It is not for an Englishman to speak of the real India.  Let him stand with Mr Kipling between East and West, and allow each thing he sees to add to his dark and intricate impression.  India will then assume her own uneasy and vast form, will press upon the nerves, and be declared mysterious.

There are a few pages in Life’s Handicap describing the City of Lahore by night.  There is great heat in these pages; there is distance also, and the breathless air of streets where the formic swarming of India, her callous fecundity, the tyranny of her skies, and her old faith, prepare us for the House of Suddhu and the return of Imray: 

“The roof-tops are crammed with men, women, and children; and the air is full of undistinguishable noises.  They are restless in the City of Dreadful Night; and small wonder.  The marvel is that they can even breathe.  If you gaze intently at the multitude you can see that they are almost as uneasy as a daylight crowd; but the tumult is subdued.  Everywhere, in the strong light, you can watch sleepers turning to and fro, shifting their beds and again resettling them.  In the pit-like courtyards of the houses there is the same movement.

“The pitiless Moon shows it all.  Shows, too, the plains outside the city, and here and there a hand’s-breadth of the Ravee without the walls.  Shows lastly, a splash of glittering silver on a house-top almost directly below the mosque Minar.  Some poor soul has risen to throw a jar of water over his fevered body; the tinkle of the falling water strikes faintly on the ear.  Two or three other men, in far-off corners of the City of Dreadful Night, follow his example, and the water flashes like heliographic signals. . . .  Still the unrestful noise continues, the sigh of a great city overwhelmed with the heat, and of a people seeking in vain for rest.  It is only the lower-class women who sleep on the house-tops.  What must the torment be in the latticed zenanas, where a few lamps are still twinkling?  There are footfalls in the court below.  It is the Muezzin—­faithful minister; but he ought to have been here an hour ago to tell the Faithful that prayer is better than sleep—­the sleep that will not come to the city.

“The Muezzin fumbles for a moment with the door of one of the Minars, disappears awhile, and a bull-like roar—­a magnificent bass thunder—­tells that he has reached the top of the Minar.  They must hear the cry to the banks of the shrunken Ravee itself!  Even across the courtyard it is almost overpowering.  The cloud drifts by and shows him outlined black against the sky, hands laid upon his ears, and broad chest heaving with the play of his lungs—­’Allah ho Akbar’; then a pause while another Muezzin somewhere in the direction of the Golden Temple takes up the call—­’Allah ho Akbar.’  Again and again; four times in all; and from the bedsteads a dozen men have risen up already.—­’I bear witness that there is no God by God.’”