Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/118

106 We see the officials perpetually hustling the childlike natives about all over the country. We see Strickland, or somebody else, not quite so clever perhaps, but still far too clever for childlike natives, perpetually exposing their villainies. We see rows of Anglo-Indian bachelors of all sorts (some the most commonplace sorts) inspiring dark-eyed little native girls with doglike adorations. But that is all, or almost all, and it is scarcely a workable statement of the great Indian equation, even from the 'simpler theory' point of view.

There is in these narratives all the ability of the thoroughly good story-teller we know, here and there bits of excellent dialogue (the final scene in 'The Sending of Dana Da,' for example), the same exquisite little descriptive cameos, the same rapid and piquant dogmatism—one has nothing less to praise here than in the tales of the 'military' feature, but unhappily also nothing more. Now and then vivid touches seem to bring us into contact with the peculiar and essential nature of the more active members of the alien races, and we realise for a moment something of the qualities in them which have made history; but how rare and partial such glimpses are! Thus Mr. Kipling shows us the Afghan Amir in his Court, and 'the long tail of feudal chiefs, men of blood, fed and cowed with blood.' But such