Chapter 54

Do not undervalue the headache. While it is at its sharpest it seems a
bad investment; but when relief begins, the unexpired remainder is worth
$4 a minute.
--Pudd'nhead Wilson's New Calendar.

A comfortable railway journey of seventeen and a half hours brought us to
the capital of India, which is likewise the capital of Bengal--Calcutta.
Like Bombay, it has a population of nearly a million natives and a small
gathering of white people. It is a huge city and fine, and is called the
City of Palaces. It is rich in historical memories; rich in British
achievement--military, political, commercial; rich in the results of the
miracles done by that brace of mighty magicians, Clive and Hastings. And
has a cloud kissing monument to one Ochterlony.

It is a fluted candlestick 250 feet high. This lingam is the only large
monument in Calcutta, I believe. It is a fine ornament, and will keep
Ochterlony in mind.

Wherever you are, in Calcutta, and for miles around, you can see it; and
always when you see it you think of Ochterlony. And so there is not an
hour in the day that you do not think of Ochterlony and wonder who he
was. It is good that Clive cannot come back, for he would think it was
for Plassey; and then that great spirit would be wounded when the
revelation came that it was not. Clive would find out that it was for
Ochterlony; and he would think Ochterlony was a battle. And he would
think it was a great one, too, and he would say, "With three thousand I
whipped sixty thousand and founded the Empire--and there is no monument;
this other soldier must have whipped a billion with a dozen and saved the
world."

But he would be mistaken. Ochterlony was a man, not a battle. And he
did good and honorable service, too; as good and honorable service as has
been done in India by seventy-five or a hundred other Englishmen of
courage, rectitude, and distinguished capacity. For India has been a
fertile breeding-ground of such men, and remains so; great men, both in
war and in the civil service, and as modest as great. But they have no
monuments, and were not expecting any. Ochterlony could not have been
expecting one, and it is not at all likely that he desired one--certainly
not until Clive and Hastings should be supplied. Every day Clive and
Hastings lean on the battlements of heaven and look down and wonder which
of the two the monument is for; and they fret and worry because they
cannot find out, and so the peace of heaven is spoiled for them and lost.
But not for Ochterlony. Ochterlony is not troubled. He doesn't suspect
that it is his monument. Heaven is sweet and peaceful to him. There is
a sort of unfairness about it all.

Indeed, if monuments were always given in India for high