Page:Letters from India Vol 1.djvu/100

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
92
LETTERS FROM INDIA.

a wonderful arrangement for human creatures to have given in to. In a week, I suppose, I shall think it very natural, but the subserviency of the natives to the handful of white men, who have got into this country, shocks me, at this moment. Young officers driving fast through the streets under the burning sun, with their servants running after them, just for show.

In this climate, it is quite necessary to have every door open, but I am making a clever arrangement of screens to screen everybody out; though it seems to me that people push to an extreme the arrangement to prevent having the slightest trouble, even of thought. I can already feel what the languor is that this climate produces. We have arrived upon the verge of the hot season, and at this hour, with the windows and blinds closed, and the punkahs going, the slightest exertion, even of moving across the room, is a real fatigue. Keeping very quiet, there is, as yet, no suffering from heat, but in a month it will be much greater. Till half past nine or ten in the morning, the air is cool that comes in, but next week, when we begin to ride, we must be out at five in the morning, so as to be in before the sun has any