Behind the Bungalow by EHA
page 10 of 107 (09%)
page 10 of 107 (09%)
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he balances the one against the other, and if he works patiently on,
it is because the balance is in his favour. I am satisfied that it is an axiom of domestic economy in India that the treatment which you mete out to your Boy has a definite money value. Ill-usage of him is a luxury like any other, paid for by those who enjoy it, not to be had otherwise. There is one other thing on which he sets his childish heart. He likes service with a master who is in some sort a burra saheb. He is by nature a hero worshipper--and master is his natural hero. The saying, that no man is a hero to his own valet, has no application here. In India, if you are not a hero to your own Boy, I should say, without wishing to be unpleasant, that the probabilities are against your being a hero to anybody. It is very difficult for us, with our notions, to enter into the Boy's beautiful idea of the relationship which subsists between him and master. To get at it at all we must realize that no shade of radicalism has ever crossed his social theory. "Liberty, Equality, and Fraternity" is a monstrous conception, to which he would not open his mind if he could. He sees that the world contains masters and servants, and doubts not that the former were provided for the accommodation of the latter. His fate having made him a servant, his master is the foundation on which he stands. Everything, therefore, which relates to the well-being, and especially to the reputation, of his master, is a personal concern of his own. Per contra, he does not forget that he is the ornament of his master. I had a Boy once whom I retained chiefly as a curiosity, for I believe he had the smallest adult human head in heathendom. He appeared before me one day with that minute organ surmounted by a gorgeous turban of purple and gold, which he informed me had cost about a month's pay. Now I knew that his brain was never equal to |
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