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Title: That Eurasian

Author: Aleph Bey

Release date: January 6, 2023 [eBook #69717]

Most recently updated: October 19, 2024

Language: English

Original publication: United States: F. Tennyson Neeley

Credits: Richard Tonsing and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This book was produced from images made available by the HathiTrust Digital Library.)

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The cover image was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

THAT

EURASIAN

BY

ALEPH BEY

❧

F. TENNYSON NEELY

PUBLISHER

CHICAGO NEW YORK

COPYRIGHT, 1895

BY

F. TENNYSON NEELY

PREFACE.

In a letter accompanying the manuscript of the following book were these paragraphs:

“Some years ago, while traveling in Southern France, I met with an accident that nearly ended my life. I was tenderly nursed to health in a family for which I formed the highest respect and a lasting friendship. Some years later I met the widow with her beautiful grown up children. One of the sons was devoted to science, the other to literature, and both becoming known in the world, while the daughter was engaged in landscape painting, ‘until,’ as she said with a most bewitching smile, ‘the right man comes along.’

“Talking of her husband, the widow said that he had left some manuscript which I might like to see. She then brought me a bundle neatly bound up in tape. Looking it over, I suggested its publication, and she gave it to me unreservedly to do with it as I thought best. I have not erased a line or altered a word. It is an autobiography of undeserved shame and sorrow, as well as an earnest effort of well doing. It is a pity that such a life should have been, and I trust that its lessons will be heeded by those who need them most.”

The word Eurasian is made of Eur, from Europe, and Asian, from Asia, and applied to the children of a European and an Asiatic and to their descendants, of whom there is a large class in India.

THAT EURASIAN

ALEPH BEY

Neely’s International Library,

Fine Cloth Binding, $1.25

A prominent newspaper editor of London, England, in a note to the author of this work says, “I am impressed with the freedom and freshness of the literary style, and am in arms against the majestic abuses about which it inveighs as if incidentally and without any grand motherly didactics. You arrest attention at once with the desertion of the Pyari by the Sahib; the treatment is pathetic and intense.”

A well-known Chicago editor says, “A powerfully written book, though without any evidence of straining after effect. It should be of especial interest to a wide circle of readers, as it deals with a new subject in a masterly manner. The life history of the offspring of an English father and a Mohammedan mother affords the author opportunity to give a vast amount of information about the doings of the British in India, and the results of the contact between the two races, with the peculiarities of each, and of their offspring, which may well open the eyes of the world to a view of the enormities that have been perpetrated in the far-off land under the plea of modern civilization. Simple justice to the work and its author requires that it should have a large sale.”

“A work of decidedly unique character, is ‘THAT EURASIAN’ just published by F. Tennyson Neely. It deals with a class of people which has heretofore seldom figured in our literature, viz., that large family of half European and half Hindu parentage so numerous in British India. The abuses and indignities to which these people are subjected have long been well known to those who have given any attention to the condition of affairs in British India during the past half century, but the general public is strangely ignorant of all this. The many startling revelations made by the author of this book, who is an European long resident in India, will be received with something like wonderment and horror. We can only hint at the extent of these revelations; the legalized vice, the cruel oppression of a wretched peasantry, the shocking abuse of native women by Europeans, and other gigantic enormities are fully and fearlessly exposed in this remarkable book—remarkable none the less for the author’s keen and caustic criticism of the Government that fosters such abuses, as for the grace and elegance of his literary style, and the lucidity of his thought.”

For Sale by all Booksellers or Sent Prepaid on Receipt of Price by the Publisher,

F. Tennyson Neely,

CHICAGO. NEW YORK.

THAT EURASIAN.

CHAPTER I.

On the southern coast of France, upon ground overlooking one of the beautiful bays of the Mediterranean, stood a chateau. It was nearly a mile distant from the coast, the land gradually descending toward the blue waters of the sea. The main and center part of the building was a relic of the ancient feudal times when strength and massiveness were characteristic of the architecture. The additions had been constructed from time to time, to suit the taste and convenience of the different owners of the property. The old park impressed one with a feeling of reverence for its solidity and quaintness, while the more modern parts added beauty and grace, making the whole consonant with the present age in comfort, luxury and utility. The grounds were spacious. An immense enclosure with its velvet green verdure, was broken here and there by patriarchal trees, of great variety. It was a park of orchards and gardens for use as well as beauty. A broad avenue, lined on either side with trees and trellised vines, led down to the sea where pleasure boats and yachts were moored. This avenue, with the blue waters as a background, formed a most enchanting view from the upper balcony of the castle. The quiet stillness of the place was its greatest charm. In the days of summer there was scarcely a sound to be heard save that of the bees and insects among the flowers, the songs of the birds in the trees, the gentle murmur of the fountains or the sound like that from invisible æolian harps, as the light breezes played among the branches. Occasionally a storm from the loud resounding sea added grandeur to the place. The drives, the walks, every tree and flowering shrub showed the careful attention of the gardeners. Every visitor was in raptures over the beauty of the place, and could say with truth, “If there is a paradise on earth it is here.”

The interior of the chateau corresponded with its surroundings. The halls were adorned with solid, grand antique furniture, statuary, and paintings, the accumulation of centuries, acquired by the wealth and taste of a long line of the ancestry of the present occupants, while the rest of the building was embellished in more modern style, showing excellent judgment and culture. The library was one of which a nation might be proud, composed of almost priceless old books, and the best of more modern authors. In all the apartments there seemed to be nothing wanting and not a thing too much. There was no crowding or confusion, nothing cheap or tawdry, but all in harmony with the massive building, and its noble park, showing the culture of its possessors.

The present occupants, a gentleman and his wife, of excellent lineage, of wealth, education, and most refined tastes, one could scarcely tell whether they were made for the place or it was made for them, as both and all were in such delightful harmony. They often had guests, but of the most select kind. There were several beautiful children, of whom I was one or would have been, that is, if this fancy picture was a reality and I had had a choice in the matter of my birth, those would have been my parents and there the place where I would have been born if such events could have been decided by myself. Had the subject been referred to me, I would have been very judicious in the choice of my parents, for it is better than any amount of wealth to have a good father and mother. Alas! and more’s the pity that so few of us are consulted about our birth, the most important event in our lives; we are brought into life without consideration, and, impelled by fate, are thrown upon our destinies for good or evil, and yet made responsible for what results from our inherited tendencies and circumstances.

Some one, I think a Frenchman, has said that we should select our parents with the greatest possible judgment. I thoroughly agree with him. So much depends on this, yet, as I have said, since very few of us are consulted about this matter, we have to accept the situation, whether it be in a palace or a hut. There is no use opposing the inevitable, still I cannot help finding fault in that we are made responsible for much that we could not in any possible way prevent. Many a one is environed, burdened and crushed by some hereditary impedimenta, and is blamed and cursed through life for that about which he was not consulted and from which he could not escape.

Before the law and human judgment all people are declared equal. Are they? Should not allowance be made for pangs of nature and taints of blood? Yet whatever men may do, I have faith that, if God is our judge, He will regard us for what we might have been as well as by what we are.

As might be supposed, the above is only a flight of fancy. Descending, I will now enter upon the real story of my existence.

CHAPTER II.

My first consciousness, my very first idea or remembrance of anything that I can recall, was on a hot sultry night in the city of Lucknow, in the year 18––, but no matter as to the exact date, for I do not know how old I was then, and do not now know the year in which I was born. I was awakened by the clinking sound of something that caught my ear; then turning my eyes I saw a number of beautiful round glittering things fall into my mother’s lap as she sat upon a charpoy. As I recall the scene, I think there must have been several hundred of these shining pieces. It is strange what an attraction there is in children for metal money, though they know nothing of its value. Is there not a latent love for it in them from a former birth as an inheritance?—but let that rest for the present.

My eyes then went to a man, as I now can designate him, for then it did not seem to me that I was conscious of him any more than that he was a thing of life, a being or something very indefinite, beyond my comprehension. I years after, recalled him as an Englishman, rather tall, of blonde complexion, with a cleanly-shaved face, except a heavy well-trimmed moustache. What struck me was the whiteness of his face and hands, so that I took him for a bhut or ghost, and quaking with fear gazed at him.

He was standing close to the charpoy looking down upon my mother, into whose lap he had thrown the shining things that I afterward learned were rupees and new, just brought from the treasury. After the clinking of the rupees I heard him say in Hindustani: “I must leave you, pyari. I am going to Wilayat, home, and may never see you again?”

“Jaoge! mujh ko chordoge?” said my mother, with trembling lips and a heart-breaking tone. “You are going and will leave me?” she repeated again, so plaintively. “Yes,” he said, “I have got leave and I must go. I have brought you five hundred rupees and hope you will be happy and take good care of the children. I have come to bid you good-bye.” Upon this my mother clasped her hands over her head and bent forward with a wail of anguish that was heart-rending. Amid her tears she exclaimed: “You always told me that I was your bibi, your own dear wife, that you would never leave me, and now you are going and will throw me away as the skin of the mango you have eaten, or as an old coat that you have worn out. You will leave me and go to Wilayat, where you will marry a young mem sahib as all the sahibs do, and she will never know that I am your wife. O Allah! Why did I ever listen to your soft words and become your pyari? Pyari, I have been and true to you in all things. Will you go away and leave me to be called a kusbi by all these people? O Allah! ya Shaitan! why am I thus to be accursed?”

Then she swayed back and forth, wailing as if her heart was breaking. She piteously asked, “Why not take me with you, as you often said you would?”

“That would be impossible,” he replied. “You would not be happy among my people in a strange land; you are of another caste or race, and it would only make you unhappy to go there.”

“I have been your beloved wife, your pyari bibi here, why could I not be there also? I have lived here all these years, discarded and despised by my people because I was a sahib’s aurat, woman, but I loved you, I lived upon the thought of you. The very sound of your footsteps thrilled me with delight. I have been good enough for you as your wife through all these years, for you have called me your pyari bibi, your darling wife, a thousand times, and now you will cast me off and get an English mem sahib. Allah! Allah! have mercy upon me! O my children, my children! They are your children. You were my God. I worshiped you when they were conceived. My love and adoration of you impressed your features upon them. They are more yours than mine, for I gave them no thought of myself but all of you. They are yours, of your own flesh and blood. How can you forsake them? How can you be so cruel to them and me?”

She ceased, bitterly weeping. He stood speechless, somewhat moved by her piteous appeals, yet as I remember him, he regarded her with a look of hardened contempt. A moment after uttering the last words she quickly threw the rupees from her lap, scattering them all over the floor and leaping from the charpoy, flung herself at his feet and putting her arms around his legs placed her face upon his boots, wailing piteously and praying him not to desert his children.

“Throw me aside forever,” she said, “but, oh! the children, your own children, do not forsake them! For Allah’s sake, take care of them.”

Her long abundant black hair fell over her shoulders. Her face showed the intense agony of her soul and her large eyes filled with tears that dropped from her face as if each one was a drop of hot blood from her heart. He remained silent, as I remember him, with a cold brutal indifference, without saying a word until she seemed nearly exhausted in her anguish. He then lifted her up and placed her upon the charpoy, and taking her hand saying, “I cannot help it, pyari, it is my kismet, I must go,” and kissing her, said: “Salaam, good-bye, God bless you,” and rushed from the room.

Is it strange that I should remember such a scene? This was my first consciousness of life. I remember nothing previous to that night, and what I saw and heard then was burned into my very being to remain a part of it as long as I continue to be. She was my mother, my own, my darling mama. I am now an old man and the sands in my hour-glass are nearly run out. I have had trials enough to have hardened all my feelings into iron, yet as I think of my dear little mama, in her agony and despair on that memorable night, great tears run down my furrowed cheeks. I cannot help their coming, and I would not if I could. Blessed tears! that relieve us in our sorrows and moisten our hearts with tenderness. It was a strange scene to me. I was frightened into silence and could not stir, and dared not cry. I could understand that my mama was in great trouble, though I knew not why it was, nothing of the cause of it. I sat in a corner partly concealed by a cloth hung on a rope that was stretched across the room. I now see every little thing as it was then, my mother’s eyes, the big tear drops on her cheeks are now in my sight, after all these years, just as I saw them then. I hear my mama’s voice, its wailing tones of entreaty, of despair. I see her body quivering in her agony as she was clinging to the feet of the sahib, just as vividly as if she was before me now.

As I learned afterward, he used to come late at night, so that I was asleep in a little side room when he came. At the front of the court was a large gate, but I was told the sahib never came in by that way. At the back end of the court there was a little narrow door, through which the rubbish and sweepings were carried and thrown, into a gully that wound its way to the old canal beyond the city. It was by the gully where the rubbish lay and through the door by which the sweepings went out that the sahib came in, never by daylight, but always near dead of night.

Shall I now express my opinion of that very brave Christian English gentleman? coming up through that stinking gully, through that little back door at the hour of midnight? A man who would do that would not only destroy the woman he had called his wife, make outcasts of his own children, but would barter his own soul and betray his God to gratify his lust. But I must not let my feelings overcome me. Yet I cannot help saying that often since then, when I have thought of that night scene, I have felt like tearing a passion to tatters, aye more than that, to be really truthful, to murder somebody; even that man, my own father, for the infamous wrong done my darling mother.

As I have said, when this sahib so suddenly appeared I was terribly frightened. He seemed to me a giant, so tall and big. Then the ghastly pale face; the reddish hair; the strange clothes, he might be one of the bhuts or jins that carry away little boys and eat them, one each day, for his dinner. Was it strange then, that I sat crouching in my corner, scarcely daring to breathe, lest he might hear me and seize me for his next day’s meal?

The clinking of the rupees is written on the first page of my memory. The sound and sight of them gave me a thrill of pleasure, but a moment after came the fright at the sight of the strange being. Scared as I was, I saw everything, heard all that was said and felt a thousand times more than I now can find words to describe. All was so sudden, strange and incomprehensible, that I was dumb with fear at the great thing standing so high up in the room, and when my mother began her piteous wailings, I was hushed to silence with my intense feelings of sorrow for her.

As the sahib rushed from the place, my mama threw herself upon the bare earthen floor with a shriek, and there lay moaning and crying out in heart-piercing tones, “My Sahib! my Sahib!” I sprang from my corner, and sat down by her, and placing her head upon my lap stroked her hair back from her face and begged of her “mama, pyari mama! why do you cry so?” There was no answer, but “my Sahib! my Sahib!” O! the agony of that hour! It has never left me, it became a part of my life and is with me now, for I feel it. What could I do, a little tot that had never been out of the court? I do not know how long I sat there; I must have become exhausted and gone to sleep, for in the morning I found myself lying on the charpoy where I suppose my mama placed me.

As I awoke, my first thought was of her. I glanced around the room and saw her sitting on a low stool facing the court. Her eyes were turned towards the western sky, but evidently she was not looking at anything. I awakened as from a horrible dream and could not at once realize what had happened, but when I saw that haggard, pallid face, those wide open eyes, that looked and saw nothing, all the night scene flashed upon me and I cried out, “Mama, mama!” She turned her head, without a word, toward me and began again to look far away as if for something beyond mortal ken. I was told years after, that before that night she was the most happy woman of all in the court, always so pleasant to her neighbors, always smiling, laughing and romping with her children; but after that awful night, the light of her life had gone out into utter darkness, for she never smiled again.

The rupees were gathered up and put in the rough wooden box, fastened with a big padlock. They were taken out one by one to pay the rent and to buy a little flour, rice and bread and a few vegetables for our daily food. There was a little sister, too young, thank God, to know anything of the trouble in the house. An old woman went to the bazar to purchase our food and did the cooking. At first a few of the neighboring women looked in at the door and tried to be friendly, but the little mother took no notice of them and they ceased coming. One day I overheard one of them say to the other as an excuse for her silence, “Her Sahib has gone.”

The little sister and I passed our time as best we could with the few cheap playthings we had, eating our cheap food, occasionally delighted with some native sweets that the old woman bought for us. The dear mama would sit on her little stool with her hands clasped over her knees, her face turned toward the west, her large eyes strained wide open as if to see something in the far away distance.

At early morning I would find her sitting thus. Nearly all the day she would sit looking in utter silence. Sometimes the little sister and I would fall upon her knees and chatter to her. She would turn her head toward us for a moment and perhaps say a word or two and then take up her looking again. There was never a ripple of laughter, such as used to cheer everybody around her, as they told me years after, not even a smile for us, her children. She seemed to be alone, and as I remember her and am now able to think about her condition and actions, it appears to me her heart was dying, gradually, to be sure, but dying.

I could not understand anything about it then for I was too young to realize what had occurred. I had scarcely ever been outside our rooms and never outside the little court or muhalla. I had no companion but the little sister. I knew nothing of the great world or little world outside, and had only seen a few native people in the court as I looked down from our veranda. As to the names, father or papa, I had not heard them, and if spoken to me I would not have understood what they meant. I was not aware that I had a father or ever had one. It was better perhaps as it was, for had I been told that the sahib I saw was my father; that it was he who had treated my mama with such infamous cruelty; that for him she was breaking her heart, dying day by day, as she kept looking toward him in the west, as he was going home to enjoy life and get a new wife, forsaking our dear mama and casting off us, his own children, for whose being he alone was responsible; had I known this, my life would have undoubtedly been altogether different and not for the better either. Knowledge is power, but it is often best not to have too much of it, nor to have it before we are capable of using it.

CHAPTER III.

I do not know how long this kind of life continued. It may have been a year or only a few months. There was nothing to break the monotony, nothing to be as time marks to show the passing days and months. The little mama took less and less interest in everything. One day coming out of the other room I found her lying on the floor. I saw by the look of her face that something was the matter with her, so I ran quickly and called the old woman, who placed her carefully upon the charpoy. She did not utter a word, made no sign of pain or distress, but kept on looking in the old direction with those large brilliant eyes, so wide open, peering into the distance. How bright they seem to me now, how they have haunted me all these years! Many a night have I awakened to see those eyes before me as if in reality they were there.

The rupees had been going, one by one, and now that the little mama remained on the charpoy day and night, the old woman took the key of the padlock from my mother’s waist-string and opened the box to get a rupee for some food. I saw there was but little in the box, a few fancy bits of clothing, some ornaments and a bundle of papers bound up with a string. The old woman took the best care she could of us all. She evidently saw that the time was short before all her labors, especially for the mama, would be ended.

One morning early, coming out of the other room, I saw those wide open eyes as usual, but the strange appearance of the face startled me. I had never seen a dead person, I had never heard of death. I did not know that people died. Yet, ignorant as I was, I saw that something terrible was the matter with mama. The old woman came quickly and at the first sight with a wailing cry exclaimed, “gayi! gayi!” gone! gone! I could not comprehend it, mama gone and yet she was lying there before me! The little sister came and we put our hands on mama’s face, we took her hands in ours. They were so cold and strange, we spoke to her, but her lips moved not. So unlike our little mama, as we delighted to call her. The old woman beckoned to some women in the court below. They quickly came. One of them took us into the other room and tried to make us understand what had happened but all we could realize was this, that our mama had gone. When we came out into the room again a white sheet was placed over the charpoy and tied at the four corners. All was so still and silent; we went and crouched into a corner clinging to each other in abject fear.

I felt as I did when that fearful white giant was in the room on that dreadful night, that I did not dare to breathe hard for fear some one might discover us. Toward evening two men came and took away the charpoy and all on it. I tried to get the old woman to tell me what had happened, but her only reply was that mama, the dear mama, had gone and we should never see her again. Our little hearts were breaking. We wept together until we fell asleep at night. The morning came but no mama for us to see.

How many times in my life since those dark sorrowful days have I thought to myself, Alas! What numbers of women’s hearts have been broken by these faithless Christian Europeans! These women were only natives to be sure, but they had hearts as warm for those whose soft words of love they had heard, and whose promises they believed, as any of their more favored white sisters. What is the use of talking of God, of justice, of virtue, of right and wrong, if such deception, cruelties and wrongs are to remain unnoticed and unpunished? Is there to be no recompense to those so cruelly injured? Are there no memories to follow the perpetrators of such infamous deeds? If not, then this world is one of chance and confusion. Might makes right, vice is as good as virtue and the sooner we get through the farce of living the better, to die and perish forever.

Soon the few remaining rupees were gone, then the trinkets, the few articles of clothing, and lastly, the box itself, all, everything had gone to purchase the little food we needed. There was nothing left with which to supply our wants or to pay our rent. One day the old woman took the little sister and me down into a little shelter, made by an old grass roof leaning against the back wall of the court. This was to be our home. She had gathered some coarse grass on which we were to sleep. Our only furniture consisted of two old earthen pots in which to cook our food if we could get any. All of our beautiful brass dishes that we once looked upon as shining jewels, when, after our meals they were scoured and placed in the sun to dry, had gone, following the trinkets and the box. My best suit consisted of a few inches of cloth and a string around my waist. My little sister had a very short skirt much fringed by long use around the bottom. For awhile the people in the court gave us food, some rice, others vegetables, and others a pepper pod and a few grains of salt. The little sister and I gathered old grass, and dried manure with which our food was cooked. So we were happy. It takes so little when we are willing to be happy that I sometimes question whether civilization is a benefactor, for it increases our wants and adds to our labor in supplying them.

The old woman lived with us of course, as this was her only home as well as ours. She was so kind that we clung to her as our new mama. Bye and bye the neighbors gave us less and less; not that they were unwilling, but they were all so poor. I did not understand the political economy of either poverty or riches. I did not know fully why the people could not give us anything.

However, I well remember a scene, an object lesson of tyranny, and the helplessness of poverty, that occurred one day. A man on a horse rode into the big gate followed by a number of men with long bamboo sticks in their hands. I heard one who lived in a hut next to us say as he ran into his house, that the zemindar who owned the place had come to collect his rents. It seemed that the rents were long overdue, because the people were unable to pay them though they did the best they could. The people were all called out of their huts where the most of them had concealed themselves and those that would not come were forced out by the men with sticks. The man on his horse demanded the rents. The people said they had nothing to pay. The little fields outside the city that they cultivated had produced nothing, for there had been no rain. They had tried to get work but there was none to be had. They could not get the poorest food for their wives and children. They were starving. They would work for him and do anything he told them, for their lives were in his hands. He turned upon them with scorn, denounced them with all the filthy names he could use and they were many. I could understand only a few of the words, but I knew they were terrible. How angry he was!

The men, with the women and children, threw themselves on the ground around his horse and pleaded with him for mercy, but the more they begged the more angry he grew, and then, when he became tired out with his stream of fearful words, he gave orders to his men with the long sticks to search every house, and in they went with a rush. The old charpoys, the tattered rags of blankets, here and there a brass cup or an iron dish, everything was brought and laid in the center of the court, a mass of rubbish the most of which should have gone out by the back door and been thrown into the gully. A cart was brought in and everything placed upon it and off it went. Just as the zemindar was going out of the gate, a man living in one of the huts came in. He had been out from very early morning going for miles to a pond where he caught a few small fish, not one over an inch in length. These he was bringing for his poor old decrepit mother who was really starving. As soon as the big man saw this handful of fish he ordered one of his men to take them. The poor man seeing that he was about to lose his little treasure threw himself upon the ground, and in tones heart-rending, begged the fish for his old mother who was dying for want of food; but he might as well have talked to the gate post. The fish were gone and the big man departed on his high-stepping horse.

Had the big zemindar put us all in some room, closed the door and suffocated us, it would have been an act of mercy compared with what he did. What is the little pain of a sudden death, in comparison with a life of hardship, starvation, suffering, misery, and after all, death sure to come? Better half should go and give the other half a chance, than to prolong the wretchedness of all. Death cannot be escaped by waiting. Much of philanthropy is to prolong misery. The real philanthropist should seek to shorten and end it. Men die for their country, for glory, the latter always a paltry thing. Why not die to relieve themselves from wretchedness and to benefit others by their absence? This would be the real sacrifice—a dying to save others. Words fail me to describe what took place after the robbery of our little court. In every hut there was wailing for their little losses, but all they had. There was not a tattered rag or dish left. There was no food of any kind, no work for anybody. They could gather nothing from the fields, for the country for miles was barren even of a blade of grass.

I was repelled by all I had seen, and felt like weeping as I heard the mournful cries of the women. We were more blessed than they were, because we had lost nothing, for the best of reasons. My instinct told me it were better to go away than to remain any longer. Our new mama seemed to have the same feeling, for without a word she took each of us by the hand and we went out through the big gate, whither we knew not. One direction was as good to us as another, so we took the first road we saw. We wandered on for a number of days, sleeping at night by the roadside, and during the days stopped where cartmen were feeding their cattle. They allowed us to pick up some grains of feed, which was the bread of heaven to us. One day toward evening we came to a large peepul tree with a small hut beside it. An old man, a faqir, was sitting in front of the hut. Something told him we were hungry, and going inside he brought out a few withered bananas and several dried fruits. He told us to eat them, and when he prepared his food he would give us some. I expressed my gratitude as best I could. I think I said that I hoped Allah would show him mercy. The old man gave me such a kindly smile, the first I had ever seen. We were all very weary, and the little sister was footsore. I went out to where some carts had stopped and gathered several armfuls of dried grass and straw, which I placed at the back of the hut. The old faqir, seeing this, went into his little garden and brought a square of bamboo, thatched with grass, that he placed over the straw with its top against the hut. What a house we had; a palace, furnished, for our wearied bodies. Into this we crept, for our new mama was always beside us. We slept—and such sleep! I dreamed of great dishes of food, how fragrant it was and how delicious it tasted, when we were awakened by the voice of the faqir calling us to come out and eat. We did not wait for a second call, and such dishes of rice and dhal, steaming hot and so fragrant. We ate as if we had not tasted food for many a day, and indeed we had but little for months. The old faqir smiled all over his wrinkled face as he saw the eagerness with which we ate his savory dishes. If I know anything about the matter—and probably I know as much as any one—I feel sure that the good angel above, who does the recording, gave the old faqir three very long credit marks for the good he did to each of us that day. He scarcely said a word. No doubt his motto was, “Doing—not talking,” and the very best habit one can fall into. After an hour or so of resting from our laborious task of eating so much, we crept into our little house and were all soon fast asleep. I dreamt that I saw my mama. She was looking with those large liquid eyes of hers, not to the westward, but toward us. She smiled so sweetly, the first smile I had ever seen upon her face, as she saw how comfortably we were placed.

At early morning we were awakened by the birds in the peepul tree. My first words were, “Darling mama,” for I expected to see her, and what an eternal joy it would have been if I could have had but one sight of her beautiful smiling face as I saw it in my dream! My heart was sorely disappointed and harassed. Why could not this world have been arranged without so many disappointments? Why could not the sorrows be more equally divided? The roses be without so many thorns? We went to the well in the garden and the faqir drew water with his lota and string, and the little sister and I had a nice shower bath as the faqir poured the water over us. He enjoyed his part as much as we did ours. He out-Christianed the Christian teaching, for besides food and shelter, he not only gave us water to drink, but poured it all over us. On returning to the hut he gave us some dried figs, nuts and sugar, and we were still more happy. After awhile, with a look of pleasure and pity, he asked whither we were traveling? I told him we did not know. This rather surprised him. Then he inquired where our home was, and I replied that we had no home. He wanted to know who our father and mother were, and I answered that we never had a father; that we had a dear mama once, but she had gone; two men had carried her away on a charpoy and we never saw her again.

The old man seemed very sad on hearing this, and when our new mama asked if we should not be going on, he begged of us to wait and rest another day; so we stayed. We watched the carts and the travelers as they passed by, listened to the songs of the birds in the peepul tree, and rested; and what a rest it was, without being hungry.

A day and another pleasant night passed, when something said, “Go on.” It is forever thus. It seems an inevitable law that one must be always going, progressing, growing, or else comes idleness, death and decay. This may seem a big idea to have any reference to the small subject in hand, but I do not look at it in that way. I was then of as much importance to myself as the greatest man on earth is to himself. The life of a fly is as valuable to the fly as the life of an elephant is to the elephant, though they differ so much in size of body and sphere of life. Each smallest thing has its round of destiny to fulfill, and I had mine.

We were very sorry to part with our kind old friend, to leave our palace of rest and feasts of food, but something impelled us onward. We started not without thanking the good kind old faqir in every possible phrase, and when we were on the way, as we looked back we saw him watching us. We waved our hands and he responded. Soon we were out of sight never to see our friend again, but I have erected a monument in my heart to his memory.

We wandered on, not in any haste, as one place was as good as another to us, only it seemed that we must be moving. Sometimes we went into the villages to get a drink of water, and the people gave us parched grain, and to the little sister, sweets, for they seemed to be greatly taken with her. She had our mama’s large eyes, and she was always playful and happy. She had not seen that white giant that frightened and killed our dear mama. Several times I thought of telling her about him, but as I was about to do so she appeared so happy that I had not the heart to do it. She never knew it, for some good angel ever kept me from telling. She was a little beauty, though I say it. Her only dress was a little skirt reaching just below the knees, and very tattered and torn. Her hair was gathered up and tied with a bit of grass. Though so poorly clad, her bright eyes, the dimples on her cheeks, the ripples of her smiles, the real priceless adornments of nature, as she tripped along with us, made her a beauty, at least in my eyes. Her sweet voice calling me bhai, brother, the only name she gave me, or pyari bhai, was like music to my ears.

After some days wandering we came to the outskirts of a town or city and we found shelter under a big tree by a wall. Some large beasts came into the tree above us and made a great noise that frightened us very much, so I persuaded the new mama to take us into the city. We came to a building into which a number of people were going, so we went with them. We found a place to rest on a veranda where there was a little straw on which we could sleep. Some one gave us water to drink and others some fruit to eat. About midnight the new mama began to groan as if in terrible pain. She grew worse and worse until I became greatly frightened and ran to some men who brought a lantern. Her moanings and groanings chilled me to the heart. I tried to comfort her but it was no use, the pain increased. Between the attacks her cries were, “What will become of the babas?”

Soon she was silent and when the men came again to see her they said to each other, margayi, dead gone, hyja! Other men soon came with a charpoy and took our kind new mama away and we never saw her again. Our dear mama and now our new mama both had gone and we were left alone in our sorrow that must be felt as it cannot be described. We cried ourselves to sleep in each other’s arms and were awakened in the early morning by the tramp of some people near us. There stood one of those white giants, not so tall as the one I had once seen. “Hallo!” said he, “What have we here?” Then speaking in Hindustani to some attendants of the serai, he asked who these children were. They said they did not know, that they had come with an old woman, that she had died of cholera in the night and had already been buried. The sahib, as I soon learned to call a white man, then turned toward us and though I was greatly frightened at first, his kindly face soon drove away every fear. He asked me, in Hindustani of course, who we were, and I told him I didn’t know. He asked where we came from and I couldn’t tell. He asked our names and I said we never had any names, and then he inquired who our father was, and I replied that we never had a father. Then he turned to his attendants and spoke in Hindustani so that I understood him well, saying, “This is a very strange thing under the sun! Two children who never had a father! What is the world coming to?” And then each of the others repeated, “Strange! barra taajub ki bat, a very strange thing under the sun, two children who never had a father! What is the world coming to?” I did not know what they meant by “under the sun” or “what is the world,” but that is what they said.

Up drove a great covered cart drawn by a horse. Such a thing I had never seen before. There might have been many in the place where we lived, but as I had never been outside of our court how could I have seen them?

We were put into this cart and driven away so fast that I was really scared and held my breath. It seemed like flying as the birds do, and I thought, “what wonderful beings these white giants are.” Soon we were at the gate of a large building and another white being came out, very slender and as thin as I felt I was, before I had eaten of that good old faqir’s food. What strange comparisons we often make, but the best of us only reason from what we know, and how little did I know? He was so thin that I did not feel very much afraid of him, as I thought he had not eaten many boys, or at most, not very many. Something was said that I did not understand, as the noise from the mouths of the two sahibs was so strange. I was lifted out of the cart and it was quickly driven away. I screamed, “My sister! my sister!” and started to run after it but was caught by a native and carried into a room where there were several other boys. They could shut me up in a room but they could not prevent me crying out for my sister, as I felt that I had been given to this sahib, and she to the other, and that she might possibly be eaten that day for dinner.

The sahib came in and had a long talk with me. He said that this was a school, an orphanage, where they kept boys who had no father or mother. They fed them, gave them clothes and taught them to read. This was news to me, but what about my sister? He replied that she would be sent to another school for girls in another city and be well cared for. This pacified me somewhat, as it was better than to be eaten, yet I would have rather been out on the road alone with the little sister than anywhere else. She was all I had, all, and I had lost her! My grief was intense. I dreamed of her at night, I thought of her every hour of the day. What else could I do but dream and think?

I was taken with the other boys out through a gate into a large yard that was surrounded by a number of houses all very neat and clean. We were then taken into one of the houses where we were given each a bath and some clothing, then into another house where we received some food that was most delightful and agreeable to me, as I had scarcely eaten anything for days, since we left the good old faqir. What a charming, soothing effect a good meal has upon, well, upon everybody. Like a fellow-feeling, it makes us wondrous kind. I had thoughts of rebellion, but the food conquered me. I concluded it might not be such a bad place after all if they gave us such good things to eat. I strolled out into the shade of a large tree in the center of the yard. The boys were rather shy of me. I was but a wee bit of a fellow, the smallest one among them all. Soon there was a ringing noise on the top of a high building at one end of the yard, when all the boys went into the building and I followed. It seemed to me that I should do as the rest did. I was lifted to a seat so high that I could scarcely get up alone, and when seated my feet were far above the floor. Soon the sahib came in and then another sahib like him, only this one had no beard and wore different kind of clothes. This sahib went to a big box, and then a great noise came out of the box and then all the boys made a great noise with their mouths, that fairly frightened me, but I thought if the other little boys were not killed by it I would not be hurt. Then the first sahib talked to Allah, as one of the larger boys told me afterward, for it was all so new and strange to me that I could not understand anything that was said. After that we went into what they called the school and I was taught to say alif be.

The days and the weeks passed and I became well pleased with my place. I followed the larger boys and they seemed to like me very much, calling me “The little one.” But one day they laughed at me when I spoke of the sahib who made a noise with the big box as the “Sahib without a beard.” This tickled them greatly, and for several days they often repeated “Sahib without a beard.” They explained that she was the mem sahib, the sahib’s bibi. I think some one must have told her about it, for the next time she came into the chapel she patted my cheeks and called me some pet name. This greatly pleased me and more than made up for the laughter of the boys. I had learned that the name of the large room was the girja, or chapel.

CHAPTER IV.

I was now as hungry to learn as I once was for food, and was soon changed from one class to another. I could not help learning for it was a delight to me. On entering the school I was put in a class studying English, and I gave my whole mind to learning this language, and the munshi who taught this class, seeing me so interested, allowed me to study with him out of school hours. Each new word and idea gave me extreme pleasure. I was very busy with my lessons, caring little for the simple sports of the boys. Yet busy as I was, often at night and often when I was sitting under the big tree my thoughts went back to the two upper rooms in that little court. It all seemed like a dream, and yet so real.

I always commenced with those rupees, poured into the dear mama’s lap. I could not go beyond their clinking sound, for at that moment my conscious life was born. I saw the white sahib standing there, the pitiful face of the mama, the tears running down her cheeks. I saw her clinging to his feet and him rushing from the room, and heard again her wailing cries. How well I recalled her sitting day after day, from week to week, peering with those large eyes toward the west; how the two men carried her away, so far away that she never returned. The grief I then experienced always came to me whenever I thought of her. Then followed the thoughts of that desperate poverty, the fearful zemindar, our wanderings, the scene at the death of the new mama, and always the good old faqir came in for a grateful thought.

The little sister—was she ever left out? Never. That little face, radiant with smiles and the mama’s eyes, my joy, my all, how could I forget her? Recalling these chapters of my life always gave me pain instead of pleasure, yet they would be remembered. If we could blot out all the pain and follies of the past and retain only the good and pleasant, what happy mortals should we be! But memory is eternal.

My reveries always ended with thoughts of the sister, and one day my desire about her became so intense that I felt I must see her. I had often been told that some day I would be taken to see her, and this kept me quiet, but now it seemed the time had come. I went to the sahib and begged him to let me go at once. He said that the next morning early he would send a munshi with me. I scarcely slept at all that night. I arose a number of times and went out to see if morning had not come. At the first glimpse of it I aroused the munshi and we departed, for a number of miles on a bullock cart and then by what he called the rehl. This was a wonderful experience to me, but I was thinking only of the little sister, wondering if she had grown, how she would look, what she would say and a thousand things about her and what I should say to her. The munshi on the way had bought some little ornaments, playthings and sweets for me to give to her, as he said we must not go khali hath, and it was very good of him to think of it, as no one ever should go with an empty hand.

How happy was I when the rehl stopped and I caught sight of the orphanage. I was trembling with joy and could scarcely walk. We soon reached the door and were shown into a room where there was a mem sahib. The munshi told her our errand. “O,” said she in Hindustani, “the little one has gone. A sahib and mem sahib came and said they would take her to be their little girl.” “Who are they and where have they gone?” asked the munshi. I heard nothing but the word, gayi, gone. It was the same word that I heard when the mama went away. My intense anxiety, kept on the stretch for so many hours, at the mention of that fatal word, was so suddenly checked, that it seemed that I was not dying but was dead. I remembered nothing more, but it must have been hours after that I found myself lying upon a cot and some one bathing my head.

A day or two after we left for home. The munshi was very sad and disappointed, for he had shared my joy in anticipation, as he now shared my sorrow. I took no pleasure in looking out of the windows of the rehl, nor cared whether we stopped anywhere or whether we went on. My heart was dead, my life had stopped and all desire had ceased. The dear mama and all I knew of her came to mind. She had gone, and now that little playful sister, how beautiful she appeared to me, she had gone too, and I would never see her again. My cup of sorrow was full, overflowing, and the dead aching pain in my heart choked me, and the more I felt the more I wished that I might be gone too as they were. I cannot tell how much I thought and felt, for who can measure the heart’s sorrows? Life for me had changed, for its only joy and hope was dead. I went through the usual routine of school duties, hardly conscious of what I was doing. I took no pleasure in anything. The boys tried to sympathize with me, but as they could do nothing they left me alone. The mem sahib talked to me and said, “It was the will of God.” I had been by this time taught a little about God. I could not see why it was the will of God that I should suffer so when I had not deserved it. I had seen some of the boys punished because they had done something wrong. I could see the right and justice of this, but what had I done to deserve punishment? I had always been kind to the little sister and loved her better than myself. When I was so hungry that I could barely stand up, and got a few grains of parched rice or grain, I gave them to her. I took more pleasure in seeing her eat them than in eating them myself. Her smile to me was my joy. If God was one of love and tender mercy, as I had been told, why was it His will that I should lose my sister and suffer so terribly? If I had done nothing for her, had ill treated her, then it might be the will of a just God to have deprived me of her as a punishment.

Such were my thoughts. I was but a child, a very ignorant one, yet I had my thoughts, such as they were. Children often think more than their elders give them credit for, and this is stranger still, since all were children once. Since that time I have often thought of myself, and could never believe my sufferings to have been according to the will of God. It is so common for people when they do not understand a thing to attribute it to this cause and make that an excuse for their ignorance and mistakes. I remember several of the questions, Was it the will of God that I should be born without a father unlike all the other boys? They had something to be proud of, though the fathers of most of them were dead; but even a dead father was better than none at all. Was it the will of God that our mama should suffer so much and then go away and leave us alone in the world? Was it the will of God that we should be separated and now be lost or as dead to each other? It is so much safer to lay the blame on God, or make His will an excuse for sins and follies than to blame ourselves, for to do the latter would be self-reproach, which is rather disagreeable; and to accuse our fellowmen might be resented, which would be dangerous. But God is so far away and keeps quiet.

I could not be resigned, yet following the routine of school duties, no matter how heavy my heart was, my grief gradually lost its power over me. What a blessed thing it is that time has the power of alleviating our sorrows and not allowing them to fall one upon another until we are crushed by them! I did not forget, but endured what seemed to me an inevitable fate or something, no matter what.

Months passed. I gave myself wholly to my studies with true delight in them. I rose from one grade to another, and became quite happy except when I thought of those who had gone. I was still the “Little One,” for even the sahib and mem sahib had come to call me by that name. I became used to it, as it suited me as well as any other.

One morning the sahib who had found me in the serai and brought me to the school came, with several others, with our sahib into the yard. Most of the boys were at play, but stopped to look at the sahibs. Standing a little behind them I heard the magistrate sahib, as I learned he was called, ask, “Where is the boy I brought you who never had a father?” “That Eurasian?” said our sahib, “we call him the ‘Little One,’ as he had no name and he is the smallest one of the lot.” One of the other sahibs asked, “Why not call him Japhet, and some day he can go in search of his father?” They all laughed, and our sahib said that “Japhet” might do as well as any other, so I was Japhet to him ever afterward, and to others to this day.

The older boys, however, had a chance. They exclaimed “That Eurasian!” as applied to me, so I was “That Eurasian” to them, and this name abideth with me still. Thus it was that I came by my two names that through all my life have been hurled at my poor head; one the donation of a Commissioner, the other of our worthy Padri. If I never got anything else from that school, I got this legacy of names.

A number of months now passed, when one morning the magistrate sahib came again. Passing into the yard I overheard him say, “I am greatly interested in that Eurasian, or, as I think, we named him, Japhet, the one in search of his father. What kind of a boy is he?” Our sahib replied, “He is one of, or rather, he is the best and brightest boy we have in school. He is a little one, as we for a long while called him, but he leaves the larger boys behind in all his studies.” This was so unexpected to me that I dodged behind a pillar; still I could hear what was said. The magistrate continued: “I have often thought of him, in fact, taken a fancy to him, and if you don’t mind, and will let me have him, I will take him away and educate him myself.” As the magistrate had brought me there, and as he was the big man of the district, whose word was law, and as our sahib had a great respect, almost fear of him, any boy of us could have told that his proposal would be accepted.

Our sahib in reply said that he would be sorry to lose Japhet, but it would be for his good to go, as he would have greater advantages. He then called out to the crowd of boys, “Japhet! Where is Japhet?” One of the larger boys pulled me out from behind the pillar, and brought me into the presence of the sahibs. Little as I was and ignorant, I was conscious that I ought not to have heard what was said about me, and I held my head down in shame, though they probably thought my embarrassment was caused by fear of the sahibs. It is often in life lucky as well as unlucky for us that we are misunderstood.

