,
and some of them with titles, sprawl around in steamer chairs,
wearing necklaces of pearls, diamonds, emeralds and other precious
stones, fit for only a banquet or a ball, with their fingers
blazing with jewels and their wrists covered with bracelets.
There seemed to be a rivalry among the aristocracy on our steamer
as to which could make the most vulgar display of gold, silver
and precious stones, and it occurs to me that these Englishwomen
had lived in India so long that they must have acquired the Hindu
barbaric love of jewelry.

My attention was called not long ago to a cartoon in a British
illustrated paper comparing the traveling outfits of American
DigitalOcean Referral Badge