'As the thriftless gold of the babul,[1] so is the gold that we spend
On a Derby sweep, or our neighbour's wife, or the horse we buy from a friend.'
The equine business on the banks of the Indus and the Ganges is even worse, it would appear, than that which concerns the female of our species:
'The ways of a man with a maid be strange, yet simple and tame
To the ways of a man with a horse, when selling or racing that same.'
All of which tends to produce in us a certain large and philosophic tolerance. Thus:
'If he play, being young and unskilful, for shekels of silver and gold,
Take his money, my son, praising Allah. The kid was ordained to be sold.'
Yet the deeper note is not altogether absent—the deeper note which tells us of that India with which Mr. Kipling has done more than any one else to make us familiar:
'Hard her service, poor her payment,—
She in ancient tattered raiment—
India, she the grim Stepmother of our kind.'
Indeed, it is with the one strong enunciation of this
- ↑ The babul is the jungle mimosa, and has a bright yellow blossom.
