Under the Big Dipper

HELÈNE
UNDER THE BIG DIPPER
BY D. GEORGE DERY
BRENTANO’S :: :: :: NEW YORK MCMXVI
Copyright, 1916, By D. George Dery
TO HER TO WHOSE GRACIOUS FORBEARANCE AND NEVER FALTERING FAITH THE EXISTENCE OF THIS BOOK IS DUE, I HEREWITH DEDICATE THIS, MY FIRST LITERARY EFFORT TO MY DEAR WIFE
March nineteenth, 1916
UNDER THE BIG DIPPER
UNDER THE BIG DIPPER
BOOK I
INDIA the wonderful—India the home of Buddha and the land of mystery and misery. The country of glorious traditions and unsatisfied desires! What ambitions have not been dreamed, what visions not conjured in your cause! Assyrian and Greek, Mongol and Parsee, Portuguese rover, Dutch trader, Russian diplomat and English merchant prince—all have sought thee and thy wealth, all have fought and striven, chicaned and murdered, sneaked and schemed—for thy gold and dominion over thy people.
And the result? A land teeming with beings abject and low; a land where Paradise might have been nestling amongst the giant hills of the North, now laid waste and desolated of its ancient splendors—a land of dreams, but a land of unfulfilled desires. The country of caste and the grave of unborn ambitions; the country of dirt and superstition; the cradle of plagues and epidemics and famines; the land of the noblest palaces and temples, as well as of the meanest hovels which serve as dwellings for its sad-eyed patient inhabitants.