FROM SABATHU TO KASHMIR. 45 



works willingly and sensibly. Perhaps you may 

 meet the family at Lichfield." 



" If I were only nearer you all," writes Hodson, 

 " and had any old friends about me, I should have 

 nothing to regret or wish for. It is there that the 

 shoe pinches. All minor annoyances are easily got 

 rid of, but one does find a wonderful lack of one's 

 old friends and old associations. Society is very 

 difi^erent here from ours at home, and diff*erent as 

 it is, I have seen very little of it. Nor am I, with 

 my previous habits, age, and education, the person 

 to feel this an indiff"erent matter ; but, on the con- 

 trary, all the drawbacks of Indian existence come 

 with redoubled force from the greatness of the 

 contrast. Still I do not let these things annoy me 

 or weigh down my spirits, but strive, by keeping 

 up English habits, tastes, and feelings, and looking 

 forward to a run home (thus having a motive always 

 in view), to make the best of everything as it occurs, 

 and to act upon the principle that mere outward 

 circumstances don't make a man's happiness." 



It is not surprising to find that a young man of 

 Hodson's years, tastes, and training did not take 

 kindly to Anglo - Indian ways and traditions, or 

 that he should feel contempt for a regular Indian, 

 " a man who thinks it fine to adopt a totally dif- 

 ferent set of habits and morals and fashions, until, 

 in forgetting that he is an Englishman, he usually 

 forgets also that he is a Christian and a gentleman." 

 A Cambridge graduate of twenty-five would natur- 

 ally have little in common with boys of sixteen 

 and seventeen fresh from school, free from all home 

 restraints, and launched without warning into a 

 strange new world of moral and social complexities. 



