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98
WINTER INDIA
98

roy's private hospitalities are continuous. At the end of each week the viceregal family go to their country house at Barrackpur, fourteen miles up the Hugli, the large house-party reinforced by a company of guests brought up on the yacht to lunch under the great banian-tree. Like Lord Auckland, Lord Curzon, with the Dowager Empress of China, rules half the human race and still finds time to breakfast under that banian-tree. Possessed of that same tireless energy as those two other strenuous rulers of his day, President Roosevelt and the Emperor William, Lord Curzon has given Anglo-India daily shock and sensation since his arrival, and sleepy bureaus and slow officials were galvanized to a life that has known no resting since. There has been no monotony during Lord Curzon's time, and those who have waited for him to weary of hustling the East, to sit back in conventional viceregal fashion and sign the papers brought him, have had to resign themselves to his omnipresence and terrible activity, his thirst for information, and his frenzy for work. He has impressed his vigorous personality upon every branch of the imperial service, and already has visited more native states and distant provinces than any predecessor; ordering, with equal attention to minutiæ, the least details of the increased state and ceremony now attending the viceregal court, the methods of famine relief and plague control, and of the organization of the new district created on the northwest frontier. He has brought India to the world's attention and given it an impetus in the path of progress and prosperity.