face" would doubtlessly have been the flippant comment of any
occidental passer-by; "meet 'em everywhere, gambling at the street
corner, or squatting in the bazaar, or riding elephants."

Yes! but--is not India's future history writ large upon that
small-boned oval face for those who, having the vision, read as they
walk warily.

For those who run hastily past life's signposts cannot and will not see
that, like the fresh green grass which hides the dug pit, those gentle
luminous eyes draw attention from the subtle cruelty of the mouth,
through which gleam the pitiless perfect teeth.

Glorying in his bull-neck and massive chin, and blinded by his insular,
inherited upbringing, the European will exclaim "Pah!" at sight of the
thin cheek and delicate oval face, failing utterly to notice the set of
the ears on the head; just as, muscle bound through worship at the
shrine of Sport, he will mistake the eastern courtesy and poetry of
movement for obsequiousness and humility, ignoring the terrible root
from which these delicate flowers spring; the root of patience; with
its tentacles ever twining and twisting through the eastern mind,
causing the very old to die placidly with a smile on their shrivelled
lips, and the young to envisage plague, pestilence, and famine with a
mere lifting of the shoulder. Patience! the card which India does not
hold up her sleeve in the game of life she is playing; the
dull-coloured drab little bit of cardboard which she throws on the
table openly, but which we ignore amongst the highly coloured,
bejewelled pictures she places before us, smiling with the tender
luminous eyes so that we shall forget the subtle cruelty of the mouth.