title: RUFFLING THE PEACOCK'S FEATHERS: Stories From Village India
author: David Howard Day
description: David Day, professor emeritus of anthropology has taught and lived in Rochester, NY for almost 30 years. His dissertation interests focused on a caste of moneylenders in southern India. Day was attracted to anthropology as a result of work experience in Kenya and India. His two previous books, The Life and Death of A Family Farm: Archeology, History and Landscape Change and A Treasure Hard to Attain: Images of Archaeology in Popular Film. His essays have appeared in Sierra magazine, a scuba anthology and in Ms Magazine. He has a long history of contributing to the OpEd pages of the Rochester Democrat and Chronicle.
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  Her Majesty's Servants  
    
  
  
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  http://www.blackmask.com
  
  
  # Her Majesty's Servants
  
  
  ### Rudyard Kipling
  
  
  
  
  
  This page copyright © 2001 Blackmask Online.
  
  
  
  
  
  http://www.blackmask.com  
    
  
      
  
  You can work it out by Fractions or by simple Rule of Three,
  
  
  But the way of Tweedle-dum is not the way of Tweedle-dee.
  
  
  You can twist it, you can turn it, you can plait it till you drop,
  
  
  But the way of Pilly-Winky’s not the way of WinkiePop!
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  IT had been raining heavily for one whole month—raining on a camp of thirty
  thousand men, thousands of camels, elephants, horses, bullocks,, and mules,
  all gathered together at a place called Rawalpindi, to be reviewed by the
  Viceroy of India. He was receiving a visit from the Amir of Afghanistan—a wild
  king of a very wild country; and the Amir had brought with him for a bodyguard
  eight hundred men and horses who had never seen a camp or a locomotive befo