The Runagates Club

We carry with us the wonders we seek without us; there is all
Africa and her prodigies in us.

Sir Thomas Browne: Religio Medici.


We were talking about the persistence of race qualities--how you
might bury a strain for generations under fresh graftings but the
aboriginal sap would some day stir. The obvious instance was the
Jew, and Pugh had also something to say about the surprises of a
tincture of hill blood in the Behari. Peckwether, the historian,
was inclined to doubt. The old stock, he held, c...