KASHMIR VALLEYS 173 



poplars, but not to pierce the deep, mysterious shadows 

 thrown by the river banks. The air was heavy with the 

 scent of flowers so familiar that it was easy to imagine 

 one's self at home in some leafy lane in June. When I 

 remembered the words used by the postmaster, and 

 the strangeness of the relative position of teacher and 

 taught, also in spite of some common ideas, the vast 

 dissimilarity of thought, then I understood how far 

 very far I was from all my old haunts and home ties, 

 and the thought brought sadness ; for though it is good 

 to see strange lands, and to come in contact over seas 

 with apostles of faiths that are not ours, there is a 

 desire for sympathy deep down in most human hearts, 

 however much they may wish to shut themselves up in 

 their own enclosure, and sympathy is difficult to arrive 

 at when there is no common plank of early associations 

 or training on which two individuals can stand and 

 hold converse! 



The thought influenced me to such an extent that 

 the following day I collected all the light literature I 

 was possessed of, and went off to visit a friend lately 

 sent up to Kashmir from the plains on sick leave, and 

 suffering from bad fever, the result of overwork and too 

 much plague duty. Fever is not a romantic or an 

 attractive ailment, its victims do not draw sympathy 

 by their interesting appearance, and much of it is apt 

 to engender an uncomfortable shortness of temper, but 

 as I sat that day and talked to a man who, barely into 

 the fifth decade, looked old, and watched the thin 

 fingers, and wondered whether he would ever live to 

 reach again the home where we had known each other 

 years before, it struck me there was an infinite 

 pathos in this toll exacted of nearly all who would 



