many a strong man down to his boots, for it is the smell of the Great Indian Empire when she turns herself for six months into a house of torment.' The temper induced by this sort of thing, when mixed up well with fever and finally flavoured with cholera ad libitum, is scarcely likely to be lamblike.
'It's an insult to the intelligence of the Deity,' observes one of the sufferers, 'to pretend we're anything but tortured rebels.' Who shall be surprised, then, that when the tortured rebels go away for a holiday to 'the only existence in this desolate land worth the living,' they are devotees of the gospel of eating, drinking, and being merry, for only too obvious reasons? At the bad times this same gospel leads to astonishing effects in the way of kindliness and self-sacrifice. A savage Stoicism holds all things cheap, even death. 'Bah! how these Christians funk death!' It is the grim and contemptuous jeer of the eternal heathen, whose heart says to him with a fraternal candour, 'Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return, and what on earth does it matter?' Yet what a depth of passion and emotion lies in these Stoics, and how paltry and factitious all other men seem beside them—children babbling of the moon or cowards sucking at their spiritual opium pipes to drug their 'funk' into 'faith'! Mr. Kipling loves his heathens with
