Page:Twenty-one Days in India.djvu/136

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124
ONE DAY IN INDIA.

mixed race in India as there is in America. The convenient term quadroon, for instance, instead of "four annas in the rupee," is quite unknown; the consequence is that everyone—from Anna Maria De Souza, the "Portuguese" cook, a nobleman on whose cheek the best shoe-blacking would leave a white mark, to pretty Miss Fitzalan Courtney, of the Bombay Fencibles, who is as white as an Italian princess—is called an "Eurasian."

Do you know, dear Vanity, that it is not impossible that King Asoka (of the Edict Pillars), the "Constantine of Buddhism," was an Eurasian. I have not got the works of Arrian, or Mr. Leithridge's "History of the World" at hand, but I have some recollection of Sandracottus, or one of Asoka's fathers or grandfathers, marrying a Miss Megasthenes, or Seleucus. With such memories, no wonder they call us "Mean Whites."