The fact that one learns first in India [he says, bitterly] is the
profound ignorance which exists in England about it. You know how one
hears it spoken of always as a magnificent field for exertion, and
this is true enough in one way, for if a man does emerge at all, he
emerges the more by contrast--he is a triton among minnows. But I
think the responsibility of those who keep sending out here young
fellows of sixteen and seventeen fresh from a private school or
Addiscombe is quite awful. The stream is so strong, the society is
so utterly worldly and mercenary in its best phase, so utterly and
inconceivably low and profligate in its worst, that it is not
strange that at so early an age, eight out of ten sink beneath it.
... One soon observes here how seldom one meets _a happy man_.

I came out here with three great advantages [he adds]. First, being
twenty instead of seventeen; secondly not having been at Addiscombe;
third, having been at Rugby and Christ Church. This gives me a sort
of position--but still I know the danger is awful--for
constitutionally I believe I am as little able to stand the
peculiar trials of Indian life as anybody.

And he goes on to say that if ever he feels himself in peril of sinking
to the level of what he loathes--"I will go at once." By coming out to
India he had bound himself to one thing only--"to earn my own bread."
But he is not bound to earn it "as a gentleman." The day may come--

when I shall ask for a place on your farm, and if you ask how I am
to get there, you, Tom, are not the person to deny that a man who
is in earnest and capable of forming a resolution can do more
difficult things than getting from India to New Zealand!