He-was sitting with the magazine in front of him, the
lamplight shining on his spectacles, a wrinkle in his forehead,
not of anger, but of perplexity, as Basil Grant strode up and down
the room, shaking it with his voice, with his high spirits and his
heavy tread.
"It's not your opinions that I object to, my esteemed Chadd," he
was saying, "it's you. You are quite right to champion the Zulus,
but for all that you do not sympathize with them. No doubt you
know the Zulu way of cooking tomatoes and the Zulu prayer before
blowing one's nose; but for all that you don't understand them as
well as I do, who don't know an assegai from an alligator. You are
more learned, Chadd, but I am more Zulu. Why is it that the jolly
old barbarians of this earth are always championed by people who
are their antithesis? Why is it? You are sagacious, you are
benevolent, you are well informed, but, Chadd, you are not savage.
Live no longer under that rosy illusion. Look in the glass. Ask
your sisters. Consult the librarian of the British Museum. Look at
this umbrella." And he held up that sad but still respectable
article. "Look at it. For ten mortal years to my certain knowledge
you have carried that object under your arm, and I have no sort of
doubt that you carried it at the age of eight months, and it never
occurred to you to give one wild yell and hurl it like a javelin--
thus--"
And he sent the umbrella whizzing past the professor's bald head,
so that it knocked over a pile of books with a crash and left a
vase rocking.
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