The magistrate smiled upon me. What a world of pleasure there is in receiving only a smile! They cost so little, why are they not oftener given? As he turned away he said to our sahib: “I will let you know in a few days.” Shortly after, going among a crowd of the larger boys among whom I was so small that I was hid by them, one, who understood English better than most, called out, “Do you know what the magistrate sahib said about that Eurasian?” “No,” said they, “what was it?” “Why, he is going to take him out of the school, and educate him himself!” “Wah! Wah!” shouted some of them, who were rather envious of me for being promoted out of their classes. They had also twigged the story of Japhet, and said: “Then he will go in search of his father!” “But he never had a father!” said another. “Wah! Wah!” was the only reply. I did not like the bantering tone, though I did not understand the joke, but as I had heard what the magistrate sahib said, these little things did not disturb me much.

As the months passed, the magistrate sahib often came with our sahib into the yard as if to see the school, but when I saw his smile towards me, I felt, though I never dared say so, that he came on purpose to see me. One day, as he turned to go out, I overheard this remark: “He is quite small yet, perhaps I had better wait awhile.” This startled me, and made me fear that I might never grow larger, and always have to remain. This, then, was the reason why I was not taken away. I at once made up my mind that I would grow, make myself taller by some means. The first step was to find out how tall I was, so I stood by a post in the house, and had one of the boys mark with a pencil my height, and to conceal my object, I made a similar mark for him on another post, suggesting that every Sunday morning we would come to the posts and see how much we had grown during the week.

I studied the subject very carefully. I concluded I must eat more, that I must take more exercise, walk, run and leap, and especially to practice on the bars, and suspend myself from them by my arms and chin. I had serious thoughts of tying a rope to each of my legs, with stones at the other ends to hang down over the foot of the charpoy at night, but fear of the ridicule of the boys prevented me doing this. I found myself when walking or sitting in school, straightening up so as to be as tall as possible. I often ran to a little hillock outside where there was a good breeze. I then expanded my chest; took in long breaths to see if I could not swell and make myself broader. I swung my arms around, drew them backwards, upwards and downwards, turned somersaults, as if bent on becoming an acrobat.

I often wanted to go and measure, as I felt sure that I was growing, but waited patiently for Sunday morning. It came. The result was surprising. I was above the mark, while the other boy had not grown a hair’s breadth. I was elated, and determined to increase my efforts. The extra food, the abundant exercise, the stretching, bending, pulling myself upwards was everything, but I could not get rid of the idea that my mind had a good deal to do with it, so I thought constantly of growing, longing to be taller, wishing it with all the power of my mind. Aside from my studies, my mind was wholly absorbed in growing taller. I reasoned upon the subject like a philosopher, to get every advantage I could. Another week passed, again I had grown, and so on for a number of weeks, a little more each week. Then I became somewhat frightened. What if I go on at this rate? I would be like a tall bamboo, a great, awkward pole of a boy and man. I thought of our sahib; a tall, lean, lanky man, who seemed as if he never got enough to eat. Years afterward, when I could think more naturally, I concluded that he had stretched himself so much trying to look into heaven to learn about God’s decrees that he neglected broadening himself toward his fellowmen, for his religion was such a straight up and down thing that it lacked all breadth. He had so much theology, that it made him lean to carry it. The boys could not suggest a question about anything, but he had a cut and dried answer ready, as if he had it pressed and laid away in a drawer, like a botanical specimen. Everything in him was dried and prepared with care without any of the juice left. He was a good and kind-hearted man, in his way, but his way was very narrow. Yet, I can say this of him, without any exaggeration, that I think he did more good than harm, and is not that saying a great deal to the credit of anybody?

I was greatly pleased with the result of my endeavors, though somewhat alarmed at what might happen. If necessary, to prevent myself growing too tall, I would stop eating, take no exercise, carry a weight in my turban, and at night have two sticks, one at the head and the other at the foot of my charpoy, to keep me from stretching out too much; with these provisions in mind, I concluded to run the risk and go on for a few weeks longer. The same result followed.

One morning the magistrate came. As soon as he saw me he exclaimed, “Why, my boy! How you have grown?” I was satisfied. I felt that I had accomplished my purpose. He turned towards our sahib, and said he would take me at once. I was allowed to take a few books. As the magistrate said I did not need clothes, I took only those I wore. The trinkets I had intended for my little sister, were carefully tied up in a little package, so precious to me, they were not left. I was ready at once, and salaaming to the lean sahib we went out of the gate, the boys giving a vigorous cheer as a token of their good wishes which I gladly received with a wave of my hand, we were soon out of sight, and I never saw that school again. Not long after, the tall sahib died, and I have no doubt that he got into that heaven toward which he had been stretching himself so long. My “sahib without a beard” went to Wilayat, and the boys, I suppose, soon scattered. Could I forget the school? Have I not been reminded of it every day of my life by the two names I received there, “That Eurasian” and “Japhet,” perpetual mementoes of that chapter in my life?

The carriage, with the fine spirited horses, soon reached the magistrate’s bungalow, and as we drove up under the portico, a crowd of servants, durwans, chuprassies, bearers, khansamas, khitmutgars, all came salaaming as if we were foreign princes. I say we, since they turned toward me as some special favorite who had come sitting on the seat beside the sahib. There was a broad veranda fringed with pots of plants and flowers; this I took in at a glance. On a large carpet two darzies were working, as if for dear life, though many a time afterward, I saw them nodding when their master was not by. The first word of the sahib was, “Darzi, kya, kuch kapra is larke ke waste bana sakte?” It was clothes for me, clothes, a subject on which the great Scotch mental tailor has laid so much stress. I had been so absorbed in the novelty of what was transpiring, that I was unconscious of the poverty of my appearance. Was not the great Newton once so absorbed in an experiment that he put his watch in the kettle and boiled it, while he held the egg in his hand to note the time? I always like to have some great example to refer to when I find some lapse or mistake in myself. It is so consoling, you know.

At the suggestion of clothes I took a look at myself; that is, as much of me as there was in sight. I knew that my growth had lengthened me a bit, but I had not realized that it had shortened and narrowed my clothes at the same time. The thought that like a flash of light, very warm too, rushed through me, that the boundaries of my coat did not sympathize with each other by a number of inches, that the bottoms of my trousers had sworn enmity to my feet, and were climbing in scorn toward my knees, and what was left of these lower encasements were clinging to my legs as tightly as bark to a growing tree. I could have hid behind the bearer, or the dog, or anything.

All this reflection took place quicker than light can run, and was ended by the darzi saying, “Huzoor, what kind of clothes?” The hukm was that he was to get the best in the bazar, with a free hand and a free purse, and to make everything “Europe” fashion. The whole thing was done in a jiffy. I think that is the word; it will do as well as any. Then the sahib said, “We will go into the drawing room.” We, that is, I and the sahib, or the sahib and I,—we; how strange it sounded! He didn’t hukm me at all. He asked me to take a chair. Now, I had never sat upon one of them in my life. My legs! what could I do with them? I felt that I must tuck them under me out of the way, but the sahib did not do that with his legs, so I let mine hang. What else? He talked to me so kindly that I soon felt easier; but it was a long time before I could get rid of the awe I had for the barra magistrate sahib.

He asked some questions in his kindly way, to which I answered and used the word “sahib.” At this he said, “You must not say sahib any more to me. Call me Mr. Percy, for I am your friend; I will be as a father to you if you will be a good boy.” I don’t know what I said, but I think I told him I would try ever so hard. The thought flashed over me how hard I had tried to grow to please him, and as I had succeeded in that I would do my best in everything he suggested. Soon we went to breakfast. Mr. Percy sat at one end of the table and I was placed at the other, a table large enough for a dozen people. How strange it was! The shining white cloth, and the great variety of food, dish after dish, when I had never before had more than one dish, and not always enough of that. Then my knife and fork and spoon, when I had never touched such things before! what could I do with them? I watched Mr. Percy closely. He was my working model. I wondered at the ease with which he handled his fork, and was surprised that he did not run it into his nose or under his chin. He told one of the khitmutgars to wait on me, and this man did his best to help me.

There was one thing I noticed but did not realize its object till several months afterward. There were two large vases filled with sprigs covered with flowers placed between us, so that Mr. Percy could not see me except by leaning aside. For several weeks these remained in that position, and I was left to work out my own salvation unseen. Afterward they were placed so that we could see each other face to face. When they had been changed I understood it all. I have often thought of that little expedient of his to save me from embarrassment, and I bless him for it, and for many other such little kindnesses.

Little things! and life is made up of them. A smile, a tear, a kindly word, so easy to give and of such value to receive! It is not only the one who does a great deed for a particular purpose, but the one who does the many little deeds of good to the many, who is the real friend of humanity.

As this is a truthful narrative of my experience, I must mention a little incident. I always admire truth, even when it does take down my own pride a bit. I knew what practice had done in my studies, and in my experiment in growing, and as I thought over the subject I concluded to have some practice with that knife and fork, so when Mr. Percy was starting to go to his court, and gave an order to the khitmutgar to prepare tiffin for me, I suggested to that worthy that I would have it in the room allotted to me. He nodded assent, and when the time came the tiffin was on the table. I told him that I would wait upon myself, and he could go to his khana. I locked the door after him and then took a general survey of the whole scene from the end of the room, then walked to the chair, placed it, sat down, unfolded my napkin, and began to use my knife and fork. After a few mouthfuls I placed my knife and fork on the plate, laid down my napkin, lifted back my chair, arose and retired to the end of the room for a new trial. For an hour I did this, and kept up my tiffin practice for several weeks, until one evening, when the vases had been replaced, Mr. Percy remarked, “Why, Japhet, you use your fork as if you had been born with one in your mouth.”

At first I felt I must tell him of my practice, but waited a moment and then did not do it. It is not always best to tell everything, even the truth, nor to tell all at once, for if you tell everything to-day that you know, what will you have left for to-morrow?

After dinner, Mr. Percy went with me to my room and bade me good night. A bearer was appointed to wait upon me. I thought the big bedstead, with its beautiful spread, must be an ornament to the room, and supposed that I was to lie on the floor upon its fine rug, but said nothing, as I reasoned that it was the business of every one to know his own business, so I gave the bearer his rope and let him do as it seemed best unto him, and I soon saw by his preparations that I was to lie on the bed instead of the floor.

I was mightily troubled about getting out of my coat and trousers, for, since I began that experiment in growing, they were to me and I to them, as if we had been born simultaneously. The bearer had brought the night clothes that the darzi had purchased. I have read how frogs get out of their old skins, and I think that bearer must have known all about it. I took everything as a matter of course, as if all was a daily habit of mine, and I to the manner born. I was growing very fast. The bearer left me and I slept. I almost wished for the old bare charpoy, for such fearful dreams I had on that soft bed after that good dinner! One dream was about getting into my trousers and coat again, and no end of worry it gave me. Very early I was awakened by Mr. Percy calling me, saying that he was going out to inspect a bridge, and would not be back to breakfast before eleven or twelve o’clock; that I was to make myself comfortable. So kind and considerate he was.

The bearer came and said that if I would lounge about in my pajamas for a while, the darzi would have some clothes for me to try on. That bearer was a jewel, a black diamond, a stoic, for he never even winked, or hinted at the narrowness of my former apparel. I think if I had stood on my head he would gravely have said that was the proper way for me to stand, yet I suspect he had lots of fun in the servants’ quarters talking about me. Upright as I am, I am somewhat of a suspicious nature; that is, I often suspect others of doing just what I would do if our circumstances were exchanged. I mention this, as I do not wish to be considered better than I am or was at that time. I hate gilding, for I always think there is flimsy, cheap material underneath.

When the clothes came, it took all the nonchalance I possessed to get into them, and appear to be at ease. They were not exactly a fit, but passable after a few alterations, so I emerged from my room. Then came the jutiwala with his boots, the boxwala with his shirts, socks, collars, neckties, and I was transferred into them, and transformed into what I never expected to be. I hardly need say that I went to my room to become acquainted with my new rig, so as to be ready for Mr. Percy. It seemed my whole desire was in trying to please him.

CHAPTER V.

I have been thus minute and particular to show, if possible, how strange it was to undergo this change of scene and circumstances. I have often wondered what a pupa must think when it first emerges from its prison of a cocoon into a butterfly to float in the air in the glorious sunlight! What shall we feel the moment after we have shuffled off this mortal coil and fly out somewhere? Whither?

I continued my practice in my new suit, before the great mirror in my room, until the time for Mr. Percy to come, when I went out on the veranda to meet him. He seemed surprised at my changed appearance, for, though clothes do not make a man, or even a boy, yet either looks more of a man or boy in good clothes, and before that I could scarcely say that I had any clothes at all. Mr. Percy laughed again and again, but his laughter was not in making sport of me so much as showing his pleasure. “Why, Japhet, how well you look!” and he turned me round and round, and I took a few paces out and back, as I had done before the mirror. The darzies, the bearers, the khitmutgars, the durwans on the veranda, and on the ground below, the malies snipping the flowers, the saises holding the horses, the bhisties, all were fluent in seconding the sentiments of the sahib. We then went to breakfast. The vases of flowers were between us as before, so I began to feel a little more at ease.

After breakfast we went into the drawing room and had a long chat, that is, Mr. Percy did the talking and I the listening. I have found later in life that a good listener is as necessary as a good talker in order to have an interesting conversation.

I do not remember now what was said, but I know that his remarks and especially his manner, had a charming effect upon me. One thing, however, I do recall. He said, “It is strange the way you got your name, Japhet. It is not really pretty and has no meaning but how few names are pretty and have a meaning? It is better than Hogg or Sheepshanks and may do as well as any other. It is not the name that makes the man and I wish you would always remember this. It seems to me you ought to have another name, as that is the custom nowadays and you do not want to appear odd, so I think I will call you Charles, Charles Japhet, will do very nicely.”

My blood flushed hot through me, as I thought of that other name “That Eurasian,” but I had rather have bit my tongue than told him of this. I remember also that he spoke of my books and studies, that my body had grown so fast lately, he wanted my mind to grow as well and to do this my mind must be fed with knowledge and exercised in remembering and thinking.

All this I comprehended in a moment. Had I not fed myself like a turkey for a Christmas dinner and exercised my body like a prize fighter and made it grow? The next day a teacher came and books were obtained and I commenced a course of study to continue until my departure for some school.

I now look back and see with what foresight and kindness Mr. Percy arranged to keep me in his home until I had become accustomed to my new mode of life before sending me out to fight my own battles. Scarcely a day passed but he examined me in my studies and seemed to take great pleasure in watching my progress. He had a special delight in his large garden, trimming and training his trees and plants, particularly those of a new kind, and it appeared to me that I was one of his plants that he was watching and developing. I needed no urging, as his pleased, intense interest made me respond with eagerness to his desires.

Clothes were made for me until I hardly knew where to put them, and it is not improper to say that I enjoyed practicing in them. He enjoyed making me pleasant surprises. I recall the great delight I experienced when one morning, dressing, I found in my waistcoat pocket a beautiful watch with chain and charm attached. I fairly danced for joy and I am not even now ashamed to say, I cried. I had to wait awhile for I hardly knew how to meet him. At length I went out with a joyful fear. I saw him watching me with his paper up before him pretending to read, with a merry twinkle in his eyes and a quizzical expression on his face waiting to see what I would do.

“O, Mr. Percy!” I exclaimed, “you are too good, too kind to me!” and I threw myself sobbing upon the sofa, shedding tears of joy. How could I do otherwise? “All right, Charles,” he said, “all right, my boy! Time is everything, improve it. Watch your watch! never be late for anything good, and always keep your appointments as you would your honor.”

Was I not proud? Where is the boy that is not proud of his first watch? If he is not, then there is something wrong in the make-up of that boy. How often during many days that followed, I took that watch from my pocket, let any boy who has had a watch answer. That watch has been the companion of my life, and now lies on the table before me. Many a time as I have looked at it during all these years it has recalled the expression of the eyes and face of the dearest friend I ever had, as he looked out at me from behind his paper on that memorable morning.

Such a man, such a friend, such a benefactor, was he not worthy of all my love, of my worship even? Is it not well for me now an old man, full of years and alas! bowed down with too many sorrows, to cherish with adoration the remembrance of such a friend? The very best of us have so few real, true friends, that we should make all we can of them.

The days passed and quickly too. I was absorbed in my studies and in trying to please my benefactor. He was very busy with his duties. In the mornings he usually went out to some village or to look at some road, bridge or building. During this time my teacher was with me. Our breakfast was at eleven when we had a pleasant time. Mr. Percy always had something new to tell me, made remarks on all kinds of subjects to give me ideas, and stimulate my intelligence. Then till evening he was in his court. After a time, when I had become somewhat acclimatized, so to speak, he took me with him on his evening drives to the club, the library and other public places. I kept retired as much as possible, conscious that I would appear awkward, and Mr. Percy showed his appreciation of my feelings. He was a man of the world enough to know that manners cannot be taught as from a recipe book. They must come by nature, from observation, be rubbed in by the friction of association, so he never gave me any instructions how to act, or placed any restraint upon me. Thus I was never uncomfortable in his presence since I had no fear of criticism. I was free to act, and he in all his ways, without suggesting his purpose, set me an example, in his manner, the tones of his voice, his words and method of expressing his thoughts. In after years I have often thought of this method of instruction and have wondered that so little attention is paid to the deportment, manners and personal habits of the instructors of youth. One, by observation, can invariably tell where persons were educated, from noticing in them the idiosyncrasies of their teachers. Man like a monkey is an imitative animal, and in early life he follows and becomes like that which most strikes his fancy.

Mr. Percy was of course my model, and though I have seen many men of all degrees of culture and schools, I have never met a more worthy example.

Though busy with my studies and taken up with the novelty of my life, I could not and would not forget the past. So great was the change that it seemed sometimes that I must be dreaming; but the events were too vivid in my memory to be anything but real.

I would frequently find myself sitting staring into the beyond. I always commenced with the clinking of those rupees. The sound is as real to me even now as when I first heard it. If a report starting miles away reaches me after some seconds, is it less a reality? It takes years for light to reach us from some distant planet. Is it less real because it has been years on the way? So I often saw that sahib as I see him now, as real to me as when I sat crouched in a corner of that room only a few feet from him. And the dear mama! How real she has always seemed! I have never thought of her but tears would come welling up from my heart. How I wished she could see me in my happiness! She surely would have smiled again. The little sister, always so cheerful even when she was hungry and tired! Our new mama, the good old faqir, all the scenes of the past, the hot dusty road, the separation from that sister, the losing her—what a queer strange kind of pain came into my whole body, a pain that never can be described, caused by the loss of those we dearly love; not a fleshy pain and not wholly in the mind, but of the soul, the heart, all the whole being, mental and physical; a choking, stifling, benumbing grief, that seems to stop the current of life and make us only wish for death.

The time approached for my entering some school. Mr. Percy wrote a number of letters. Catalogues were received, and it was at length decided that I should go to the St. George’s School at Dhurm Thal, a hill station. Preparations then began. The darzies were set to work, more clothes were made, and what they could not make were ordered from an English shop. The boxwalas came with brushes for the hair, the teeth, for the fingers, for the clothes, the boots and the bath. I never knew there were so many kinds before. Then thread, needles, tape, buttons, for Mr. Percy said in selecting them, “You must have a ‘Bachelor’ just like what my mother made for me when I started for school,” and away he went to his room to bring the Bachelor that his mother had made years ago, and which he had kept as a treasure. Blessed is the boy who has a mother to make nice things for him, but alas for me, my mother I had scarcely known!

He gave the Bachelor to the darzi for a pattern, with a strict injunction to be careful of it, as it was his mother’s gift. Said he, “This may come handy sometimes when you need a stitch, or find a button gone, for you should not be obliged always to depend on others.”

Then came the boots, the tennis shoes, the balls and bats, some handsome books, papers, pens, ink, sealing wax, envelopes, etc.

Nothing was omitted that he could think of. A spare room was devoted to this schoolboy outfit, and the articles were laid here and there over the room. Day after day he would say, “Now, Charles, let us go and look the things over,” and in we would go, and after a survey he would say, “Well, I don’t know what else you need!”

This outfitting was quite a recreation for Mr. Percy, and he acted as if he had once been a boy himself and had experienced the same preparations for his going away to school. If one knew in his youth how much happiness he really enjoyed, and could foresee the struggle and hardships to come, he might not be so anxious to become a man. The happiness of youth is mostly due to its unconsciousness of evil. Yet, even older people are like children in this respect, always wishing, longing for what is beyond them and to come.

Soon everything was in readiness, the boxes were packed and the morning of my departure arrived. The last thing was a huge fruitcake and a lot of sweets, “For,” said Mr. Percy, “this is the thing to make quick acquaintance with boys at school.”

A bearer was to go with me to take care of me on the way and return. He took a gari to the station with my luggage, and I went with Mr. Percy in his carriage. He had never preached to me or moralized, but on the way he said, “Now, Charles, I want you to be brave, to study hard, and above all be truthful, honest, upright, and be clean in thought, in word and act.” This was all, but there was so much in those few words, in his manner of saying them, and I knew that he spoke from his heart as he uttered them. Soon we were on the train, and as it moved off he said, “God bless you, my boy,” with a tenderness in his tone, and as I saw, with tears in his eyes. I felt it all, pressed his hand saying, “Thank you, thank you.” I knew that he felt that I was really grateful, yet it seemed to me that I had not shown my appreciation of his kindness as I should have done.

The journey was interesting, especially up the hills, as I had never seen any but level land. The school was reached in the evening, and we were shown into a large hall where there were about forty cots, but only a few boys were there. The bearer left me, to come again in the morning. At the ringing of the bell we boys went into the dining hall. I noticed its barren appearance at once. There was such a contrast between this and the dining room and tables at Mr. Percy’s that I felt homesick. I thought that if the other boys could live through it I could; but it seemed as though I was in an orphanage again, the only difference being that this was for white boys, not for natives, and in the hills. After supper we were ushered into another barren hall, the only ornament being an organ upon which a teacher played while the rest sang something, and then followed what they called prayers. I was too weary to pay much attention. Then to the dormitory to sleep.

I dreamed of Mr. Percy and saw him grasp my hand and heard him say, “God bless you, my boy!” and then I was carried away through the air up into some high mountain and left in a barren, desolate place. The fright awoke me all trembling. I saw that it was morning, the sun shining in our window. How well I remember that room! and would not four long years in it make me remember it forever? I recall it as on that first morning. Four bare walls, a ceiling and floor, with nothing to break the monotony but forty cots standing in rows as straight as the walls, and the square windows. I have often wondered, when pictures are so cheap, that they did not put a few on the walls; when nature outside showed the intention of God to make the world beautiful, that they did not give us a few flowers in cheap earthen pots, if nothing better, to relieve the everlasting squareness and barrenness. Compel a man to live in a hovel like a stable, he may not turn into a horse, but the chances are that he will not be near the man he might have been had his surroundings been such as to develop his sense of beauty. How much more should a boy be educated by his sight and senses, be taught by his daily surroundings?

There was no privacy whatever. I well remember months afterward when out walking with one of the boys, a little timid, refined lad, who told me that before leaving home his mother had made him promise to kneel by his bed every night and say his prayers. “But,” said he, “how can I do it with all the boys looking at me?” I knew nothing about praying myself, but I could feel for a boy who thought he ought to pray and was afraid to do so. A man might be brave in battle, but I think it would require more courage to kneel by his bed and say his prayers before a lot of scoffing men.

CHAPTER VI.

Everything about the place was solid and substantial. The walls were square and bare, the floors of wood, unblessed with any kind of cloth, on which our feet ached in the winter time; the tables and benches in the halls were of the hardest wood, our plates, cups and dishes all of metal, our food in abundance, the few kinds they were, but badly cooked and served by weekly routine. Even the strongest appetite must be appalled by knowing three months or a year beforehand, that on certain days at a particular minute, such and such food would invariably appear. A person’s appetite likes to be surprised at times and is pleased with variety.

As everything we saw was solid and at right angles, so everything we did was by rules. We undressed by order, got into bed by order, the light went out by order, we washed, dressed, played, studied, sang, prayed according to rule. I had an abundance of pocket money, but could not use it except by rule. We all had to take steps, to march by order. This monotonous grind by order, day and night for weeks and months and years, as if we were so many prisoners in a tread-mill, was one of the grievances of my school life. I had all I needed and more, to add to my comfort. Many of the boys were scantily supplied. Their fathers had perhaps never been boys and gone away to school, or perhaps they never had fathers as I had none, and they never found such a friend as I had. I pitied them and aided them often, and so gained many a friendship. I had plenty of good, warm, soft bedding, and many a night my extra blankets were loaned to those shivering near me.

The principal was a great solid, ruddy, beefy sort of a man, so plump and enshrined with flesh, that if he had slept on the rocks they would not have come near his bones. He wore “parson clothes,” and was always mousing around, not to do any work himself, but to see that the teachers did their’s and that the boys obeyed the rules. He read the prayers and flogged the boys, and from what we could hear some of them required his services very often, or he thought they did. The result was the same. I do not remember, during my whole four years, of ever receiving a kind word from him. If he ever spoke to me it was just what was required, of course, and by rule. We never came in contact for good or ill except once. Whether this was arranged by the decrees or by the rules, or what, I do not know or ever cared, but have since suspected—as I have stated that I am rather of a suspicious, inquisitive nature, wanting a reason or giving a reason for everything—that I was not worthy of his profound attention, but having been sent by the well-known magistrate and collector of Muggerpur, a man of considerable influence, who paid well, I was not to be interfered with, though I was unnoticed and unfavored. Though in birth I was nothing, as I well knew, and he I am sure knew it as well as I did, for such men can tell by a sniff what rank a boy or man is of, yet my patron, by his position, had raised or put me in the rank of the higher class. It was not long before I came to the conclusion that my position was fixed, not by my own merit, but by some arbitrary rule or something, I knew not what.

Though happy for myself in my position, I could not help pitying some about whom he inquired of a teacher if they were of the middle or lower classes in society. The result was that the floggings were in this proportion, commencing with the lower class, as three, two, one. Though to be just I think the higher class, of which I was accidentally one, seldom got what we deserved. Thus the scripture is fulfilled, “To him that hath, shall be given even more than he hath,” so the lower classes, who have all the poverty, misery and wretchedness, have these abundantly increased, and besides get nearly all the stripes and curses.

This class arrangement greatly puzzled me. Somewhere in one of the scripture lessons we read that “God created of one blood all nations of men,” but this we read according to rule, and probably meant nothing when it came to practice, as scripture often does, yet for the life of me, and I was very attentive whenever our rules compelled us to read our Bible lessons, I could never find out where it was said that God had created higher, middle and lower classes, and this is still one of the many things I have yet to learn.

Why was I sent to this school? I often thought of that, for I was always putting in my whys and wherefores. This school was under the distinguished patronage of the Lord Bishop of Somewhere, the Supreme Head of the Church and next to God in authority, following the ecclesiastical rules. Accordingly, every mother’s son below him in rank followed him darja ba darja, as the natives say, step by step, as sheep follow a bell-wether. When he says “Thumbs up,” it is thumbs up, and when he says “Thumbs down,” what else can it be but that?

I think it was on account of its prominent figure-head that Mr. Percy finally decided upon this school.

The teachers, with one exception, were excellent men. They were good scholars, as I afterward came to know. They performed their work thoroughly and took delight in the advancement of their pupils. And better than all, they had a kind, genial manner that showed itself in various ways and won the affections of the boys. They were above pettiness, and acted as if they had once been boys themselves. Many men seem to forget and act as if they had come into the world full grown.

The one teacher, my exception, seemed to be, I do not know what else to say, a freak of nature. I formed a dislike to him the first time I saw him. I could never get over this feeling, though I tried to do so. I was not alone in this, for during the four years I never heard a boy speak well of him. And boys can make up their minds about what they like or dislike as well as men. In fact, their judgment is often more correct, as it comes by instinct. Did you ever see a dog run around in a crowd and pick out just the man he wanted? A wide awake boy, as well as a dog, can tell who would be kind to him at the first glance.

Acquaintance with this teacher did not improve on the first opinion of him, but the reverse. He was tall and lean as if he had been brought up on milk with the cream removed. His complexion was almost milky white, or rather a pale yellow, sometimes whiter and sometimes yellower. The color of his hair was not much better than that of his skin. He had the most juvenile moustache, and a few straggling unneighborly hairs at the sides of his face, that he seemed to be nursing with great care to bring to maturity. Many were the sly jokes of the boys on those whiskers. His clothes were of the strictest cleric cut, a parson’s waistcoat, a great high collar that was ever threatening to cut his ears off, but refused to do the deed out of sheer pity.

I cannot but think, heathen as I am, that a parson, of all men, should always be a well favored, as well favored in body as well as mind, a manly man, of whom God or nature need not be ashamed and to whom the people would listen without disgust or pity. Another thing I could not understand why most of this class should always have that far away pious look, a ministerial drawl or holy moaning tone. Whether these are produced by their longings for heaven, or their food, or their devotions, or what I cannot tell. Their tone or drone and appearance, all goes to show that their profession has got the better of their manhood.

To return to the school. This teacher had really nothing in him or about him of a parson, except his manner and his clothes, and the clothes were the most valuable part of him. He evidently realized this himself, for, lacking in every respect what pertained to a real priest, he tried to make up in his dress and posing. By his manner, at first sight, not later, he would be taken to be one of God’s saints; and by his clothes, that he was the confidential adviser and chaplain of some great Archbishop or the Bishop himself. He went around the building or through our play grounds with his eyes turned towards the earth as if in holy meditation, appearing as meek as Moses was said to be, but an hour afterward when some of the boys were called before the beefy principal for some loud laughter or slight violation of the rules, we knew that “Yellow Skin” had been telling. How we learned to think of that man! not with hatred for he was not worthy of that, but with contempt, probably the same feeling that a noble mastiff has for a mangy pariah cur. He was lurking everywhere, with his eyes towards the ground as if searching for some lost jewel but we came to know that he always had his side eye upon us. Outside his classes he never spoke to the boys, as this might have compromised his clerical dignity. He never accused any one openly and the principal never revealed his informant, but any boy of us knew who had told. I always thanked my guiding star that I was not in any of his classes. By instinct I kept out of his range as much as possible.

The principal, portly as he was, knew a thing or two. He was a slow thinker, or probably thought but little, as I have not treasured up anything of his, not a saying, a witticism, an anecdote, and a man must be composed of the very essence of stupidity who in four years could not give out something worth saving. A learned professor—as I have read somewhere—claims that “genius is the evidence of a degenerative taint, that is, an epileptical degenerative psychosis.” To be just, I must absolve our chief from any such imputation. But he was business itself, a plodder in his little circle, with as much brilliancy and energy in his thoughts and movements, as in a buffalo going from grass to its wallow. He surely understood “Yellow Whiskers” thoroughly, as he never treated him as an associate, rather as a spy and lackey.

How different with the other teachers. We soon fell into the habit of making a note of their bright sayings, their anecdotes and witticisms and frequently after class, one boy would call out “Hallo Jim,” or “Dick” or “Japhet, I have got another,” and out would come the note-book and heads would be bent over it reading something good that he had got from his teacher in the class room. It became quite a competition as to who should get the most of these good things. And now after years have passed I often take out the old note-books and read them with the greatest pleasure, and again see the happy faces of the boys reading the bright things they had secured. But we never remembered anything of the sleek parson spy, except what we were obliged to do by the nature of memory, and what we would willingly have forgotten.

A little incident will show the character of one of our teachers. One morning, as we came into our class room, every eye was fixed upon a billy-goat tied in the master’s chair on the platform behind the table. Every boy looked at every other boy with a silent question on his lips, and waited in wonder what the teacher would say. I greatly admired him, as he was one of my model men, and I felt sorry for anything that might annoy him, and I think most of the class felt the same. Soon he came in, and apparently did not notice anything out of the way until he was about to step upon the platform, when he turned quickly, saying, “I beg your pardon, boys, I find I have made a mistake. I am not the kind of teacher you need, as I see you have selected a billy-goat to take my place. You, perhaps, think that he is able to teach you all you are capable of learning, so I had better seek another situation, but before I leave, as I would not act hastily, I would like to know if you all prefer the goat to me. Any one who wants the goat, hold up his hand.” Not a hand went up. “Now, any one who wants me to remain hold up his hand.” And every hand and arm in the room went up as high as they could be raised. “That settles it,” he said, “and I have a very good opinion of you. I think the chaukedar must have been playing on us all, so we will have him called to take the butt of his joke away.”

That was all. He never referred to the matter again, and our lessons went on as usual. We all, or most of us, felt so sorry for the master that we proposed as we left the room to keep dead silent. But the news of it got to the principal. We never knew how, but we all believed that the spy, always lurking about, had seen the goat through the window. That evening, as our chief pastor read the prayers, I felt by his tone, manner, and the redness of his face, that something was coming; just as the heated air and the distant rumbling thunder, tells of the coming storm.

Prayers said, little Johnny, he who was so timid that he could not kneel down before the boys to say his prayers, was called in front of the desk. Said our portly head in a pompous, angry voice, fierce enough to make a lion tremble; his face crimson, and his whole mountain of flesh fairly shaking with wrath: “You were seen in front of the school building last night, when several large boys ran past you, and I am sure they were the ones who put the goat in the master’s chair, and I want you to tell who they were?” There was a dead silence, of a minute, it seemed to me, but it may have been only a half of one, yet it was an awful long time. Johnny was as silent as the rest of us. Then the chief, angrier than ever: “Are you going to tell me who those boys were, or not?” “No, sir, I shall not tell,” said the brave lad. His voice trembled, but had a deal of firmness in it. As he gave his answer our chief drew a rattan from the table drawer, and laid it upon poor Johnny, right and left, up and down, regardless where he struck. Every blow hit me, for I had often met the little fellow and loved him. One thing, especially, brought us together. One day he told me he had never had a father, so this made us twin brothers in sympathy ever afterward. I screamed in pain, pain in my heart, the worst kind of pain. At my scream the big flogger stopped and shaking the rattan at me, shouted out: “If that boy makes another sound, I will give him something to remember. This will do for to-day,” said he, as he seemed to be exhausted, and out we went, the spy following us.

As I had been threatened for my sympathy with Johnny, my instinct told me that it might be better for him that I should not be seen in his company by the spy. I went back up the hill to a bit of level ground where we often walked, and where I knew Johnny would come, and soon he appeared. We went into a quiet little nook, and then he pulled up his trousers and showed the great red marks that were swelling into welts, and then showed me his arms and back. How those cuts must have hurt! I had never been whipped, but had received some cuts in play, so I could imagine how such a thrashing must have felt. But he never whimpered. He seemed to be more hurt in his thoughts than in his body. I took him in my arms, and told him he was a brave noble fellow, that there was not another boy in the school who could have stood such a licking without screaming and blubbering. This greatly pleased and consoled him, but he carried the marks, as he was black and blue for months. He then said that the night before, he had gone out for a few minutes, and just as he was in front of the hall, four boys ran out of the class room. He knew every one of them, as the moon was shining brightly. Just as he entered the door, the spy appeared. Neither of them said anything. When he was called up by the principal he was surprised, as he could not think of any reason for it. He was thunderstruck when the question was asked, and more so, when the blows fell.

Just as we thought, the spy was in it. Johnny did not tell me who the boys were, and I did not wish to know the name of any one who would sit still like a great skulking coward, and see a boy like Johnny, be thrashed for his fault. Though Johnny never told, they became known and were not forgotten during our four year’s course. They were not blamed for the goat affair, as all took that as a joke, but for their cowardice and meanness in letting Johnny be whipped while they looked on. They were often left out of our games when sets were made up if we could do without them. Often we would find placards on the walls and trees asking: “Who were the cowards that let Johnny be thrashed?” “Little Johnny is known, but who are the sneaks?”

But where was our teacher? It appeared that he had gone out for a stroll with a friend after his classes, but I felt sure that he knew something was going to happen about the goat affair, and he would get out of the way so as not to be called on to say anything, or to blame any one. This was just like him. He was a man, and we all admired and loved him.

As to our principal. That scene of anger and brutality ended his praying for me. He read prayers, but I never heard them. His influence over me for good or evil was ended. How could such a man as that preach to us of pity to the weak, of kindness, of charity, of mutual forbearance!

Johnny became a general favorite, a hero among us, and I never saw our teacher meet him without a smile or pleasant word, and I am sure that Johnny had many a treat without knowing the giver; for he often found sweets and cake in his coat pockets in the morning and wondered how they got there.

In spite of the rigid rules, the blank walls, the coarse solid food; in spite of the harsh bully of a man over us and the spy lurking at our heels, our time passed pleasantly. The rest of our masters were kind and considerate. I soon fell into the ways of my associates and although our rules were so precise, I soon became accustomed to them. I studied because I enjoyed it and for another reason. Not a day passed in which I did not often think of Mr. Percy. I would find myself asking, “What would he say if he could see me, if he could know my thoughts, know of my progress, what would he think of me!” I would imagine him in his home, or riding, driving, how he looked and talked. He was my other life and I could but feel from the interest he had shown in me that I was his. I guided myself in all my ways by what I thought he would like and this I now see had a wonderful influence over me. His gentleness, his intelligence, his nobility of character inspired me and had I been inclined to idleness, or injurious habits the remembrance of him would have checked me, for the thought of failing in his anticipation of me gave me pain.

To go back a little. As I awoke the next morning after my arrival, I thought of Mr. Percy and soon I was writing my first letter to him. It was the first real letter that I had ever attempted. My teacher on the plains, had daily instructed me in writing and composition, and had caused me to write some imaginary letters which he corrected. I now wrote as I thought and just as I felt. Mr. Percy had never criticised me in a way to make me feel any embarrassment. So I had no fear, besides it was a labor of love and respect. I told him of my journey, my surprise on seeing the hills, of my arrival and first view of things. The letter was ready on the appearance of the bearer. He took it and made his salaam, while I burdened him with many salaams to all the servants.

The next day there came a letter written on the day of my departure, the first of a great number that I received from Mr. Percy all of which I have kept, forming several volumes that are among my treasures. The letter ran thus:

“My Dear Charles:—

You cannot know how lonesome I have been since you left. This shows how much I think of you and what you are to me. I trust you had a pleasant journey, and arrived safely. I have no doubt you found everything strange, for it must be a new life to you. There will be some things disagreeable to you as there is to every one of us in whatever circumstances we may be placed. The world is far from being perfect, and as we ourselves lack so much, we should always be ready to make allowances for others. The best way is to do the best we can, take the bitter with the sweet, and endure bravely what we cannot cure. I am anxious for the return of the bearer to hear from him about you, and also to receive a letter which I am sure you have sent by him. Wishing you every blessing and success, I am your very desolate and devoted friend,

R. PERCY.”

In a few days another letter came:

“The bearer has returned and I am so glad to hear such a good report of you and of your position. He is ready again and again to give his account of the ‘Chota Sahib,’ and I often see him surrounded by everybody in the compound and know he is telling of his journey up the hills and no doubt much about you. I was this morning behind one of the trees in the garden and overheard him say to the mali, “One day the ‘Chota Sahib’ will become a ‘Barra Sahib,’ so you see there is some hope for you.””

I could see in my mind the twinkle of his eyes as he would have made this remark had I been near him.

The letters came and went regularly two a week. One of the rigid rules was that we were to write home only once a week. I considered this most unjust, especially if the writing did not interfere with my studies. I evaded this rule openly a number of times until I was spoken to by the principal. I then secreted the materials in my pocket and went for a walk to a place sheltered by a rock where I could be unseen and yet see any one coming. This was my writing place, that is for off-day illegal letters during the first year, except in the rains when I sought shelter in a hut built for the watchmen. My trunk on leaving home was well supplied with writing materials and with stamps, so I had no trouble in this respect. But how to get the letters to the post was my first query? I had plenty of money and had given the bearer of our room several tips already, so he was my friend and remained very devoted to me during all the years I was in school. He was a good fellow in himself and would have done me favors without reward.

I always like to speak as well as I can of human nature. It is so defective at the best that we should always keep the better view of it to the front, if possible. Yet, I think my tips had considerable to do with his constant allegiance to my interests. Money is like cement in a wall; it keeps the bricks together. The power of money! What has it not done and what is it not able to do? Nothing on earth seems able to stand before it. Nor honor, nor patriotism, integrity or virtue? Even the doors of heaven seem to be unlocked by it. If not, why the gifts of wicked men who have spent their lives in sin, if they did not have faith that they could purchase a mansion in heaven, as they could buy a ticket for a seat in a theatre?

It was privately arranged with the bearer that on certain days he would find under the sheet at the foot of my bed a letter which he was to take to the post-box on the lower road. So faithfully was this contract kept that my letters never failed to be posted.

To be sure this was a violation of the one of the rules, but what of it? I was not conscious of wrong in evading the rule. They had no right to make it. It interfered with an inalienable natural right of mine, and the right of my best friend to have the letters from me. If they had said, “You must not write during school hours,” I would have seen the sense and justice of it. My instinct rebelled against the rule and I violated it with a clear conscience. I hate injustice and have a contempt for the petty kind, and who has not? Tyranny is one of my devils, man-made, however, for I have never got my faith high enough or so low as to believe in the divine origin of the devil or any devils. They are all so low down, that man must have begotten them.

As to the rule, I took pleasure in breaking it for it was absurd and unjust. If they had posted up in our room “No pillow fights.” I would at once have said, “Right you are,” for a violation of such a rule would cause destruction of property, confusion, and no doubt the devil of quarrel would have been born.

