Word: lancer
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REVIEWING "The Lives of a Bengal Lancer" is a hard lot. The reviewer, goaded by an unreasoning desire for hyperbole, is consciously bound by a definitive knowledge of the dullness of critical prose when compared with the brilliant nervousness of Yeats-Brown...
...over a period of years. Put in that way, nothing could seem more tedious and dull. Yet, the casual reader who has scrupously avoided, perhaps through laziness, the countless "Mother Indias" and now watches the columns of the daily press with some dismay, can be assured that the "Bengal Lancer" has come closer to India than any of his predecessors. Lowell Thomas, no mean adventurer himself, said: "I have read several hundred books on India and this surpasses them...
...beaten-path of the senses that Kim and Gunga Din pale into insignificance. Strange stories have come out of the East for years; the cobra-enchanter, the sacred animals and the mystical rites along the Ganges, the horrible parade of the Juggernaut in the Temple Square. The Bengal Lancer wondered about these. And wondering, he took to the path of the great Yogi, he sat at the feet of the guru, a holy man, studied breathing exercises and renunciation of the body, learned new definitions of purity and love. He heard the guru say that the worst enemy...
...idea is that this Bengal lancer has already had, if not nine lives like a cat, at any rate more than one. But Onetime Lancer Yeats-Brown would probably admit he was unusual. Not every fresh-cheeked British boy from Sandhurst turns into a No. 1 poloist and pig-sticker, nor discovers a thirst for the mysteries of Hindu Yoga...
...Lives of A Bengal Lancer is the November choice of the Book-of-the- Month Club...