With these views I determined on trying an experiment in “Our Club,” as I was sure it would be for good and certainly do no harm. We engaged an excellent manager of the cookery and refectory in an Eurasian widow. Eurasian, as we had decided to employ only our own people, except for the most menial work. It is not a very good commentary on the native Christians of India, that Christian families, padris, missionaries, church committees or even the Bible and Tract Societies will not employ them, but take heathen servants to their exclusion. If Christianity in two hundred years has not been able to produce a servant that a Christian might employ, is it—but what is the use of talking?
Apropos of this is a statement made by a prominent clergyman at a Church Missionary Congress. “After a century of effort, the expenditure of many noble lives, as well as of some millions of money, the Church of England, extraordinary to say, has signally failed to establish one solitary or single native church in any part of the world—that is to say, a church self-governed, self-supporting and expanding, or exhibiting any true signs of vitality as a church. This is a tremendous indictment, I know, but for long, my heart has been hot within me and at last I have spoken, not without, however, having weighed well my words.”
This woman was a model of cleanliness. One of the mottoes on our walls was “Cleanliness is next to Godliness,” and under it printed in large type was the remark of Sir B. W. Richardson: “Cleanliness covers the whole field of sanitary labor. Cleanliness, that is purity of air; cleanliness, that is purity of water; cleanliness in and around the house; cleanliness of person; cleanliness of dress; cleanliness of food and feeding; cleanliness in work; cleanliness in the habits of the individual man and woman; cleanliness of life and conversation, purity of life, temperance, all these are in man’s power.”
It is in man’s power, God-given always, as all good things are, to make his own moral destiny for this life as for that to come. He can best answer his own prayers by putting his own shoulder to the wheel, instead of praying to the gods. There was a world of instruction in the reply of Lord Palmerston to the Scotch elders of Glasgow, when they requested him to appoint a day of fasting and prayer to avert the cholera. He replied that it was useless to do so until they had cleaned the streets of the city. He relied more on scavengers’ shovels than he did on Bishops’ prayers.
We made cleanliness one of the articles in our unwritten creed, for may it not come that cleanliness of life and living will some day be the universal creed to fit us not only for this life, but for the future life?
The next step was to have our manager understand just what we wanted and a number of us formed ourselves into an experimental catering and cooking committee having first secured an excellent range for our cook-house. This cooking really belonged to the women, but we men assumed the right to examine into it, whether it was ours or not. We saw to the procuring of the food, and therefor felt empowered to know that it was properly served. I have always felt great sympathy for Xantippe who is generally written down as a scold, for it is recorded that Socrates would often, unawares to her, invite a number of his friends to dinner when he had not provided a scrap for the larder. What true wife, though she had the temper of an angel, would not give it recriminating voice and action under such circumstances?
We provided, and so had our rights.
Our first effort was with various kinds of good substantial soup. I had enough skimmed broth in my school days to last me for life and the very recollection of it causes in me a kind of water brash.
We succeeded and made out a list of soups to be prepared in a wholesale way of the best materials, at such a price that any wayfarer or aristocrat coming to our club, could relish a bowl of it, and also that families belonging to the club, could send in their orders the day before for what they wanted. The price just above the cost, was so much below what they could be made for in their homes, and so much better, that we had many orders. We also had the best of bread, cake and biscuit, made in the cleanest possible way. If the Europeans in India could see how their bread is made by the natives in the bazars, they would eschew it forever, and diet on fruits and vegetables. It is scarcely credible the methods of the native cooks. I once at table gravely asked my khansaman, if they really strained our soup through their turbans? Putting his hands together in front of him, with a slight bow he replied: “What else can we do if their Honors do not give us towels?”
Once, as a guest, eating food provided by a zemindar, he placidly looking on, I turned and noticed two of the servants, the one pouring milk through the shirt-tail of the other, straining it for me to drink. A sahib blaming his khansaman for boiling the roly poly in one of his master’s socks, the fellow gravely replied: “Sahib! it was not one of the clean ones!”