I think that the world, as well as schools, is cursed with too much legislation. Statutes, laws, regulations, restrictions, prohibitions at every turn, are enough to make us all sinners. I often think of that old fable of Eve and the apple, that if the Lord had told her to go out and gather all the apples in the garden and eat as many as she wanted, she would have said that she did not like apples, and never did from the time she was born, they were too acidulated, and she would not have tasted even one; but when she was told not to touch any of them she was bound to break the rule, even if she broke her neck and the necks of all of us, her children. I cannot leave this without noticing a question that has often bothered me, because I am no theologist and yet cannot take everything by faith on the mere say so of man or men—and that is, since the Lord foreknew what Eve would do, why did He place the apples in the garden and then forbid her to take them? Did He not lead her into temptation? That is, if the story about her is true. If, knowing the predilections of my bearer for appropriating my property, and particularly for his dislike of seeing silver and copper coin lying around unused, why should I freely place them about in his sight to excite his desire of reciprocity, in order to tempt him and so bring punishment upon himself and upon his children? Would not I, an educated fore-thinking sahib be more to blame for what I did, than what he a poor ignorant man did? Though I have studied much, and thought a little, yet I am often puzzled by such simple questions.

It is the little things of life that bother us the most. Poor Johnny could take a flogging that raised great welts on his body without a squeal, but he could not kneel to say his prayers when the other boys could see him. I have ridden an elephant, a noble tusker, all day in the forest after tigers and he never flinched, but in the evening when he was hobbled to a tree, one little mosquito buzzing about his ears would set him frantic with rage. It is the mean, petty annoyances that make life a burden, and it is not strange when they become frequent, that many take tickets of-leave for parts unknown.

CHAPTER VII.

From the first I found myself in a very good position in the school. The principal and teachers knew who had sent me and this settled my status with them. And I knew that the principal had received a letter, for Mr. Percy told me that he would write, and that I need have no fear of my reception or treatment. The boys soon learned that the magistrate and collector of Muggerpur was my patron. They also knew that I received two letters a week from him, and so probably concluded that I must be of some account. When I became better acquainted I read some of the letters or paragraphs to some of my intimates, and this had its effect, for the letters were such that any boy or man might be proud of receiving. They might talk of their fathers, and though I never had one I could show them that I was not friendless. These things gave me a standing with the boys. Besides I had a superior outfit, comprising everything that a boy could want in school. My clothes were of the best material and made in the best style, some of them by a “Europe” tailor. I think there is nothing that gives a boy such self respect as good fitting clothes. Some of the boys, and I pitied them, had clothes that could only humiliate them. “The apparel oft proclaims the man,” and I think often greatly helps to make the man. Their trousers were either so long as to drag on the ground or so short as to expose their legs, and their coats hung like bags from their shoulders. How could a boy rigged in such fashion stand erect and be polite?

Then I had two good trunks, not boxes, with spring locks, in which I could keep everything safely and neatly. These trunks were the admiration of my fellows. Later in life I have thought of the value of the impression those trunks made on the minds of my room-mates. The whole outfit of a man is a delineation of character. It has a subjective influence on the man himself and reveals to others the style of the owner. It seems nothing would humiliate me more than to go among strangers with a box or trunk, the hinges broken, the lock gone and the thing bound up with rope. I would certainly make an allowance, as I always have done, for poverty. I have never, since I was taken up by my best friend, been in want of money; yet I have seen so many to whom an ana was of more value than rupees to others, that I have not only a respect, but a profound sympathy for the poor. Still I cannot excuse negligence or laziness in not repairing a hinge or lock to a box, when it would require but little labor or expense.

Boys will be boys the world over, and I never yet saw a boy whose mouth was not open like a young bird’s, ready for something to eat. We were allowed only once a week to make purchases, and the mittai and boxwalas knew the day as well as we did, and never failed to come, and though it was not down in the rules that we should see them we always met them and on time. Many were the talks we had about what we should purchase next time. It soon became known that I was a liberal buyer, and I am proud to say that I was also a liberal giver. This made me many a friend and warded off many a bad cut that I might otherwise have received. There was nothing great in this, no real true feeling or friendship. It proves nothing but this, that boys as well as men know on which side their bread is buttered. How frequently we see men, brainless idiots, without a virtue or grace to recommend them, fawned upon by men of intelligence, of honor or without honor, for the sole and only reason that they have money. Let there be a carcass, though tainted, the vultures will surround it. My instinct was not so dull but that I saw through this personal attachment of some of the boys, not all of them, I am glad to state, for quite a number of them whose pockets were rather pinched, liked me not only for my sweets, but for my own sake. I know this, for years after, when I met them, they would say with a warm grasp of the hand and a kindliness of voice. “Japhet you were kind to me at school.” Such expressions are worth more than Government Stocks and far better than lying, empty inscriptions on a tombstone after one is dead.

But there were ripples now and then. Soon after the term opened the new boys began to make up the different teams, clubs and societies. There was one team rather high, inclusive of the larger boys of what they considered the “first class” and exclusive of any that did not quite come up to the views of their set. In short, they were aristocratic, and I could never understand on what this was based. In looks they were inferior to others; their manners were rude and coarse; in their studies they were below the average, and some of them did not pass their “exams;” yet they presumed to be the set of the whole school. It is not only in school that we see this assumption of superiority, for in life similar scenes are enacted.

I have often been amused by the strutting and parading of men who are in society. I knew one, the son of a London tailor in the civil service, who would have taken oath that he had never seen a goose; another, the son of an engine driver, who I know would have sworn that he really did not know what an engine was, but then he was so ignorant that he would not have known his own father, the engine driver, had he met him in “society.” And of the aristocracy itself, it might not be safe for many of them to look up their pedigrees, for fear of running against a pirate, a ruffian, or a scamp of some kind.

I saw something of this in the manners of the set, but paid little attention to it, as they were mostly very civil to me; probably for the reasons I have given. I was fully occupied, and this is the best preventive of devils being born in one’s self.

One day, as I was seated on a bench behind a bush reading a book, I overheard some one ask, “Why not take Japhet?” “What! that Eurasian?” said the other. This startled me. I had almost forgotten that other name of mine, but this remark revived it. I remained quiet, but as they passed on I saw that he who had repeated the name was one of the four who had been the cause of Johnny’s punishment. Had he been any other I would have felt the slur more than I did. I had no idea what the word meant, as I had concluded it was but a chance nickname that boys often give each other. But now being uttered by this boy, who could not have heard it before, I thought there must be something in me or about me that made the name applicable to me; that there must be a meaning to it, and resolved to say nothing until I saw Mr. Percy again. Yet I could not forget it.

When I went up to the room I surveyed myself in a small mirror I had. My hair was black, but other boys had hair as black as mine; some had red hair; others white; some yellow. I preferred the black, so the question about the hair was settled. Some boys had pale, sickly complexions, others reddish-yellow, and some had faces as brown as mine, so I could see nothing in my face to make me an oddity, such as to be called by a particular name. I stood erect, had well-fitting clothes, and saw nothing out of shape or style, so gave up trying to solve the mystery and went back to my book.

When I have thought of this I have smiled at the simplicity of my ignorance, and wondered why I did not inquire of some one what “Eurasian” meant. One reason was that I was too proud to confess my ignorance; but another and a greater one was a fear that there might be something in it to my detriment, and I would delay the knowledge of it as long as possible. It has been one of the weaknesses of my life to put off the disagreeable as long as possible, though sure it must inevitably come sooner or later.

I think it was the fear of hearing something unpleasant that kept me silent. I concealed my fear, however, and I doubt if any one ever suspected that I had thoughts of the opprobrium cast upon me by this name. I resolved to make up any defect or deformity by my standing, not only in my classes but in our social life, by my proficiency and courtesy, and I think in a great measure I succeeded, for except by a very few, who occasionally in a mocking way tried to give me a snub, the others treated me not only with respect, but considerable deference. One of those who would have crowded me out, if he could have got others to join him, was a great lubberly fellow, coarse in feature and dull in intellect. He was the son of a chaplain on the plains who was compelled to marry the daughter of his charwoman before he left college. This I heard years after, and it was well I did not know it then. It is a wise provision of Providence that we do not know everything about our fellow-mortals. The mother of this boy, as I saw her years after, was an adipose creature, a fine specimen of good living and poor thinking. Once, calling on her husband to make some inquiries, the only remark I heard her make was, “Henry, I think that rooster will make a fine curry one of these days,” referring to a pullet in front of the veranda.

The father was a “so so” sort of man, almost emaciated as if he gave his wife all the fat and nearly all the lean to eat. He had a recipe for a rum punch that he was offering to everybody, so that the profane of his flock called him the “Rum Punch Padri.” He was a good-natured, fidgety man, no sooner commencing anything than he was off to something else. He showed his nature in the performance of the Church service, for I never saw a padri get through with it quicker than he did. He never made a pause, and seemed never to take breath. From the time he commenced to the finish, it was a race between himself and the congregation; he to see how far ahead he could get, and they to keep in sight of him, for they would hardly begin “Good Lord” than he was far away into the middle of the next sentence. This reminds me of what a friend, the surgeon of a man-of-war, told me of their chaplain, one Sunday morning, betting a bottle of champagne that he could get through the service in fifteen minutes. He went in for it and came out with his watch in his hand, throwing off his gown, claimed his champagne, and got it. But the “Rum Punch Padri” was a truthful man, for he frankly said one day that so many services were a great bore. He was not to blame so much for his haste, for he had to make up for his wife’s slowness—and she was so slow! I often thought that if I had such a wife—but I will not say what, as it is not always best to say just what one thinks.

If it is really true that children get their intellect from the mother, and that there never was a smart man who had not a smart mother, one of the problems of the future in step with the progress in other things, will be to give everybody smart mothers; but that cannot happen just now, as what would be done with all the dull women? If it were said to each of them vide Hamlet, “Get thee to a nunnery,” the world would be almost motherless.

After seeing the mother I could make some allowance for that boy. Had I known her in my school days he would have had my fullest sympathies, with such a maternal burden. He could not help being born lazy, tired, dull and snobby, though the latter trait he probably got from his father. I did feel enough for him to aid him in his mathematics and translations. The father was of good family, that is, the society “good,” not in mentality, nor in sense, certainly not in morals. It was a false label as applied to him, or rather a good label attached to a fraudulent article.

I found myself admitted into the highest set, and had not much to complain of. The term passed quickly. I often indulged in reveries of the past, and hoped that in some future time I could gather up the threads of my life and unravel the mystery of my early days, for there was certainly something strange and mysterious, for little Johnny and I were the only boys who never had a father, and it was strange, very strange. He was a modest, quiet and lovable lad, and we often walked and talked together, for he confided in me as an elder brother.

The year closed with our examinations, and I was extremely happy in being able to carry the report to my best of friends that I had passed at the head of my classes. This was not from any superior mental ability, but because I had a special delight in studying. In one of Mr. Percy’s letters he said, “Anything you have to do, do it with all your mind and strength. Don’t dawdle. If you find your mind is tired, rest it by taking up another book, or if you can, take a good run. If at play, engage in it with all your might. Don’t linger over anything, act vigorously, and stop.” This letter was a spur to me, and many a time when I was growing listless, that expression “Don’t dawdle” came up. I did not know really what it meant, and have never looked it up yet. I caught the idea he intended to convey, and used it as my mental whip. Since then I have often used the word upon myself, and would like to have used it upon others, for there are many dawdlers in the world.

We had our final games, our last treats, packed our boxes and were ready to depart. The bearer had come for me. The journey down the hills and on the train was pleasant; but the anticipation of meeting Mr. Percy made me oblivious to almost everything by the way. As the train drew up to the station, I saw him looking eagerly at each passing car. He quickly saw me, and his first words were, “Why, Charles, my boy, I am so glad to see you. How you have grown!”

The carriage was in waiting, and soon we were at home. I cannot tell how the other boys felt when they met their fathers and mothers or friends, but I doubt if any of them were happier than I. If the heart is capable of holding only so much joy, they could not have been happier, for mine was full. The servants were all ready with their profoundest salaams and greetings, and even the dogs, from the big hound to the little terrier, were glad, and he must be hard-hearted indeed, who cannot enjoy the greeting, sincere and honest as it is, of a dog.

Need I tell of the pleasant dinner that followed? The big vases of flowers were not now needed to hide my mistakes. All was as if I were some distinguished guest, not that quite, but a long absent friend. After that came our chat with our coffee in front of the fire. One thing gave me the greatest pleasure, and that was Mr. Percy’s evident satisfaction in my improvement. He never praised or flattered me, though he always spoke kindly. It was not in his words so much that I knew of his pleasure, as in his manner, a feeling that came from his heart, and through his eyes, in his voice, his smile, his gestures; in fact, his satisfaction showed itself in the whole man. He was all or nothing. His whole being was absorbed in what he was, and all his faculties and energy in what he did. He could not profess to believe anything and then act contrary to it. There was no sophistry in his words or deception in his manner. His leading characteristic was sincerity. He often said that he made many mistakes, and he might have added that he was ever ready to acknowledge and rectify them. He had his moods as all should have. At home in his library, investigating some abstruse law case, he was as frigid as marble, and could bear no interruption from friend, servant or dog. Even in this mood he was never out of temper, for I never once saw him surly or cross. He calmly gave the order that he was not to be disturbed and it was obeyed. Once I broke the rule. The door was closed and the bearer acted as Cerberus. A young man had come to see me ride a pony that Mr. Percy had purchased for me. I did not like to wait, for it might be hours before the door would be opened, as it was early morning, and I might miss the chance of a ride. I approached the door and the bearer shook his head, but I gave a timid knock and heard “Come in.” I opened the door just enough to let my voice in and said, “Please may I ride the pony?” “Yes, Charles; good morning,” he answered. I heard the smile in his tone, and said “Thank you.” I think he would have received the bearer with the same courtesy if it had been necessary to interrupt him. He treated the servants with kindness, even the sweeper had respect shown him. He made all allowances for their capacity and position. I remember one morning a neighbor called, and while sitting on the veranda complained of one of his servants who was not able to do this or that, and after he had finished, Mr. Percy quietly asked, “Stoker, how much ability do you expect to get for eight rupees a month?”

I saw him in his court room where he put on his judicial mood, when calm and dignified he listened to all parties alike, showing in his manner that he had taken no side, but was trying to find out the truth that he might act justly. One thing I remember particularly, he would not allow a witness to be bullied or frightened out of his senses by a pleader on the opposite side, as is too often the case. In some courts one might think the one accused of crime had got into the witness stand instead of the dock, from the manner the witness is treated. The way they are often badgered is enough to keep them away from court, and when there, to prevent them telling a straight story, either true or untrue. After calmly hearing a case Mr. Percy would deliberately render his judgment. When many years had passed, and I had an opportunity of inquiring, I found that never was one of his decisions reversed by a higher court.

There was not a more sociable man in the station than he. He was extremely fond of good company. I mean by that, of intelligent men and women of good sense, agreeable manners; who had something worth talking about, who could wield argument even against himself, and I think he was more pleased with a keen opponent than with one who agreed entirely with him. He was fond of wit, and had an abundance of it. I knew that he hated low talk and vulgar anecdotes. No one ever commenced the second time to tell one of those ill-flavored stories in his presence. Once a rather fast youth, who presumed a good deal on his family and position in society, was about to offer one of his unsavory morsels, when Mr. Percy remarked in the tone of a judge roasting a thief, “Mr. Sharp, you had better take your smut to another market.” Another time, after a bachelor’s dinner, a man high up in the service commenced to relate one of his bald old elementary jokes that appeared to have some impropriety in it. Mr. Percy arose and left the room without a word, but every one was conscious of what he thought and felt. The social thermometer fell suddenly a number of degrees, and the story remained untold.

His purity of conversation was one of his characteristics. I cannot recall a word or story of his, that could not have been told in a drawing room to the most refined ladies and gentlemen. He would no sooner let dirty talk come from his lips than he would have taken filth from the gutter and rubbed it upon his own face or thrown it in the faces of his friends. This had a great effect upon me in after life.

One may make allowance for ignorant men who have always lived in an atmosphere of coarseness and vulgarity, for indulging in talk which seems second nature to them, but I never could comprehend how educated men, boasting of their blood and family descent, claiming to be Christians and gentlemen, can indulge in stories and insinuations that are most repulsive to all but those whose minds gloat and fatten upon salacious garbage.

Mr. Percy could become angry, but always with a reason and a purpose, yet at times, under great provocation, he could be as cool as if nothing had happened. He was once making an experiment in trying to grow seedless oranges. There were only half a dozen fruit on the tree, and while they were ripening he never missed seeing them several times a day, and every one about the place knew his interest in them. The malies were ordered to watch them night and day. One morning all were gone. The malies were instantly summoned. They declared that their eyes had been upon the oranges every minute; they would sooner have plucked out their eyes than to have had the fruit disappear. He knew that one or all of them were guilty, as it was impossible for any one else to have taken the fruit without their knowing it. They were all ordered to the veranda, and the bearer was told to bring the galvanic battery, or bijli ka bockus, as they called it. A large mirror was placed in front of the box. They were told to look into the mirror and to take hold of the handles of the battery and the oranges would be seen in the eyes of the thief. They all exclaimed that the idea was an excellent one. Three of them stood the test bravely, receiving the shocks and looking with eyes wide open into the mirror. The fourth, as he took hold, when the current was increased, cried out that he was dying, and tightly closed his eyes, declaring that the light was so bright that he could not open them. “All right,” said Mr. Percy, “if we cannot see the oranges in his eyes we will look into his house,” and every one went to see the search. Sure enough, the oranges were found hidden in the man’s hut. Mr. Percy did not dismiss the man or even utter a word of reproach. His fellow servants, however, did not let the matter rest, as they often asked him what he thought of the bijli ka bockus. There was no more fruit stolen after that. The report got abroad in the bazar, and probably there were but few in the city who did not hear of the Barra Sahib’s wonderful instrument for detecting a thief.

Once he had purchased a number of sheep to add to his flock. A few mornings after, looking them over, he asked the shepherd where he got those strange sheep. “Why,” said the man, “they are the very sheep his honor bought.” Mr. Percy suggested, “They are very much changed,” and examining them closely, exclaimed, “They have been sheared!” “Sheared!” said the man, in utter astonishment, “is his honor’s servant such a dog as that, to let any one shear the sheep while I am the shepherd?” “Very well,” said Mr. Percy, “put the sheep in the yard and feed them.” He then turned to me and said that we would take our morning ride, as my pony and his horse were waiting.

We rode off to one of the villages near which the sheep had been pastured. Calling the zemindar or head man he asked him if there was any wool in the village, as he wanted some immediately. The zemindar replied that the day previous he had seen one of the villagers carrying some wool to his house, so bidding him show us the place we followed. The man was called and told to bring out all the wool he had, which was quite a load for him. Mr. Percy said it was just the kind of wool he wanted, and told the man to bring it with him at once. He asked the zemindar to come also.

We returned at a walk with the men at our heels. Mr. Percy was so quiet and deliberate that no one would have suspected the purport of this wool gathering. On reaching the sheep-fold the shepherd appeared at the gate. With a glance he took in the whole situation, the zemindar, the purchaser and the wool itself. He stood trembling from head to foot. Mr. Percy sat on his horse silently looking at him for some moments, as it seemed to me, then calling the shepherd by name, he said, “You tell that lying dog of a servant who takes care of my sheep that if he has any more wool to sell that I would like to buy it.”

There was not a coarse or improper word used. There was anger, but it was of that slow, intense, deliberate kind that made every word cut with a keen, sarcastic edge, or fall like a blow upon the man until he could stand no longer, but fell crouching before us and begged that the sahib would strike him, kill him, but not say anything more. I thought that I would have rather taken any number of lashings than those reproachful words. Mr. Percy turned without another word to him, after he had thrown himself upon the ground. He inquired of the man how much he had paid for the wool, and calling the bearer told him to pay that amount and a rupee besides, and suggested that he buy no more wool of the shepherds. He also told the bearer to give the zemindar some fruit for his children, and our morning’s adventure was ended.

I asked him if he was going to dismiss the shepherd. “O, no,” said he, “I might get a worse thief, and he will never shear the sheep again.” He never did, and was one of the most faithful servants ever afterward.

I have known many sahibs since then, and doubt if they would have let such a man off so easily. Most of them, in their wrath, would have thrashed him with a horse whip, or others would have sent him to jail. Though Mr. Percy had his riding whip in his hand, he did not even raise it, and he would no more have struck the man than he would have struck me. He abhorred that brutal custom of flogging the natives, or throwing boots, or anything convenient, at their heads, so frequent among the high born sahib log.

He always made allowances for the circumstances of the natives. Once, referring to the ignorance, poverty and low wages of the people, he said: “If I was so hard pressed as they are, I am afraid I might do a little stealing myself.” He was very kind to the poor, and they all knew him as their friend.

Early on each Sunday morning, there would be a crowd of the lame, blind, diseased, old, decrepit women and mothers with sickly, starved children, in our compound. As soon as we had taken our tea, which was very early, he would say: “Now, Charles, let us go to our religious service. We will not say, ‘Let us sing, or let us pray,’ but we will worship God in giving something to His poor.” So we would go out, he, with his bag of rupees, anas and pice, which he had ready, and each of the Lord’s poor would come up to get their share. He never trusted this to the servants. This was his personal service unto God, and he performed it devoutly as if he felt God himself was there seeing it all, and I have no doubt He was.

CHAPTER VIII.

I have in my life attended many religious services, but never one that impressed me of so much good as those to the poor in our compound. This service was not restricted to Sunday, as is too often the case in religious matters, as if God was shut up in the churches and He only did business one day in the week.

Scarcely a day passed but some came to him for assistance of some kind, and very few went away without a token of his kindness. He was cautious in giving, yet he very often gave when he was not quite satisfied, saying: “I would rather take the chance of giving to twenty undeserving, than to fail once in doing right to any one. The deceivers hurt themselves more than any loss to me. I will do the best I can, and the settlement at last will be all right.” Then he added, “Charles, my boy, always remember this, a man who does a mean act always hurts himself more than anybody else. It may not seem so at the time, but sooner or later in this life, or the life to come, every wrong act will rebound upon the doer like a boomerang, and this will make an eternal punishment. This is one of God’s beneficent and inexorable laws, and I do not believe that He will or that He can change it. Whatever a man sows that shall he reap, is true, not because it is in the Bible, but because it is in harmony with the universal law of cause and effect, in nature, and also in morals.”

He often indulged in such reflections. It was his indirect way of appealing to my reason, in giving me suggestions and advice.

I have said that he was kind to the poor. He took a great interest in establishing hospitals and dispensaries in the district, and when the Government allowance for medicines was not sufficient, he supplied this from his own funds. He always kept a stock of medicines on hand and various medical works, which he had well studied, so that he was quite a doctor. For some of the villages remote from the dispensaries, he would send medicines for free distribution to some prominent native, usually a man in Government service, with full directions as to the use of them.

One day a native from one of these villages came to ask for a certain kind of medicine. He was asked how he knew of the medicine, and he answered that he had bought some of the Tahsildar sahib, and that he had gone to him for another bottle, but the Tahsildar sahib had demanded two rupees for it, and he had paid only one before, so he had come to the Barra Sahib. Mr. Percy told him that it was not possible that he was telling the truth in saying that he had bought the medicine. The man declared that he had told the truth. Mr. Percy, turning to me, said, “Well, Charles, we have some business in hand, and you must help me out. I believe this fellow, but his say so will not be sufficient proof against the Tahsildar. If we cannot get up a scheme to entrap this fraud we had better leave the country at once.” Ram Singh stood waiting very attentively, not understanding anything that we said. For a few minutes Mr. Percy sat with an elbow on each arm of his chair, with his hands in front of him, the tips of the fingers of one hand touching the tips of the other, while he looked away off, as if he could see help coming from a distance. This was often his attitude when engaged in deep thought. “I have it, I have it!” he exclaimed, and going into his library, returned with a ten-rupee note. “Now,” said he, “I will write something in Greek, and sign it with my initials, and you can put on it some writing with your name.” When he had finished, he handed the note to me, and as I turned to go to the other side of the table, there sat “Cockear” before me. This was a terrier always waiting and watching. We called him Cockear because his right ear always stood erect, or rather, leaned forward, while his left ear always hung down at the side of his head, giving him a most comical appearance. I had tried to make sketches of this dog, and on the impulse of the moment, with him before me, watching intently, as if he had some interest in the business in hand, I got a sketch of his head, particularly that ear of his, and wrote Charles in front, and Japhet after it, with “his” above and “mark” under the sketch.

A few days previous a soldier had come to sign some papers before the magistrate and I noticed he signed in this way with his mark. I was greatly surprised that a good looking European was unable to write his name, so I got the hint from the way he signed the paper. As I handed the note to Mr. Percy he exclaimed “Excellent! excellent! just the thing, couldn’t be better.” He sent for the villager and when he appeared he said, “Ram Singh, you know I am your friend, your bhai, brother.” “Certainly Sahib, I know it, for didn’t you come out and help me when I was in great trouble and came very near losing my fields.” “Now Ram Singh do you think you can do just as I tell you without a mistake?” “Certainly Sahib, if I have to die for it.” Said Mr. Percy, “Here is a ten-rupee note, now listen with both your ears for you must do just as I tell you.” “Without any doubt Sahib.” “You take this note, go back to your village and to-morrow morning, take two men, your friends with you, show them the note and then you go to the Tahsildar and buy a bottle of the medicine, give him the note and get eight rupees from him, do this so that your two friends can see the whole transaction and prove by them that you bought the medicine.”

Ram Singh was asked to repeat the instructions several times to show that he thoroughly understood them. And now said Mr. Percy “Don’t you gossip along the road with any one about this matter and don’t say a word about this to your wife for you know how the women chatter.” “Yes, yes, I know it too well,” he replied with a knowing look, for his wife’s free tongue had caused the trouble about the fields, and the Sahib had made a good point of it. “After you get the medicine, bring the bottle and the eight rupees and your two friends straight to me as quickly as you can, for I will be waiting for you.” Saying “very good, Sahib, it shall be just as your Honor has commanded,” he made his salaam and departed.

I was greatly interested in the affair, because I was admitted as a partner, a junior one to be sure, yet still a partner. I questioned if Ram Singh would do as he was told. “No doubt of it,” said Mr. Percy. “I know Ram Singh well, and he will do his part to the very letter just as I told him. That is the pleasure in dealing with these natives, if they have entire confidence in you, they have no minds of their own when in your service and never stop to reason, but do just as they are told. This is rather inconvenient at times. Once I gave a darzi some cloth and an old pair of trousers for a pattern and told him to make a pair just like the old ones, but to my dismay he put in all the patches and darns.”

I was considerably excited over our plot and showed it by my restlessness. “Charles, Charles,” said Mr. Percy, “You are too agitated. I am afraid you would never do for a judge.”

As that day was some joogly poogly of a holiday, Mr. Percy had more leisure than usual and various were our talks and amusements, as if he was living over one of his boyhood days. Suddenly changing our conversation he said, “Your letters each week were so different from each other, so much so that I could not help noticing it, why was it?” Then I told him, that by a rule we were allowed to write only one letter a week, on Saturday, and these were delivered to the principal who read them before they were sent; that when writing these regulation letters I was not free to write just what I thought but all the time I was writing I could think only of what the principal might say or criticise. “I see, I see,” said he. Then I told him of my little trick about the other letters, of my writing them out by the rock and of my compact with the bearer to post them. With a pleased smile, as if he remembered he had once been a boy himself, he replied: “Charles I am afraid you are somewhat of a rogue after all.” I could not help judging from his manner that if he thought I was a rogue I was a very good kind of one, for he often spoke of his delight in those stolen letters.

The morning came and with it, Ram Singh, his two friends, the bottle of medicine and the eight rupees. So far so good. He was told to keep the empty bottle and the filled bottle he had just bought, by him, and that he should go out and the bearer would give food for himself and his friends, but to say not a word about the business to any one. A sowar or mounted messenger was sent in haste to order the Tahsildar to bring all the money he had collected for some village purposes, all the medicine in hand, as Mr. Percy wished to examine them, and the full list of all those to whom he had given medicine.

A few hours afterward, came dressed for the occasion, the Tahsildar, with the haughty air of one honored by being sent for to meet the Barra Sahib. He was shown into the library. After the usual fulsome greetings, the Tahsildar, radiant with pleasure, the village accounts were examined and the money handed over. I was standing by and at once saw our old friend the ten-rupee note. To restrain my expression of surprise, I put my hand on my mouth as if I had suddenly bit my tongue and went to another part of the room. I felt certain that I was not fit to be a judge as I could not keep a straight face. I quickly returned, Mr. Percy counting the money took up our note, saying to the Tahsildar “This is a strange looking note, can it be a good one?” “Without doubt,” said the Tahsildar, “it must be a good one.” “We will have to trace it,” replied Mr. Percy, while turning it over and holding it up towards the light. “Where did you get it?” he inquired, and the Tahsildar quickly answered, “I am sure I got it of one Ram Singh of the village of Futtypur.” “How did you come to get it?”

“In this way,” and the Tahsildar hesitated. “The man came to buy some cloth, and got me to change the note for him, which I did.” “Very good,” said Mr. Percy; “we will see about this later.”

The medicines were all examined, and then the list of those to whom donations had been made. Mr. Percy, looking over the list, quietly said, “You gave away all these; that is, I mean, were none sold?” “Allah forbid!” exclaimed the Tahsildar. “How could it be possible when his honor, out of his distinguished generosity, had provided medicine to be given to the poor, that his honor’s slave should be such a dog as to sell any of the medicines?”

I looked over the list, but Ram Singh’s name was not there. Mr. Percy went out of the room for a moment, and soon after he returned, in came Ram Singh with his two friends. As junior partner, I did my part in looking on, especially watching the face of the Tahsildar. At the appearance of Ram Singh he surely felt that there was mischief brewing, for he scowled and fairly looked daggers at the man.

“Now, Ram Singh,” inquired Mr. Percy, “did you ever get any medicine of the Tahsildar sahib?”

“O yes, I got a bottle.”

“When?” quickly asked Mr. Percy.

“It was on the last day of the Ram nila mela, when the people were coming from the pooja.”

“He gave you some?”

“No, no. I paid a rupee for it; and here is the empty bottle.”

“Ram Singh!” said Mr. Percy, very sternly. “Do you expect me to believe that you went and paid the Tahsildar sahib a rupee for a little bottle of medicine, when you are so poor that you cannot get food enough to eat?”

“He is lying,” broke in the Tahsildar, catching at this straw, “they are all liars, these spawn of Shaitan!”

“Ram Singh,” continued Mr. Percy, with a grave voice, “I want to know where you got that rupee.”

“I sold some haldi to the poojawalas; a few pice worth to one, and a few anas worth to another, until I got the rupee.”

“Yes,” said Mr. Percy, “and then you wasted it on a bottle of medicine.”

“Wasted! wasted, sahib! wasted, when my only boy, the light of my eyes, the heart of my heart, was ill, and I was afraid he was dying! Had he died, where would I have been? My honor, my house, my all! How could I think of the loss of a rupee, even if it was the last one I should ever see?”

“It is well,” said Mr. Percy; “but did you ever get any more medicine?”

“Yes,” he replied, “this morning I got another bottle, and here it is,” holding it up.

“And this was given to you?” asked Mr. Percy.

“No, no! I gave two rupees for this one.”

“Ram Singh!” said Mr. Percy, more sternly than before, “I don’t want any falsehoods about this. You said you once paid one rupee when it was all you had, and now you dare to tell me that you have gone and paid two rupees?”

“Your honor!” exclaimed the Tahsildar, “he is lying, and I would not listen to him any more; where could he, a beggar get two rupees?”

“Yes, sahib,” put in Ram Singh, “it is a true thing; for these brothers of mine went with me and saw me get the medicine, and they know I tell the truth.”

“We will hear them,” said Mr. Percy. “What do you know about it?” They were all standing in a row in front of us, directly facing the Tahsildar, with the palms of their hands together, as is the custom. Said the elder of them, “Ram Singh came to us just as light appeared this morning, and showed us a ten-rupee note, saying that he was going to the Tahsildar sahib, at Sahib Gunge, to buy some medicine, and wanted us to go with him, as he said he was afraid of being robbed, or that the Tahsildar sahib might arrest him for having so much money; so we went with him and saw him give the note, and get the bottle of medicine and eight rupees from the Tahsildar sahib. That is all I know about it.”

“Another lie! they are all of a kind, and have made up this story together, to destroy my honor,” put in the Tahsildar.

“Now, Ram Singh,” said Mr. Percy, “I want to know about this; where did you get that ten-rupee note?” And Ram Singh, greatly surprised, not seeing the line of investigation, exclaimed, “Barra Sahib! Did I not come to you yesterday for some medicine, and from your honor’s kind heart did you not give me a ten-rupee note?”

“Is this it?” inquired Mr. Percy, showing him the note.

“The very one,” he exclaimed, “for there is the dog’s head. This morning when we were on the road, where no one could see us, I took the note out of my kamarbund and showed it to my two brothers, and I told them that I saw the Chota Sahib make that dog’s head while I stood at the Barra Sahib’s table.”

“Charles,” asked Mr. Percy, “Chota Sahib, are you in this conspiracy too? Let us hear from you; the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth!” as sternly as if I was a culprit, yet with a twinkle in his eye that I well understood. “Did you ever see this note before?” he asked. “Yes,” I replied, “I saw it in this room yesterday. Ram Singh was here, and Cockear was sitting in front while I made the sketch. I cannot tell a lie, sir. That is my mark. I did it with my little—pen.” I was about to say hatchet, as I had just read the story of George Washington. I also added, “These Greek words are yours, and there are your initials.” “Yes,” said Mr. Percy, “you are correct. The only witness yet remaining is the dog, so we will call him,” and at a whistle, there he was before us, all alive, trembling with eagerness, with that ear of his cocked up, as if waiting to hear us say, “Rats!”

In the whole of this investigation Cockear came as the climax, and his action showed that he was conscious of his importance in the affair. The whole scene was so ludicrous that we, Mr. Percy and all, even Cockear in his way, burst out laughing, except the discomfited Tahsildar, who responded with more of a savage grin than anything else.

Assuming his magisterial air again, Mr. Percy said, “Now, Tahsildar sahib, we will hear what you have to say.” This man, so bold when he entered the room, cowered in his chair. He seemed whipped; completely used up. He began, “Your Honor!” and hesitated. “If it had depended on the testimony of these miserable wretches I would never have believed myself guilty of such a mean act, but as the Chota Sahib’s picture of the dog and your signature on the note are against me, I must believe that I did this thing; it must be my kismet, though I cannot understand how I came to be caught in this net of Shaitan.” “You plead guilty, then?” asked Mr. Percy. “Your Honor have mercy upon me, for it was Shaitan that has beguiled me.”

After a pause Mr. Percy began, “Tahsildar!” he dropped the sahib, “I had all confidence in you, and trusted you implicitly. You have robbed the poor; you have deceived me; you came here boldly and lied to me, and have wronged these poor men in trying to make them out as false witnesses. Why, even the dog is more honorable and truthful than you are. An officer of the government, you are no better than a common liar, or a low down bazar sneak thief. I shall never trust or believe you again.”

As he went on Mr. Percy’s wrath increased, and he gave the Tahsildar such a scoring that made him tremble. Mr. Percy had taken a large round black ruler in his hand, and when firing off one of his severest shots at the Tahsildar, he brought the ruler down upon the table with such force that it broke into a number of pieces. This so increased the fright of the Tahsildar that he threw himself upon the floor and grasped Mr. Percy’s feet. Cockear, taking him for some kind of game, went for the crouching suppliant in dead earnest. This rather spoiled the judicial aspect of the scene. The bearer took away the dog, and the man was ordered to his seat.

“One word more,” said Mr. Percy, “Don’t you ever in any way interfere with these men. They have done just what I told them to do.” Then turning to the men, “Ram Singh, if this Tahsildar ever troubles you in the least, let me know it and I will have him put in jail as a thief. Here are the rupees you paid for the medicine and there is another bottle besides. I am much pleased with what you have done. You can go now,” and out they went, followed by the Tahsildar who made a most obeisant salaam. I doubt if in all his life he was as glad to escape from anything as he was from Mr. Percy’s withering scorn.

This ended, Mr. Percy said, “Now, Charles, I think we have had circus enough for one day, we will take a walk in the garden.” Several times he referred to the scenes in “our court,” as he styled it. The crash of that ruler, the quaking fright, and the crouching of the Tahsildar and Cockear going for him was so ludicrous, that he laughed till the tears came.

I said he was angry. I never again saw him show his indignation as on that day, and had he not cause for it then? Yet he did not use one improper word, nothing but what his mother might have heard, and I think had she been present she would have said “Robert, you are too good, you should not talk to such a man, rather take the ruler to him, or beat him out of the house with your slipper.”

CHAPTER IX.

In the evening I was amused at a little incident. We were taking our coffee after dinner in front of the fire in the drawing room. Cockear was crouched on the rug before us watching every motion and with that ear of his erect as usual. Said Mr. Percy, “Cockear! you honest fellow, come to me,” and with a spring the dog was on Mr. Percy’s lap. Mr. Percy looking into his bright beautiful eyes said, “Cockear, I believe you have a soul and are immortal. I know you would talk to me if only that mouth of yours was of a different shape, but I will say in that upright ear of yours that you are one of the best witnesses I ever had. I wish the witnesses in my court were only half, or even one-quarter as truthful as you are.”

Then we had another talk and laugh over the outcome of our scheme and the ludicrous incidents in it. Then he fell to talking over the deliberate falsehoods of the natives.

“I often wonder that there is any justice to any one, for who can decide, even with the utmost care what is truth when there is so much falsehood and perjury on both sides? I often think of Pilate and can sympathize with him when he asked “What is truth?” I have a case of murder in court. A score or more of Muhamedans swear on the Koran that the man is guilty, and as many Hindus swear by the water of the Ganges that the man is innocent. What am I to do? I have sometimes thought in such a case I might as well count the flies on the punkah over my head, and if the number be even, let the accused go free, if odd, sentence him to be hung. And I think the decision by the flies would be as just as by the evidence of the witnesses.

“The natives all acknowledge this habit of lying and perjury and seem to think nothing of it, take it as a matter of course. Why, I am told that the groups of trees in my cutchery compound are called two ana trees, four ana trees and so on up to two rupees, according to the size of the bribes the witnesses are willing to take; so when the parties in court want witnesses, they go to the different trees in proportion to their ability to pay and get what they desire.

“Some of these natives talk of representative government. Who would be the representatives? What would they represent? As a whole people they have no country. I never yet saw a patriot among all I have met. They have not the remotest idea of what that word means, what the love of country is. If they fight, it is because they are hired to do so for the sake of plunder, or to kill those who oppose their wishes, but they would never fight and die as patriots for the love of their country; and those who talk the most, would be the last to take up arms. If we were to leave the country, within a month all would be confusion. They would be robbing each other and cutting one another’s throats worse than pirates. The more educated know this, and while they want to become the rulers, they would like us to remain and be their protectors. It is the jealousy of the different tribes that is the greatest strength of the English in India. They cannot trust each other for they know too well what would happen if left to themselves. Just think of it. Here is this Tahsildar, from one of their old best families, as they would say, a devout Muhamedan, a man honored by Government with a good position, receiving a large salary, and yet for a paltry rupee or two he stole my medicine, robbed the poor of what I had given them, and then deliberately lied about it. Why, I would sooner trust you, Cockear, with my dinner than such a man, wouldn’t I?” and Cockear put up his paw and nodded his head as if to say: “You are right again, my master.”

Mr. Percy continued, “I was once in a district where there was a famine; thousands of people were starving. At the best, we had not funds sufficient to give them half enough to eat of the coarsest food. There was nothing for them to gather, not even grass, for the earth was as hard and dry as a brick. The people died in the villages, on the roads, under the trees, not from any disease but from starvation. Every day we sent out men to bury the dead—skeletons—on which there was nothing for even the jackals to eat. It was a horrid time. I could scarcely eat my own food for thinking of the poor wretches dying in want of such food as was given to my dogs and horses. The few Europeans could not be everywhere in the district and watch everything, so we had to use our subordinates. In a very large village we put the Tahsildar in charge. He reported to us the number to be fed, and we supplied him with funds and gave him orders to purchase and distribute so much food each day. He reported every day that he had done so. I rode out one morning very early and found some food cooked, the fires all out, and the distribution ready to begin. I had the food weighed and found it was only half the allowance ordered, and that he had daily reported. I ordered the fires to be relighted and the proper amount of food to be cooked, and saw to the feeding of the people myself, twenty-two hundred of them, and then what they did get was only half of what they needed, a couple of chupatties and a little dhal, to last them for twenty-four hours; but it was all we could give them. This was for that day; but what if I had not been there, or what of the days when no European was present? We were as positive as we could be that this Tahsildar was making money out of the famine fund; but what could we do? He received the money, he bought the food, saw to the distribution and made out his own reports. He could have bought up any number of lying witnesses to prove that he was honest, and we had none to prove him otherwise. Shortly after the famine he made a grand wedding for one of his children that cost him over ten thousand rupees, and it was the common talk among the natives that he got this money from the famine relief fund.

“Such a man, to rob the food from the mouths of starving children! He would be mean enough to take the winding-sheet from the corpse of his grandmother if he could sell it for a few anas! He was probably the best native in the district. What then were the rest? And they talk of giving such men power to make laws and govern India! If a man like him, in such a position, would be guilty of such contemptibly mean crimes, what might be expected of men receiving only a few rupees a month? Give me an honest dog every time, rather than such a man,” and Cockear nodded again very emphatically, as if saying, “There is no mistake in that.” Thus Mr. Percy talked, for this was one of his moods. He seemed to be thinking aloud. He was so just and kind himself toward the natives, though they often abused his confidence, that when he talked of their dishonesty and meanness to each other he always grew warm. Why shouldn’t he?

He had great sympathy for the poorer natives, since he knew so much of the extortions and tyranny of the richer classes.

To have some little part in the conversation I told the story of that frightful zemindar who seized the very rags of the poor people in that never to be forgotten court from which I had escaped; and of the cruel robbery of the man of his handful of fish that he had caught for his starving old mother. How vividly that scene came up before me.

“Yes,” said Mr. Percy, “and very likely that same zemindar would be called before some wandering parliamentary committee to give his advice about relieving the poverty of the people of India. He could tell them more of how to relieve them of their property.”

As I had no experience and little knowledge of these subjects I could not say much; so both Cockear and I were good listeners, as we frequently had such conversations, that is, Mr. Percy talked while we listened. Some Frenchman has said that there is a large class of people, including nearly everybody, who have not sense enough to talk, nor sense enough to keep still. Had he seen the dog and me, I am sure he would have made a special class for us.

