loose and flowing robes that are only for esoteric disciples; he has
the private _entrée_ at five o'clock tea and hears plans for the
evening campaign openly discussed. He is quite behind the scenes. He
hears the earliest whispers of engagements and flirtations. He can
give a stone to the Press Commissioner in the gossip handicap, and win
in a canter. You cannot tell him anything he does not know already.

Whenever the Government of India has a merrymaking, he is out on the
trail. At Delhi he was in the thick of the mummery, beaming on
barbaric princes and paynim princesses, blessing banners, blessing
trumpeters, blessing proclamations, blessing champagne and truffles,
blessing pretty girls, and blessing the conjunction of planets that
had placed his lines in such pleasant places. His tight little cob,
his perfect riding kit, his flowing beard, and his pleasant smile were
the admiration of all the Begums and Nabobs that had come to the fair.
The Government of India took such delight in him that they gave him a
gold medal and a book.

With the inferior clergy the Archdeacon is not at his ease. He cannot
respect the little ginger-bread gods of doctrine they make for
themselves; he cannot worship at their hill altars; their hocus-pocus
and their crystallised phraseology fall dissonantly on his ear; their
talk of chasubles and stoles, eastern attitude, and all the rest of
it, is to him as a tale told by an idiot signifying nothing. He would
like to see the clergy merely scholars and men of sense set apart for
the conduct of divine worship and the encouragement of all good and
kindly offices to their neighbours; he does not wish to see them
mediums and conjurors. He thinks that in a heathen country their
paltry fetishism of misbegotten notions and incomprehensible phrases
is peculiarly offensive and injurious to the interests of civilisation