Page:Under the Sun.djvu/13

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Preface.
vii

we get that freshness of feeling which youth alone enjoys when all the world is new to it, interpreted by the adult and matured mind suddenly entering a practically new world, — for such India is to the English official on his first arrival. All we other Indians had of course noticed all those odd and tender points about the "syce’s children," the "pea-boy," the "bheesty’s mother," the "dâk-bungalow moorghees," the "mynas," crows, green parrots, squirrels, and the beetles that get into the mustard and the soup. Here, however, is one at last who writes down his observations, and opens, I think, thereby a rich and charming field of Indian literature, which ought hereafter to yield mant other pages as agreeable as those which it gives me true satisfaction thus to commend to the public.