I need not say that the days passed quickly, and the time was coming for me to return to school. I scarcely allowed myself to think of leaving Mr. Percy and his pleasant home. When I did so, a choking lump would come into my throat and a pain into my heart that brought tears to my eyes. What boy has not felt this? I hardly dared hint at my feeling, but one day when Mr. Percy suggested some preparation for going, I said I was sorry to leave. “Yes, Charles, so am I sorry to have you go. But I wish you to make a man of yourself, and this can be done only by discipline of the mind and the acquisition of knowledge, and the best place for this is in school. Manly strength comes from exercise of the body, mental strength from using the mind, and both should go together. If you neglect the culture of both, except to ornament the body with clothes, you become a fop or swell. If you improve the body only, you are simply a muscular animal or strong brute. Neglect the body and only cultivate the mind, and you may become a mental phenomenon, a dyspeptic growler. A trained mind in a trained body, is the way to put it; otherwise there is incongruity, as much as to speak of cleanly people living in a filthy house or filthy people living in a clean house. I said discipline of mind. This comes by thinking for yourself, reasoning with intense thought, and retaining what you learn. A man mentally strong is not the one who simply knows the most, but the one who has power to think, to reason, grasp facts, compare them and make conclusions. The most of the educated natives have acquired knowledge by memory, to the neglect of their reasoning faculties, and are like trained parrots. One with disciplined reasoning faculties has always the advantage over the one who is only a memorizer. The former is able to use the material he may find in his way, while the other has the materials but is unable to use them. Therefore get discipline, reasoning power first of all, and the other will naturally follow. You must labor with your mind as with the body. You may come across the story of the man who began by lifting the calf, and continued it daily, so that when the calf became an ox he could lift it as well. Strength of mind is acquired by constant study, mental lifting. The boy who at first lifts the light weight of the multiplication table and goes on lifting something heavier each day, will find at length no difficulty in grappling with Newton’s Principia. The training of either mind or body should not be by spurts or sudden starts. You cannot violate the laws of growth, either mental or physical, and be a really well developed man, any more than you can violate God’s natural or moral laws six days of the week and expect to make up for it on the seventh day. I do not want you to be a seventh-day sort of a man, but to be real and true every day and every hour you live.”

With such remarks as these he grew more and more in earnest. “And now,” said he, “I wish to talk to you from my inner soul, and I want to make an impression that may never leave you as long as you live.”

I will not try to give his words. I thought so much of what he meant that I did not remember the phrases he used. He talked to me of uncleanness of thought in which is the root of all evil, of uncleanliness of speech, of uncleanliness in deed. He told me of things that made cold chills rush through me and gave me such a fright of impurity that I think this talk was the greatest blessing of my life. He warned me against improper associates. “If you cannot get good company, it were better to be alone. If a boy makes any improper suggestion or indulges in improper talk, check him at once, show him the evil of it, persuade him, do him good in every way, but if he will not desist, run from him as if from a leper or from fire, and keep away from him as you would from a foul or poisonous thing. Better to throw yourself into the filth of the gutter than to allow yourself or any one to throw filth on your mind. You can wash your body or your clothes, but never wash your mind. The stains that are made upon it can never be erased. They are more indelibly engraved on the memory than any engraving on the hardest substance known. Memory is God’s judgment-day book, or rather men’s, for each one keeps his own daily and eternal record, and this he will take with him when he departs this life, and he will possess it, for it is a part of his soul, and carry it with him for ever; and this record will be a constant and perpetual witness for or against himself and make his heaven or his hell. This record is as indestructible as the soul itself; nothing of it can be lost, for nothing in the memory can ever be forgotten. Man is the architect of his own fortune, not only in this life, but for the life to come. Now Charles, I have told you all this as a sacred duty, and I beg of you in the fear of God, and for the love and regard you have for me, remember and obey these things.”

How well do I remember this. We had come into the garden and taken our seats on one of the benches. He took one of my hands in each of his and looking me in the eyes he talked with such warmth and tenderness as if his soul was in every word. And I am sure it was. Had I been his own son, and he upon his death-bed looking into eternity and giving me his last parting words, he could not have expressed himself with more solicitude and loving tenderness. How often in my life have I thanked God for such a wise friend and those words that have kept me from falling into many a snare and from getting many a stain and wound.

There are many thousands—bishops, priests, parsons et id omne genus, who are wasting their lives in trying to reconstruct the old hardened sinners. If they were to spend four-fifths of their time in warning the children and youth against vices and in showing them the horrid nature of the pitfalls of sin, in a few generations there would be no old sinners to worry about. They leave the young trees to grow all gnarled and twisted and then sputter about trying to convert them into straight trees. I have heard many a sermon, but all of them put together never had such a good effect upon my life as that half-hour’s earnest talk in the garden.

But as I am not well up in church therapeutics, my suggestions may be scorned by the last downy-cheeked fledgling of a priest who has just donned his church coat. Yet I cannot help thinking my own honest thoughts.

Did we have any such instructions in school? None whatever. The course of study was prepared by Government. It was so full and rigid that very few of the boys could spare time to read a book or paper. We were much like the poor geese of Strasburg. Each goose is nailed up in a box so that it cannot stand up or move, with its head and neck out at one end of the box. A number of times during the day and night, men go through the lines each with a syringe filled with chopped feed which is injected down the throats of the geese, willy nilly, and thus, enlarged livers are produced for the celebrated pâté de foie gras.

We human geese were stuffed and crammed by our teachers. It was “one demnition grind,” quoting Mr. Mantalini. There was no physiology or hygienic morals in the course and no time to give attention to such subjects.

It is true, we had our religious exercises. We memorized the creeds and catechism; but as they were compulsory and often given us to learn or repeat as a punishment, we got to rattling them off as we did the multiplication table or rules of grammar. We certainly neither understood them or fell in love with them. We had our daily religious service, as a matter of course, just as we had our morning wash, by rule and order, and as the water was often icy cold, so was the other. In fact all the religious ceremonies were as formal, exact and regular as if the motive power was a steam engine.

After the plain talk given me by Mr. Percy, I thought what a blessing it would be if all the boys could have heard him, or if our burly principal or some of the teachers could have given us some instruction about keeping our minds and bodies morally pure and clean, rather than cram us continually with mathematics, grammar, creeds and psalms. As for the good these latter did us, they might as well have been written on a roll of paper and placed in a Tibetan prayer-wheel, and each boy to give it a turn as he passed. However, I may be an old fool, as these are the thoughts of my later years.

CHAPTER X.

The time of my departure was coming. I scarcely need say that I had a new outfit. The darzies were set to work and various articles were purchased until the boxes were full to bursting. The day before my departure a large basket was filled, the center piece a huge fruit cake, surrounded by lesser cakes and the spaces filled with sweets. When this was full to the top, the sight of it was enough to gladden the mouths of any number of boys. Mr. Percy, no doubt, recalling his boyhood days as if he knew what was coming, said, “Charles, I think the boys will be glad to see you again.” And they were. We had many a feast out of that basket. We appointed a catering committee to see to the distribution and to prolong our stock. I could not take the credit to myself and omit Mr. Percy, so I told them that he had sent the basket for them as well as for me, and I think they were better boys for knowing they had such a friend. He, I think, would have called this one of his religious services. And why not?

As I had plenty of money to buy all I wanted on our market day, I reserved most of my share of the basket for little Johnny, the only child of the widow, who, like me, never had a father, and except his poor mother, scarcely a friend. Though he was not of our higher class society, I invited him to our treats, and as it was my basket, and I was somewhat master of the situation, no one, except two or three snobs, made objection to his coming.

My leaving home was quite an event, like the departure of some honored guest. All showed their love and respect not for myself alone, but on account of the friendship Mr. Percy had for me. He took me to the station in his carriage, and as the train was starting grasped me by the hand and with tears in his eyes said, “God bless you Charles. Be studious; be true; be clean in thought, in word, and deed,” and he stood watching until the train was out of sight.

The years passed pleasantly though monotonously. We boys had our little tiffs as men have their big ones. Toward the close of the year we put up a big calendar of our own on the wall of our room, and in the evening, at the close of each day, a boy in turn marked off the date with a long black pencil, and we all joined in a song composed by our poet for the occasion. Any one who has never been a boy at school can smile at this if he pleases. It was our way of keeping track of time.

I had a good supply of new books, and to get time to read them, finished my lessons as quickly as possible. My two letters a week came as regularly as the dates on our calendar. The delight I had in those just received, and the anticipation of those coming, was to me a great source of pleasure. And I had mine to write. Shortly after the term opened, the principal, meeting me, said: “Master Japhet, you need not send your letters to me any more for me to read. Seal them and put them in the post-box, and you can write as many as you wish.” He did not say why, for he never gave a reason for anything, as his word was law, he was law unto himself, and to all the rest of us, for that matter. But I knew the wherefore of it, that it was one of Mr. Percy’s surprises, as it was characteristic of him to give surprises of pleasure without even hinting about them. I could well say: “Nothing like having a friend at Court.” I left our dignified governor with almost a bound of delight, thinking I could write just as I felt, the thoughts of my heart without a spy over me.

The year closed, and we were all soon homeward bound again.

I need not tell who met me or how I was received. We had our morning rides, our evening drives, our walks, our talks, our cozy dinners and those blessed after-dinner coffee chats in front of the fire in the drawing room, for my vacations always occurred in the cold seasons, when it was pleasant to have a fire. Then we three enjoyed ourselves. I mean by three, Mr. Percy, Cockear and myself, for Cockear always made one of our company. He sat in front of us, on the rug, with that ear of his always erect, listening intently to all that was said, and frequently bowing assent to any good point that he thought we had made. And sometime, somewhere in the great beyond, he may be able to tell us how much he was helped to a higher and nobler life by those talks of ours. If God is so careful as to number the hairs of our heads, and to notice every sparrow that falls, will He not also look after the good dogs?

To tell really just what I think: I have seen many dogs whom I thought better fitted for heaven and eternal life than lots of men I have known. This may be only an opinion or a prejudice of mine, yet I will vouch for this as a fact, that a dog was never known to betray his friends. And still further. If mankind were as good as dogs in their morals and actions, then the clergy, priests and parsons might all go to cleaning pots and kettles or some honest labor, instead of trying to clean the souls of men.

Frequently in our evening drives we called at the library or club, where Mr. Percy introduced me as his Charles. All treated me cordially, as I thought, chiefly on Mr. Percy’s account, and for his sake I put my best in front, so as not to be unworthy of him. One evening, as I went out of the reading room into the hall, I heard Mrs. Swelter, a great, humpy dumpy woman, with a very red face, the wife of the General of the station, remark: “Mr. Percy, you seem to make a great pet of that Eurasian?” “Hit again!” I said to myself. I hurried away as quickly as I could. I concluded that the time had come when I must know the meaning of that word. When we gathered that evening in front of the fire I asked Mr. Percy what it meant.

“Did you hear what Mrs. Swelter said?” he asked.

“Yes,” I replied.

“I hoped you had not heard what she said. She ought not to have made any such remark as that,” and Cockear said, for I heard him, “A dog would not have made such a remark, even about a jungly cur.”

Then Mr. Percy explained it all as kindly as possible. “And,” he went on, “I assure you it makes not the slightest difference to me. I look to find in you, truthfulness, chastity, industry and ability. You have been to me, thus far, all I could wish, so never let the thought of that word trouble you.”

These kind words took the sting out of Mrs. Swelter’s remark; yet I did not forget it and never will. I always forgive those who injure me, but never forget them. That is, I remember them enough to keep out of their way so as not to give them a second chance to wound me. This Mrs. Swelter was a kind of sergeant-major of our station society, and all paid deference to her, chiefly on account of the position of her husband, but she never got more than a silent bow from “That Eurasian.” Why should she? Once she asked Mr. Percy, why Charles never spoke to her, and he told her that I had overheard her remark, and she could not blame me for not being friendly. I was glad she knew my reason, and after that I took delight in avoiding her, for I had feelings as well as whiter-faced people.

Several evenings after this, when we three were assembled as usual, Mr. Percy asked me, “Do you remember when I first saw you?” “Yes,” I replied, “just as well as if it was this evening.”

“That was a strange meeting, wasn’t it?” he said. “Have you ever heard of that little sister of yours?”

What memories that question revived! I had not forgotten her by any means, for often at school I had recalled all I remembered of her; our leaving that wretched court, our tramp on the dusty road, her smiles and playfulness, the good old faqir, the death of the new mama, and then the sad separation; and I cried many a time as I thought of these things, and resolved that as soon as I was a little older I would go in search of her.

Then I told Mr. Percy the story of our lives, beginning with the first conscious knowing that I was in the world, the clinking sound of those rupees, the sahib, my mother’s tears and cries, her death, our destitution and wanderings up to that serai where he found us.

He had got to his feet by this time, and was walking back and forth in the room, with his head down, listening intently. When I had finished he asked, “Did you ever see or hear of that sahib again, or learn his name?” “Never,” I answered. “The brute!” he exclaimed, with such energy that I think if he had a ruler in his hand he would have broken it into a number of pieces, and it was well for the sahib not to have been within hitting reach just then. He was silent some minutes, when he said:

“Charles! I would rather a thousand times be you than such a man. You can become a true man; he never can. He has lost his manhood and God himself cannot restore it; and he never can make atonement for the wrongs he inflicted on your mother, on you, and on your sister. He committed an infamous crime; worse than murder. But we must find the sister.”

I then told him of my visit with the munshi to the girls’ orphanage: that the sister had been taken away, and I mentioned the name of the lady and gentleman who took her. He wrote letters addressed to the gentleman, but they were returned, uncalled for. He wrote to friends, but they knew nothing, and it seemed that the little sister was forever lost to me.

On each Sunday morning Mr. Percy held his religious service. The crowd had greatly increased, but each received the usual share. There was a great scarcity of food in the district, on account of the slight rainfall, and Mr. Percy, foreseeing this, had purchased a large quantity of grain, and this he called the “Widow’s Fund.” On other days he held what he called his morning service, when the widows came, most of them with children. He had a careful list made out, so as to be sure that they were really widows in need. To some of them he sold the grain at the price he paid for it, and at half the bazar prices. To those who had no means of purchasing he gave, so that all were supplied. The low price at which he sold the grain greatly offended the bunyas in the bazar, as they had a large supply on hand, which they had taken from the poor cultivators in return for the seed and money advanced at an enormous profit to themselves.

One morning Mr. Percy called these bunyas to his bungalow and gave them such a scoring about their rapacity and robbery of the poor that they all agreed to lower their prices. It was through fear of him only that they did this, as one might as well expect pity from a tiger toward an animal he has caught, as leniency from a bunya to the poor whom he has in his power.

One day, toward evening, we were walking in the garden and came to one of the benches, when we seated ourselves. Some reference was made to the orphanage where I had been placed. I then told him that I had overheard him tell the Padri that he would not take me away until I was larger. I related my experience in bending all my energies to increase my growth; how I fed myself, exercised, how I hung by the arms and chin from the pole, measured my height each Sunday, by marks on the wall, and thought of tying weights to my legs at night, as I was determined to be released from the place as soon as possible. He listened without a word, with a questioning smile playing over his face, until I had finished, and then he unbent with laughter. He laughed till the tears came, and I had to laugh too, for I couldn’t help it, and Cockear, who had been gravely listening, broke out with his dog laugh. And why shouldn’t we laugh? If the man who hath no music in his soul is fit for treason, stratagems and spoils, what might be said of the man who never laughs? Beware of him.

I never felt the least embarrassment from Mr. Percy’s laughter, even when it was caused by some nonsense of my own, for it was always so good-natured, joyous and spontaneous. It was rather an incentive to me to tell him something laughable. Had his laugh been coarse or sarcastic, which was impossible, it would have shut me up at once. He was as open and free with me as if I was an intimate friend, so that I had no hesitation in telling him everything, even my mistakes and follies. There are few people we can trust in talking truly from our hearts, and how few parents are the confidants of their children, when they should be first of all in their hearts and lives. But why should I, now an old man, a unit—and a very insignificant one among the wise millions of the world—talk of such things? I have to constantly remind myself of the habits of old people to run into tedious details, and so, often check myself, or I shall never finish my history.

This vacation passed, others followed, and the years at school continued with great improvement, I think to myself and to the satisfaction of my teachers and above all to the great pleasure of my best friend, Mr. Percy. His letters seemed to have more breadth and to grow better as I grew older. He wrote me on all kinds of subjects. Each one of them was an incentive to study for I had to read up or think on the many things referred to in them. Frequently when the boys were at their games, and I dearly loved play, I felt in honor bound and from love to Mr. Percy that I must think over his letters and see what I could say in reply to them. Our library was nearly as empty as a church’s poor box and the few books in it were of little use for the reason that they were donated, and it often happens that benevolent people give away what is useless to themselves or anybody else. Whether the recording angel gives a credit mark for this kind of charity I have my doubts. I was thrown mostly on my own resources and had to think for myself, which probably was much better than if I had borrowed from somebody. I think this correspondence was the best part of my school education. The most of our school duties was to commit to memory and repeat continually rules and definitions, and we had so much of that to do that we had no time to think. The main object seemed to be, not to make us think and reason, but to pass our exams. What a thing this Government system is! and the men who concocted it. But I suppose we should have charity for them as they could not act otherwise than within the circumference of their own capacities.

I must relate an incident that occurred during one of my later vacations. There was a holiday. Mr. Percy had been all the morning writing a judgment on one of his court cases. I had entered the library to get a book and seeing him at his desk, I begged his pardon for interrupting and was turning to leave when he said, “Don’t go, Charles, I have finished my work and am now ready for a holiday.” So we sat and chatted. I was looking toward two photographs on the mantel that I had seen there ever since I entered his house. I never asked about them, and in fact I never questioned him about his life. He had told me many things and I felt that he would tell me all whatever he wished me to know and that I ought not to make inquiries. I was conscious that he had some secrets that were sacred to himself. Everybody should have such secrets. I have a kind of pity for those who will tell all their family affairs, to every gossip who comes along, and a contempt for those who besmirch their own relatives, for in doing so they are throwing dirt on their own faces. Hearing a man talk of his brother as a liar and thief, one cannot but suspect that some of the same blood may run in the veins of the narrator. Some may say before I finish this narrative that I do not practice what I teach; but who does? Truth is truth at all times and everywhere, no matter if people do often stretch it beyond its power of tension. I am laying down a rule in general, “Don’t do as I do, but as I tell you.” Besides my excuse for my course in this narration that, as I am stating facts, I am compelled to make my face still blacker by telling the truth about my own existence, which I regret and lament as much as any mortal man can regret anything. These, however, are thoughts of my later life, and not at all referring to Mr. Percy.

As he saw me looking toward the photographs, he said, “I have never told you about them.” Then taking one of them down. “This is a picture of my mother, my own dear mother. She has been my star of destiny. Her teachings, her example, and the remembrance of her, have fashioned and guided my life. The best gift under heaven is a good mother.” I could have cried as he said this. “My mother! my own darling mama! Why had fate or destiny or the brutality of a man deprived me of such a gift?” He had continued while I thought. He described his mother, beautiful, intelligent, refined, accomplished and more particularly, how her soul was wrapt up in her boy, her only child and she a widow. Above all things she wanted him to be pure and true. I then knew why he had talked to me as he did about such things. She had been my mother too, through him. He told of her waiting supper for him to return from school three miles away, to which he went and returned each day on foot. As they sat together she talked with him about his lessons and he told her the incidents of the day, and she inquired what new ideas he had received. So they chatted, and I have no doubt there was laughter too, for he must have been full of roguish fun, and those eyes of hers, one could not mistake, for they were full of mirth. He said the recollection of those cozy table chats always brought the image of his mother fresh before him, for they occurred just before he left home to go into the world never to see her again. He said they had no secrets from each other. They lived with one heart, one soul and one ambition and all of her was centered in him.

Could I doubt when I heard this, the cause of his being so pure, honest, candid, frank and free? His mother.

Then he told me of the farewell, of her standing on the porch, and his going over the down, turning now and then to wave his handkerchief, to which she replied with hers, and at last going over a little hillock, the house was out of sight, when he ran back to the top and saw her still looking. Then the final waving of farewells. He spoke of the almost daily letters full of loving counsels, and then of one from a friend with a black margin, saying that the mother had gone. The tears came freely as he finished his narrative. “Charles,” said he, “I know you will forgive my tears, for I cannot prevent them nor would I, when I think of the loss of such a mother.” I was crying too and could not help saying “Would to God I had such a mother to remember.” After our emotion had subsided, he took down the other photograph. “This,” said he, “is a picture of my affianced, my loved one. She was all my heart and mind could wish. I loved her first because she was so like my dear mother, her very counter-form, and I know had they both lived, my mother, with the love she had for me, would have loved her, we both alike would have been her children, as we are now. She is mine still and I am hers, not until death do part, but forever our hearts are one. I have never failed to look upon these pictures in the morning, and they always say ‘Robert, we are with you, watching over you and will guide you the best we can.’ That is the impression the sight of the pictures have upon me, and whether they do guide directly or not, might be questioned, but indirectly they have greatly influenced my life. Can I go wrong when I think each morning of those two pure spirits watching over me? I trust not willingly.”

I got from this the key of his life and I could interpret many things I had heard and seen. This revelation of his inner life, the secrets of his soul, which he told me he had never mentioned to any one else, had a great effect upon me. To have known such a man, and to have been trusted by him, made me love him more than ever, and further inspired me with a reverence for him.

With all due charity for mankind one cannot but regret that there are so few, really pure, noble upright men in the world whom we can respect and admire. I cannot help asking, if after all the centuries of civilization, has the growth of mankind in purity and honesty, kept pace with the progress in other respects? After this conversation he showed that he felt I was nearer to him than ever before as I knew he was dearer to me. Next to trusting in God is to have a true friend in whom one can confide and feel that all is safe and sacred.

CHAPTER XI.

The years passed with their vacations. One day at school I received an urgent telegram, telling me to come at once as Mr. Percy was very ill. The journey homeward was a sad one. Formerly they were full of joyful anticipation; this was full of grief and fear. He was very ill. He received me warmly and I attended him as an affectionate son would a beloved father. “Charles,” he said, “the end is coming. I am going to them. They are waiting for me. I shall soon be where there is no more sorrow, or parting, or dying any more forever. Be true to my teaching. I tried to do my duty. Pardon my mistakes. Come to me when you have done your work. God bless you my boy. God bless you”—and he was gone. Could my wish have been granted I would have gone with him to where there was no more parting forever more.

The last rites were performed and I was given the place of chief mourner, for all seemed to know how much esteem and love he had for me. Then I felt myself alone in the world; the halcyon days of my life were ended.

He had made his will very carefully, giving the details of his property, and except a few personal articles, including those precious photographs that he reserved for me, all was to be sold and the proceeds, with various stocks, bonds and several bungalows in which he had invested, were placed in the hands of trustees for me until I had reached the age of twenty-four years. Until then I was to receive sufficient funds for my support and I was to finish my school course. So I had money enough, but of what account is money when the heart is breaking?

On the days when I used to receive those blessed letters sadness overwhelmed me. No more letters to come. No more letters to write. This deprivation constantly revived my consciousness of the loss I had sustained, and during all the rest of my school life I could not overcome this terrible feeling.

My school days ended and with great regret I bade good-bye to some of my schoolmates and some of the teachers for they had endeared themselves to me by their kindness.

I was again alone in the world. I did not know that I had even one friend to whom I might turn for advice or comfort. I was conscious that I ought to engage in some profession or employment as other young men were doing, but which and what was the question. If I chose the Civil Service in the Government, it was necessary for me to go to England and pass an examination. I had no friend there, not even an acquaintance, so had no influence, and I learned that influence was everything even to get a chance to offer myself for an examination; so that profession was closed to me.

To become an officer in the army the same difficulties arose. I could not become a soldier as I learned that Eurasians were not accepted. In fact I had no liking whatever for the army, even had there been an opening for me. I always had a repugnance to taking life. I could not see a chicken killed without a sense of pain and to see a gasping fish just taken from the water gave me a shock. In my life I have gone out shooting and the more birds I killed, the greater the burden of sorrow I carried home, thinking of the number of lives I had destroyed when God had created them as well as me and that they had as much right as I to live. I never could realize any pleasure in what is called sport when life is involved. For a number of men, not to mention women, to chase a fox until he is worried to death and then let him be torn to pieces by hounds was always a cruel, fiendish business to me. Suppose some bigger brutes than these ladies and gentlemen, as they style themselves, should run them down with horses and hounds as in former times slaves were hunted, and tear them to pieces, what would they think of the sport?

Anent this subject one of the best English novelists makes one of his characters say: “The most blood-thirsty nation on the earth, you shed blood for mere amusement; we only shed it for some deep purpose, such as revenge, ambition and the like. You English are not happy unless you are killing something, if it is only a pigeon out of a trap; there is too much of the Saxon and the Dane about you. Again your chief outdoor amusement consists of galloping on horseback with a number of dogs, over hedges and ditches after a poor animal called a fox, and when you see the wretched, fagged-out creature torn to pieces by your dogs, you ride home satisfied to your dinner.”

It is bad enough to kill birds and beasts for our food, but to kill men, who, we are taught, have immortal souls, was and always has been, horrible to me. Adam Smith, in his “Wealth of Nations,” says, “The trade of a butcher is a brutal one and an odious business.” If that can be said of a business which supplies necessary food for the people, what can be said of a trade for the destruction of human beings, to gratify the vanity or rapacity of a tyrant or people? To kill his fellowmen is the soldier’s business, for that he is trained, for that the church prays for him. The more men killed the greater the glory and the number of medals. Beautiful trophies for the judgment day—the souls of murdered men! The uncivilized, unchristian tribes show their valor by the number of human scalps hanging to their belts, and a “heap big Injun” is the one who has the greatest number of these tokens of death. Christian “big Injuns” use honors and medals instead of scalps.

Would not this be better? Say for all who are killed by a regiment let each soldier wear a blood-red stripe for each man slain. If very successful in their bloody warfare the stripes would be increased until their whole garments would be of one uniform, ruddy hue, and they would be “heap big Injuns” for all the world to look at. Their praises would be read and known instantly by all observers. Then, instead of worshiping one whom they style a God of Love, and one whom they call the “Prince of Peace,” why not be consistent and adopt a god of war, such as is Kali, the goddess of the murderers of India, and offer unto him the blood of their victims, as these people do to their goddess? Does it speak well for civilization, after thousands of years, and after nineteen hundred years of Christianity, that twenty millions of armed soldiers, belonging to the most enlightened and so-called Christian nations of the earth, should be waiting and expecting every morning an order to attack and destroy each other? And all anxious to flesh their weapons in the bodies of their fellowmen? If, after all these centuries, Christianity has culminated in such a condition of murderous intention, how long will it be before their “Prince of Peace” will come to reign?

Having such feelings about war and soldiering in my later years, I must have had something of them when I left school, and they prevented me from thinking seriously of a soldier’s life. I concluded that I would rather be a hermit in a forest all my life, living on herbs and wild fruits, and die thus, and go to my Maker without a spot of the blood of my fellowmen on my soul, than to be the greatest warrior that ever lived, though he could boast of having slain his thousands.

What of the responsibility of those who instigate war? The great poet says, “The king himself hath a heavy reckoning to make when all these legs and arms and heads chopped off in battle shall join together in the latter day and cry, all, “We died at such a place;” some swearing, some crying for a surgeon, some upon the debts they owe, some upon their children rawly left. I am afraid that there are few that die well, that die in battle, for how can they charitably dispose of anything when blood is their argument? Now, if these men do not die well, it will be a black matter for the king that led them to it.”

Well might the king say, in his remorse, “The lights burn blue, it is now dead midnight, cold, fearful drops stand trembling on my flesh. Methought the souls of all that I had caused to be murdered came.”

Another thing influenced me. A surgeon of the army remarked to me that the best soldier was one with a vigorous, healthy body, and only sense enough to obey an order and fire a musket.

I was not willing to suppose myself such a thing as that, an idiot, strong enough to stand up and be shot at, and with only brains enough to pull a trigger when told to do so to kill somebody. If I was to be such a soldier, then God, who created me with a mind capable of thinking and reasoning; Mr. Percy, in giving me an education; and I, in acquiring it, we all three had sadly muddled the business and made a damnable mistake somehow. So my warfare ended.

I then thought of the police service, but this was so like a twin brother to soldiering that I dropped it quickly. I was in no great hurry to choose a profession, as I was not obliged to work for a living, but considered it my duty, as well as pleasure, to seek to do what was best, so I went to the station where my property was situated, and found a home in one of the houses with an excellent family, one of my tenants.

I had plenty of books, the gifts of Mr. Percy, each of them a true indication of his style of thought and belief. I ordered others, such as I considered would interest me. With them I lived. They were my best and most intimate companions. I have often thought that if I were cast away on some desert island, and had plenty of books, I could not be alone.

The middle part of each day I spent in reading; mornings and evenings in adorning the compounds and gardens of my several houses with fruit and fine trees, flower plants and shrubbery. I soon made a great change in the places, to the great satisfaction of my tenants. This gave me a great liking for botany, as I had scarcely heard of such a science in school, for there we were so much driven to study men’s rules and theories that we had no time to study what God had created.

This employment finished, I became restless with a desire to enter upon some profession or business for life. I thought of commercial business, and from what I knew of it I supposed it would give me a chance to use my brains; but I had no more idea of what it required than if I was the son of a lord. I knew nothing of book-keeping, for this was another of the practical things omitted in our school, and it sometimes puzzled me to see what I really had learned that was to be of practical use to me. If it be true, as some one has said, that the greatest knowledge is to realize how little we know, I concluded that I had reached that happy condition. It is true that I practiced a little book-keeping as required by Mr. Percy, but it was single entry, or rather two entries, cash received and cash paid out, and every pice I handled was in that account. Since then my acquaintance with even commercial men has led me to believe that single entry book-keeping is not a slight affair, for some forget to enter what you have paid them, and remember to enter what they did not pay you.

I concluded to make a trip on commercial life intent. I took me to the capital city of India with the highest ambition. At once I sought the papers with an advertisement, “A young man of good abilities and excellent education, etc.” Some letters were received to which I replied, and found that there was work enough, and that the salaries offered, ranged from the magnificent sum of fifteen rupees to forty rupees a month, and some of the parties expected me to keep a pony besides, as their’s was outdoor work. Some of these offers were made by white men!

The advertisement evidently useless, I got a city directory and wrote to a large number of the best mercantile houses, and as I had a very fair hand and did my best with the Queen’s English, I received a number of very polite replies in babu English asking me to call at a particular time, which I did in my best rig, as I came to know that a well-fitting suit of good clothes had a great deal to do with a first impression. Each kuli, and there were a number of them at every door, had to look at my card, and then several babus wished to know my business, until finally I reached the grand mogul of the place. Looking me over while I stated that I had received his letter asking me to call, “Yes, yes,” said he, “but since your letter came my partner has found a man.” The same thing happened in a number of places. That partner was always the one who was putting his fingers in my pie. Several asked me what salary I wanted. I replied that I wished to learn the business, so I would be satisfied with a hundred rupees a month to begin with, and they exclaimed something like this: “Great heavings! we can hire a dozen babus for that money.”

I kept up this “racket” for a number of days, as I became quite interested in learning this part of mercantile life. If it had been a matter of daily bread with me, perhaps I would not have taken the rebuffs so easily.

One day I ran across two of my schoolmates on the same errand. They were terribly down in the mouth or down at the heels, for they were completely discouraged, and their clothes had long since forgotten the press of the tailor’s goose, and their boots were in the last stages of decrepitude. They put me in mind of the fellows we read of in our Scripture lessons at school, who went down to Jericho and fell among thieves. “Well, boys,” said I, “come over and dine with me, and we’ll talk over old times.” They did not look into their note-books to see how many engagements they had, or say, “We’ll think it over,” or “We’ll see,” in that kind of society style you know, but accepted at once. After making a short call on one of the merchant firms, I found the boys in my room. We had a good feed, the best I could get, and they told me their experience. They had been at so many houses, run the gauntlet of so many kulies and babus, and had been snubbed so often by the mercantile gentlemen that they had scarcely courage enough left to look in at the door of a house again. Through the friendly influence of the dinner they confided to me that they had trusted “an uncle” with their watches and most of their clothes, and their money was nearly all gone, and if they did not get work soon they would have to sleep in the park, and then have a chance of being accommodated with apartments at the workhouse.

“Yes,” said one of them, “if we were not Eurasians we could get situations at once, and one fat white face had the cheek to tell us that he would not employ Eurasians, as they were not trustworthy. How did he know that of us? It was a downright insult!”

Again he burst out, and as we had not had any liquor whatever, he was clear-headed, saying, “Hell and fury! Who made us Eurasians, I’d like to know?” “That’s it,” said the other, “who made us Eurasians?” and they brought down their fists so hard onto the table that the bearer rushed in to see what we wanted. At this I changed the subject to our school days, and inquired after the boys of our set. Before leaving I told them if they did not succeed in a day or two, to come to me and I would let them have money to go home with; for the sake of old times I would not have them “run in.”

I was such a simple innocent that it never once entered my head that I had been refused because I was an Eurasian. This reference of the boys opened my eyes, and I concluded to make some calls to see if what they said was really true. I was out again the next day. I did not care so much now for a situation as I did to know the effect of the color of my face. I had a roll of government notes in my pocket, and could draw for more when needed, so could face the kulies and babus without having that utterly forsaken walk and look of a beggar. As I entered one of the prominent offices I could not help thinking of what Mr. Percy would say, “Charles, be a man, in your looks and in every step you take,” and so I uprightly faced the grand panjandrum. I bowed politely, and said, “I am seeking a situation. I don’t care so much about the wages, as I wish to learn the business.” Looking me all over, as if I was some specimen from the zoo, he remarked, “I don’t think you would suit us.” “Will you be so kind as to tell me the reason?” I inquired, with as much suavity as I could command. I think my manner fetched him, for he said, “Take a seat, will you?” the first time a chair had been offered me in all my rounds. He replied, “Well, really, you know, I don’t like to say; for myself I think you would suit us, but, now, ahem! I hope you will take no offense, but the fact is, I am really sorry to say it, but my partners are opposed to having any Eurasians.”

“What reason have they?” I calmly inquired, that is, outwardly calm, but inwardly very uncalm. Said he, “Really, I don’t know, and can’t say; you will have to ask them, and I think they are both very busy, as it is mail day.”

What a lot of lies mail day is responsible for! He then began to fumble his papers, as if to say that my time was up, so I bowed and left, feeling in my soul that he was a liar, and at the entrance door I inquired of a babu about the partners, and he said that they had not come to the office that day.

But why prolong the story? I made out a list of the firms on whom I had called. There were all sorts of excuses, but the majority objected to employing Eurasians. One thing astonished me, that so many of them had wicked partners. Perhaps they were only imaginary dummies or office devils, to whom they could attribute all their sins. And most of these men were Christians in their way.

One morning I found an article in one of the daily papers that fitted so well with what the boys had said and with what I felt, that I cut out this paragraph. I was rather glad that they had not seen the paper, as I had furnished them with tickets-of-leave; or they might have been tempted to curse their fathers, which is bad business when it can be avoided.

“There is a prejudice against the Eurasians, both among the Europeans and natives. It is not surprising that the heathen natives, with all their old feelings about caste, should prefer to have their own people about them, but not at all creditable that Europeans, all probably calling themselves Christians, should despise and degrade a people who are a part of themselves and begotten by them. It is said that a person always hates the one he has injured. As a Saxon, I have often thought of what I would have felt, if my father had made me an Eurasian. For some months, every morning, there passed my house, a fine well built man, clad in native clothes, going to his work at five rupees a month. I frequently conversed with him and found him quite intelligent. It appears that his father a Scotchman, years ago, on coming to India took up a native woman by whom he had several children. When his time for furlough came he gave the woman a few rupees and said, “Salaam.” He married a beautiful Scotch lassie, she no doubt believing him to be a chaste Christian gentleman—and returned to India. Other children were born, were well educated, and these young Scotch Macdonalds are in the service receiving one thousand to two thousand rupees a month, while the other poor devil of a Macdonald has to be content with his five rupees. I often thought as I saw the man, that if my father had played such a scurvy trick on me, I would have cursed him by daylight and by candle light, month by month, and year by year, up hill and down dale to my latest breath and before high heaven I think I would have been right in doing so.”

Thus ended my mercantile life. It was all confined to single entry, as I never had a chance of making a double entry to any of the houses. I visited the libraries but it was not worth while; being managed wholly by natives, what could be expected? the botanical garden and saw the great tree spreading out, as if it would protect and shelter everybody like the Indian Government, but very poor protection and shelter I found it, for during a storm that came on I had been better under a beggar’s thatch; then the Zoo with its monkeys, about as full of tricks as some of the mercantile men I had met, and the tigers not more merciful than many human animals; then to the Museum and to the Art School, where several hundred natives were being taught, but not an Eurasian! Poor devils! Why should the Government care for their education?

As I had failed in my main purpose, I endeavored to get all I could to pay for my trip. I got considerable mercantile experience, or rather experience of the mercantile character that has lasted me for life. I proved it to be true that experience is what a man gets after making a fool of himself a number of times, and as experience is about all we get in life, or take out of it, I tried to be satisfied.

One evening after returning from one of my trips and trying to analyze this antipathy, prejudice or hatred of the Europeans for the Eurasians I recalled this saying, “It is said that a person always hates the one he has injured.” I thought there may be a great deal of truth in this and further, the Europeans may look upon us as connected with themselves. We are constant, perpetual reminders of the lustful sins of themselves or their class. Even Lord Palmerston got to hating Punch for its continued pictures of himself with a straw in his mouth, and I have read that in a political campaign, caricatures have more power than argument. It may be the Eurasian pictures of themselves that the Europeans do not like. Who knows? What puzzled me then, and what my poor brain has never been able to comprehend is, that as nearly or quite all the Europeans I met were what are called Christians, how they could reconcile the hatred and oppression of a poor unfortunate class with their religious professions. I leave this to some head, wiser than mine to solve.

CHAPTER XII.

I returned to my home and to my books. These were true friends on whom I could rely, and with whom I could find good society, especially as I had my bread provided for. But what if I had been without books, without money and could only eat my crust after I had earned it and unable to get any work to do? This has often been one of my serious questions.

There is not a country on the globe where a European is so badly off as in India, if he is without work and destitute of means and influence. I have known a family of father and mother, with several sons and daughters well educated. The father and sons tried to get employment but failed. They offered to work at wages that would barely supply them with the coarsest food, but this was denied them. They were at last reduced to living on rice alone, the amount for the whole family of six not costing four pence a day, and this they often could not purchase.

Another case was that of a man and his wife, well educated and of fine appearance. He had invested all his money in a business that did not pay. They sold their little property for almost nothing and then their clothes. He could get no kind of employment, and at last they were so reduced that the wife had to conceal herself in the hut where they stayed, for want of clothes, and their almost starving heathen neighbors gave them a few handfuls of rice to eat. An empty pocket and a naked back are about the worst certificates a man can show to get employment or position of any kind. Nobody wants such a recommendation, not even a Christian. Accursed is poverty, for in proportion to his descent in destitution, a man is less liable to receive anything. The rich, who need nothing, have money thrown into their laps and positions thrust upon them, but the greater a person’s necessities, the less he gets. This is a strange contradictory world, yet this is also nature’s law. The more you enrich a field the more it gives you in return, the more I improve my bungalows, the higher rents I can get, but what is the use of talking; the poor cannot grow fat on illustrations and arguments.

If the poor whites have such a struggle for life what must be the condition of the destitute Eurasians who from their emaciated looks have not even rice to eat?

Some months passed and again I became restless. I thought that in the economic arrangement of nature in which everything has its function and uses I also must have my place and work; that I, not less than an active mosquito or a creeping snail, could not have been forgotten in the universal plan.

I knew I must first fit myself for a position. As I had tried to learn the mercantile business, so I thought of engineering. This was no sooner considered than settled. Even if I did not find employment by it I would have the discipline and knowledge of the science, so would lose nothing and be a gainer by it. I entered an engineering college and passed several successful and happy years without anything really worth mentioning occurring except several incidents that were of great importance to me.

The station was a small one, so the society was limited. The students were rather above the average in ability; in fact there was not a sumf among us. All had passed in the highest grades in school, so we could stand erect with our heads upon our shoulders and act like men. We called on the European families, were invited to their lawn and tennis parties, took our share in the games, or rather more often got up games of our own to enliven our hours of recreation and give pleasure to our friends. During the last year of my course a gentleman, with his wife and daughter, came to reside in the station. The daughter was about eighteen years of age, finely formed, healthy and robust, of blonde complexion, very good looking and to me, handsome. She had passed the giggling stage of girlhood, if she ever had been in it. She was well educated, intelligent and had read a number of good books.

From what I have read in English books, from what I have heard and the little I have seen, it appears that most young women and many older ones in society can dress finely, smile, giggle, dance, flirt, look pretty and be or do anything but be sensible. The chief characteristic of this young lady was her sensibleness. She seldom indulged in nonsense, but when she did there was so much wit and real fun in it as to lift it above inanity. I said she was a blonde, so my opposite, for I was rather “soso.” I have heard the story of an Eurasian who in England was with some unsophisticated girls, when one of them innocently remarked, “You are very much tanned, are you not?” “Yes, I am,” said he. “When I was in India I was out a great deal in the sun.” I think this is what has ailed me, or something or other, perhaps the other, had made my complexion the opposite of a blonde. Yet I think being opposite we were attracted to each other for that—well, no matter—what’s the use of surmising? We often met. I tried to talk as intelligently as I could to her, and I think she reciprocated my efforts, for a number of times she mentioned that she had found the books I had referred to and gave me their opinions. I liked her for this.

