"No thank you," he answered sadly, "not that wine." Then he got up uneasily and moved for his umbrella and his galoshes, and the passage and the door. I thought he muttered, "You might have helped me."
"How could I help you?" I said savagely.
"Well," he sighed, "I thought you could ... it was a bitter disappointment. Good night!" And he went out again into the rain and over the clay.
X ON OMENS
Only the other day there was printed in a newspaper (what a lot of things they print in newspapers!) five lines which read thus:
"Calcutta, Thursday.
"An hour before the Viceroy left Calcutta on Wednesday for the last time lightning struck the flag over Government House, tearing it to shreds. This is considered to be an omen by the natives."
The Devil they did! A superstitious chap, your native, and we have outgrown such things. But it is really astonishing when you come to think of it how absurdly credulous the human race has been for thousands of years about omens, and still is—everywhere except here. And by the way, what a curious thing it is that only in one country, and only in one little tiny circle of it should this terrible vice have been eradicated from the human mind! If one were capable of paradox one would say that the blessing conferred upon us few enlightened people in England was providential; but that would be worse superstition than the other. There seems to be a tangle somewhere. Anyhow, there it is: people have gone on by the million and for centuries and centuries believing in omens. It is an illusion. It is due to a frame of mind. That which the enlightened person easily discovers to be a coincidence, the Native, that is, the person living in a place, thinks to be in some way due to a Superior Power. It is a way Natives have. Nothing warps the mind like being a Native.