Читать книгу Lord William Beresford, V.C., Some Memories of a Famous Sportsman, Soldier and Wit онлайн

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India appealed to Lord William, he liked it from the first. Perhaps he, more than some, felt the loneliness inseparable from landing in a strange country for the first time, with a career to make out of nothing; far from the help and glamour of home associations, feeling rather like goods on a market stall, from which the ticket describing their merit and value has fallen, leaving the said goods to prove their own merit, and so create their own price.

Starting a life in any new country, individuals are only a number to begin with. Yet India is one of the kindest to strangers, there is something in the atmosphere that melts the Northern “stand-off” attitude. All are exiles, which forms a bond of sympathy, uniting them into one big family, so to speak. It is good for all to find their own level; travelling assists them, gives them a new education. There is much to be learned in a large mixed cosmopolitan concentration, where princes, rajahs, judges, generals, police, subalterns who know everything, old men who believe nothing, middle-aged men who suspect everything, all rub shoulders, look well groomed and comfortable, yet all with the same longing for home in their hearts.