One holiday when we were at a tennis party, a white, or rather a reddish youth, still in the downy stage of adolescence, on a visit in the station was of the party. I was standing a little aside, but heard the youth ask the young lady to be his partner. She replied that she was going to play with Mr. Japhet. “Well,” said he, “if you prefer that Eurasian.” “You have no right to make such a remark as that,” she replied with warmth. It was not prudent for me to appear as if I had heard anything, and her choice of me and her reply helped me to restrain my anger. But I remembered the youth, and why shouldn’t I? He was not yet old enough for a man, nor young enough for a boy; “as a squash before ’tis a peas-cod, or a codling when ’tis almost an apple.”

At first I liked her for her good sense and goodness, then I admired, and then—but what’s the use of repeating the old, old story that has been so often told since Adam looked upon Eve and saw that she was good; and yet I will, for there is a pleasure in telling it—I loved her. By that electrical, unseen, unheard power or means of conveying messages from heart to heart that love has, I knew that she loved me. Nothing was said between us about it, for what need was there of telling when we both knew it all? After a while we talked as if the subject had been understood and settled for some time. I will not relate what we said, for nearly everybody knows our conversation all by heart; at least they ought to.

Then the next question was about mama and papa. My dear little mama had gone, and I was still Japhet in search of his father, so there could be no trouble on my side, but hers? Aye, there was the rub. I had my “doots,” as the Scotch say, and yet I was full of courage. She was a fair lady and my heart was not faint. I concluded to attack the weaker half of the family first, but I found my mistake, for she was the stronger of the two when it came to heart affairs, as probably many men have learned to their sorrow when dealing with what is called the weaker sex. She listened most attentively, turning red, then white and so on, the red coming like flashes of lightning. I saw this danger signal at once, but love and courage made me go on. I had formed rather a tender regard for this expected mother-in-law. So in the gentlest, most winning terms and tones I could command, I plead my case. I saw and felt I had no chance from my first word. My courage at last took to its heels and I was trembling and powerless. It was one of the hardest and most trying bits of work I ever had and I have had not a few. When I had finished she said in angry tones, repressed like water bursting from a pipe under a pressure of seventy pounds to the square inch:

“I am surprised! I am angry! How dare you think of such a thing? No, never! I tell you, never!” Just then the other half came in, but he was cold and rather mild and his better half remained on deck. In a word she told him what I wanted but gave him no chance to talk. “No,” she continued, “I tell you once for all. She shall never see you again. Before I would let her marry an Eurasian I would shoot her.” “And I would bury her,” said the other half.

As I did not want any shooting or burying, just then, I thought it best to retreat, and having said, “I am very sorry,” departed.

It was sometime before I could realize what had happened. I have read of the experience of people who had been nearly paralyzed by the shock of an earthquake. They say it is impossible for the mind or words to convey any idea of the intensely awful abject feeling that took possession of them. It seemed to me that I had been through, or into or out of, something of that kind. I do not remember whether I walked, or crept or ran, but I left that scene of failure, anger and despair as soon as I could, and who wouldn’t? My wits had all left me, like sunshine friends. “When a man’s wits are gone, the heavens should open and take him away,” but no heavens opened for me, and I was left to make the best of the situation. When I thought of the young lady, of my love for her, I could have been knocked down by a feather, or anything, for her sake, but when I thought of that unattainable mother-in-law, and her cruel mean fling at me, and of that cold-blooded masculine, offering his services as sexton at the funeral of his daughter, I felt like swearing, and I will not say that I did not use some good robust Saxon expletives, for really, the occasion demanded it.

I think the Episcopal Bishop had a good idea when, in a convocation, he became indignant over some wrong: “Mr. President, I think it is the duty of this right reverend house to set forth a form of sound words to be used by a man under strong provocation.”

In principle I am opposed to swearing, and then only in good, choice language. I never take the name of God in vain, as that is a sin against Him, and a crime against my better nature, and I detest the use of gad, begad, ’swounds, ’sblood, ’sdeath, so many snobbish “Christian gentlemen” are guilty of.

Darwin looks upon swearing as one of the most curious expressions which occur in man; he considers that it reveals his animal descent, and looks upon it as the survival of the habit in animals of uncovering the canine teeth before fighting. I will not dispute this, but confess frankly that I felt like uncovering my canine teeth, as no simple words could do the subject justice. Neither anger or whimpering would accomplish anything for her or me. I hardly knew what I did or did not do, for several days. I could not attack the citadel, as I had no band of knights to aid me, and had to subdue and smother my love and grief as well as my anger allowed me. After several days, I received a letter clandestinely dispatched by some bribed servant. She told of her love for me, that her mother and father were furious, that her mother was to leave at once with her for Bombay and England. She had begged them to let her see me just once, but they declared it impossible, that they would bind her with ropes, or lock her in a room, if she dared to think of such a thing. “And all because you are an Eurasian! How could you help that?” she added. Certainly? How could I help that?

She further wrote that she was going by the morning train, and wished me to come, not to the railway station, where they would be watching, but to stand on a hillock, near the track, where she could see me once more. I was there. As the train passed she cried out to me, “You have all my heart and love,” and she was gone. I was left in an agony of sorrow and despair. How could I help being an Eurasian? Who made me an Eurasian? How often have I repeated these questions? I often felt like cursing him. It is said that Noah, the Patriarch, good enough to be specially saved, cursed his son for his lack of parental respect, and Ham turned black. My father, for Mr. Percy told me that I must have had one, did the same for me and without any provocation on my part.

There was an interval of several weeks, just here in my life, that has always been a blank to me. I must have been very ill.

My course finished, I received one of the best certificates of my proficiency, and was soon homeward bound again. I was then anxious for employment where I could use the knowledge I had acquired. I was ambitious to go to the capital city to begin at the top. I wrote to the Government of Bengal asking for a position and received the answer—“His Honor directs me to acknowledge the receipt of your letter, and to state that he does not deem it advisable to bring outsiders into this province.”

This seemed to me very unjust, as his Honor himself was an outsider, but he probably had in mind the saying, “Present company always excepted.” Besides the babus were everywhere employed from Calcutta to Peshawar. Have the rest of the people no rights? Are the babus so loyal or superior to all others that they should be made the special pets of government? I have often wondered why the rest of the people of India submit to this injustice. There may come a time when the government will wish it had friends in the place of these impudent Bengalis, and the babus themselves will think Hades has burst wide open.

I wrote letters to various firms and all replied, “No assistants required,” or, as some of them put in their printed slips, “No Eurasians need apply.” So there was no help for it; to the books again! It was everything to me that I had an income, but what of the thousands of poor wretches who had neither money, income nor employment.

A year later the bequest of Mr. Percy was placed in my hands, and every rupee accounted for. I invested in villages, and in various parcels of ground in the station, on which I erected bungalows, one of which was for myself, according to my own taste, with one room especially for a library for the books that I had been accumulating.

All this gave me employment for several years, and I was quite happy. My new house was the best in the station, and was better furnished, with ample grounds, ornamented with every kind of shrubbery and flowers. It became the envy of the station. The Commissioner of the Division wrote, asking if he could rent it; then the Barra Sahib wanted it, and the officers wished it for a Mess Koti. My refusal to all created quite a feeling against me. Some one told somebody else, who told me, that the “higher classes” considered the house too good for an Eurasian. I wonder if they should accidentally get to heaven and find some of the lower classes—Eurasians—there, whether they would blow up St. Peter for letting us in?

I had numerous brushes with the magistrate; for he seemed determined to annoy me because I had not let him have my house. My hedges were too high or too broad. I should trim my trees, or should not trim those by the roadside, which I myself had planted. When I had one of my houses partly constructed he forbade the work to go any further, as I had not obtained his permission to build, and besides it would obstruct the view from his house, though it was five hundred yards away. I felt that all this was petty, spiteful tyranny, and resisted as well as I could, but of what avail? I might as well have quarreled with the man in the moon.

The magistrate had almost absolute power over affairs in the station, and could be a despot if he chose. He was the Great Sahib, and he let everybody know it, especially those he styled the lower classes. If he could not carry out his plans in an open, manly way, he resorted to petty tyranny that goaded one to madness. I had never met him, and all his orders to me were made not in person or by letter, but through his servants, which made it more annoying.

I was soon to make his personal acquaintance. One night, after dining with a friend, I was walking homeward when I heard the screams of a woman, or rather of a girl. I ran, and found two native policemen, one holding each of her hands and dragging her along the road. They stopped at once, and she begged me to have her released. They said they had orders to bring good looking girls into cantonments, and they found her on the road. I ordered them to let her go at once. They said they could not do so. I insisted, and they replied that I should have to answer to the magistrate for obstructing them. I took the girl to a friend’s house, and told them to keep her concealed at my expense. The next morning a servant came, ordering me to appear at the magistrate’s bungalow. I went. As I entered, this worthy was sitting at his writing table.

I said, “Good morning,” and bowed, but he made no salutation. His manner and silence was very embarrassing to me, so I said, “My name is—” “Yes, yes,” he interrupted, “I know you well enough; you are that damned Eurasian who is always making trouble.” “But,” said I, and before I could get in another word he retorted, “I don’t want a word from you. I will let you off this time, but if you ever interfere with the police again, I will give you cause to remember it,” and with a wave of his hand, a servant opened the door for me to retire.

The seizure of this girl was a part of a damnable plan established by a Christian government to supply victims to gratify the lusts of its imported soldiery, and these soldiers probably all baptized, confirmed Christians.

I sent that girl to a girl’s school, and paid her bills for years, which I trust the Recording Angel has put down to the credit of my account.

All the Eurasians were my friends, all the second class whites, and I had besides a number of acquaintances among the first grade. I had several riding horses, the best that money could purchase, a fine carriage, and several rigs of the best make, with horses to suit them. I had a fine house and could give good dinners, no small item in making friends, so some were glad to know me for that, if for no other reason. Then I was greatly interested in sports, and was liberal in my subscriptions, so that, having received my money, they could not well overlook me, especially as they no doubt expected other favors to follow.

One evening, near the band stand, I saw a number of ayahs, with the children of the Mem Sahibs, and among them a very comely young woman, evidently an Eurasian. My beloved magistrate was talking with the children, but with his eyes on the governess. One, a young officer near me, nudged another, and nodding toward the children, said, “The old fellow is up to his tricks again.” The other smiled. The former asked, “Do you know what he said when he came to dine at our mess on Sunday evening?”

“No, what was it?” “Well, the Barra Sahib had read prayers at church in the morning, so at the mess, just as we sat down to the table, he asked, ‘I say, Langton, by the way, who was that young woman in front at the left this morning?’ ‘O, that was the Shaw’s governess,’ replied Langton. ‘By Jove! she is not a bad looking piece; though rather, don’t you think, as if she had been too much in the sun?’ At which there was a slight buzz among the younger set, and they looked at each other with sly winks and nods, and Jeems, at my left, whispered to me, ‘The old man may have the incapacity of age, but he evidently has not forgotten the desires of youth!’”

I was disgusted—angry. Though I did not care a fig about the church and its worship, yet I have always been a stickler for decency, even in a church, or among my dogs. The thought of such a depraved thing reading prayers—the Scriptures, styled sacred—and in what is called the house of God, and while going through with his farce of worship, looking around over the congregation to find some one on whom to rest his lustful eyes! Evidently his eyes were not made for the good of his soul.

For several weeks I often noticed the Barra Sahib among the children, as they seemed suddenly to have become special favorites of his; but he was always near the governess.

Some months after this we lost our magistrate, for he was promoted to the Commissionership of a distant province. The governess also disappeared.

CHAPTER XIII.

I had frequently in going about the station, seen a European whose name I learned was Jasper. He had a beautiful house and well kept grounds on a retired road. This much I saw as I passed his place, but had never spoken to him. One morning he came, as I was sitting in the veranda, and handing me his card said that his mali had told him that I had some very fine crotons, and with my permission, he would like to see them. We went into the yard, and through the garden, and I found he was greatly interested in botany. This suited me exactly, as I began to have a special delight in adding to my knowledge of that science, as well as increasing my stock of plants. He praised my collection of crotons saying that they could not be excelled in India. After a pleasant round of seeing and chatting, he invited me to call on him, as he had some things to show me and bade me “Good morning.”

Thus commenced one of the most pleasant friendships I could have formed, which continued until his death. He was about middle age, of good parts, well read, and I had not been with him an hour before I knew that he did his own thinking. He always showed great respect for the opinions of others, the same that he claimed they should have for his.

A few mornings after, I returned Mr. Jasper’s call, and was delighted with his rare plants and flowers. We then took our seats on the veranda, and he called for tea. In the course of our conversation, I referred to my releasing the girl from the police. I could not forget that screaming cry for help in the night, and the oftener I thought of it, the more indignant I grew. At once he exclaimed “What an outrage! It seems incredible that such things could be possible. It is not only this one case, but all over India such seizures are taking place. Sometimes when I hear of such things, I wish I was God, or given His power for a short time, I would cause lightning to strike the men who organized such a devilish system, and those who carry it on. I would make such a retribution upon them all that they would feel they were in hell. If a daughter of the Queen, or of the Prime Minister, or of a member of Parliament, of the Viceroy or Commander in Chief, should be seized, to be kept as a prisoner to pass a short life in infamy and die of vice disease, what would happen? Why every paper in the United Kingdom would have gory articles on the subject; the whole nation would be aroused, and there would be a question in Parliament. If done in a foreign country it would be a cause for war. It is the old story of whose ox is gored. Admitting that she is an orphan, without friends, an Eurasian, pardon me Mr. Japhet for this word.”

“Go on,” I quickly replied, “I have been too often under the lash, or rather through the fire on account of that word to take any offence, for I know just what you mean.”

He commenced again. “Suppose this girl and other girls are friendless and weak, are they not the very ones to be protected? What are laws and governments for, if they are not to shield those who need protection the most? Are the laws for the rich, the strong and mighty, who do not need their aid? To whom should we be charitable if not to the poor? To whom shall we show mercy, if not to the weak and erring? These girls have immortal souls, or else Christianity and all human teaching is a lie. Have we not had it drummed into our ears, from our infancy that all souls are precious in the sight of God, and that He is not a respecter of persons; that the poor and helpless are his care? You know the teachings of Christianity and of the Church, but what is the practice? I am old enough to care very little about creeds and theories. I care more to know of a man’s life, what are his daily acts and thoughts. I don’t care to hear a man’s prayers, so much as to see what he does. He may pray for the poor with his lips, but I would rather see him pay for them from his pocket. But what is the practice here?

“We took this country because we had the power to do it. We hold it by might and force, and rule it with a sort of tyranny, a military despotism. We are not here because the people want us. If we did not keep the country by force, not by moral or religious power, but by real brutal force, it would slip out of our hands in a single day. Blink at it as we may, this is the fact and no one can question it. Here then is a force, of one hundred and fifty thousand English soldiers, more or less, sent out at an enormous expense to live by the sweat and blood of these poverty-stricken, overtaxed natives. Only ten per cent. of these soldiers are allowed to marry. A direct violation of the laws of God and nature. It is not enough that the people are taxed to support this great army, they must also provide victims to gratify the,—I will not say brutal, for that would be a libel on even the lowest of the brute creation,—but the foul, inhuman lust of these officers and soldiers. And what is enough to make infidels of all mankind, is that all this is done under a Christian Queen, a woman and a mother, by authority of a Christian Parliament, and executed by the Christian Government of India! By a nation ever ready to parade its civilization, chivalry and Christianity! No wonder that these heathen have so little faith in the Christian religion. I heard an old missionary say that the worst place for missionary work was in the vicinity of a cantonment; that the very lowest heathen were degraded by contact with the soldiers. It is so everywhere.

“A writer on Africa says, ‘The farther the traveler advances into the interior, the better is the condition of the natives found to be, less drunkenness and immorality!’ Yet it is pretended that we are holding this country for the glory of God, and the welfare of the people, and that the subjugation of the people of the world by Christian nations is for the promotion of civilization and Christianity! Out on such cant and hypocrisy! The biggest robbers get the loot, and we are the robbers. Why not say so, that we are after the loot and nothing else? Why not be truthful even if we are thieves and not try to cover up our iniquities with a film of religious varnish?”

I had no chance to put in a word and did not care to, as I thought he was hitting the bull’s-eye at every shot, but I interjected: “They say that it is necessary to make some provision.”

“All rot,” he exclaimed, “it is a slander on humanity. Don’t you know that men can frame excuses and apologies for everything they wish to do?

“Why not make provision for men to commit theft, or highway robbery or murder? It is false that men cannot restrain or subdue their sexual passion the same as they subdue their other passions. Are they worse than the brutes? If men are such gross animals that they cannot control themselves, they ought to do as Origen, the saint, did to himself, or as they cripple their fighting stallions.

“The fact is that the teachings of our people are wrong. They always uphold what they do themselves, and make excuses for those who do like them. One cannot take up a high society English novel but he reads of the seduction and ruin of some poor ignorant girl by some titled roue. High society seems to demand and gloat over such rotten mental food, as it enjoys its rank over ripe game. If not, why are such books written, and some of them by women, too? If the literature of every nation is the mirror of its mind, what can be the minds of those who write and read such books? The level of public morality must be very low when the higher classes can delight in such things. If these stories were written to condemn vice and licentiousness, to show the curse and crime of wrong-doing, I would say nothing, for I am not a prude, but the most of these stories make the amours and seductions by their heroes as something to be admired, rather than horrible and repulsive.

“If there is any truth in Christianity, or any force in morality, it should be used against the great vices of the nation, as well as of the individual. But, as the Rev. Mr. Morley, in the “Times,” says: ‘The church has nothing to say to public justice and mercy, to the spirit of our legislation, to the union of hearts and minds embracing all classes and conditions. All this it leaves to the world.’

“What are all the sweet mouthings in church about baptismal regeneration and holy communion, when the majority of those listening are constantly violating the laws of God and their own natures, and not a word about this? I suppose all the soldiers in these regiments have been baptized. Were they regenerated? If so, they must have got over it very quickly. If there is any virtue in baptism, they should be baptized every day, and by immersion, even to drowning, and then they would not be fit to live on earth, much less to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.

“The trouble is, that in the churches, faith and morals, creed and practice have been divorced, and do not live together. Many of these soldiers would probably be astonished if it was suggested to them that their religion had anything to do with their passions or their lusts. They would probably answer as the old negro woman did, who had stolen a goose. She went to church and gave testimony for Jesus. When reproached by her mistress for doing such a thing, after her theft, she exclaimed: ‘Do you think I would deny my Lord and Master for the sake of a goose?’”

At this I interrupted him, by asking if these girls and women were restrained and prevented from leaving?

“Certainly,” he said, “as much so as if they were in prison for life, and there were armed sentries paraded before the gate. If, by any chance, they escape, they are seized and brought back as any escaped prisoner would be. The doors of these hells never open outward for these poor wretches, and it might be written on the portals ‘Death to all who enter here,’ and their lives are very brief when fresh victims must be got. Talk about slavery! Why, the very worst African slavery is Paradise to this, and our goody goody canting hypocrites make much ado over the enslavement of the negroes.

“What can we expect when the church is silent, and the priests and bishops make excuses, and apologies for this foul and ghastly pestilence of lust? What a comment on the morals of a people when the church is seriously considering the necessity of separate cups for administering the wine at communion to prevent the contagion of venereal disease! Such a proposition would be amusing and a sarcasm, if it were not so serious, and yet an outsider cannot forbear asking why the church does not attack the root of the matter instead of lopping the branches, or why such noxious persons should be allowed to partake of the communion at all?”

Again I interrupted, I inquired if there were not medical examinations, and did not the doctors give certificates?

“Certainly,” he said, “but what of them? They might as well give consecrated charms to carry in the pocket, as a protection against cyclones and earthquakes. Do you suppose any man can give a certificate to protect any one against the evil results of a violation of the laws of God and nature? Can we thwart God when He evidently intended to make the consequences of sin terrible? Heal the sick, cure and save all we can, but their medical examinations and so-called cures are for another purpose. When Jesus lived, and as it is said, healed the diseased, what did he always say? “Go and sin no more.” But these false cures are not to cure, but on purpose to let the victims go and sin again, and be damned. I am not giving my own opinions, for I have talked with doctors themselves, and they have told me what they thought of the business.

“One of them, a Scotchman, a true man in every fibre of his being, a surgeon who had been through the Mutiny, and at the siege of Delhi. I met him one morning, coming from the hospital. He referred to what he had been doing. Said he, ‘I hate the stinking business.’ ‘Why then, don’t you refuse to do it?’ ‘Man, alive! I would then lose my position, if I did. I am nearly ready to retire on a pension, and I cannot afford to stop now, and lose that.’

“‘But you cure and give certificates,’ I suggested? ‘Certificates be damned,’ he said with disgust; ‘I might as well snap my fingers, and say that the wind shouldn’t blow again. Every time I have this hateful business to do I wish the Viceroy or the Commander in Chief had to do my dirty work, they would soon stop it if they had to make every soldier a eunuch, unseminare them. It is only a trick or deception to delude the soldiers to think they are safe, and let them go on from bad to worse.’

“I expressed surprise that those who made the law did not understand. ‘Understand,’ he replied, ‘they did not want to understand. They wished to please the soldiers, even if it was by deception, and so made their regulations, forgetting that the Almighty had made His laws some time ago. We cannot frustrate the plans of God.’ Much more the doctor told me. I hope Mr. Japhet,” said he, “that I have not detained you too long.” I replied that I was in no hurry, as I had no special business on hand.

He asked, “Were you ever in Naples?” “No,” I replied. “I want to tell you a little incident. One morning, while visiting a friend who had long been a resident of that city, we were seated at an open window, looking out at the belching fires of Vesuvius. I remarked, ‘Why not bore a hole or tunnel from the sea, and let in the waters to drown those infernal fires? Wouldn’t there be a muttering and a spluttering, and a—’

“‘Stop, stop!’ he exclaimed. ‘You do not know what you are saying! Should you dare suggest such a thing here in public, the Neapolitans would mob you at once!’ After a little hesitation he continued: ‘Why, it would be a crime! What a catastrophe would happen, and where would Naples be, or even the globe itself, if such a thing should be done?’

“As my friend was of a religious turn, he went on: ‘It would be the most stupendous attack on God’s order in nature that man ever attempted. The building of the Tower of Babel would be children’s play compared to it. It would be an eternal sin, involving not only the doer of it, but the entire human race. Why, your suggestion will give me the nightmare as long as I live in Naples, fearing that some God-defying man might do it.’

“I have often thought of his remarks, and the lesson of them to me was, that we cannot, or ought not to think of defying the physical laws of nature, any more than we should outrage the moral laws of the God of nature.” Thus ended my first call on Mr. Jasper.

On returning I had these thoughts: It is pitiable to think of the thousands of loving Christian mothers praying daily for their soldier boys in India, unaware of the cheap temptations furnished by the Government within a few steps of their barracks, and to be with them in camp, to march with them for their convenience.

It is pitiable to think of the thousands of pure, innocent women at home, accepting as husbands the returned gentlemen from India, where these have left a number of their own black-and-tan pickaninnies, or have been shorn of their strength, in the laps of many Delilahs among the native women.

CHAPTER XIV.

I had a good home, and everything pleasant, but I was alone. Some one has asked the question: “What is home without a mother?” Mine was: “What is home without a wife?” I had sadly failed in my first and only effort to get a partner of my joys, a queen for my home, to my sorrow and extreme chagrin and mortification. I had no ambition to encounter another angry mother, though she had her rights, as I believed I had mine. Burnt fingers make us chary of handling fire.

I had been in a number of happy homes, though excluded as I was, and had seen a number of noble wives and mothers, who shed a divine light and influence not only in their family circles, but on all around them.

Mr. Percy’s description of his mother and of his betrothed, gave me a high ideal of the real and true woman. He never spoke of woman but with respect, and I might say with reverence. The influence of his mother had so formed him, that he could no more have injured a woman than he could have hurt his own soul.

I think the opinion a man has of woman is a true index of his character. I have never heard any one speak disparagingly of woman, but I have asked myself, “What must he think of his own mother or sister?”

I had frequently met a young Eurasian woman. I always like the word woman, for God made women; ladies are a society product, and are somewhat like artificial flowers, painted and produced to order. There are to be sure real ladies, but first of all they must be true women, and as I have always preferred flowers of nature’s own making, so I have a preference for a real woman, yet I will have to admit that even the best of us may be deceived by appearances. I once saw some roses painted so true to nature that butterflies came and lit upon them, and I could imagine them saying to each other, “Fooled again!” So we imperfect sighted mortals may be fooled with what we think are roses.

But to my story. The young woman was really handsome, and quite well educated, though to be truthful, her education was somewhat artificial, as the most of her life had been spent in a convent school. On her father’s side of French descent; she was born of lawful wedlock, and in a happy, well-to-do, prosperous family. Cupid shot me with one of his best arrows soon after we became acquainted, and I think she was also hit with the same kind of weapon from the quiver of the famous little sportsman. There seemed to be a mutual sympathy for each other in our wounded hearts. The result was, as it generally happens in such cases, we concluded to cure each other’s wounds, by joining hands and hearts. The wedding took place at the home of the bride, with great ceremony, and a large gathering of friends, and then this Adam and his Eve returned to their garden of Eden, and all went merry as a marriage bell.

It seemed as if I had now reached the acme of my desires, wealth enough, a beautiful home, a fine library, flowers in our garden, and above all—a wife. I had forgotten the story, as probably most of us have, that there was a serpent even in the garden of Eden, and I never thought that one could enter mine.

I had fine horses and carriages, so we could enjoy our drives. As I have said, I subscribed liberally to all games and entertainments, so we had frequent invitations, and were well received. We also gave our little parties, which were well enjoyed. My wife was an excellent pianist, and entertained our guests with music, in which some of them took part. One of the most frequent callers was an Hon. a young officer of one of the regiments, very gentlemanly in appearance, of a high society family, well read, and one who had traveled and seen the world. He had a good ear for music, and played well, so he and my wife had something in common to interest them, with which I was well pleased. He not only often dined with us alone and with others, but before our evening drives he frequently took tea with us on our veranda, and we talked on various subjects, for he was an excellent conversationalist, full of anecdotes and incidents, which he related in a very fascinating manner. He had style, a quick appreciation of things, and what interested me was his remarks on moral and religious subjects, not connected with churches or creeds, but in their widest meaning, and frequently with me alone he spoke of the beauty of virtue and honor. He seemed to be a devoted church-goer, belonged to the High Church party, was a stickler for ecclesiastical forms, and often talked of the beauty of the services, and the value of the sacraments.

Both my wife and myself were greatly pleased to have such an acquaintance to relieve the monotony that rules even in our best India stations. We had other friends whom we often saw, each excellent in his way. We were happy and time passed rapidly. One of the largest gatherings in the station was at the Birthday Ball, when guests came from outside places. We attended the ball, though I could not dance, yet I was very fond of music, and the social part. My wife excelled in dancing and took great delight in it, so she had plenty of partners, one of whom was our Hon. friend, and he was about the best dancer of them all.

I had frequently to be absent for several days, to visit my villages, and to look after my investments. I regretted these absences for my wife’s sake, as she was timid at night, and besides she appeared fond of my company, as I know I was of hers. One day, as I was about to leave, our Hon. friend called, and during our conversation asked me if he could take my wife out driving during my absence. I replied that I would be most pleased to have him do so, and suggested that they should use the phaeton, as it would be more comfortable than a cart, and the horses needed exercise. During my absence I congratulated myself on our happiness and prosperity, and thought with pride of the pleasant reception of my wife in the station.

So the months passed with nothing to cloud my happiness. One day when I was in the garden, looking over my trees and flowers, pruning a limb here and there, my head man or durwan, an elderly Hindu, whom I had kept in my service for years, followed me around. I saw by his manner that he had something to say to me, so I asked “What is it, Ram Kishn?” He replied, “I have been with the Sahib for years and have eaten his salt, and I would shed my blood for him.”

“I know that, Ram Kishn, but what do you wish to say?”

“Sahib!” he said with hesitation, “I have often thought of telling you something, but I was afraid. I have seen something that even we poor ignorant idol worshipers—Kam ackl, bhut parast log, as the Sahibs call us, think is not right.”

I quickly asked, “Has somebody been stealing my fruit or flowers, or the bearer been cheating with the grain?”

“No, Sahib! nothing of that kind, something worse than that.”

I began to be impatient and said, “Out with it then, what is it?”

“Sahib, you know I love you, and think much of your izzat, honor. I would let you beat me, or you might put your feet upon me,” and he threw himself upon the ground toward me. I began to be alarmed, thinking there must be something serious, or he would not act in that way, for he was a very reliable, sensible man. I told him to get up, and urged him to tell me what he meant. He said, “I would rather die than say it, but I tell you for the sake of your honor, I must tell you.” ‘Well, then tell it,’ I urged.

Said he, “If the sahib will not kill me with the knife in his hand.”

I hurled the knife away, and said, “There goes the knife,” and then I folded my arms and stood waiting. He went on:

“Now, if the Sahib will not call me a liar, or the son of a dog, or curse me.”

I held up my right hand and said: “Ram Kishn! I will eat an oath before God, that I will not touch you with my hands or feet, neither will I harm you with my words, if you tell me what you mean.”

After a few moments, he said, “Sahib, you know the young Sahib who comes here often, and sings with the Mem Sahib, who goes out with her in the phaeton when you are absent?” I nodded my head in reply. “Well, when you are gone to your villages—how can I tell it, Sahib? he comes late at night when the lights are all out, and the Mem Sahib lets him in, and he does not go away till early next morning.”

I staggered and fell. He rushed to me moaning, “Sahib, forgive me, what have I done? I have killed you!” Then he helped me to a seat in the arbor.

It seemed my heart had stopped, and I was choking. He stood with the palms of his hands together, bending towards me, and the tears running down his cheeks.

For some time we were silent. I could not think, it seemed that I had fallen from some house or tree and was insensible. After awhile I said. “Ram Kishn, I don’t doubt that you believe what you say, but there must be some mistake. It is impossible, impossible.”

Then he said, “Sahib, do not say a word, not even to the Mem Sahib. I am the only one of the servants who knows this, for don’t I watch on the front veranda when the Sahib is absent?”

“But, what shall I do?” I asked, for I was in such a dazed stupor that I could not think.

He replied, “The Sahib is going away to-night. Go, but do not go far from the station, and return here to this arbor at twelve o’clock. Do not come before that time, or the servants will be about, and we do not want them to know anything of this, and then we’ll see that which is to happen, will happen.” I told him I would do as he said, and that he should order the sais to have the cart ready at five o’clock, and to have the bearer put in my luggage. He replied that it should be just as I ordered.

I sat for awhile, and then started for a walk, somewhere, anywhere, I did not know, or care. I did not wish to see my wife, as I could not trust myself to meet her just then. As I expected, when I returned, she had gone out with her Hon. friend for a drive in the phaeton, so I started in the direction of my villages. I halted at a village several miles from the station, telling the sais that I was ill, and very ill I was, too. How long the hours were! How slowly the minutes crept! I held my watch in my hand, counted the tick, ticks, as if every one was taunting me with my wretchedness. So I waited and ate grief for my dinner. Eleven o’clock came, and I turned towards home. Home! How suddenly it had changed to Hell! I formed no plans. I doubted, I feared, I hoped. Nearing the station I went by a back lane to the stables, and taking the luggage myself, went through the garden to the arbor. There I found Ram Kishn. To show his sympathy in the dark, he took both my hands in his and pressed them without uttering a word. After some moments of silence I whispered, “Ram Kishn, is it,” and interrupting me, he said, “We’ll see, sahib, come with me.” I followed him to a side door which we entered, for it seems that he had quietly unfastened this door. He lit the night lantern, and drew the slide to hide the light, and we silently groped our way to our bedroom, yes, our bedroom. As we entered it, he drew the slide, and there upon my bed, our bed, they were both asleep in each other’s arms!

If I had been dazed before, I was paralyzed now. It was well that I had formed no plan and taken no weapon, but it would have been useless, as I could not raise my arms. I could not think; my power of speech was gone.

In an instant, at the glow of the light, they both awoke with a scream of fright. I turned and left the room.

Often since that terrible moment I have thought of what I might, could, would or should have done. That is always the way. Most people can think afterward, when it is too late for thinking. But it was well that my guardian angel or something kept me from taking a pistol or even a stick in my hand. It has all passed, except the sad remembrance, and I console myself with the thought that when one has done his best, that whatever is, is best.

I went out into the darkness, wishing that it could engulf and hide me forever. On and on for miles down the metaled road, thinking, but all my thoughts ran into a delirium.

When the morning sun shone into my face, I found myself seated on the sand by the roadside looking toward home. Home! I had none. It had vanished in the darkness. Strange, is it not, that after a lapse of years old scenes will suddenly flash upon one? It is true that a thousand times I had thought of my mother, but at that moment I saw the dear little mama, with those beautiful eyes wide open, looking, looking while her heart was breaking, dying! I could realize her bitter sorrow, for was not my heart breaking too?

These thoughts of her brought me to life again, to the maddening reality of my own condition. I arose and went back to my infamy and disgrace. I felt but little anger, as the consciousness of my degradation overwhelmed me, and despair paralyzed all my feelings.

As I entered the house, I saw my wife—how I hated that word then—seated in the drawing room. She did not look at me, and I passed on into my private room. When I came out again, she sprang toward me, but I retreated, saying, “Don’t come to me, never touch me again.” She threw herself upon the floor, wailing and begging me to forgive her. My heart was stone, my whole body dead to her. After a while she took a seat and I listened in silence, while she told me all. How the Hon. had flattered her, deceived and so seduced her, that at the Birthday Ball, after a waltz together, he had taken her into the kala jagah—well is it named the black place—and then had taken liberties with her, and then on and on—why repeat the hateful story?

By the time she had finished I had formed my plan, and said this to her, “Your Hon. seducer will probably not tell of this. The only one else who knows it is Ram Kishn, and he will not tell, and we need not say anything. We can live in hell here, and that is enough, without telling others to have them add fuel to the flames. You can have that side of the house entirely to yourself. One of the rooms you can use as a dining room, and you can have the carriage for your evening drives. I will keep this side of the house for myself, and we’ll live as never seeing each other.”

The thought of the pleasant life we had passed, and of this horrible life coming, made me exclaim, “What infamous crimes were my ancestors guilty of, that I should be cursed like this? Why should I be damned for the sins of that villainous father of mine?”

At this she asked, “Am I not to be your wife again?”

“My wife!” I exclaimed; “No, never, never again. Your purity is gone. You are polluted for me. You have violated all your rights, not by a sudden passion, but deliberately, time and again. You took advantage of my absence. You have done your best to degrade me, to ruin me, and to pollute yourself. You have not the slightest claim on me for any rights or privileges. As for love, such as I had for you yesterday, my heart is now dead to you. I forgive you, pity you, and will provide every comfort for you, but you are not my wife except in name, and never can be.”

She fell back in a swoon, and I called her ayah, waiting woman, and left the room.

What else could I do? Since then I have often thought of what I did, and my conscience has never condemned me. I acted toward her as I would have had her act toward me if the circumstances were changed. Had I broken my loyalty to her in but one instance, she would have been right in dealing with me as I dealt with her. I do not believe in two codes, one for erring men, and another for erring women. If men demand virtue in their wives, and cast them off when they fall, then let the men apply the same law to themselves. The man who has commerce with more than one woman, is as guilty as the woman who has had commerce with more than one man. If immorality is wrong in a woman, why not in a man? Why should the man have the right to transmit the curse of sensualism or debased appetite to his children more than the woman? Why should a woman in marriage take up a damaged article of a man, any more than a man a disreputable woman for a wife?

Asks a Danish novelist, “Is a woman who has had no relationships with a man before marriage entitled to expect the same in her husband? Is a man who has had relationships with other women before marriage entitled to complain of his wife who has had such relationships?” Another gives this paragraph—a conversation of a father with his daughter. “There,” he says, “is woman’s noblest calling.” “As what?” asks the daughter. “As what! Have you not listened? As—as the ennobling influence in marriage, as that which makes men pure, as—” “As soap?” she suggests. “Soap?” asks he, “what makes you think of soap?” “You make out that marriage is a great laundry for men. We girls are to stand ready, each at her wash-tub with her piece of soap. Is that how you mean it?”

Once conversing with a young man, a full-blooded European in high position, from a remark of mine he was led to ask, “Do you think that children will inherit the disease of their father?” “Inevitably,” I replied, “and I do not believe that God himself can or will avert this natural law.” He replied, with a tremor in his voice, “I am very sorry to hear you say that, as I am going to be married in a few days.” I changed the subject, and made another remark, when he asked, “Don’t you believe in the blood of Jesus to atone for our sins?” “No,” said I, “not at all.” “Well!” he exclaimed, “if I did not believe in that, I do not know what I should do.”

His was a strange mixture of practice and belief, like vice and virtue sleeping in each other’s arms in the same bed. Living in the midst of sin, diseased, and about to commit the meanest of frauds by marrying a pure, noble girl, and yet professing to believe in Jesus, the purest of men, who denounced lust in the severest terms, and taught that even lustful desire was as criminal as adultery. Why should there not be pure-minded, physically clean men, for fathers, as well as pure-minded and beautiful women for mothers?

Why not, in the name of all that is just and holy, demand of men the same chastity that they demand of women?

I know this is not the rule in “society”; that there are many men who claim to be men of honor, gentlemen, and many of them professing Christians, who glibly talk about the beauty of chastity and virtue, and yet who feed in every pasture as if they had a right there, but if their wives step aside, then the devil is to pay, and all that.

I acted according to my sense of justice—one law for both sexes, so how could I have done otherwise than I did?

What of the Hon. gentleman, an officer in her majesty’s service? I might have shot him, and been hung for it, as that is justice according to English law. I might have exposed him and created a scandal, to be myself despised as a cuckold, and he be patted on the back by his gentlemen comrades, or laughed at for being caught. Such an escapade, by what I have read and heard, is winked at by mothers in English “society,” and constituents would not hesitate in making such a man a member of Parliament. “Young men will sow their wild oats,” is their excuse. “It is only an exuberance of gaiety—a youthful indiscretion,” say they.

An English writer, a member of Parliament, so the statement is not to be doubted, said in a newspaper article that “An Englishman is never so happy as when stealing his neighbor’s wife,” so the Hon. may still be happy stealing other men’s wives, as he stole mine. But then she was only an “Eurasian,” the wife of that “damned Eurasian,” and so fit game for an Hon. or any other gentleman.

I went to Ram Kishn, and he followed me into the arbor where we could be alone. I told him what I had done. He replied, “Sahib, I am a poor, ignorant, bhut parast, and have no more sense than if I was brother to a donkey, yet I think you are doing right.” “Now, Ram Kishn,” I inquired, “you will never tell a word of this?” He thrust out his tongue, with his teeth upon it, as if to say, if it ever utters a word may it be bitten off. And his tongue ever remained true and unbitten.

We two lived in this way in a divided house, not a home. Talk about hell fire! It could not be worse than what I endured and suffered during the long and dreary months while we lived and died a living death in every day. I provided everything I could for her comfort, the best of servants, the choicest kinds of food, books, magazines and illustrated papers. She had her drives, but alone, the carriage was for her and no one else. We seldom met, and then only for a word or two, when I asked if she needed anything. I think, as she became conscious of her sin against me, she respected me for the course I took.

She fell ill. I got the best medical attendance and nurses. The end was approaching, and then she sent for me, and confessed again that she had wronged me, and almost cursed that Hon. gentleman who, by his pious talk and seductive flatteries, had led her astray, and held her in his power, spellbound and powerless as the serpent holds the poor, weak bird, and destroyed our love and home. Why should she not curse him? “For cursed be the heart that had the heart to do it.” She did not blame me for what I had done. My kindness and consideration had made her love me more than ever. She had repented with bitter tears, until her heart was broken, and now, at the close of her life, ending so sadly, she wanted my forgiveness, which I gave most freely. She begged a parting farewell kiss, which I had no desire to refuse, and she departed, once the life of my life, but now no more.

Did I not suffer, and for her? Did I not live down in the valley of despair, and under the shadow of death, all those months and for her sake? I would have given all I possessed, even life itself, to have restored her to me as she once was—my wife.

I buried her body in a beautiful spot in the cemetery, in silence, as not a prayer or funeral note was uttered, for I had been so damnably wronged by my Christian father, and this Hon. Christian gentleman who had murdered my love, whom I had often seen, hail fellow, well met, with the chaplain, and had noticed in church piously reciting the prayers, that I hated everything associated with him, and wished to have neither priest nor prayers.

My wish is, that if there be a devil, he may get this seducer and give him his just dues, as I would wish to see a murderer caught and hung. I believe in justice to sinners as well as to saints.

Some might say, “Why not have charity?” and my reply would be,

“Urge neither charity nor shame to me,

Uncharitably with me have you dealt,

And shamefully by you my hopes are butchered,

My charity is outrage, life my shame

And in that shame still lives my sorrow’s rage.”

The last mark of respect I could show her was to erect a beautiful monument on her grave, inscribed with “Mary, the wife of Charles Japhet,” which the world may read, though it has never known the secret of our lives until now. Though she had ceased to be in my heart my wife, still she was and ever will be my wife in name.

Years have passed since that awful, memorable event. I have often tried to analyze and comprehend my feelings and condition at that time. I had such implicit, absolute confidence in the virtue of my wife that I would have risked my soul in proof of it. I had such respect for that man that nothing but overwhelming proof could have convinced me of his lack of integrity. I was rather proud of his acquaintance, pleased with what I considered his polite attentions to my wife. I would have felt it degrading, not only to them, but to myself, to have entertained the slightest suspicion of the least impropriety.

This was my condition before the fearful awakening came. Then it came so suddenly, like a flash of lightning before my eyes, that I was bewildered, stupefied. For the moment I could not realize anything, either that I existed or could think or feel—paralyzed is the best word I can use,—in thought and feeling.

Then there flashed through me a contempt, a thorough disgust for those two things as if they were but slimy toads in the mire that were beneath my notice, and too nasty for me to touch or look at. With this latter feeling overpowering me, I escaped from what, had I remained a moment more, would have become a revenge, and I would have committed a terrible deed, not a crime, in killing them both, if I could. I think I would have been justified in doing this, and yet, and yet, there would have been a fearful remembrance of it ever afterward. I wonder why I acted as I did, and still am heartily glad that I did not act otherwise.

