It is Cardan, I think, who advises men to partake sometimes of unwholesome food if they have an extraordinary liking for it; it is not always well, he would tell us, to be of an even virtue. What a poor thing, for instance, were an oyster in constant health; ladies’ caskets would then want their pearls. Who does not at times resent the appearance of a friend who is comfortably fat, come weal or woe? The uniform hilarity of Mark Tapley recommends itself to few. But to the punkah-coolie, how inexplicable our theorizing on the evil of monotonous good! To him anything good is so rare that he at once assimilates it, when he meets with it, to his ordinary evil. He cannot trust himself to believe the metal in his hand is gold. Given enough, he commits a surfeit, and tempted with a little he lusts after too much. Indulgence with the coolie means license, and a conditional promise a carte blanche. And thus he provokes ill-nature. Usually it depends upon the master whether service be humiliation; but the punkah-coolie is such “a thing of dark imaginings” that he too often defies sympathy.
I have three coolies, and I call them Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego, for they have stood the test of fire. And Shadrach is an idiot. Upon him the wily Meshach foists his work; and at times even the crass Abednego can shuffle his periods of toil upon the broad shoulders of Shadrach. He is slate-colored when dry; in the rains he resembles a bheesty’s[1] water-skin. In his youth he was neglected, and in his manhood his paunch hath attained an unseemly rotundity. Not that I would have it supposed he is portly. His dimensions have been induced by disease. His thin face knows it, and
- ↑ The water-carrier.
