MARK TWAIN

added later: "and we did not know that it was to be her
last."]

By all accounts England is the home of pious cant; and

cant of a most harmful sort. Gen. Sir William------told

me that more than half the hospital contents all over
India is syphilis; bad, very bad cases; these fine hearty
young fellows come out here to defend England and Eng-
land makes no provision for their natural passion—in-
famously betrays them to their destruction, knowing her
treachery, but afraid to go in the face of cant. Then those
70,000 young men go home and marry fresh young Eng-
lish girls and transmit a heritage of disease to their chil-
dren and grandchildren.

Clean women subject to rigid inspection ought to be
kept for these soldiers. Any other course is treachery to
the soldiers.

This B. L Company had a dead python landed once. A
year later this ship brought one to Calcutta 200. Our
Captain was instructed to see for himself that this one
was alive before he accepted it. The man, a half-caste,
said, yes he was alive; and opened the door of the box
and gave the snake a punch with an old umbrella and
asked him to show up. The snake snatched the umbrella
and made a rush, and showed up on deck—forty feet long
and as big as a barrel* Everybody went aloft, but the
half-caste said: "There's no harm in him, he just had a
feed that will last him two years; come a couple of you
and take him by the tail and help me steer him into the
box." Which they did without trouble.

For six hours now it has been impossible to realize that
this is India and the Hoogli (river). No, every few miles
we see a great white columned European house standing
in front of the vast levels, with a forest away back—La.
planter? And the thatched groups of native houses have

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