Mr. Jasper was my kindest friend when the shadow of death was over my house. He walked beside me to the cemetery, and stood beside me in the silence at the grave, and returned with me in the carriage. He scarcely spoke a word in all that time, but I felt the sympathy of his heart. The shadow of death brooded within my house, the stillness was awful, almost beyond endurance, and I was terribly alone. I could well apply the lines of Shelley to myself:

“As the earth when leaves are dead,

As the night when sleep is sped,

As the heart when joy is fled,

I am left lone, alone.”

CHAPTER XV.

The next morning my friend called, and we had a long conversation on the veranda. He said, “I was not a little surprised that you did not have the chaplain and no kind of service at the grave. Not that I personally was dissatisfied, but rather that you dared to go against the usual custom.”

I could not tell him the exact reason, which mainly was my dislike of the chaplain on account of his intimate companionship with the Hon. who had wrecked my life, so I said that I had no acquaintance with the chaplain; that according to social custom, as he had come last to the station, it was his place to call on us. If he had any interest in our religious welfare it was his duty to see us. If he was the shepherd and we the sheep, it was his place to look us up, and not ours to run after him. As he had never cared for us, either in health or in sickness, and we could live and die without his services, it seemed to me that we could be buried without his aid.

“Believe me,” he answered, “I am not finding fault or criticising, but only referred to your not following the usual custom, and am rather pleased that you had courage to do what you thought best. For myself, I would prefer a solemn chant, or such a hymn as ‘Abide with me,’ or any hymn that would lead us to think of eternal life. I object to the service for the dead, as given in the prayer-book, being used for everybody, saint and sinner alike; not that I would be a judge of the dead, yet we cannot always restrain our thoughts and judgments.

“When I stood at the grave of a man whom everybody knew as a drunkard, and we both knew such a man, who, going home at night drunk from a party, fell from his horse and broke his collar bone, and died from his injury mainly because he was dissipated. He was worse than a drunkard, a seducer of innocence, a debauchee, most profane and vulgar in all his conversation. He was vice personified; destitute of all pure noble feelings, spending his nights in vice and his days in intrigue, whose acquaintance was fatal to a woman, and who reveled in the putridity of immorality. Every decent person loathed him while he was living, and only recognized him because he was in a prominent government position. When we stood at his grave, and the chaplain said the words:

“‘Forasmuch as it hath pleased Almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear brother here departed, we therefore commit his body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust; in sure and certain hope of the Resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ,—’

“I could not help thinking, you are either a fool or a liar and I recalled the saying of Garibaldi: ‘A priest knows himself to be an imposter unless he be a fool, or have been taught to lie from boyhood.’

“Such a performance as that, and I don’t know what else to call it, is degrading a religious service, and turning it into a falsehood, making a sham or mockery of what at such a solemn moment should be—most truthful and sacred. Everybody present at the time knew the service was a lying flattery, a religious farce. Is it any wonder that so many people lack sincerity, and lose faith not only in the church, its ministers, but in all things religious? The clergy go through their forms whether they are suitable for the occasion or not.”

I suggested that perhaps his hymns might not always be appropriate.

“Why not?” he asked. “They would not lie about God or the dead, but would be only for the living. Another thing. As this man to whom I referred was near death, they sent for the chaplain. He may have found a suitable prayer, or have said some good words, but what could he do for such a man in the awful hour of death? They say, ‘The man may repent,’ and then? Would he go to heaven? What kind of a heaven would be suitable for him? What society is he fitted to enjoy? What delight would he take in anything that is pure and holy? That is another of the false, baneful teachings of the Church, that the vilest of men may in a dying hour, by a few words of the priest, by partaking of the communion, by the anointing of oil, or the sprinkling of a few drops of so-called holy water, in an instant, be fitted to go into the presence of God and associate with angels and the pure and good. You might as well take a savage cannibal, or a wild Hottentot, suddenly into a London drawing room, among the refined and educated, and expect him to enjoy himself and be at ease, as to think of a vile, polluted man gaining admittance into Heaven, and to be happy should he get into it. Of what interest would God be to a soul in a future life, who had nothing to do with Him here?

“With me it is not a question if I shall go to Heaven, but how shall I like it when I get there? Strip many people of all that is in them that pertains wholly to this life, and there would be little left that would be worth taking over into that other life. The whole church scheme is founded on the idea that Heaven is a kind of a pen, or a big sheep-fold, and that the keeper of the gate can be cajoled or bribed to let in anybody who is vouched for by some priest; that even those so vile as to pollute the earth by their presence, who can get past the keeper through the gate, or by any hook or crook get in, will at once bloom out into saints and angels.

“Is it strange that so many live in vice and sin, when their salvation is made so easy, by getting in a priest at the last moment? How can honest men, as clergymen, bolster up such a flattering delusion? If it is criminal to deceive men about things in this life, how much more so when it is about that which affects their eternal life? If the parsons cannot keep a man from sinning, or make him lead a good life here, how can they, in the hour of death, save him from Hell or fit him for Heaven, when his body is racked with pain and his senses are benumbed? Is it not a gross deception to teach that, when a man becomes so feeble from his vices, that he can enjoy nothing more on earth, neither of its good or evil, and has nothing left but its dregs, that he can take communion, and reach Heaven?

“Colley Cibber wrote of Nell Gwynn, the notorious profligate mistress of Charles the Second: ‘She received the last consolations of religion. Her repentance in her last hours appeared in all the contrite symptoms of Christian sincerity.’

“This is only one instance of thousands of similar statements. How can a person’s death-bed be illumined by the holy consolations of religion, after a whole life spent in the meanest kind of wickedness? What sacrilegious rubbish!

“My idea of Heaven is this—that it is a condition of the soul, and is made by ourselves, with God’s help always—by conquest, the conquest of self, the subjugation of all thoughts, feelings and acts, everything that is unheavenly, and by building up the soul with pure thoughts and deeds of rightness. We make a heaven for ourselves by subduing and improving. The farmer clears the ground and destroys the weeds to give place to the seed, and then by cultivation, produces a harvest. He does not expect a crop without labor; by some chance, or prayer, or miracle. Why should we expect a spiritual crop of good without working for it? Our diseases, are in no sense, accidents or mysteries, but the necessary and legitimate results of the violations of laws. A man who violates the laws of his physical being to his own injury is a criminal in regard to himself, just as he would be a criminal in breaking the laws of the state.

“Government does not accept the plea of ignorance of the laws, for to be ignorant is a part of the crime, so no one should be excused for not knowing or obeying the laws of his own being.

“The material view of Heaven as a place, instead of a condition of the soul, that men can be thrown into it, by some force or power, outside of themselves, that some one else has the keys and can open the place for them, is a delusion that has done great hurt to humanity. With these ideas men deceive and excuse themselves. Instead of making and building up a heaven of their souls, they depend on others. They shift the responsibility. If they sin, some one will bear their sins for them. No matter how often they sin, or how long they continue in it, if they, at the dying hour, can say they are sorry, get a priest to vouch for them, and give them the pass-word, they will be made heirs of Heaven, and be straightway carried to Abraham’s bosom. All this is contrary to common sense and reason.

“Is it fair and just, supposing heaven to be a place, to those who all their lives have striven to be good, to have these wretches who are steeped in sin and made up of vice and crime to become at a breath, inhabitants of heaven when they are not able to sin any more? This would not be human justice, nor can I believe that it is God’s plan to people heaven in that way, supposing it to be a place. O, yes, the thief on the cross! I think if Jesus could have foreseen what use would have been made of that expression he would never have uttered it. He had the Jewish notion of heaven being a city, a new Jerusalem, with many mansions, surrounded by a wall with gates. With all due respect to him as a great teacher and a pure man, I cannot but think that these words of his have kept many in sin, delayed their repentance and leading of a better life. Do I say this rashly? Have I not heard men say, ‘O, I will repent before I die;’ and when warned of their mistaken idea of repentance and the danger of delay, have answered, ‘The thief repented on the cross when he was dying and was promised paradise.’ And there is the parable of the laborers. This is a Jewish story and might be told of one of their rulers who could do as he pleased. It is utterly contrary to human justice for a man who works only an hour to receive as much as the man who labors ten hours. It is a libel on God to think he would pay his laborers in that way.

“I have sometimes thought that some people are dead long before they are buried. All the spiritual life, that which makes manhood or saints, is dead, killed by their vices and transgressions against their spiritual nature, and the animal life alone remains that keeps their bodies in existence. What effect then would a prayer or a wafer or anything have upon such a thing that is only like the carcass of a dying brute? In proportion as a man sins he becomes dead to righteousness. I think no one can question this. Then we cannot help admitting that there may come a time when he, his soul, will be actually dead to all good influences. Then he will be a hell to himself, or in hell, just as you choose to have it.

“It is a horrible thought, I know, yet there are many horrible things in life that we cannot escape. The hell or the punishment is of man’s own making, not of God’s.

“If a farmer who has good soil, rain and sunshine, wastes his time in idleness, how can he blame God for not giving him a harvest? When a man wastes his life in vice and crime and becomes a hell to himself, how can he accuse God of being unjust or unmerciful? The moral laws are as exact and reasonable as those of nature.

“The mistake is, I think, in leading people to believe that the church by some supernatural power given to it, or by a sudden belief, hope or regret of the man himself, can change this inexorable, inevitable law of God so as to make the vilest sinner become a saint. The soul that sinneth shall die, and my belief is that God will not frustrate the execution of His own laws. There are no miracles in nature or anywhere else. It is inconsistent to suppose that the Creator of the universe would permit or give power to a few poor mortals anywhere to interfere with or change the working of His laws. In the revolution of the spheres there has not been for ages the slightest variation or shadow of a change. It is impossible to suppose that there could be such a variation in the orbit of a planet so slight as to be beyond the power of man to detect it with his most delicate instruments, without believing that chaos would be the result sooner or later. There is as much harmony and equilibrium in a globule of water as in the largest planet. The dazzling glory in a dew-drop is but the exact reflection of some greater and higher glory. Everything in nature is according to the strictest kind of inerrant, unchangeable law. Why then should we expect or believe that in the spiritual or moral life its laws are errant or changeable? Why should cause and effect be different in the one than in the other? When water can be produced by any power of God or man without the exact proportions of oxygen and hydrogen, then I will attempt to believe that a vile man, dead in trespasses and sins can suddenly be changed into an angel and be fit to enjoy the society of the pure and the good.

“The mercy of God! It is blasphemy to make such a plea to ward off and escape the consequences that are the result of the deliberate violations of God’s moral laws. Earthquakes and cyclones are in harmony with nature’s laws that God has made. Why not demand that the mercy of God shall suddenly interfere and prevent these from engulfing cities and destroying thousands of innocent women and children, as to believe that the mercy of God will interfere with His spiritual laws and save a soul that is dead in sin or has never wished for salvation.”

“But,” I inquired, “do you not believe in the forgiveness of God?”

“Most emphatically I do,” he exclaimed. “When a man longs for it in his soul with heartfelt repentance. You know what I mean; not a sham repentance or asking for forgiveness when he is at the end of his tether and is too weak and impotent to sin again. But suppose that full pardon is given, what then? Does it restore the sinner and reinstate him in his former innocent state or place him where he might have been had he not sinned? Not at all, for I say it with loyalty and reverence to God that there are things He cannot do. He cannot do away with the results of the cyclone of last year. He cannot blot out the occurrences of the past and make the history of the world a blank. He cannot violate His own laws which His own omniscience and wisdom have established. This is inconceivable.

“There are so many who misinterpret the forgiveness and mercy of God that they transform Him from a being of infinite perfectness into a thing of whims and caprices.

“To illustrate my meaning. Suppose a young man, well educated and trained, a model young man in every respect, leaves home like the prodigal son and goes to some city and yields to temptation and vice, as so many do where they think they are unknown and have a chance to see life. His money all spent, his strength all gone so that he can dissipate no more, he goes home. The father and mother receive him with tears of gladness; not a word of reproach is uttered. He sits at the family table, kneels again at the family altar and apparently all is as if nothing had happened. He is fully forgiven but does that forgiveness restore to him the innocence he lost? Never! That is lost forever. He may never sin again, but he cannot obliterate the wounds and scars he made upon his own soul by his sinning. Neither the forgiveness of his father nor the prayers of his loving mother can ever make him what he would have been had he not sinned. Nor can God do away with the violation of His laws. A man’s deeds become a part or all of himself. Destroy the remembrance of those deeds and so far you annihilate the man himself. The only thing for a sinner to do is to sin no more and make the most of the rest of his life.

“Suppose I take an illustration from nature. We go into your garden, and as we pass along, you with your pruning knife in your hand make a cut in one of the trees. Ten years from now we meet again, and as we pass the tree you remark: ‘Why, Mr. Jasper, here is the very tree I cut ten years ago, and there is not a sign or scar of the knife. It is as if it never had been hurt!’ ‘Hold! I cry. Let us cut the tree down and open it.’ There is the inevitable wound made by your knife. It could not be otherwise. Nature always retains its scars and why not men? So the immortal soul never forgets or loses anything of good or evil. It is fearful, awful, I know, and makes one dread to live. Everybody has to carry through life the scars they received in their youth. It is nonsense to say that a life tainted with sin may come out all right in the end.

“The acts of men when once performed are indestructible and eternal, whether they are good or evil. Could they be annihilated, then the good might go as well as the evil, and nothing would be settled, all would be chaos.

“‘According to law,’ is an expression of the justice of an action among men, so we can say that God does everything according to law. Neither will He, or can He, by miracles or any special providence, change or interfere with the execution of His established laws. Why should He? In answer to prayer? What a mess this world would be in, if God answered everybody’s prayers! Two Christian people are at war. Both claim to be right, and each prays to God for help to conquer the other. The one is conquered, but does it acknowledge that its defeat was because God was not with it?

“A farmer went to his minister and asked him to pray for rain, as his corn was drying up. Another farmer objected as he had just cut his grass and rain would ruin it. What would be for the benefit of one might be loss or death to many. Who can interfere with the government of the Almighty?

“Who knows the laws so well as He that made them? Nine-tenths of the suggestions and directions to God, as to how He should manage the affairs of the world, would be insults and sins, were it not for the incapacity and ignorance of those who make them. It is no crime or sin for a donkey to bray at the moon.

“Suppose that one who has spent years in study and experiment produces a large and intricate machine. He knows the purposes for which it was built and all the details and manner of using it. Is such a man to receive directions how to manage his machine from any passer-by, from persons who know nothing of mechanical laws, and of but little else, and never gave an hour’s thought to the simplest mechanical appliance? If any one knows more about the machine than its maker, it might be well for him to give suggestions. So if any one knows more about the world and knows how to take care of it better than its Creator, let him step up, and give his advice and orders.”

I interjected, “If a man makes his own destiny, what is the use of the church or parsons?”

“Use! Why to help make it better, for good, not by any delusions, deceptions, false hopes, jugglery of ordinances or soft sayings. ‘Believe, have faith in this or that and you will be saved.’ Let the priests and all religious teachers warn the people of sin, show them the fearful and inevitable consequences of the violation of the spiritual and moral laws; that as a man lives so he dies, and as he dies so will be his eternal condition. Give him no chance for an excuse, of dodging, of trying to escape through somebody’s influence. Educate him, threaten him, frighten him by the awful present and eternal consequences of sin, into a better life. Make no apologies for sinning. Give him to understand that he is making his own heaven or hell. As the Persian poet puts it:

‘I sent my soul through the invisible,

Some letter of that after life to spell,

And bye and bye my soul returned to me,

And answered, I, myself, am heaven or hell!’

“There is nothing truer than the saying of Kant. ‘Every action carries with it its own punishment, and its own reward.’

‘It matters not how straight the gate,

How charged with punishment the scroll,

I am the master of my fate,

I am the Captain of my soul.’

‘Our acts our angels are, for good or ill,

Our fatal shadows that walk by us still.’

“The great mistake is, that salvation from sin is made so easy; is considered so cheap a thing, that few pay any attention to it. Make men understand that their eternal destiny is of their own making—with the help of God always—that no mediation, intercession of others can possibly change their evil nature, or do away with the fearful consequences of the violation of God’s law. I would not smooth over anything. I would show them that the most difficult thing in life is to be good, and yet that every difficulty can be overcome and the way become delightfully pleasant if the mind and strength of the heart and soul are inclined to it. When a man has wasted his life, sucked the sweets from every flower to gratify his pampered appetite, and the fires of his passions have gone out, he becomes devout, builds a church, endows a hospital, says his prayers, and is cock sure of heaven, as if the eyes of justice were blind and the record of his misspent life could be erased by a few donations of money or the mumbling of a few prayers!

“Away with all such cant and hypocrisy! Money can do a great deal on earth, for all on it, even immortal men are purchasable, but it would be blasphemy to think that the justice of Heaven could be thwarted by bribes, or the records of wrong-doing be washed away by a few tardy tears.

‘Yet here’s a spot,

Out damned spot! Out I say,

What! will these hands never be clean!

Here’s the smell of blood still;

All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand.’

“It is not by any creed or prayer, or ordinance, or mediation that a man is to be saved, but by noble thinking, and brave doing every moment of his life. He may get all the information and assistance he can, but he alone can and must do the work.

“It is awful to reflect that not a thought, or word, or deed is ever forgotten, and that each one makes his own doomsday book, in which all is written with such exactness that there are no erasures or corrections, and to be forever carried as a part of the soul, a perpetual, eternal witness for or against himself. The soul, disrobed, naked, and seeing itself in that fearful light where there can be no deception or the least concealment—what need of any judge or any record but the memory of the soul? The memory keeps an everlasting account of all that ever comes to it,—‘Where I do see the very book indeed where all my sins are writ, and that’s myself.’

“The great mistake is, I think, in making religion wholly a supernatural thing, something to be accepted by faith only, in somebody’s statement, and clothing it with mystery, and placing it before our reason. True religion is as much a science as mental philosophy, or chemistry, and should be investigated by the same methods.

“Says Webster: ‘Science is the understanding of truth or facts; it is an investigation of truth for its own sake, and a pursuit of pure knowledge.’

“Sir William Thompson says: ‘Science is bound by the everlasting law of honor to face fearlessly every problem which can fairly be presented to it.’

“‘Conviction,’ says Bacon, ‘comes not through arguments, but through experiments.’

“Says a French philosopher: ‘I have consumed forty years of my pilgrimage seeking the philosopher’s stone called truth. I have consulted all the adepts of antiquity, and still remain in ignorance. All that I have been able to obtain is this: chance, is a word void of sense. The world is arranged according to mathematical laws.’

“The relation of cause with effect, heat with cold, light with darkness, sweet with sour, positive with negative, is not more or less definite in the natural sciences than that of good with evil, vice with virtue, pure with foul, or rewards with punishments in moral or religious science. Why invent a devil to be the author of evil any more than to imagine some demon to be the creator of darkness, or another as the devil of cold in the arctic regions, or another as the devil of heat here in India?

“Once, conversing with a Roman Catholic priest, he said, ‘Your theory may do very well for you, but for the masses of ignorant people, sunken in vice and sin, a literal hell of fire and a devil are an actual necessity.’

“Bobby Burns says:

‘The fear of hell’s a hangman’s whip,

To haud the wretch in order,’

but I prefer his other sentiment,

‘Just where ye feel your honor grip,

Let that aye be your border.

Its slightest touches instant pause,

Debar a’ side pretenses,

And resolutely keep its laws,

Uncaring consequences.’”

Said he, as he arose to go, “I hope I have not tired you. I have talked enough, so I will practice a little by seeing my poor families, for wishing the poor to be fed without giving them bread, would not be satisfactory to them now, nor to me hereafter.”

Such was Mr. Jasper. I liked him for his honesty and sincerity. I doubt if he ever uttered a word but what he believed, and what he said he felt, as if it was a part of himself.

CHAPTER XVI.

My home was lonely. The light that once shone so brightly in it had gone out, as I might say, in darkness. I took to my books, but I had no purpose or pleasure in reading. I improved my own grounds, and my property in the station. I often went to my villages and spent weeks among them, having good wells dug, a large tank, covering an acre of ground constructed to contain water for irrigation, built roads, made drains, planted good fruit and timber trees. I took much pleasure in all this, and had great satisfaction in doing my duty to the poor people. I was not satisfied to squeeze every pice of my rent out of them and give them nothing in return. The results were better than I anticipated. There was scarcely any sickness or disease among the people, owing to the good water and drainage. They became healthy and more able to labor, and, having abundant water in the tank for irrigation, they raised extra and improved crops. The people had plenty to eat, and the cattle were well fed. They had gardens, for which I supplied imported seeds, so they had vegetables the year round, of which formerly there was a scarcity except during the rains. In a few years there was plenty of fruit, and the branches of the trees supplied the villagers with fuel, so they could save the refuse, that was formerly burned, for their land. I considered all the expenditure I had made, enhanced the worth of my property. The ryots did not fail to realize the value of the improvements to them, and gave me not only my legal rents most willingly, but in their generosity gave me something of their products and would have provided for me as their guest while I was with them.

They always received me with pleasure, not as their landlord, to make demands upon them, but as their best friend. They ever had some present for me. The largest melon, the ripest fruits, the finest flowers, were kept for the sahib. I encouraged them to cultivate flowers, giving them seeds, and sending them various kinds of plants and shrubs. I offered prizes for the best flower beds kept by the women, and appointed a committee of five to decide upon the awards. This was such a success, and gave so much pleasure, that I offered other prizes for the planting of trees, for the best productions of their gardens, and the best crops, the finest looking cattle, and the cleanest, neatest houses and yards. Twice a year we had our little fairs, gala days, on which the prizes were distributed. The amounts I offered were not large, but the emulation they excited was very great. They stimulated industry and induced the people to work with pleasure, and gave them a taste for beautiful and useful things.

My villages soon became the envy of all around them; my people, my friends, took pride in speaking of me as “their sahib” and telling what he had done for them. Need I say that I was pleased, for what is there to produce greater happiness than in doing good and making others happy? I might have skinned these people, and drained every pice I could out of their poverty, but thousands of rupees accumulated would have been only blood money and a curse compared to the pleasure I received from the contented happiness of these once impoverished serfs.

I ventured on another experiment. I built a cheap school-house in each village, and surrounded them with trees and flowers, planted by the villagers themselves. I always got the people to be my partners in everything. A teacher was engaged for each school-house, and every girl and boy was asked to attend, and they were all there. I had no thought of encouraging that Oxford and Cambridge fad of giving the higher education to people to whom it is more of a curse than a blessing. I have often thought of writing a book denouncing the government scheme of giving the sons of the rich natives a classical education at the expense of taxing the groans, sweat and life blood of the poor to pay for it. These upstarts are impudent and mean enough in their natural condition, but with the nonsensical crammed education they get, they are still worse. But I have never found a pen sharp enough, so my book is still in embryo.

In these schools, reading, writing, and the simplest figures were taught; nothing more from books, but a great deal as to morals, manners, health, about their houses, their fields, their cattle, about the birds, the flowers and trees.

I put the girls first, as I always do. If we educate any let it be first the girl, for as the girl is, so will be the mother and the coming man. “A clever mother makes a clever man.” One might as well suppose a stream to rise above its source, as to expect a nation to rise above its mothers. An English writer says, “No great general ever arose out of a nation of cowards; no great statesman or philosopher out of a nation of fools; no great artists out of a nation of materialists; no great dramatist, except when the drama was the passion of the people.” And I will add, no great, good men without good mothers. Therefore, I say, educate the girls! Sometimes the whisper of a mother, in the ear of a child to-day, becomes the boom of a cannon a century hence. The people of India are utterly blind in this respect. No matter what else they do, they will never become a people among the great nations of the earth until they educate the women.

I visited these schools often, gave the children treats, and offered prizes. I gave little lectures to little people, and being only “That Eurasian,” I had their language probably better than they could speak it themselves, so had no difficulty in reaching them.

On the lecture prize days, the work in the fields was stopped, the gardens neglected, and the holiday clothes taken from the earthen jars. The people were all there, and not even a zanana woman or baba left behind. The walls of the little school-house were too near each other, so we had our School Jama’at under the big tree, with mats all around on the ground for the people to sit upon. The result in a few years—for I am looking back now—was that there was not a girl or boy in the villages but could read and write fairly well. They were eager to read, and begged for books and papers, so that I never made a visit that I did not carry out a supply to them. It was interesting, to me at least, to see frequently a little tot of a girl standing up and reading to a number of grown men.

All the teaching was in their own language, of course, as I was not an enlightened fool enough to introduce English among them.

I have always considered, and I do not speak from guess or supposition, but from what I know, that the zemindars, or village owners, are the greatest curse of India, unless they do something for their people, and not one out of a hundred, or even one in a thousand, does that.

Next unto these zemindars is the army of brazen robbers, the jamadars, who collect the rents. They live on the villagers, while with them, and take all the dastoori and plunder they can lay their hands on. The poor people might better welcome a swarm of locusts than these plunderers. I never employed a jamadar to do my collecting, but went myself, and each ryot placed his money in my hands as I sat by a table under the big tree. All paid willingly, as they knew the exact amount, and that there would be no extortion.

Another thing. I allowed no bunyas or money-lenders about. These are another set of leeches, who suck the life blood of the poor in the shape of interest on money advanced on the crops, at from one hundred to two hundred per cent. profit. I have often wondered that a government, half civilized or even a quarter enlightened, should not pass a law against this accursed system of usury, and so protect the poor from wholesale robbery. These harpies are worse than thieves, for they plunder under protection of government, and can collect their extortionate demands by means of law, and in the government courts. I found that several of these fat sleek fellows paid regular visits to my villages, and I well knew from the nature of these animals that they did not go without a purpose. One day I called the ryots together and discovered that a number of them were paying from fifty to one hundred per cent. for loans—a profit to these extortioners that not a mercantile man of Calcutta, or his wicked partner, hardened though they be, would expect. I made a list of the names, with the amounts. I told them that I wanted all this borrowing stopped at once. I drew up a paper, and said that I would advance the sums they had borrowed, without any interest, on condition that they would make their marks on the paper promising never to borrow from the bunyas again. And they all agreed and signed. I got no interest, but received what was better, the good will of these poor men. I advised them to wear their rags, and live on weeds, rather than go in debt. I loaned them money, but at the same time I tried to give them a lesson in political economy. I gave not only one talk, but repeated it. The result was excellent. In a couple of years there was not a man in the villages who owed a rupee. They had a pride about this, for knowing my feelings, it became a disgrace for a man to borrow, and any one was marked when he went into debt. I got a good deal of pleasure out of this in the hatred of the bunya tribe.

Another thing I noticed. Before my improvements and the new regime, the people went to different melas to see the tamashas, for however low and poor a people are, they will have their pleasures. I have read this somewhere. “One way of getting an idea of our fellow men’s miseries is to go and look at their pleasures.” I have often thought of this when seeing the simple trifling amusements of the millions of India people at a mela. How narrow and empty the minds that could take any pleasure in what they enjoy! My whole feeling toward them was pity, even to sadness, as to bring tears to my eyes. Immortal souls, with no desires worthy of immortality!

After a few years, what with the improved culture of the fields, the gardens, the trees, flowers, our fairs and school exhibitions, the people had so much to look forward to and prepare for, that they had no time or inclination to run about the country, or go away from home for amusement.

I made very few rules, but gave many suggestions which they were very quick to take up. Once in our assembly under the big tree, one of the younger men wore a rather earthy looking coat. I suggested that he ask his wife to loan him her clean sari. He left at once and soon appeared with a nice clean coat to the amusement of the company. This little hint was enough, and they showed respect by appearing as cleanly as possible.

I gave them a lecture on the impurities of water and showed them by means of a magnifying glass, first to the women and then to the men, what hideous creatures there were in foul water, to their great disgust, for I saw it in every face, and explained that when they drank such water, and all these clawing, wriggling creatures got into their insides, they would see bhuts, ghosts, even in the day time, and get fever, cholera and all other diseases.

I may have magnified even the truth in this, but as it is what all medical men do when they wish to frighten their simple-minded patients, my little exaggeration was excusable. I talked very plainly to them of the nasty, filthy habit of the Hindus, washing their bodies and rinsing their mouths in the foul pools, and then using the water for drinking and cooking purposes. Of all the customs of the India people this is the vilest, and often have I seen these self styled holy Brahmins, so fastidious as not to drink water out of my clean glass, yet bathing in water so foul that I would not allow my dog to be washed in it, and then drinking the same water.

The Government sends to Europe for learned Medicos to come out here at great expense and publishes octavos on the prevention of disease, and yet allows these talaos or cess-pools to exist near every village, the very hot walloes and breeding places of nearly every kind of disease. It is a very soft thing for these gentlemen to get such a pleasure trip, and that is about all there is in it, except the taxes on the people to pay the bills.

I think my talks on this subject were a great success, as I saw afterward that the people were particular to get water for drinking and domestic purposes from the wells, and the water for bathing they carried away from the tank to use outside.

All these things may be considered trifles by learned scientific minds; but no matter. Many a time in my life I have had to do with trifles. When that English gentleman, my father left us, and poor mama broke her heart, a trifle perhaps to him,—and little sister and I lived on a few handfuls of rice a day, given by the poor out of their scanty store, it was a mere trifle, and when the good old faqir gave us a few handfuls of parched grain, it was only a trifle, but life to us, and when Mr. Percy found us in the serai, only a trifle, but what would I have been if that trifling incident had never occurred? I do not think I am out of my sense in saying that the man who looks carefully after all the trifles may let the big things take care of themselves.

It is said that one of the great characteristics of Charles Darwin was his interest in the littles of every day life, and besides he was one of the most courteous of men. One statement of his, has given me great satisfaction. In a letter he says: “As for myself I believe that I have acted rightly in steadily following and devoting my life to science. I feel no remorse from having committed any great sin, but have often regretted that I have not done more direct good to my fellow-creatures.”

The tank, well filled with clean water, I stocked with the best of fish of which the villagers soon had a plentiful supply. I am surprised that the distinguished officers of government who write so learnedly about relieving the poor of India, do not look after such a cheap and excellent means of supplying food for the people. Yet as this might become another article for taxation my prudence suggests silence.

I gave and also received, illustrating the Spanish proverb, “He who would bring home the wealth of the Indies must carry the wealth of the Indies with him.”

I became very fond of these people, and I know they had great regard for me, and the children, especially the little girls, chattering, laughing, playful things always around me, and they were rewarded. As I looked at them I thought of that little sister of mine, would I ever find her?

One thing I recalled years afterward, and that was, I never once talked to the people about their religion or referred to mine, for heathen as I am, I have a religion. I never once spoke to them of the Bible or the Shasters, nor gave them any creed or catechism. I often spoke to them about God, pointing upwards, as to the One above, and explained what I thought He would be pleased to have us do, and with what He would be displeased. I am sure they came to reverence Him with a desire to obey Him, for they paid less and less attention to their old idolatries.

One day one of the men came to me with a question. He first stated his case, and then asked “Sahib, do you think Permeshwar, God, would be pleased to have me do that?” “No” I replied, “I don’t think He would.” “Then,” said he, “I will not do it.” I felt that good seed had been planted in their hearts as in their fields, and I would let it grow and ripen, cared for by God himself.

For some time I enjoyed this pleasant labor, as it diverted my thoughts from my desolate home. I have long since come to the conclusion that when a man becomes tired of himself, or is down in the mouth or heart, the best remedy is to try and benefit his fellow men.

Said Rowland Hill: “I would give nothing for that man’s religion whose very dog and cat are not the better for it.”

I left the villages to themselves for awhile and engaged in other matters.

CHAPTER XVII.

One day, starting on a journey, I entered an apartment on the train in which there was a lady and gentleman. They were very reserved as all English people are.

I remember the remark of the great Dr. Johnson to his friend Boswell, “Sir, two men of any other nation who are thrown into a room together at a house where they are both visitors will immediately find some conversation. But two Englishmen will probably go each to a different window and remain in absolute silence.

“Sir, we do not understand the common rights of humanity.”

Apropos of this, I recall an account of a shipwreck when only two men, Englishmen of course, were saved, one clinging to the foremast and the other to the mainmast. One, as he was rescued was asked, “Who is that other man?” He replied, “I don’t know.” “But didn’t you speak to him?” “Speak to him!” he exclaimed. “How could I when we had not been introduced?”

I read my paper for awhile in silence. I am never alone when I have a good book or paper, and yet I felt like talking, as I sometimes do. Probably we all feel that way. Strange isn’t it?

I tried to think of something to break the silence between myself and my two silent fellow travelers, but failed entirely. Some miles were passed, and I thought of a good iced drink that my bearer had brought for me in my traveler’s ice box, and without a reflection, but from the impulse of my good nature, I suggested that perhaps they might take something. Had I been acquainted, I might have said in good Johnsonese, “Let us reciprocate,” but I was prudent and cautious. They accepted at once with thanks. This broke the ice between us, and I found them very pleasant company. It is said, no matter by whom, that if an Englishman is once introduced, or the ice is broken, he can be very affable. Probably this may be true.

It was so in this case so what matter elsewhere. We enjoyed our conversation so much that our journey passed quickly and we were scarcely aware that we were at the end of it. They gave me their cards, and said they were from Wazirabad. Wazirabad! How that name struck me! I quickly asked, “Did you know a Mr. and Mrs. Strangway, who lived there?” Both replied at once, “They were our most intimate friends!” I told them that the Strangways, years ago, had adopted a little sister of mine, and though I and another had written, we could never get a word from them or about her. They replied, that soon after the Strangways returned with the little girl they left for Europe taking her with them, and remained abroad for years, where she was educated. While absent, the Strangways from some cause or other were obliged to return to India, and soon after their arrival they both died suddenly from the cholera. “But what became of the daughter?” I impatiently asked. Replied the lady: “She was left without any means, and went as a governess to Bhagulpur.” At the mention of this name I sprang to my feet with a start. “Do you know to whom she went?” I asked.

The lady looked at her husband, and after a moment’s hesitation said, “Wasn’t it to the Shaws?” “Great Heavens! then I have seen her without knowing her,” I exclaimed. My heart thumped in its beating, and cold chills raced over me. They probably attributed this to my excitement, at suddenly hearing of my long-lost sister. And I, what did I think, or what didn’t I think? That villain of a magistrate leaving the station, and the sudden disappearance of the governess, my sister!

We shook hands, but I hardly knew when my newly made friends left me. Horror of horrors! To have been so near and yet not known her, and that cursed old Englishman talking about her as he did, and how could I think it, leading her astray! My sister! As long as she was somebody else’s sister, how little I cared, but now when she was my sister? How could I think of it? How endure it? I went to some hotel, I cared not where. I had no desire for dinner. I could not sleep or rest, but walked the floor. What a never ending night it was! The moments grew into hours, and the hours into days, before the morning broke. It seemed as if I was under the curse of Heaven. Born under a curse, with trouble enough already to have broken my heart, when would it end? Would this be my lot until death released me? What maddening thoughts I had during that long never ending night! It seemed as if my heart would burst and my brain go mad in anger and despair. I forgot my business and took the first train for home, and the journey seemed eternal.

At last I reached home, so thoroughly exhausted that I felt and knew that I must rest and sleep or die. I ate some food without tasting it, and then yielding, I slept, for nature could endure no more. Ah! what would become of us if we could not sleep! What a hell of anguish and despair would we be in without it?

Yet I awoke as if from some terrible dream, of demons, fiends, with horrible forms and faces and some accursed men wrangling and fighting over a beautiful innocent childlike girl, with none to help her, neither God above, nor angels, nor women, or men. I awoke so terrified that I could not realize my own self. I felt that I was absent, gone away and had to come back to myself. It was some minutes of time before I recovered from that fearful state, and then I became calm, for I began to reason about the folly of wasting my strength when I might need it so much. I compelled myself by my will to be quiet, and partook of breakfast.

The next thing was to find out the station of the commissioner. I thought first of Mr. Jasper. No, that would not do. I did not want him, now my best friend, to know my secret, my fears or my sorrows. We often prefer to hide such things from our best friends. I went to the magistrate, a stranger to me. I asked him as calmly as I could, the address of Mr. Smith, now commissioner somewhere, formerly magistrate and collector in our station, that I had some important business with him, and hadn’t I? He at once gave me the name of the place. I thanked him and left.

I took the first train for Jalalpur, the headquarters of the commissioner, where I arrived the next morning. Another fearful night. I cannot describe it, as the very remembrance of it now makes my old heart ache. I thought of those of whom I had read, going to the guillotine, the awful journey, and the dread of its end. What would be at the end of my journey? I shuddered at the thought of it, and felt as if I was going to my doom, to a hell of some kind, and something which I could not resist, compelled me to go on, go on.

The station was at length reached, and reason took possession of me, and I thought I heard a voice saying, “Be a man, Charles, be a man.” Ah! Mr. Percy, would to God you were here now to help me! The thought of his words braced me up. I had a bath at the station rooms, the colder the better, I thought, and then a breakfast by force of my will, and then out on my search.

If ever a criminal went limp to the scaffold I could sympathize with him that morning. Going along the road I met a government chuprassi, as shown by his clothes and badge, and I made inquiries of him, one of which was, if he knew of a young woman, an Eurasian, under the protection of the Commissioner Sahib? Protection! God forgive me for that lie! But how else could I ask? He looked me over, again and again, and hesitated. I waited. He then said, “Sahib, I am one of the Commissioner Sahib’s servants. If he knew I told you anything about this woman he would send me to Jehannam before the sun went down.” I replied that I had some news for her, that he should have no fear, and need only tell me the direction to her place. Before telling, he exacted a promise that I would never mention him in any way, or his head would have to say salaam to his shoulders.

I went on and came to the place. How much it reminded me of that small wretched court where my little mama once was. I hurried in through the narrow door or gate, as I did not wish to be seen by any one. There she sat on the veranda of a small house with a little boy at her knees. She was very much disturbed at my appearance. I saw at the first glance our mother’s large lustrous eyes. Why do we always speak of the eyes of a person? Is it because they are the windows of the soul through which we look as through windows into a house? I now saw the well remembered features of the face. I could not be mistaken. It was she, the long lost sister.

Though I recognized her, would she know me, as she was so young when we parted? That thought troubled me.

I did a great deal of thinking in that moment of silence. How fast we think at times!

I bowed and said, “Good morning. My name is Japhet, Charles Japhet. Are you Miss Strangway?” “Yes,” she replied. “Then you remember Mr. and Mrs. Strangway, of Wazirabad?” I asked. “Oh! yes, surely I do,” she quickly answered, with animation. “They adopted me, I was as their daughter, their only child, and how they loved me! O, if they had only lived, I would not have become what I am now.”

She bowed forward, her face in her hands, and sobbed bitterly. I could have cried, too, and why not? Quickly the thought came to me, “Don’t let your feelings run away with your sense, for you need all the sense you have got.” After she had recovered a little, I asked, “Do you remember where Mr. and Mrs. Strangway got you?” She thought a moment, and replied, “Not very clearly, all I remember, that there was a great big house, and a great number of girls, with nice white frocks; that a lady came one day, took me by the hand and led me away; that is all I recollect, and I suppose that this lady must have been Mrs. Strangway, for I was with her always afterward.” “So you remember the frocks; just like girls!” I couldn’t help saying. She smiled. It was that playful smile that I so well remembered, and which I was glad to see, even in her sad condition, and though my heart was breaking with sorrow and dread.

“But do you remember nothing about a little brother of yours?” I asked.

“Nothing but this,” she answered. “I remember a long, dusty road. One day the little boy, my brother, I think, went to climb a tree to get me a flower or some fruit, and a great big monkey up in the tree made faces and chattered at him, and when the little boy ran away from the tree the monkey chased him, and I was in a great fright for his sake. That is all I remember.”

How vividly I recalled that scene! How frightened I was as I saw that monster grinning at me, and how I ran with him after me, and another thing, that the little sister picked up a stick, and came to defend me, bravely shaking the stick at the vicious brute.

There was no more doubt, so I said, “I am your brother.” She sprang to her feet, exclaiming, “You my brother? You that little brother? Come in quickly!” For I had been standing outside. She threw her arms around my neck and kissed me. Why shouldn’t she? “You my brother? You my brother?” she repeated, as if it was impossible. “Yes, and you are my sister, my long lost sister!” I replied.

We sat for an hour or more. There was no fear of interruption, as no one came in the day time but an old woman servant, and she had gone to her home in the city, not to return until toward evening. There was no fear of that distinguished Christian gentleman, the Honorable Commissioner, coming, for his deeds were deeds of shame and darkness, for which he always chose the night. I thought this, but certainly did not say so.

She gave me an outline of her life, told how kind and loving her adopted parents were to her, how they left India and placed her in a school in France while they spent several years on the continent. They then took her to England, where they placed her in an excellent school, while they spent some years visiting relatives in America. Returning, they took a home in Scotland, often traveling, sight-seeing, mainly for her improvement, while she enjoyed all the luxuries she wished. Then the loss of property, the return to India, and the sudden death of those she loved, and who loved her as their own child, how she was then thrown upon the tender mercies of the world to earn her own living, of her going to the Shaws as a governess, and then she cried as if her heart would break. The pitiful story—ah, the pity of it—I knew that was yet to come. I sat in dread, cold with fear. “O, God, if this cup would only pass from me.”

She began again, with bated breath, how the commissioner came to her at the club grounds where she was with the children, how he met her as if by accident in the early morning when she was out with them, of his smiles and flatteries. That he told her of the death of his wife, and how lonely he was, to get her sympathy. Then of his asking her to marry him, and of her repeated refusals, of his persistency until she at length consented. Then he received promotion in a distant province. He promised that they would be married on the journey, and in his new home she would be his wife, so she went with him, but it was not convenient for him to stop on the way, for he had to be at his appointment on a certain date.

“So here I am,” she bitterly exclaimed. “He has promised a hundred times to marry me, and lied every time. What am I now? Not his wife, only his aurat, his woman.” She moaned.

It was the same old story, of lying, deceiving rakes to allure victims into their nets. I have often thought if there is no hell, one should be invented for such infernal villains. What shall I compare them to? I know of nothing but that they are incarnate devils, fiends in human shape. The tiger, the most ferocious of brutes, kills his prey, destroys them and puts an end to their suffering, but these human devils prolong the lives of their victims, by deception and lies, to gratify their damnable and insatiate lust. What were my feelings? I felt like cursing, and committing murder. I do not hesitate to say this, and before God too, who I think would not rebuke me.

