Page:ER Scidmore--Winter India.djvu/263

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LAHORE
241

very common, low sort of person here. He only associated with the 'Tommies,' as you see by his books—all full of things about the sergeants' and the soldiers' wives and their class. Of course, as he never associated with ladies, or went with the nice chaps of the regiments, how could he know anything about society, about Government House, or the Simla sets? Why, in that ridiculous story—" and she told me in detail how he had it all wrong about the Gadsbys, the Hauksbees, and others; for she knew some people who were in Simla that year, and it was this way, etc., etc. In fact, all those ancient and historic scandals were degrees worse than Kipling makes them out; for the Anglo-Indians allow no imagination to the novelist, every tale must be identified with some real event in their own experience. As to whether Kipling truly delineated native character—"Dear me, how should I know anything about the nasty creatures! As if we paid any attention to them! Government has schools and does altogether too much for them, anyhow." And then the memsahib, who of course did not speak Hindustani, who never came in contact with native women of any but the servant class, and who fitted exactly into the situation that Mrs. Steele upbraids, denounced that champion of the native people. It was quite like the Creoles of New Orleans and Mr. Cable; but having heard Macaulay berated, Max Müller scoffed at, and Sir William Hunter denounced, it was taken with many grains of salt.

More interesting than anything inside the Lahore Museum is the fine old bronze cannon before its