KASHMIR VALLEYS 175 



and of India as a sickening hole, and as men do not 

 care to discourse of that innermost shrine that nearly 

 all of us possess hidden away, silent, secret, adorned 

 with our best thoughts, hung with out highest resolves, 

 brightened only by hopes, so these will not admit to 

 any save themselves that they would not exchange for 

 all the "fleshpots of Israel," nor for all the "little 

 village " could offer, their acreage of sand and scrub, 

 their battalions of white turbaned, black-eyed natives, 

 their charge of weak-kneed folk. 



Yes, silence is best about such subjects, for to 

 talk is to think, and thinking leads to brooding 

 over sufferings and difficulties, and may ultimately 

 tend to shakiness of nerve and incapacity for 

 work. " Strength " is the one thing necessary where 

 many depend on one man to stand upright. Sometimes, 

 may be in the charged, electrically-laden hush before a 

 thunderstorm, or in the calm coolness of a starlit night, 

 surrounded by the speechful silence of still jungles, 

 hearts are opened and hidden streams uncovered, and 

 strange tales go round of difficulties and dangers, con- 

 tests with native cruelty and corruption, cunningly- 

 laid traps eluded, evils and powers of evil but dimly 

 comprehended, and then the Indian Empire becomes 

 a very real thing, and Imperialism seems different to the 

 Westminster product: a thing of blood and sinew, a 

 strength put out by the noblest and best of the sons of 

 our little northern isle to support the unwieldly mass 

 that demands all the energies evinced to keep life in 

 itself! 



As I sat talking that day, and noted the sad, weary 

 expression of the eyes, the exhausted frame, India 

 seemed some terrible vampire, sucking the energies 