She shed bitter tears while I stood by, thinking. At length I said: “I have come on purpose to take you away from this hell, and we will go at once.” “I am ready! Thank God, I am ready now!” she exclaimed.

I went out and called a gari and on returning, found she had put all she wanted in her bag, and taking her baby boy, we were soon on the way to the railway station. Before the train came in, she took a piece of paper and wrote, “Gone, to return no more, for you have lied to me,—Clara Strangway.” This was enclosed in an envelope and addressed to “H. J. Smith, Commissioner,” and dropped in the postal box.

We reached our home, and a new life for her commenced. We were happy in a brother and sister’s love and care, as much so as we could be, except for the thoughts of that cursed part in her last few years. No one asked questions, and we told none our secret. She passed in sight as my widowed sister. Was she not a widow, in a cursed widowhood?

Not long after, a young Eurasian gentleman of good family and business, became acquainted with her and proposed marriage. She told him the whole story, concealing nothing. They were married, and lead a happy life.

It seemed that I had lived a dozen lives in that short time. Life is a comedy to those who think, and a tragedy to those who feel. Mine surely was a tragedy, terribly real.

Thus ended another episode in my life, ended only in part, for it was burned into my memory to remain forever. What a blessing if there were some erasive to remove the foul stains from memory! But no, it cannot be; not God himself can do it. A blessing? No, a curse, for the good too might then be erased as well, and so we are to keep all, the good and also the evil, and forever.

CHAPTER XVIII.

I was alone again. I sought company in my books. They were friends whom I could trust, and would not leave or betray me. I also busied myself in my garden, and in looking after my property. I often went to my villages. There was nothing that gave me so much satisfaction as to see the happiness and prosperity of those people. They were not all good, or without faults by any means, but what people are? I had found more sinners than saints among the upper class of society, so why should I expect anything more from these ignorant villagers? I say upper class. I don’t know why, except it is the fashion, good form, or something of that style. They may be upper, that is, ahead in shameless dishonesty, in gilded fashion, deceptive force, in skillful lying, willful seduction and foul unchastity. If that is the meaning of the term, I accept it, but the real genuine upper class of the world is what are called the common people.

I doubt if anywhere on the globe the same number of people could have been found making up a community, as in my villages, who were more industrious, honest, truthful, grateful and virtuous than were these people. They were not allured by ambition to be something above their lot. They had not learned anything of the follies, fashions, intrigues, deceptions, seductions and vices of the civilized Christian world. Their natures had never been distorted and deformed by coming in contact with civilized society.

I often doubt if so much education and knowledge is not more of a curse than a blessing. Eve got to knowing too much, and Adam followed her, and their knowledge has made liars and seducers for us ever since.

I doubt, no I know it, that it would have been utterly impossible for any leading man in either of the villages to have conceived, planned, and accomplished such a villainous crime as that of the distinguished Christian Commissioner Sahib. They could not, and would not have done it, for their high moral, or high animal sense, if you like it better, would have revolted at it. The highest sense of chastity is in brutes, and the very lowest in the upper classes of human society. I am a liar if this is not true. But what is the use of talking?

I sometimes went to the club, as I did not like to exclude myself from all mankind. There were many newcomers, who looked askance at me. To some of them I was introduced, and they proved to be very pleasant and agreeable companions, for though I have had my grievances, and may be a little cynical at times, yet I would not have it understood, that I think all people are bad, or that there may not be some people, even of the “upper classes,” and in every grade of society who are good and trying to do good. Yet, I was not comfortable. The general company was not to my taste. The conversation was usually horsey or vicious among the men, or made up of gossip and slander among the women. Frequently on going home, I tried to recall some idea, some information that I had acquired, but there was absolutely nothing worth carrying home.

One evening, as I approached a company, I was introduced to several, but one quickly and deliberately turned his back upon me. A friend told me later on, that he was one of the new magistrates, who had just come to the station, and that he gave as his reason for snubbing me, that he had a preference in his acquaintance, and did not care to know that “Eurasian.” I recalled him as the downy youth, who had made a similar remark when I was at the engineering college, and further that he was a son of the Commissioner of Jalalpur. Worthy scion of a noble sire!

I concluded that the game was not worth the candle, so I paid up all my dues and withdrew from the club, for my own good, and probably to the satisfaction of Mr. Smith and others.

Mr. Jasper frequently called. His conversation always set me to thinking. This is a good sign of conversation, as well as of a book. In my experience the best books are those which lie open in my hand, while my thoughts are pursuing some ideas suggested by something just read. The only real use of books is to make a man think for himself. Reading that does not set the mind to work, not only wastes the time but weakens the faculty for thought.

If a book will not set one thinking for himself, it is not worth shelf-room. The same with men. One might be with some a week or month, and all they have to give is talk, mere words, while they are enamored by their own verbosity. I also dislike a man who always agrees with me, and never goes beyond my depth. Mr. Jasper was always climbing, reaching out for something higher than himself, and exciting one to go with him.

One morning I abruptly asked him, “Do you believe in God?” I cannot tell why I asked the question, as we cannot always give a reason for our doings.

He exclaimed, “Why do you ask such a question? Believe in God! How can I help it? How can any thinking being do otherwise? I see, you have got the impression from something I have said, that because I do not believe everything in the Bible, the church, the creeds, as some do, I must be an atheist. It is so easy for some to use that epithet against any one who is not willing to swallow everything that people wish to force down his throat. Some one has said, I forget who, that ‘if some mortal steps on the world’s platform and announces a few salient truths which do not conform to the stereotyped systems of the religious community, he is overwhelmed with hisses and objurgations, denounced as a heretic or ostracized as an agnostic or an infidel.’

“I am profoundly a theist. I can say, with Voltaire, that if there is not a God it would be necessary to invent one. He was also very orthodox in his belief in hell, for, when a friend wrote to him, ‘I have succeeded in getting rid of the idea of hell,’ Voltaire replied, ‘I congratulate you; I am very far from that.’

“But to the question. I doubt if there is really an atheist in the world. There are infidels, as every one is an infidel in regard to something. There are different views about God, as many as there are people. You never saw two faces exactly alike. I have often thought of this, that of the fifteen hundred millions of people in the world, we can recognize every one from another. It seems incredible. If then, all these faces are different, so are the minds, and each one has his conception of God. Who will presume to say that any one kind of face is more acceptable to God than another? Or who is to tell us that all the rest must make theirs conform to a certain type, or to lay down a law that such is the will of God?

“He that did it would be laughed at as a fool for his presumption. The white man, in his arrogance, sneers at all the rest, and thinks that his complexion is the one above all others. How does he know but what God prefers the ebony black to his white leprous skin?

“The different races uphold their own color, as they should. If then, we cannot determine the type of face or color, how, then, can we fix the type of mind to be preferred? Who shall lay down a law that all men shall think alike, in a certain groove, and in a particular manner, and believe the same things in the same way, as one man or a set of men, in their assumed superiority, think the best! Why should you, or any class of men, dictate to me how I shall think about God, or in fact about anything, any more than you or they should tell me how to have my hair cut, or to select a certain pattern for my clothes?

“I go into your garden, and may make suggestions about your walks, or your flowers, and you may act upon them or not, but what right have I to insist and command you to do according to my views with your own property? What right, then, have I to step into your mind, and tell you to think as I do, and believe what I tell you, or be damned? When men cannot make two faces alike, how can they expect to fashion the minds of men to one pattern? This has been attempted in all ages, and mainly by the Church, and what was the result? Persecution, imprisonment, crucifixion, burning at the stake, pouring molten lead into the ears, bursting people with water poured into their mouths, tearing them limb from limb, in short, no tortures that devilish ingenuity could invent but were inflicted, and the wars, desolating countries, the destruction of cities, the outrage and murder of helpless women and children, fire and the sword, the fiendish passions of men unrestrained, a greater destruction of property and human life by the Christian religious wars, than in all the wars of the world put together, and for what purpose? To make men think alike. Did they succeed? Not at all. Mankind will think as it pleases, fire or no fire, and in spite of the direst persecution. The attempt was so absurd and outrageous that any one, half mad or an idiot, ought to have seen the folly of it. The scientists might, with as much reason, call a convocation and pass a resolution that after a certain date all mankind should be of a certain height, and of a particular color. Yet, notwithstanding the horrible failure, the same old spirit exists, and the dungeon, the rack, fire and sword would come into use again for the same old hellish purpose if it were possible.

“This is the era of another method, until in the revolution of time, the old system may again appear, as the affairs of men have their cycles and their seasons, as the spheres and all things in nature. In ancient times the religious believed in knocking unbelief on the head with battle axes. Now it is the use of offensive epithets, caricature, sarcasm, virulent attacks, denunciation, differing from the former methods, but with the same old spirit and the same purpose in view.

“Yet, to be candid and reasonable, I am glad to admit that there has been great improvement. There is now a wide liberty and more generosity, simply because the world has grown wiser by experience, and the number of free thinkers, those people who think as they choose, have increased, and can show that they also have rights which the others are compelled to respect.

“One thing I cannot abide. It is that any man, or set of men, should organize a church, patch up a creed, formulate some ordinances and make claims that they are right and all others are wrong. They have divine authority, they say, and so say they all, each batch of them.

“But who are they? Men, all, every one of them, and all of them very fallible men, too. Can any one set of them have any superiority or right over all other men?

“If Peter, who denied his master, and cursed, and a very fallible man he was, could found a church, why not each of the other apostles, or why not anybody, for that matter? If a Roman Church, why not an English Church, an American, an African, a Chinese, a Hottentot Church? No one could assert that the African Church might not be as acceptable to God as the African face, and there might be as much difference between these churches as in the color of the different peoples. So many get up schemes to assist Providence, as if He was incapable of conducting His own affairs.

“Suppose a being from another world, or not to go so far, say a heathen, should begin the study of the different beliefs of the different churches and at the same time study the actions of those who profess belief in them. What would be his inevitable conclusion?

“That Jesus was the Prince of Peace? And that all the people of these different creeds are his true followers?

“No more, than that the sheep and tiger, the hare and the cat are of the same family. He might believe that the tiger and the lamb might be together, but the lamb would be inside the tiger, and that there would be peace among the churches only when all the others would be in the bowels of one.

“There is a great deal made of that scripture phrase of the lion and the lamb lying down together, but each sect wishes to be the lion.

“This may be a crude way of stating the case, but is it not a fact that the Roman church will never rest until it has devoured all the others? The Anglican church and its infant in America are always crying out for unity, but is not this ever the cry, ‘Come into me?’ It ill becomes the adherents of the Church of England, that dissented from the Church of Rome, to throw stones at those who dissent from them. Each of the sects, and they all are sects, claims to be the body of Christ. What a wonderful number of bodies he must have! If they are all in one body, what a disturbed condition it must be in! If Jesus was divine, it is sacrilegious to think of all the discordant elements shut up in him, or if he was only human, still it is mortifying to think that his teaching and example should produce such a variety of beliefs and actions.

“The Roman church, to begin with, regards all others as schismatic, heretic, their clergy as lacking lawful orders, their sacraments and ordinances as null and void. The Roman church declares that its restoration to civil power is necessary, ‘that when the temporal government of the apostolic see is at stake the security and well being of the entire human family is also in jeopardy.’ This church insists that the state has no rights over anything which it declares to be within its domain, and that Protestantism being a mere rebellion, has no rights at all; that even in Protestant communities the Catholic bishop is the only lawful spiritual pastor. She claims everything.

“The Anglican church would like to affiliate with the mother church, be considered as a branch or offshoot, but the mother church will none of it. She will have no bastard children in her family. She must be all over all. The Anglican after such a snub comes with his apostolic succession and assumed divine rights, treats others as the Roman serves him. Both have their different creeds and rituals, ceremonies, millinery, exclusive consecrated churches and graveyards, in which none of the outside world may be laid to rest.

“None even can enjoy the last inheritance of mankind unless he happens to belong to their folds, they making death a sort of human judgment day, in trying to forestall the Almighty by keeping their sheep from the goats.

“And as we go on, the separations continue in almost endless variety, each sect attacking the other. Their papers or organs are full of sneers and slurs, bitter acrimonious attacks on each other, while they all assume to be of Christ. Yet they wonder that the churches do not reach the masses. What would the masses get by going into them?

“Another view. A church established by law or by some means may be considered a very respectable, proper and orthodox thing and all that, but what can it do to relieve me of my individual responsibility to God? I am not answerable to the church for the eternal welfare of my soul. I myself must look to that. Go to church, believe in the church, accept its creeds. Some of this may be a help to me, to quicken my thoughts, enlarge my understanding, but I deny any divine power or authority in it over me. Will the church take my place and be judged for me, relieving me of any final judgment? If not, how can I rely on it when there is a final settlement between God and myself? At last I am to stand naked and alone. This is the truth. ‘Thou wast alone at the time of thy birth; thou wilt be alone in the moment of death; alone thou must answer at the bar of the inexorable Judge.’

“Nothing can come between me and God. I am what I am, and so shall I remain forever.

“If I could get some one to do my thinking, to believe for me and to relieve me of all mental and moral responsibility in the end; if any one of these ecclesiastical leaders, from the self styled infallible pope down to the street Salvation Army shouter, could give me a quittance from sin and a sure deed to an inheritance in heaven, it would be well to trust them. Not one of them is sure of heaven himself. Yet they uphold their different creeds as if the Almighty had written and signed them with His own hand. Their assurance is only equaled by their impudence, when they demand of every one, ‘Believe as I tell you,’ as if the eternal destiny of human souls was in their say so.

“The church can be a kind of a human mutual aid society, and has its place in the world, but nothing more. I must live my own life, die my own death and remain what I make myself; and I cannot see how God, or angels, or men can change this inevitable condition for me.

“If I could sell out, deliver myself over to the church or some body, get rid of life, of myself, but I do not know how it can be done, nor do I know of anyone who could make the purchase and give me a release from all further responsibility.

“The fact is, everything in the world is so desperately human. All humanity is on the same level plane. None can rise higher than the rest. Yes, it is true that some claim to know, to have entered into the secret councils of the Almighty and to understand all His plans, and so are able to dictate to the rest, but when investigated they really know no more than others. They have evolved a lot of theories from their inner consciousness, nothing more; most frequently the less they really know, the more bold and dogmatical they are.

“A young man—and generally they are below the average in natural ability—goes to a school where he is taught some particular belief, how to preach it, defend it; then he is set apart, ordained by the laying on of hands of men little wiser and better than himself, and he goes forth to uphold or disseminate his creed with the voice of an infallible trumpet. By what right does he assume to have the ability or the authority to know all about the purposes of God or dominate over his fellow men?

“I grant his right to bray like an ass if he chooses, but I deny his power to anathematize me for not believing his bray to be the roar of a lion. Many a time have I sat in church and heard a beardless stripling of a youth, just from school, make his statements about Providence with an air of authority as if he had just been appointed prime minister to the Almighty. What did he know more than his audience? Much less than most of them. Take an old priest or clergyman. Who is he? Only a man as I am. What is he? Only a student as I am. Where has he been that I have not gone? What advantages has he had more than I? None. Is God nearer to him than to me? I trust not. We are the same in every way, men. Yet when he takes his place in the pulpit he assumes that he knows everything, and presumes that I know nothing; preaches to me, dictates to me and denounces me for not agreeing with him and accepting all his talk, his sublimated drivel as God’s truth. Charles Kingsley, a most sensible priest, says, ‘Youths who hide their crass ignorance and dullness under the cloak of church infallibility, and having neither tact, manners, learning, humanity or any other dignity whereon to stand, talk loudly pour pis aller about the dignity of the priesthood.’

“The churches assume to be invested by God with power to regulate our belief without taking upon themselves any responsibility for our miscarriage; they teach that the spiritual direction and salvation of a man’s soul is wholly in the power of somebody else than himself.

“The priest declares that the bible says so, and therefore it must be true. Who made the bible? Men, such as we are, and therefore of no final authority. He says the church teaches so and so. But who made the church? Men. So on all through the gamut. We start with man and man made things. We never get away from men and never rise any higher than men can go.

“I put nothing in the place of Almighty God or between Him and myself. I defy the authority of any to impose upon me what they are not willing that I should impose upon them. Why should a man attempt to bind my conscience when he is not willing to allow me to bind his? I refuse to accept pope or priest as having any authority to direct me in religious matters. God is as near to me as to them. If they can get power from Him so can I. If they can presume to use upon me what they assume to have received, why can I not act in the same way toward them? The pope assumes to direct me; why not I in turn direct him? He has his authority, so he says, from heaven; so might I say of mine. What then is the difference? Only this. He is a big pope, inheriting his power by tradition; I am but a little pope, just starting. In himself he is no greater or better a man than I am. He has only power and wealth acquired by other men. A man, as Buddha, Jesus, Muhamed, starts alone as the founder of a new religion. The movement continues until the followers of each are numbered by millions. A priest commences a schismatic, and as the years pass on, one thing after another is assumed, culminating in papal infallibility, and the pope is considered as a god upon earth.

“Religious tyranny is worse than political tyranny. In the one the highest aspirations of the soul are fettered and enslaved, while by the other the body only is in subjugation.

“Charlemagne converted an ecclesiastical fiction into a political fact. The sword compelled the people to acknowledge the pope as the vicegerent of God. The popes were the confederates of cruelty and crime. There was not an enormity so great in the political world but would be consecrated by the popes and priests, if it was for their interest to do so. History tells what this church has done for its own aggrandizement. The Roman has been more bold and defiant, as it had the political power, but the other sects, each in its own way, has sought to dominate the opinions of mankind.

“But enough of this. The time must come when the world will worship only one God and do away with the idolatry of the bible, of Jesus, of Mary, of the innumerable saints, the adulation of rites, rituals, ceremonies, and make righteousness and holiness consist in obeying the laws of God, as written in the hearts of men, and in maintaining clean, upright lives.

“We need a natural, not an artificial religion, one in harmony with the nature of God, not something manufactured by councils or religious tinkerers. I am well aware that most if not all the people in the churches would deny my right to have any opinion at all on these subjects except what they hold. I have known Christian ministers shocked at the suggestion of a doubt about any of the tenets of their faith, and yet I have heard these same men, well versed in Hinduism, attack it with such virulence and ridicule that the very heathen in front of them begged them for shame to desist.

“If Christian ministers in the bazars can preach against Muhamedanism and Hinduism; if they can write books to destroy these religions, why should they object to an investigation of their own creeds? They talk of the intolerance and bigotry of the Muhamedans, but who so intolerant as the Christians? Let one of their number leave their ranks with all honesty and good intention. He is then shunned as a leper, avoided as if he were a dangerous animal and treated with contempt, and reflections are made on his motives, until he is at length obliged in self defense, and for his own self respect, to give his reasons and make attacks in return, when but for the uncharitable treatment he received would have remained silent.”

I had asked frequent questions during the conversation, but do not consider them worth repeating. This accounts for the apparent breaks in Mr. Jasper’s remarks. It was no fault of his that he did not answer my first question, as I diverted him from it by a question. I again referred to it, and he said:

“Believe in God? Most emphatically I do. I came to conclude in the existence of God in this way. I see about me a world of matter. It is inert, dead, incapable of motion in itself or of moving other things. It could not therefore come into existence by itself. I observe that vegetable and animal life is above matter and has a certain power over it, yet I am conscious that this life did not create itself. Then comes man, supreme over all, with his varied powers and faculties. I know from my own experience, that though he can do much he is only a transformer. He cannot create anything, so he could not be his own creator. So on, from the lowest to the highest life I see no power of creating. I see what man can do, the transcendant harmony and adaptation of the things his mind can arrange but not create. I see the wonderful things in nature, their beauty and the universal harmony of all things, not only of the earth but of the heavenly bodies. Everything I see is according to law, nothing by chance. I see nothing on earth that can create the smallest thing, and that nothing is moved or transferred but by life, mind; and hence I infer that there must be a mind above all this to start it and continue it, and this mind I call God. I do not know what you think of my theory, but it is satisfactory to myself, and this is sufficient for me. It may not satisfy you or any other being on earth. I am not thinking for others; only for myself. I must believe and act for myself.

“This mind, spirit, Being above, I revere, I worship, I love. He is my light, my life, my peace and joy. I cannot but think Him infinitely wise, for I see proofs of His wisdom everywhere. I see His goodness in all He gives me to enjoy. I judge Him to be Almighty, for I see his power displayed everywhere. I know of His mercy, for if it were not for that I would not be permitted to live, violating what I cannot but see are His righteous laws. I see it is the evident purpose of life to be and enjoy. Should I wantonly wound a bird, I ask, what if some one should torture me in the same way? Should a man wrong my sister or my daughter, how would I feel? How then could I injure his sister? Why should I do anything which I would not have done to me? I believe in Providence, one who upholds and directs this universal all, from the largest planets, down to the drop of dew on a rose leaf. I see and feel all this, that as matter cannot act of itself, it must be acted upon, and with what wisdom, power and love!

“When I obey the laws of nature, and of my being, there is a satisfaction. When I violate the laws there is a sense of wrong, a knowledge that I have sinned, and remorse follows, warning me not to do the like again. If I fail to listen to the requests of the poor, the question always comes: ‘If you were in their place, how would you like to be treated in that way?’

“What more? I pray for light, for forgiveness, for strength, for wisdom. I thank God for all things, and when I come to Him in humility, when I make confession of my sins, throw myself upon Him, into His merciful arms, and feel that this mind, this Infinite being is my God, my Father, what a peace and joy comes into my life! I often like to sit in silence, not to think, but to feel with my whole being, after God. This is Heaven to me, to be in harmony with the Divine One above, around and within me, and I am supremely happy. I have no fears, no doubts, for I have done the best I know.

“Now you have read the thoughts of my soul. Good night, Mr. Japhet.”

He said all this with so much sincerity that I could not but believe that he had let me read “the thoughts of his soul.”

CHAPTER XIX.

I had not forgotten scarcely an incident in my past life. I often went back, in memory, to that little court where I first found myself. Everything appeared before me as if placed upon a canvas by some realistic painter. The old, dilapidated gate-way, with some of its bricks ready to tumble out on some passer’s head, the very color of the bricks, that wall at the back, with its little narrow door, the mud huts at either side, the women sitting in front of their doors preparing their scanty food, then the narrow stair against the back wall, the two little rooms above, and the narrow veranda in front, as clear to my mind as if I were standing there, and seeing it all. And that little mother, with the sad face! O, how sad! Her lustrous eyes looking, staring, until they became like glass. This was more than painted, rather engraved in my memory, on my very soul, every line and point so indelible as never to be erased.

I frequently thought of going to this place, but was repelled from doing so. It gave me a chill, or kind of shock to think of it. I had often read of the anxious desires of people to revisit the lands of their birth, the places of their youth; of the Swiss, when absent, pining for a sight of their mountain homes.

In my maturer years I reasoned about this apparent prejudice of mine against the place of my childhood, and called myself foolish for allowing it to influence me. Such thoughts gradually removed my objections, and I resolved that I would visit the court. The opportunity soon occurred. I had some business in Lucknow, and this being finished, I took a stroll, and soon reached the old place, guided by directions I received on the way. There was the old gate-way, the mud huts, and the two little upper rooms in the back corner, all the same as they were years ago, but in a worse condition, if that were possible. The poor were there, for they are always with us, and will be, until men learn the great lesson of humanity to their fellow-creatures, and while might makes right, and avarice makes men stony-hearted and cruel.

I obtained permission, and went up into the little rooms, and seating myself on a charpoy, gave way to a host of reflections. I went back to my beginning, to the clinking sound of those rupees. I saw again that monster sahib. I heard the cries and laments of the dear mother, and then on—but why tell of it? I thought till I cried, yes cried, I am not ashamed to say it. Tears, blessed tears, they are the shower to cool the burning heat of the heart!

How long I sat I know not. I did not measure the time by tears, as they did in the olden times by drops of water. Recovering myself, I had a desire to learn if any one remembered me, or could tell me anything of that dear mama, but the older people had gone where my questions could not reach them. The others had not known, or had forgotten. They had miseries enough of their own without burdening themselves with those of other people. I went from one to another to get, if possible, one remembrance. Had any one given me the slightest recollection, I could have embraced him with tears of joy. It is so sad to be entirely forgotten, to have passed away into nothing, not to be able to find one who remembered seeing or hearing anything about you. This made me inexpressibly sorrowful. At last one said that there was living near by, a Le Maistre Sahib, an old man who might tell me something. This gave me a gleam of hope, and in gratitude for this hint, apparently of so little value, and out of kindness for these poor, where I had once been so kindly treated by their kindred, I gave the crowd around me some rupees, to their great joy.

I at once made my way to the bungalow of the sahib. He received me with great courtesy. That he was of French descent, on his father’s side, at least, I knew from his name. And more, he had that suavity of manner and genial “bonhomie” that distinguishes French people wherever you may meet them. I told him my name was Japhet, and I could not help adding playfully that I was in search of my father. He replied, “Yes, he is a wise son that knows his own father.” We chatted about various things, and then I said I supposed I was born in the muhalla over there, that I had been taken away when a child, and never again saw the place till that day, when I had come to Lucknow on business. I told him that I was an Eurasian, that I must have had a father.

“Yes,” he interrupted, “The most of us have had fathers.”

I continued, that very likely my father was a European, but I never knew him, and did not even know his name—that as he had resided in Lucknow for a long time, he probably could give me some information.

He replied, “My father was a Frenchman of good family, and was in the service of the old King of Oude. He married a native woman, and we were a happy family, yet I cannot but regret that my father had not married one of his own race, but I was not in a position to give him any advice on the subject. At my father’s death he left considerable property, so I have stuck here ever since.” This and more of his biography he gave me.

As I was more interested in looking up my own pedigree than in listening to an account of his, I suggested a year somewhere about which I wished to inquire and asked if he knew of any incidents to aid me in tracing my mother or my father.

“Yes,” said he, “I remember the time very well, and it is strange how trivial things at times will help to fasten greater things in the memory.”

And the old man chuckled over something as he recalled the time. He continued: “I was then very much annoyed by a number of cattle coming into my compound at night, eating the grass and the vegetables in my garden, and destroying more than they ate. My servants repeatedly tried to catch them, but at the first noise every one bolted out through the hedge as fast as their legs could carry them. It seemed as if the devil was in the cattle, and the cattle were in the plot to worry me and escape. This continued for a number of nights. I went to the cowherds, but they declared and swore that they tied up their cattle every night, and they would not think of such a thing as letting their cattle go loose to be lost or else get into the pound. I returned home determined to have those cattle, outwit the devil and those cowherds or else I was not the son of a Frenchman. I laid my plan. I sent to the bazar for a lot of strong rope, and had my servants make a lot of loops or snares, and I explained to them that after the cattle had entered the compound, we would slip around through the gully and fasten the ends of the ropes to the trees standing in the hedge, and let the snares hang between where the cattle would have to go out. The servants rather enjoyed the prospect of fun as much as I did, and besides they were becoming tired of night watching and being aroused to chase the cattle.”

The old man went on with the garrulous prolixity of old age, entering into all the details, and in fact the story was interesting from the way he told it, with so much earnestness, with his French gestures,—how well they illustrate,—and the twitching and smiles of his face. “Well,” said he, “the night came and the cattle also. I took a number of men with me, they with the rope snares, and we went a long way around, down through the gully and fixed the loops. When all was ready, a man went into the compound, and at once such a scurrying of the cattle, and then what a bellowing, roaring and plunging as each was caught in a noose! It was a good deal more sport than to see a poor devil of a man hung!”

The old man laughed again and again, as he recalled those bellowing, plunging cattle, and I had to laugh too, almost forgetting what I came after, but asked, “And then?”

He replied, “We watched by the cattle till morning, as we were in to the finish, and sent for the owners, as we well knew who they were. They held up their hands in surprise, saying they had been everywhere looking for the cattle as they had broken loose during the night. I made them do something more than hold up their hands, for they paid me well before the cattle were released. It was a trick of theirs to let their cattle out at night to steal a good feed, and the brutes seemed to be trained therein.”

I could not see what all this had to do with me so I asked, “And then?”

“Really!” he replied, “I had almost forgotten what I was going to tell you. It must have been about three or four o’clock in the morning or just before day break, as we were watching the cattle as I went along the gully, I came near running into a man. I saw at a glance that he was a European and recognized him as Mr. Smith the young magistrate.”

“Smith!” I thought, “that name Smith, have I come across it again?”

“And then?” I asked.

He continued. “I said, ‘Good morning Mr. Smith,’ but he made no reply and slipped away as quickly as he could. I was much surprised, as it was very strange for a European to be there in that stinking gully at that time of night. It was bad enough for me, but then I had a little business there. I asked one of the servants close by who that was? ‘That is Smith Sahib,’ said he. ‘Smith Sahib!’ I exclaimed, ‘What can he be doing here at this time of night?’ The servant coolly answered, ‘The sahib has an aurat over in that muhalla there and comes to see her at night.’ You cannot hide anything from these natives.”

As my friend was evidently in a gossiping mood, I checked him by asking: “Do you know anything more?”

“Yes,” said he. “One night, I was aroused by a native saying that some one in the muhalla was taken with the cholera, and they wanted me to come at once. They always come to me when they are in trouble, and I am such an old fool that I always help them, so I quickly dressed and taking some cholera mixture, went to the sick man and he was soon greatly relieved. While standing by him, as he was lying on a charpoy in front of his house, I saw Mr. Smith”—“Smith again!” I groaned inwardly—“come in by the little door in the back wall and go up the narrow stairs to the upper rooms at the corner. I knew him well, yet I asked ‘Who is that Sahib?’ And they replied, ‘Smith Sahib, his woman is up there.’”

My friend halted a little and I started him by asking, “And then? Did you learn nothing more?”

“Yes,” said he. “Some time after, it may have been a couple of years, when the famine came, the muhalla people being in great distress sent for me and I went. A number of the poor wretches had died, really starved to death, and there were others who could barely stand alone, living skeletons, an awful sight! Strange isn’t it that with all our boasted civilization, philanthropy and religion, yet human beings die for want of work and the coarsest food to eat?”

I became fidgety, thinking he was about to give me an address on political economy or religion, which at any other time I would gladly have heard, so I pulled my check rein again, “And then?” He took to the track immediately.

“Well, I sent for some food at once and waited to see it distributed, and while waiting looked about the place. I noticed the upper rooms and thought of the woman, so I inquired about her. They told me that her sahib had left her to go to Wilayat; that she mourned for him day after day and at last died of a broken heart, uska dil tut gaya, her heart broken went. Then the old mamagee who had been the servant of this choti mem sahib took care of the two children, a boy and a girl, as they had nothing to live on. The muhalla people gave them something till the famine came and they had nothing for themselves. One day the mamagee took the children one by each hand and went out of the big gate, and that was the last they ever saw or heard of them.”

How my heart beat, and my whole body, hot then cold, trembled, as he told this.

He remarked, “This is all I know, and I am afraid it will not be of much use to you, and now I want you to stay and take dinner with me.”

So considerate he was, and kindly, just like a Frenchman, as I had read of them. I thanked him, but said that I must take the next train for home. He urged me to come again and see him, just as the French do.

I took my departure. Dine! Take dinner! I felt as if I never wanted to eat again. I had rather gone to death. I wandered towards the railway station. I almost cursed my insatiable curiosity for leading me to that wretched place, of which I always had such a dread of seeing. We can see evil enough, and misery to the full, as we pass along, without rummaging around to find it. I had taken the bit in my teeth in spite of my reason, of my good sense, and I was wilfully making my own evil destiny. We are all mostly fools at times, and most of us all the time. I was bewildered, weary, sick in my very soul. I tried to think of other things, but the black nightmare that had come, would not away. “What next? What next?” some coco demon kept torturing me in asking. I had so much of the past, not of the remote, but of the recent past, to think of, rather to feel, that I could take no thought of the future.

I was in a condition of a traveler, who, after a toilsome journey of months comes to an immense stream, where there is neither bridge, nor boats, nor ferryman. He can neither retrace his steps, or go forward, and sits down in abject despair. I reached home, and hardly knew how I passed the next few days.

I took to my books, but my old friends were either very dull, or sleeping, or dreaming, and failed to take any interest in me. I rode out to my villages, on my fresh horses, and they gave me a good shaking up. The villagers failed to please me, as they formerly did. Evidently the times were out of joint, or I was, or something. We’ll leave it at the latter. Would you believe it, that in a few days, when I was just recovering from that fearful wide awake dream, and had called myself a fool a score of times for ever venturing to that place in Lucknow, that had been the dread of my life; that one morning the question came right to me, “Why not go again, and find out all about that Mr. Smith?”

I was in the garden at the time, and I must have called out something terrible at myself, for all the malies came running to know what I wanted. I concluded I must be going daft, and to save appearances, told them that they must keep the walks cleaner, or I would cut their wages. I saw the nonsense of this, for there was not a weed or a blade of grass to be seen, and the paths were as smooth as a bald man’s head. But I was ready to break or cut something, I could not tell what or where.

The question came again and again, and would not down, and the result was that I was on my way again to Lucknow. I knew what I was going for. I was Japhet in search of his father. But why? Yes, why? I have often wondered why people do certain things, even to their own hurt. I have put the question to them, and the answer was: “They couldn’t help it.” There seems to be a tide in the affairs of men, and often a big flood tide that carries them whether they will or not. Good, old Æneas was impelled by fate, and so it seems are all other men. I was going, I knew that, impelled to go, and all the time calling myself a fool. I might be going to my degradation, my death, my damnation, yet I must go. Men will worry their lives away in trying to invent some powder to blow other men to bits, yet knowing all the time, ten chances to one, they may blow their own heads off first, yet they keep on trying. But what is the use of any further explanation when everybody knows what I mean, that when the devil of curiosity takes possession of us, as it did of our mother Eve, as the story goes, we do not think of consequences.

I went directly to the bungalow of M. Le Maistre, and he received me most cordially. I told him that I came to look up the record of that Mr. Smith, as every one ought to have some interest in his paternal parent. He looked at me with a peculiar expression on his face, showing that he thought me a queer lot, but it was not in his French blood to say anything to hurt my feelings.

He suggested we go to the cutchery, court house, which we did at once. He knew the head clerks, and they would tell us everything. And they did. I often think these natives know especially what they ought not to know. I went on purpose to learn something, but in my secret soul I wished they were as ignorant as mules, and could tell me nothing.

Smith Sahib, they said, had gone home, to Wilayat, from Lucknow, on furlough, had married, and returning had been assistant at some place, and then magistrate at, alas! my station, and then commissioner at Jalalpur.

The whole story came out in a sentence. I then knew too much. I restrained my feelings as I was becoming hardened as a criminal who commits crime upon crime.

I did not care to think, and if I was ever thankful for a man who could talk, I was then. My friend was a whole mill stream of talk. The gate once opened, on he went. It was not idle or dull chatter either, but a flood of good things, interesting and amusing. I yielded entirely to his good humor, and the blue devils had no chance of attacking me. I dined with him, as my reason told me that this was the best thing I could do, and so it was.

At home again, but I was not happy, for I was not satisfied. I had, as it were, started out on a hunt, got track of the game, but had not bagged it. I know this is not at all respectful to compare a father to game, and to talk of bagging him, but then what had my father taught me of respect to himself or anybody else? What had he done for me but to curse me in begetting me?

When I have heard that prayer, “We bless thee for our creation,” may God forgive me I never could say it, and God knows why, and I think I love Him too well to believe that He will make any record against me for what I am now saying. What next? was the question. The same something, I do not know what, either led me, or pushed me on, or told me to go on, go on. I could sympathize with the wandering Jew.

I went to Jalalpur. On the way I tried to analyze my feelings. I had no love or respect for this man, though he should prove to be my father. That was settled. I had nothing to give him, that he would like to receive; I wished nothing from him, no public recognition of me as his son, if it was found that he was my father; I wanted no money or favor of any kind whatever. The only thing I wished really to know, who was my father. This man, or some equally honorable gentleman? I wanted to know, if I had a father, and who he was. I made up my mind to go most respectfully to Mr. Smith, state the case calmly, find out the fact, and go home to let the matter rest for ever and aye.

With this conclusion, I tried to assume a moral philosophic kind of feeling, and by the time I had taken a good bath at the hotel, donned my best morning suit, and fortified myself with a good substantial breakfast, I felt myself ready to meet anybody, even my father, if I should find him.

I went to the big bungalow of the Commissioner, guarded in front by a number of impudent lackeys, the hangers-on often make the man in India. I sent in my card, and was admitted to the presence. I bowed and said “Good morning,” but he did nothing. That was his style. He did not ask me to be seated, and I did what I could not help doing, remained standing. Glancing me over he quickly said, “I have nothing for you, there is no vacancy.” I replied that I did not wish for a situation. “O!” said he, “I thought you were the man that wanted a place.” I answered, “I come to ask you a few questions: were you in Lucknow in the year —.” He stopped me at once, saying, “I deny your right to question me. Say what you have got to say and as briefly as possible, for I have no time to waste.” Then I said, “I will state the matter as briefly as possible. You were in Lucknow in — and were acquainted with a Mussalmani, and I believe you to be my father.”

I got this out quickly so as to give him no chance to choke me off. He sprang to his feet, his face livid with rage, and shaking his fist at me exclaimed. “You damned Eurasian! Do you come here to insult me? I dare you to prove what you have said. Out from here at once. Chuprassi! Open the door, and get this man out.” This last was said in Hindustani in the most insulting tone and words.

What more or less could I do than go, and at once? I think even the cringing slave at the door, pitied me as the gentleman fairly shouted his insulting command. Did you ever see a dog go into a room wagging his tail and expecting a pleasant reception, then turned out with the forcible aid of a boot? I was that dog. If I had any respect, or desire to be just and fair before I went in, when I came out all had given way to anger and hate. That is about the size of it. I had been humiliated, cursed, spurned. My feelings flashed within me and over me, chills and fever, cold and hot they were. But this was uppermost. He dared me!

I have read that the quickest way to get up a shindy at an Irish fair, is to have a man go with his coat tails dragging on the ground and dare any one to step on them, or to put a potato on his shoulder and dare any one to knock it off. Men, that is, real men won’t be dared. I have known a little fellow at school to be dared by a big bully, and he went in for all he was worth, no matter if he came out all bleeding and pummeled, for he wouldn’t be dared.

“All right, Mr. Smith, you dared me to prove it. But how shall I do it?” was the question in my mind for days. It was a queer thing to do, prove that a man is your own father, but there are many queer things in the world, as probably all of us have discovered. I concluded to go again to Lucknow, though I had not the remotest idea of what I should do.

On arriving there, I at once went to M. Le Maistre. I had formed an opinion that he was very shrewd and quick-witted, and that if any one could help me he could.

He received me very kindly and after a little talk, I said, “M. Le Maistre, I rather like you and think I can trust you.”

“I don’t see why you shouldn’t,” he replied.

I went on. “You know what I am in search of?”

“Your father,” he said with a smile.

I answered, “Something of that kind, perhaps. I went to see Mr. Smith. He was very angry, and dared me to prove that he was my father. I don’t care a fig about him as a man, or as a father, but I won’t be dared. I am to prove this thing, if it is possible, if it takes me the rest of my life. Can you help me?”

“We’ll see,” he answered. “Let us go over to the muhalla.” He was full of talk about everything. I think he would have gone to Jericho with me, if I had only agreed to listen to him.

A little incident occurred which I must relate, as I remember it so well. As we were going through his compound, I bounded up with a scream at the sight of a cobra rising in front of me. I think if Eve had hated snakes as I do, she would never have listened to that serpent. M. Le Maistre went to the cobra, took it in his hand and let it crawl up his sleeve. I stood aghast in astonishment. When I recovered my breath, I asked, “Are you not afraid?”

“Afraid!” said he. “Why should I be afraid? I never harmed a snake in my life and they never harm me.” Then he pulled the hideous thing out, placed it on the ground, and patted its neck with his hand, and we went on. The chills were still racing up and down my back, but with his lively stories I soon recovered.

Reaching the muhalla he began talking with the people, especially an old man, with whom he was well acquainted. M. Le Maistre told him, that he wanted to find out something about Smith Sahib’s woman who had lived in the two upper rooms, years ago. The old man after thinking, said that there was the son of a money-lender, not far away, whose father had done business for the woman, cashed notes for her or something, he did not know just what, and he might tell us something. So on we went and found the son. He at once said that he had lately been looking over some old papers of his father’s and had found some, hidden in an earthen jar, and among them a package. This might be what we wanted. He quickly brought it. There were some letters in English, turning yellow, yet very legible, but not one of them signed. Better than all these was a photograph of an English Sahib! The very thing! I recognized it at once. The fright I had received on that fearful night, when I had got the first and only sight of that monster man was so impressed on my mind that I remembered him as if I had seen him that very day. I fairly leaped for joy and M. Le Maistre chuckled at our success. That wonderful little package, so carefully done up, the treasure of my darling mama, and what was it not to me?

M. Le Maistre, with all his wits in hand, said: “Yet he may deny all these letters, for there is not a name anywhere! He was a shrewd one. But as it is a long lane that has no turn, we’ll see.” Away we went, I with the packet fast in my pocket, as happy as if I had got a deed of possession to a new world.

“Now,” said he, “we will go to the cutchery and get some papers to prove this handwriting.” On mentioning to the head clerk that we wanted to look at some papers of the year—he immediately said that he had just received orders to collect all the papers beyond a certain date to be burned in a few days, and we could look them over. We found what we wanted, and were allowed to take a dozen or more all written and signed “H. J. Smith.” The very handwriting of our letters to the crossing of a t and the dot of an i. I was satisfied and suggested that we return to his house, but M. Le Maistre said “O, no, we are not through yet. There is the photograph?” “Yes, but what of that?” I asked. “We’ll go to the photographer, and see what we can see,” he replied. He asked the man of art if he had the negative of such a photograph, showing him ours, or if he had any copies of it. He went to his closet and soon returned with a photograph, on the back of which was written: “You may make me one dozen like this—H. J. Smith.” The very same writing as in our letters, and in the cutchery papers. We quickly bought the picture, worth its weight in gold to me, not only for the likeness, but for the writing on the back of it. If I was surprised before, I was astonished now. I was in a delirium of excitement, but my old friend was as cool as when he handled the cobra. Any one can imagine only slightly my feelings, but they cannot realize my intense enjoyment at the out-turn of our search. With a quiet smile, my good friend then said, “I think you can eat a good breakfast now and we’ll have it.” And it was a good one. He drew on his boundless store of stories until I departed, giving him all the thanks my language could express, and carrying with me the proofs that I, Japhet, had found my father! Would he dare me again? It was some days before I felt that I could venture to beard the dragon (I ought to say my beloved father), in his den again. I was anxious to get through with the business, for it seemed that until it was finished I could do nothing else.

