No More Learning

"Thanks--a thousand thanks! O Moon and little, little Stars! To think
that a man should so shamelessly. . . . Infamous liquor, too. Ovid in
exile drank no worse. Better. It was frozen. Alas! I had no ice. Good
night. I would introduce you to my wife were I sober--or she civilized. "

A native woman came out of the darkness of the room, and began calling
the man names; so I went away.
He was the most interesting loafer that
I had the pleasure of knowing for a long time; and later on, he became
a friend of mine. He was a tall, well-built, fair man fearfully shaken
with drink, and he looked nearer fifty than the thirty-five which, he
said, was his real age. When a man begins to sink in India, and is not
sent Home by his friends as soon as may be, he falls very low from a
respectable point of view. By the time that he changes his creed, as did
McIntosh, he is past redemption.

In most big cities, natives will tell you of two or three Sahibs,
generally low-caste, who have turned Hindu or Mussulman, and who live
more or less as such. But it is not often that you can get to know
them. As McIntosh himself used to say:--"If I change my religion for my
stomach's sake, I do not seek to become a martyr to missionaries, nor am
I anxious for notoriety. "

At the outset of acquaintance McIntosh warned me. "Remember this. I am
not an object for charity. I require neither your money, your food,
nor your cast-off raiment. I am that rare animal, a self-supporting
drunkard. If you choose, I will smoke with you, for the tobacco of the
bazars does not, I admit, suit my palate; and I will borrow any books
which you may not specially value. It is more than likely that I shall
sell them for bottles of excessively filthy country-liquors. In return,
you shall share such hospitality as my house affords. Here is a charpoy
on which two can sit, and it is possible that there may, from time to
time, be food in that platter.