In Lifes Byways (Paperback)

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1905 Excerpt: ... The Luck of Moung HIoo Soh. LITTLE Moung Hloo Soh sat in the hot, white dust of the road outside the village, playing contentedly with some wonderful, empty meat-tins and a bunch of unripe plantains. He was naked from the top of his little bare head to the soles of his little bare feet, and was quite unaware of the fact that it was not altogether becoming for a boy whose father was an Englishman to expose himself so unconcernedly to the gaze of every passer-by. Being only four years old, he had but an imperfect comprehension of his own history, and was not annoyed when the village children called him thahkin (Master), teasing him, good-naturedly, as Burmese children always do. Was it not the name his mother often called him? And though it was a term of respect applied exclusively to the white people, were not his chubby little face and fat little body quite surprisingly white in comparison with others? The ball was set rolling by Macnaughten, or rather by that fate which shoved him--a more or less impecunious subaltern--into an English regiment putting in the last two years of its foreign tour in an up-country Burma station. Unlike his fellow subalterns, and most other men, he fancied he would gladly have lived there for the remainder of his service, being cursed with no particular ambition beyond that of getting from life the greatest amount of pleasure which his happygo-lucky nature and very limited income could manage, between them, to procure. He played polo, shot, and rode at various small race meetings, after the manner of most subalterns; he had no particular objection to the climate; and he thought--and here his opinion coincided with that of most men--that the Burmese people were the cheeriest and pleasantest in the world. So that he viewed wi...