Note return — Chapter III

The small-pox was committing dreadful ravages in Rampore and its neighbourhood; and though vaccination was performed gratis at Bareilly, the fatalist prejudices of the natives, even of those of rank and education, prevented them from availing themselves of the boon. All the instances of the colonel, in behalf of a charming little girl, four years old, whose mother and sister had already taken the infection, could get from her father nothing more than a promise "to think of it! If it's her fate——" said he. "'You fool!' said I, in my civil way," (and the colonel's brusquerie was here, at least, not misplaced,) "'if a man throws himself into the fire or a well, or in the path of a tiger, is he without blame?'" Such apathy seems almost unaccountable to English minds; but it may find a parallel in Lady Chatterton's story of the Irish parents, 7 who, after refusing to spend fourpence in nourishment for a dying child, came in deep grief after its death to their employer, to solicit an advance of thirty shillings to wake the corpse! Perhaps some ingenious systematists might hence deduce a fresh argument in favour of the alleged oriental origin of the Irish.