I - It makes me regard your interesting nation with the same
shuddering curiosity that I should bestow on a Pappan cannibal
chewing the scalp off his mother's skull. Does that convey any
idea to your mind? It makes me regard the whole pack of you as
heathens - real heathens - not the sort you send missions
to - creatures of another flesh and blood. You ought to have been
shot, not dead, but through the stomach, for your share in the
scandalous business, and the thing you call your newspaper ought
to have been sacked by the mob, and the managing proprietor
hanged.
HE - From which, I suppose you have nothing of that kind in your
country?
Oh! "Pioneer," venerable "Pioneer," and you not less honest
press of India, who are occasionally dull but never blackguardly,
what could I say? A mere "No," shouted never so loudly,
would not have met the needs of the case. I said no word.
The reporter went away, and I took a train for Niagara Falls,
which are twenty-two miles distant from this bad town, where
girls get drunk of nights and reporters trample on corpses in the
drawing-rooms of the brave and the free!
End of American Notes by Rudyard Kipling