CHAPTER XX.

Again I was on my way to Jalalpur, with the precious parcel, the other papers, and that fatal photograph. What is the use of telling of my feelings? Any one can imagine what they were. I reached the big bungalow again, but instead of sending in my card, I told the Janus at the door that Stark Sahib wished to see the Commissioner Sahib. I well knew that if he learned my name I would not be admitted. It was a little lie, but who does not lie sometimes?

I was ushered in. I had scarcely got inside the door before he shouted, “You here again! What the devil do you want now?” I replied that I had come on very important business. Rising to his feet, in a great state of anger, he blurted out, “I don’t want to hear anything from you—not a word,” and he came toward me. I stood my ground, facing him so boldly that he halted. I said, “I have something to tell you this time, and you have got to hear it whether you like it or not. I am not going till I tell you, and the sooner you let me commence, the sooner I will finish.”

“Well, damn it!” he fairly screamed, “what have you got to say?” I calmed down a little and said, “I come to you with all the respect I can command; I want nothing from you whatever; no recognition, no place or position; and as to money, thanks to the best friend of my life, I probably have ten rupees to every one of yours; so I want nothing but to tell my story, and then there will be an end, so far as I am concerned.”

I think he saw that I was not to be bluffed or bullied, and as I asked for nothing, it would be best to let me talk. “Go on then,” he said very sternly, but quite subdued, “and the sooner you get through the better!” I continued, “You were a sub-magistrate in Lucknow in the year —, and you kept a mussalmani in a muhalla.” “It’s a lie, every word of it!” he retorted. I went on regardless of his interruption. “You remember a M. Le Maistre there, for you rented one of his houses. One night, or rather toward morning, he met you in the gully coming from the muhalla. Another time he saw you coming in through the little back door—you remember it—and he saw you go up the narrow stairs in the corner to the upper rooms, where the woman lived.”

“It’s all a lie, a damned lie!” he cried.

I resumed, “You had two children by this woman, a boy and a girl, and then you left her.”

“You cannot prove a word you have said,” he interjected.

“You left a number of letters with her.”

“I deny them,” he replied.

“You thought,” I went on, “that you were very shrewd in not signing the letters, but I got a lot of papers from the cutchery written by you, and signed with your name, and here they are, a dozen of them and a package of letters, all written by you, with every stroke and mark and dot alike.”

“What damnable plot are you hatching?” he exclaimed.

I continued, “In the packet of letters there was a photograph of yourself. This is it.”

“Let me see it,” he said, reaching out for it.

“You can look at it, but it shall not go out of my hands,” I said.

“That is no likeness of mine,” he replied.

I started again, “I went to the photographer and obtained this, another of you, and on the back is written by the same hand that wrote the letters and papers: ‘You may make me one dozen like this. H. J. Smith.’ Is that your handwriting and signature?” I inquired, holding up the back of the picture for him to see.

He rose and began pacing the room back and forth. He evidently found himself caught and bagged. He at length asked:

“What is your object in raking up these youthful follies of mine? I wish you would stop at once.”

“No,” I replied, “I am not ready yet.”

“Go on then, go on; damn your persistency,” he retorted.

I did go on. “You left my mother. She never smiled again, and soon after died of a broken heart. You left your two children to die of starvation had not some kind-hearted people taken care of them. What were they to you? You married in England and returned to India. After some years you became magistrate of Bhagulpur, and one Sunday, when you were reading prayers in the church, you saw a young girl in the congregation, and when you went to dine at the mess that evening, you asked who that plump young woman was. Even when you were in the house of God, and conducting religious service, your lustful eyes were searching for a victim.”

“Damn your insolence!” he angrily exclaimed.

I waited not. “You became acquainted with that governess, and by your flatteries and promises to marry her, you seduced her, and brought her here with you, as your mistress, to her shame and sorrow.”

“Where is she? Tell me where she is and I will marry her at once,” he excitedly exclaimed.

I replied, “I came here and took her and her child away and you will never see her again. That girl was your daughter and my sister.”

“Good God! You don’t say so!” he exclaimed, and flung himself into a chair. He sat with his face pale as death, and with staring eyes, as if he really saw the horrible enormity of his crimes.

I let him have some moments for reflection, and then asked, “Do you remember seeing me in Bhagulpur? I had rescued a young girl from the hands of your police, as they were dragging her to a brothel. For this you ordered me, by the mouth of one of your servants to come to your bungalow, and then not only insulted me, but called me ‘That damned Eurasian.’ When I called to see you here, you insulted me and spurned me out of this door, and again called me ‘That damned Eurasian’—me, your son! Who made me an Eurasian, but you?”

“Have you finished?” he asked, very mildly though, for the great man, as he was considered to be, seemed to be completely cowed, beaten.

“Yes,” I replied, “nearly so, for I have little more to say. Had you treated me any way decently, I might have concealed some of these things from you, but you defied me, dared me, so I have done my best, as you know to your sorrow. And to close, I must tell you that I have not the least respect for you as a man, nor the least regard for you as a father. I leave you to your own bitter thoughts, which will be hell enough for you, and may God have mercy on your soul, if He can.”

I left at once, glad enough to have finished the hateful business. Did I do right in what might be called running this man to earth? What less could I have done than what I did? It seems most natural that there should be some filial regard of a child for a parent, but I could never, from the time I first saw him, so hardened and devilish, looking down on my weeping mother, feel the least respect, much less love for him as a father, and could only think of him as a wicked, contemptible, living thing.

Other thoughts I have had. The chaplains must have known the character of this man, and yet they appointed or allowed him to conduct the religious services in church; his associates must have known of his amours, intrigues and seductions, for such things cannot be concealed, but they probably were as deep in the mire as he was in the mud, so very likely no one ever checked him in his career of lust and crime. Society must have known all about him, yet he was the swell cad of them all, the admired and intimate friend of the ladies. What delicate tastes some ladies have! He was called a Christian too, and he would no doubt have taken it as an insult if any one had hinted otherwise. A Christian!

I have read the story of a wicked man, who, being angry with his wife, took their child to a wood and murdered it. Then taking some of its flesh he returned home, and sending his wife on an errand put the flesh into a curry that she was preparing. Unheeding the child’s absence, the woman presently ate of the curry, when the inhuman father told her what he had done. Crazed with horror the wretched mother fled to the jungle and destroyed herself. This wicked man belonged to a wild jungle tribe of heathen, but there is not a heathen so low and degraded but would hold up his hands in horror at such an unnatural crime.

But here is a Christian, an intelligent man, of good standing in the upper class of English society, who murdered his wife, my mother, as much as if he had put a noose around her neck and strangled her. He discarded his own children; left them to poverty and starvation. He seduces his own daughter, my sister, and becomes grandfather to his own child! Tell me, O God! and all thinking beings on the earth, who was the worse, that heathen wicked man, or this so-called Christian gentleman?

CHAPTER XXI.

For some days after returning home, I could not get rid of the horrid gloom that brooded over me like a cloud of sulphurous vapor. During the day I kept myself very busy, looking after various things, making calls on those who needed a little assistance, looking after my garden and property, visiting Mr. Jasper, so my mind was diverted. But at night! I had to read the driest metaphysical books I possessed, not for pleasure or profit, but to fatigue my mind, so that it could get any rest at all. Woe to me, if it caught even the slightest thread of the black story of my life, for then away it would run like a fast flying reel, until all from the beginning was unwound. How I tossed and turned, trying to sleep! I repeated poem after poem, put wet cold towels around my head, arose and ran as fast as I could through the garden, and to concentrate my thoughts, repeated poems and paragraphs backward word by word.

I thought of the fate of the damned, who through the long eternal night are trying to forget the foul offenses and crimes of their lives on earth! No, no hell to be compared to such a torment! To be their own accusers, to be their own judge, to keep forever their own infamous record! To be haunted by a ghost that will never be laid. Utter annihilation would be a paradise of bliss compared to such an eternal state of misery.

I still had a duty to perform before I could drop the subject so far as it was possible to do so. M. Le Maistre had made me promise to let him know the result of my investigation, and of my visit to the Commissioner. It was no use to delay, as sooner or later I would have to tell him, and the black wounds would have to be re-opened again. I could not write to him, for I have made it a habit of my life never to write anything that I was not willing the whole world should know. I have gone a hundred miles to tell what I might have written in a few lines. There are so many chances for a paper to be lost and be found by the wrong person, to be mislaid or kept for years, to be read and gossiped about by the world after the writer is dead. These letters and writing of the Commissioner, some of them unsigned, had been his death warrant.

So I had to go again to Lucknow. My old friend received me kindly, as usual. I went over the whole affair again, except that about my sister. That I never told except to the one himself most concerned. He heard it, and will remember it. My sister never even suspected what that man was to her. She had enough sorrow and shame as it was, without knowing of that black, foul crime. It was too much for me to know, and what would I have given to have erased the hideous remembrance of it from my memory?

I was rather ashamed to tell of my ruse, the white lie (though I never knew how any lie could be white), I told in order to gain admittance, but my old friend said that in catching rascals, as in trapping rats, one has to use a little chaff and deception, so I concluded that he did not think any the worse of me for my little trick.

Yet I have always hated to lie, it strains me so, and after it I feel a weakness, as if my moral system had been wrenched, so I refrain, that is, as much as possible.

M. Le Maistre was as good a listener as I knew him to be a good talker, though these two traits seldom go together. After I had finished by telling him of the apparent remorse of the man—I do not like to write man, as applied to him, as it seems a degradation of that word, neither do I like to use epithets all the time, so will have to let it go—he exclaimed, “Served him right; served him right. Such a scoundrel as that should be put into the public stocks to be jeered at by every beggar who passes, as long as he lives, and after death, we need not say anything of that, for he will have all he deserves. God is not just if he will abate one particle of punishment due to such sinners. I know that some, the church people would censure me for such an expression.

“There is a lot of nonsense talked about eternal salvation. Why, they would people heaven with scoundrels, reprobates of earth, suddenly made into saints. There cannot be two laws of God to directly contradict each other. This is what I mean. There is a man of fair education, exemplary in every way, an excellent Christian. I am not making a case, for I knew just such a man. He is seated one evening with his wife and children on a veranda in front of his house. A man for some slight grudge comes, and without a word, shoots, and the father and husband falls dead in the arms of his wife. The criminal is tried, found guilty, and sentenced to be hung. The priest has been with him. On the scaffold he tells the crowd that he has repented, believes in Jesus, and is going to be happy among the redeemed.

“The church affects to believe him, that all his past has been forgiven, that the blood of Jesus has washed him white as snow, and that he is going straight to become a saint in heaven.

“But what about the family? Deprived of their support, guide and best of earthly friends, they are reduced to want and beggary. The mother is crushed to death by her hard toil and care. The boys without education and the training of a father, fall into vice and sin. Their children inherit their defects and so on for generations; aye to the very end. With the family the evil consequences of that man’s crime are eternal. How can we by any torture of justice suppose him to be saved from all the consequences of his sin and to be happy in heaven, while they suffer all the miseries inflicted by his crime while they are upon earth, and an eternal loss and degradation?”

I think I said that my friend, when he got started was like the rushing waters in a mill-race when the gates were open. As I enjoyed his talk, I had no inclination to shut down the gates. Of his own accord he made a halt. I took occasion to refer to my story and said that the only thing I questioned, was that perhaps I had been a little severe on my unworthy parent. He quickly said, “Not a bit of it, not a bit of it. With such a man, hardened, encased in sin, you have got to be severe in order to touch him at all. Had you gone to him otherwise than you did, he would have smiled in your face, rubbed his hands with glee over the tricks of his youth, and the follies of his old age. Had my father served me as yours did you, killed my mother, and made his children outcasts, I would by the God who made me, I would have done more than you did, very much more.”

He used some other very forcible expressions that I forbear to give. I saw the old man’s blood was up, so waited without a word. He began again. “I am a father, I have daughters, but all happily married, thank God, but for years it was the torture of my life as to what might happen to them. They went into “society,” as it is called, and what these upper class men, as they are styled, polished and skilled in all the sly arts of flattery and seduction, might do, I did not know. They are educated, trained in vice as they are in grammar and mathematics. I was just reading an account of a candidate for Parliament, being accused by his opponents of impudicity when he was at the Charterhouse school. There was issued a writ for slander and when the case came on, a paper states, “there was a shocking light on the morals of the great public schools, at any rate twenty-eight years ago.” I was astonished not long ago when an Englishman, lately from home, said that he did not believe there was a boy in England over fourteen years of age, but was guilty of immorality. One prominent school was called ‘Sodom on the Hill,’ because of its wicked practices. A gentleman told me that when he was in the university, one of the greatest in England, there was no set that could keep up with the divinity students in immorality and flagrant blackguardism. Great God! what a condition of society! Where are the fathers and mothers and sisters of these boys? What can be the condition of the homes of England? What can we expect of men who were such boys?

“I know this is not a pleasant or agreeable subject for conversation, but like some other things in life it ought not to be avoided on that account. If I were to write about this, not a paper would publish my article. They are too much absorbed with politics, in detailing the dresses worn at some party or ball, with wars, intrigues, or the events in society, to give any attention to a subject on which the very preservation of society depends, and not only that, but the destiny of souls. Some say we ought never to refer to such things to corrupt the minds of the young. Such people are so simple-minded, as to have forgotten all about the inquisitiveness or the passions of their own youth. The young! They know too much, taught by the example of their elders and the vicious stories in novels, of the intrigues and seductions in society life. They are attracted, allured, rather than repulsed and warned of danger. Another class, and a numerous one, the guilty, the culprits themselves, would frown and declare it was too nasty for anything. They certainly would not like anything that would reflect on their own wicked conduct, or show up their own impurities.

“Impurity is the greatest evil of this age. It is worse than cholera, or any pestilence, for these only destroy the bodies, but this undermines the moral nature, and destroys the souls of mankind. We give little attention to this sin of all sins. Fathers and mothers let their children grow up without a word of advice or warning. ‘It is such a delicate subject, you know,’ is the excuse. The clergy discourse on everything, but are as dumb as mummies about this devil of lust. Only a few days ago the chaplain was over here, and I asked his advice and made some statements about some young men, whom I wished to save from ruin, when he interrupted me by saying, ‘M. Le Maistre, these things are too horrible, I wish you had not told me a word about them,’ and away he went, this man who ought to be a sin doctor, a soul curer and saver of souls, went away to gossip with a lot of women at a croquet party.

“I am inclined to think that we ought to go back to the Christ that was, begin a new church with a new set of preachers, who would talk less about rites and ceremonies, less about the souls of men, and care something about their bodies, and dare to denounce the sins and lusts of the flesh, and have manhood and courage enough to take for a text, ‘Whosoever looketh upon a woman to lust after her!’ Wouldn’t there be a squirming among the sinners such as your distinguished father, if they dared to preach as Jesus would? Let us have some dinner.”

We had a good dinner, and a very pleasant chat among the family present, until the time for my train. On bidding good-bye, I said, “I can trust you.” He answered, “You need have no fear of me.” And I never had.

I wanted a change, to go into a retreat after all the excitement and anxiety of the past few months, to get rid of the ennui and disgust of life that was unsettling me, and the best remedy I have found in such cases, is to go and benefit somebody, and give real enjoyment to others.

I at once thought of my villagers. Have not great men sought rest by retiring to their country homes, why not I? For several years I had only ridden out a day at a time to attend some school festival or fair, but now I concluded to make a real visit. I had my tent, servants, bag and baggage sent out to make a real stay in my Reviera or Tusculum. I sought the shade of a big peepul, a ficus and a religiosa to me, and I was soon pleasantly situated. The condition of the villages was excellent. The drains I had formerly made carried away all the refuse to the opposite side of the village from the tank. The people were extremely healthy. Few deaths had occurred, and these were from natural causes. I had given them a number of talks about the value of manure and refuse, that this was food for the soil, that the land was hungry, starving, and needed to be fed. This they could understand, for they had been hungry themselves. I said nothing about nitrates or phosphates, or the chemical ingredients of different kinds of soil, or that the ash of wheat contains phosphates, potashes and magnesia. Too much learning hath turned many a wise man’s brain, and I wanted no insanity or confusion among my people. I told them that every seer of refuse was land food, and every seer would bring in a number of extra grains of seed, larger and better vegetables, a larger rate of interest than they had paid to the bunyas. I had frequently pointed out the stuff lying about and making the villages untidy and going to waste, while the soil was begging for it. I found that they had acted on my suggestion, and swept the streets and yards, and every straw and leaf were stored in the pits. The result was a clean village, healthy people, and thriving fields. In planting the trees years ago, I was careful to have them of good timber, or of excellent fruit. They beautified the villages, gave plenty of shade, while the lopped branches supplied fuel, the fruit was a harvest in itself of food, and gave the people a pleasure in life all conducing to health and happiness. I am a utilitarian, but include that which gives beauty and pleasure with the useful.

Some years previous I had supplied a few imported cattle. These now formed quite a stock, of which the people were very proud and I rejoiced in their pride. I had given some talks on cattle and their treatment; that they could not expect a poor starved bullock to do good work, any more than a weak starved man. I drew a picture on the school blackboard of a fat-bellied man, thrashing and punching a pair of skeleton cattle, and gave my opinion of such a man, fattening himself while starving the poor brutes depending on him.

I had offered prizes to be distributed by a committee at our semi-annual fairs to those having the best cattle, and also a big leather medal to be given to the one having the poorest cattle, this to be nailed to the door of his house until the next fair. I wanted a little fun, and they all appreciated this leathery idea. I hardly need say that after a few years the committee decided that there were not any cattle in the villages to entitle the owner to the leather medal. It was a standing remark for them to make when any one’s cattle were becoming a little lean, “O he is going in for the leather medal.” I am egotist enough to believe that my talks about cattle were far superior to any given by the wordy lecturers of the anti-cow-killing society. It is the grimmest kind of a farce for the Hindus to talk of the sacredness of cattle and then to cruelly starve and treat the poor brutes as they do.

I had stocked the tank with the fry of the best fish and some had grown to a large size, and plenty of them. There had been a fish committee appointed and a law passed, that no one should fish except with a hook and line, and that no fish under six inches in length should be kept out, but be thrown back into the water. I had plenty of sport, if it can be called sport to take life of any kind, and a fish for my breakfasts, giving the rest to the widows. I always showed great respect to the women, putting them ever first.

One morning I received the finest compliment of my life. I was coming from the tank and my boy,—I never was in want of boys when fishing, who is?—had a fine string of large fish, when the widows approached to get their share. As the fish were distributed, one old wrinkled body getting her share exclaimed: “The Sahib is a friend to the poor widows.” I trust the recording angel made a note of that, for I like to get all the good marks I deserve, as I am afraid I shall have so many bad ones to be erased, for I have read somewhere, that every time the scribe above puts down a good mark for any one he rubs out a bad one. The fish committee made their report that there had been no violation of the law except once, when a man was caught going away from the tank with a number of small fish. The committee at once surrounded him, and decided that he must eat the fish raw, then and there, and they waited until he had devoured heads, tails, bones and all. I doubt if the justices of any high or low court ever gave a decision with more justice, or administered a punishment with more alacrity than did my fish committee.

Once going to the tank with my rod, I met this man and said, probably with a slight hint in my voice that I had heard from the committee: “Well Gulab, are you fond of fish?” He hesitated, with a slight grin on his face, for he was somewhat of a wag, “Yes, Sahib, when they are cooked.” I replied, “That is the way I like mine, not raw, but well cooked,” and we parted, each with a meaning smile.

I was so well pleased with my fish investment, bringing in a constant crop of food without labor, worth the product of a number of acres, that I sent for some fishermen with nets to go to the river to bring me a lot of small fish at so much a seer, and they brought me not seers, but maunds, and I waited to see what a harvest my planting would produce, as I told the villagers that the tank was my field. Some of them, I afterwards learned, called the tank, “The Sahib’s Khet.”

I found that it was the custom of the people after their evening meal to assemble in front of the school-house at the chibutra, the areopagus of India villages, when the teacher and older scholars would read aloud the papers and books that I had sent them. Questions were put, and various were the discussions, with more courtesy and order than in the British Parliament, when the Irish bill is to the front. These assemblies became so popular that every man, woman and child in the village would be present, not one left to guard a house, for why should there be a guard, when all were at the chibutra?

The women had their right to half the space, and well they claimed and kept it. Woe to the wight who dared intrude upon their side. I greatly enjoyed this assertion of rights by the women. I have always been foolish enough to believe that a woman is as good as a man, everywhere and at any time, and most of the time a great deal better. She has her rights and should demand them, even if she has not as much coarse brute muscle as the self styled lords of creation. From my little reading and observation I have come to the conclusion that the moral and social status of a nation, a tribe or individual, is seen by the way they treat their women. If a man, or rather a male of the human species, acts like a hog towards a woman, he is a hog in other respects. I mistrust that this word is not a polite one to use, and that it would be as bad to say hog before some fastidious people, as it would be to say hell in church. But when I mean hog why not say it, and surely I have seen hog bipeds, as well as hog quadrupeds.

I cannot help throwing in a suggestion. If I, now an old man, should give any advice to a young woman, about to accept a man for a husband, it would be to see him often with his mother and his sisters, and observe his treatment of them. His murder will out to them, when he would be all smiles and graciousness to women outside his home. In his home he is off his guard, and there is the place to judge these slippery men.

As long as the people of India keep their women in ignorance and seclusion, England need have no fear of holding the country in subjection. Liberty, patriotism and the higher moral traits of the human race were never born of men, but of women. Was it not the mother of the Gracchi who bade her sons go forth and conquer in battle or be brought home dead on their spears? That was also the spirit and patriotism of the Spartan mothers that made a place in history for their nation. Was there ever a great people, but had its grand women, its noble wives and mothers? The people of India think they know a great deal, but they are far from having learned this first great principle, the great secret of a nation’s freedom and civilization, the education and elevation of women. I may be mistaken in this as I am in so many things, yet I see no reason why I should not say the best I think on the subject.

I do not know when I acquired this regard and reverence for women. I think they must have been implanted by Mr. Percy to grow with my years. I know of so many traits in my thoughts and life, that in after years I saw I got from him unconsciously, not that he taught me directly, but rather that he impressed upon me by his conversation and example. It was an education to walk and move beside or in the company of such a man, to absorb something of his character and goodness. Ah! that grand man, so pure and good! What would he have been without that noble mother of his! He fairly worshiped women as God’s best gift to men, and he could no more have harmed a woman than he could have blasphemed his Maker. I have often thought that a man who respects and reverences women can scarcely go wrong in a moral sense.

I was greatly pleased with the position the village women had taken, and with their spirit of inquiry. They were my best hope in the permanent prosperity of these people.

I was allotted the place of honor at the chibutra. There was no one to move that I take the chair, or to ask for a vote of thanks at the close of the meetings. They had not come to imitate the babus in aping the customs of the English. There were more questions put than ever dreamed of in Parliament, but with this difference, none were asked to gain time, or to waste time, or to perplex the Ministry or the chair. They applied their inquisitive pumps to me, as if I was a never-failing well of knowledge. The women, too, had their questions, mostly about the women in Wilayat, how they lived and did, a very good sign. During all these evenings I gave talks on all sorts of subjects, making them practical, as well as interesting. Once I talked on gossip and slander. I suspected that there were several women whose tongues hung as loosely as a clapper in a bell.

The next day several matronly women met me, and said they were very glad I had talked about women quarreling, as there were some guilty of it. All this may be called trifling matter, not worth mentioning. Yet, what to great people would seem trifles, were to these simple people great affairs. They were not in society, could attend no operas, clubs, or fashionable parties, had few books, knew nothing of the great life of the world, and were better for it, so the little things would make their lives happier, and would lift them up from the earth, above the brutes, and raise them toward God, and fit them for a better eternal life.

I am convinced that if the simple, ignorant people of India were shown how to better their condition, no people on earth would be so ready to act. Theories will not reach them. They, like all people in their grade of life, are materialists; they want to see with their own eyes—results. They can reason upon what they see and feel, or better, upon what they eat. I have been told by an educated, English gentleman, that most of the common people or voters in England, were guided more by their stupid bellies than by their brains, how much more so these people? I might have talked and persuaded all my life, and they would have remained just what they were, and would have continued doing as their forefathers did centuries ago, but when they saw me spending money in support of my theories, they became interested, and when they saw results, they were convinced. All the people in India are the slowest in the world to make experiments or engage in anything that they do not comprehend or see a profitable solution.

It appears that when the tram-car was first proposed for Bombay, not a native would invest in it, though begged and urged to do so. As soon as they saw it was a paying concern they clamored for shares, and felt wronged that none were sold to them. A Parsee complained to me that he had been hurt by the refusal.

There is a great drawback. The people are desperately poor. There is not a people the sun shines on, who are so sunken in the degradation of poverty as those of India. Ninety per cent. of them are connected with agriculture, and it is stated on good authority, that sixty per cent. of them do not get enough to eat, even of the coarsest food.

What can a people do for themselves when the average wage is not more than three rupees or three shillings a month? What can all the learned investigations and scientific reports of Government do for a people in such an utterly helpless condition? I am not speaking at random. I have seen and heard for myself, and know what I am talking about. To illustrate: Passing through a field where a man—almost naked—was rooting up the earth with a pair of small skeleton cattle, I had a chat with him about his life and crops. I asked him how much he got a year from all his labor. He replied, that if by working every day he could get a little food for himself and family, and at the close of the year could have enough to buy a cloth for himself, he would be happy. A whole year’s work for a little food, a little rice with weeds and stuff from his fields, not wheat or grain, as all the latter would have to be sold to pay the rent, and at the end have enough left to buy a cloth, worth less than a shilling!

The great curse of Indian agriculture, is the middlemen, the “zemindars,” or village owners. They do nothing except to pass their time in idleness and dissipation, spending more in one night on a nautch dance of prostitutes, than would dig a dozen wells, or build a good tank, while they live on the sweat and blood of their ryots. It is to the infamy of Government that it tolerates such a system of tyranny, injustice and robbery. Not one in ten thousand of these zemindars does anything for the benefit of his villagers.

I once talked with a great Maharajah with a long string of titles, who was ever head first when his name could be mentioned in public, and who privately was known as a screw, the owner of hundreds of villages, and I suggested some improvements for his people. “No,” he replied, “I have nothing to do with them, except to get my rents, all I want is my rupees,” and he was getting them by lacs a year. They are worse than vultures, for these are scavengers, destroyers of carrion, good birds, and never take life, but such men as this Maharajah, live and grow fat on the lives of their serfs. It is evident that I grow warm, yes hot, on this subject, and why not?

Another thing I cannot abide, and that is the learned nonsense about improving the condition of the agricultural population by some high flown scientific processes. You might as well form a society to cultivate the valleys of the moon, or “go about to turn the sun to ice by fanning in his face with a peacock’s feather.”

Lighten the burdens of poverty, and the crushing of the ryots, by less taxation, by the destruction of the leeches, the zemindars, and then the people would have something on which to live and help themselves. The permanent prosperity of a country depends on agriculture, and India will never come up, it is now at its lowest depth, until the condition of the ryots is radically changed.

The editor of a prominent India paper says: “The direct effect of unduly low rents is careless husbandry. Instead of benefiting the cultivator, such rents are a mere incentive to idleness.” What a sapient conclusion! His publishers should have immediately cut down his wages so that they might not be an incentive to his idleness.

This reminds me of a bunya who sold cloth, traveling from one bazar to another. He purchased a fine, stout pony to carry his goods. The beast was so fat that he diminished its food, and as it traveled so well, he increased its load. He continued to do both, until the poor brute, of its own accord, discontinued eating and going, and the man wondered what gave it such an incentive to idleness. But he had not the wisdom of the editor.

An expert sent out by Government says in his report, “Until a more adequate collection of statistics is made nothing can be done for agriculture!” I might use some very harsh words, if I should relieve my mind by using epithets regarding such twaddle, so I refrain. Yet I cannot forbear saying that one of the things for which I have an unsurmountable contempt is an educated fool.

Referring to these Government learned scientific investigators recalls to me an incident. One of my neighbors went on furlough. He had several valuable horses, which he left in the care of his sais. They were large, strong-limbed, well-proportioned animals. But something seemed to be the matter with them. They became thinner and thinner and drooped, standing for hours with their heads down and their legs scarcely supporting their bodies. Some of the neighbors happened around in the mornings and formed a kind of committee of investigation, as they did not like to see such fine animals go to the dogs and vultures, and beside, they had some regard for the interests of their friend. At length they decided to send for a distinguished veterinary surgeon, several hundred miles away. One suggested that this would be expensive. Others blanked the expense; they couldn’t let the horses die. The vet came, took a general look at the beasts and stood silently as if meditating where to begin. At last he spoke, “Gentlemen, this is a very serious matter, very strange; never saw anything like it in an experience of forty years. Yes, gentlemen, in forty years. Here are young, fine, well built animals slowly dying by inches, and yet apparently without disease. I will have to investigate, and it will be some days before I can make a report.” The days went on, and the vet stayed on, at a salary of fifty rupees a day to somebody. The weeks passed, and notwithstanding the vet’s investigation and long report, the horses grew thinner, and then the poor brutes went to death for want of breath, or, to be explicit, they died because they hadn’t strength enough to breathe, and not because they were sick or diseased. The vultures sang requiems over their bones, and said, “It was a strange case, very strange, the like they had never seen in all their experience of years, all skin and bones, not a particle of meat; very strange.” So said we all of us, “a very strange case.”

After his weeks of diagnosing and cognising the vet departed with his pockets full of rupees. Besides, he made quite a reputation, for he sent a long account of this very strange case to a horsey journal. A deluge of letters came, everybody had his theory or opinion, until the editor, buried under the accumulation of papers, said that the discussion must stop. At last the Government got to hear of it. Why is it that Government takes such a long time to hear? Is it on account of the length of its ears, the distance anything has to travel to get into its head? It had a long investigation by a committee of fifteen, all titled, distinguished—nobody knows anything but this class—and as each had to have his talk printed, the result was a voluminous book, of which a thousand copies were published, costing many times more than the horses were worth, not to mention the expense of the committee, for such men are always good livers. Of these thousand copies only twenty-five were used. Each member of the committee took a copy to show his wife and friends, and ten were sent to editors. A Government subsidized paper declared that the book reflected great credit on the distinguished committee, that it was just what the public might have expected from the well known reputation of the members selected with such great care and excellent judgment by His Excellency, the Viceroy.

An opposition paper, reviewing the book, said that the committee was a ponderous one, in number, in titles, in its expenses; the report was ponderous in its size and weight, in the number of its pages and sections, and in its cost. The subject of the investigation, to begin with, was of no consequence, the quiet death of three probably worn-out old hacks in a little up-country, out of the way station. There was not a thought in the book worth preserving, the style was verbose, flatulent to a degree, as if the committee had been appointed wholly and solely to make a book. “Without wasting any more of our valuable space on nothing, we give it as from our profound conviction that a mosquito might take in every idea in the whole book and then not be conscious of any enlargement of its brain.” A babu tried his copy, but declared it was too much for him, as “it made him sick in his mind to read it.” The only real benefit from the book was what the paper-maker, the printer and the waste paper dealer received. The whole committee decided unanimously that the horses had died, and as everybody agreed with them, the subject was dropped and forgotten by the public.

One day, not long after the mysterious affair, I met the sais who had charge of the horses. He knew me very well. I questioned him. I told him he knew what ailed the horses, and wished him to tell me. He hesitated. I urged. At length he said, “Sahib, if you will promise me upon your honor never to report me I will tell you.” I promised. He replied, “When my sahib was taking leave he told me it would cost him a great deal to go to Wilayat and back, that there was now a very big income tax, and that the rupee was very bimar, that there were taxes on everything, and more to follow, he didn’t know on what next; it might be on his wife and children, so that he couldn’t afford to allow more than one seer of grain a day for each horse, and that he would give me so many rupees, and that would be so many anas a day, while he was away, and that I must not spend more than that, or he would cut it from my talab, and I knew he would do just what he said. When he is here he strikes me with his whip, when I am within reach, or, if not, he hurls a brick, or anything he can get, at my head.” “But about the horses?” I asked. He replied, “The grass, as you know, all dried up, the price of grain doubled in the bazar, and as I had only so many anas a day for each horse until the sahib returned, I had to cut down the feed until it was scarcely more than a child could eat, and that is what was the matter, the horses died for want of feed.”

“But why didn’t you tell me, and I would have given the feed?” I asked, quite indignant. “Yes,” he continued, “and when my sahib returned he would get to know of it, and I would be thrashed, my pay cut or be dismissed. I know my sahib too well to think that he would be willing to have any one know that he had left his horses to starve. I was sorry for them, and often cried, but what could I do? It was either I or the horses, and I preferred to save myself, for he is brother to a donkey who will not try to keep his own skin on his back.”

As the sais has gone to a place from which he will never be dismissed, and though he may not be flogged by a sahib, he will have to meet the ghosts of those starved horses, so let him be happy if he can. As I had promised on my honor, though an Eurasian is not credited with much of that, I never told the story until now, and the learned vet, and the distinguished Government committee, can have the free and full benefit of my information. It was a strange case, very.

I will not point a moral to this incident, for if any one has been so slighted by nature as not to have the ability to see it, all pointing would be superfluous. It would be like having to explain one of my own jokes, and that always gives me a mental twist. This reminds me of the reply of a Scotchman, when asked to explain, “A body canna be expectit baith to mak the joke an’ to see’t; na, that would be doin’ twa fowk’s wark.”

CHAPTER XXII.

I believe in feeding and grooming, whether of a horse or a man. I have no scientific knowledge, though I spent years in school, and hardly know what the term means, so I have had to rely on my instinct or common sense, and I cannot rid myself of the idea that the first thing we need, whether men or horses, is enough to eat. I have often thought, in my blind way, that most of the crime of the world is due to poverty, poverty of work, and poverty of food and clothing. I cannot forget the remark of Mr. Percy, that if he was poor and in want, as these people are, he would likely lie and steal as they do. I have often thought that I would have done the same. When the poor, the abject poor, willing to labor, but can get nothing to do, see the rich, living in luxury, and most of them by extortion and tyranny, how can they help being socialists or nihilists, or anything under heaven that promises them a chance of relief?

The longer I live, the more charitable I become towards the shortcomings and sins of the poor.

The rich have no excuse for sinning, while those in want have the best reasons. I can even think kindly of Judas. He was the treasurer or financial secretary, and had to provide for the other twelve and himself. As none of them earned a penny, he must have had a sorry time of it, to get anything to put in the bag, if the people were not more generous than they are nowadays. Most of the twelve, I doubt not, were experts at finding fault, and especially that changeful, fiery-tempered Peter! Judas often felt the lash of his tongue, when the meals were not forthcoming, or insufficient. I doubt if Judas had any intention of betraying his master to death. He probably thought those who made the request to see him, wished only to talk to him, or may be worry him a little, and if he could get thirty pieces of silver for such a slight favor, it would help him in his commissariat department for many days to come.

His intentions were probably of the best, but the result surprised him, grieved him to death, and he did what any real man would do, killed himself. At any rate, the betrayers of virtue, the seducers of ignorant, innocent girls, the rich tyrants and extortioners, those who oppress and rob the poor, and lots of people who do abominable things, and all sinners, for every one is a traitor to goodness, should never take up even the smallest pebble to hurl at the badgered and bewildered Judas.

Another, and it may be a queer notion I have, and it is this; that about all the sins we commit are by the body. I doubt if the soul ever sins. It is the house we live in that is forever decaying and tumbling down about our ears that brings us into trouble, or as a vehicle in which we go about, always running us into some scrape or other, yet the soul is made responsible for it all.

Many become so absorbed in thinking of what they call the sins of the soul, that they have no time to look after the vices of the body. If our bodies could be kept in subjection, kept strong, healthy and clean, we need not worry much about the salvation of ourselves, our souls.

Touching the subject of food again. I was much interested in a book on Honey Bee Culture loaned me by Mr. Jasper, a subject on which I had never read.

One particular item of importance was the production of queens. There are three kinds of bees in a family. The drones are the males, large, clumsy fellows, whose only use is to furnish a husband to the queen. They are idle, never do any kind of work, but always great eaters, and like their types in human society the least useful, they make the most noise, by the loud hum of their heavy vibrating wings.

The workers, styled “the bees” by Aristotle, are neuters or undeveloped females, of which there are from fifteen thousand to forty thousand in a colony or family. They gather the honey, secrete the wax, collect the pollen, protect the hive from intrusion, and manage the general affairs of the family, the younger members, before they are strong enough to go abroad, build the comb, ventilate the hive by flapping their wings, and thus grow stronger, feed the larvæ and cap the cells until they are able to make journeys outside.

The queen is a fully developed female, the only one in the family. She is the mother of all, and only meets her husband once, at the beginning of her life. Her only work or duty is to lay eggs, which she does at the rate of two to three thousand a day, and during the extreme limit of her life of five years, may lay one million three hundred thousand eggs to keep up the family circle. This is small business compared to that of a queen of the white ants that lays eighty thousand eggs a day! No wonder that we have such an infinite multitude of these pests!

The making of a queen is peculiar and interesting. Suppose she dies, or is unfit for duty. There is then great consternation and excitement, for without a queen or mother, the bees know that their family would be extinct in a short time, as the workers only live from one to three months. If a cell can be found containing a neuter egg they enlarge it to three or four times its former dimensions to form a regal palace. After the egg has been hatched, which takes place three days after it has been laid, the bees fill this large cell with what is called “royal jelly.” This is a delicate, highly concentrated food of a rich, creamy color, made by the bees eating honey and ejecting it from their stomachs after it has been partially digested. Floating in this nectar the larva lives and thrives until after sixteen days from the laying of the egg, she appears as a full grown, graceful queen, and in a few days takes her marriage flight, meets her husband and then begins her work of life.

The point of my story is that it is the “royal jelly” that makes her a queen, elevating her and making her a mother. Had it not been for this royal food she received, she would have remained a neuter, a most honorable and necessary member of the family, but not a mother. This has given me great proof in favor of my theory of the value of good food in the making of grander men and women. If regal jelly can change a neuter worker bee into a queen, why should not good food raise ordinary human beings into kings and queens of humanity? A starved human animal must necessarily lack courage, energy, ambition, and most of the traits that go to make up manhood. Any one who has studied the rearing of domestic animals knows how almost useless it is to try and make anything of one that has been starved in its infancy by lack of food. It is often better to kill it at once than to waste time and money on it. I do not suggest this treatment in the case of stunted human infants, though the Spartans pursued this method in making themselves a brave strong race, by destroying all their puny, crippled children. However, I cannot help thinking that it were far better if some people had never been born, or had taken their quietus in infancy, than to live years of suffering, degradation and misery. When I have looked upon maimed, disgusting creatures, I have agreed with John Stuart Mill that suicide is justifiable, and that it would be Godlike to help these unfortunate spirits to escape from their pest houses. This, however, pertains to another subject, and I may have shown the perverseness or obliquity of my nature by alluding to it. What I would urge in all sincerity is, that humanity should take at least as much care in producing and rearing its progeny, as it does in rearing its domestic animals.

Another item in regard to the bees struck me. That when the queen has once received her husband, and there was no further need of the drones, the bees destroyed all or most of them as useless, idle eaters. It might be severe, and yet I cannot help thinking that humanity might imitate the wisdom of the busy bees, and destroy all the drones, the idle eaters of the world. Let not any one hold up his hands in horror at such a suggestion, for who but our God made the bees, and gave them this instinct of righteousness, and showed them how to deal with the vagabonds in their community? Instead of saying with the wise man, “Go to the ant thou sluggard,” why not say, “Let us go to the toiling bees, and learn of them how to deal with the human drones, if not to adopt the drastic method of the bees, at least make the idlers go to work.”

The zemindars are the drones of India, the dissipated idlers. They should be exterminated by the workers or by the government, and the industry and progress of India be rid of its greatest curse.

We might learn many a lesson from the industry of the bees, when we poor mortals get tired or lazy. To make one pound of clover honey, bees must deprive sixty thousand clover blossoms of their nectar, and to do this they have to make three million seven hundred and fifty thousand visits to the blossoms. That is, if one bee alone collected the pound of honey it would have to make that many journeys back and forth from the hive to the flowers. When we consider that the distance traveled is often from one to three miles in a journey, how can we compute the miles this little toilsome creature has to make to collect the pound of honey that we consider of so little worth? Surely there is many an open bible in nature, from which we could gather many a lesson if we were not so bigoted, proud and stupid. I am reminded of a remark of Charles Kingsley’s, “Ere I grow too old, I trust to be able to throw away all pursuits save natural history, and die with my mind full of God’s facts instead of men’s lies.”

Another item of interest. There is no king or emperor among the bees, as Shakespere states in his play of King Henry the Fifth, nor a queen. Theirs is a democratic government without even a leader, the worker bees each attending to their own business, all acting together on some general principle for the common welfare. The queen, so-called by men, is only such in name, as she does nothing but her duty, as the only mother, to provide for the increase and continuance of the family. There is no ruler with a royal squad of idle relatives to live in dissipation and luxury on the industry of the laborers, no blathering parliament, no judges, no high or low courts, no big salaries, no legal members to fleece the innocent, no policemen, for there are no evil-doers, no annual budgets to provide for from the increased taxation of the poor, no expense of any kind whatever, as there are no idlers except a few drones kept in case of a paternal necessity, the most being killed,—no criminals, no poor, no rich, no castes! What a lesson a nation of bees can teach the most exalted human nation on earth! And yet humanity in this nineteenth century boasts itself as being civilized, enlightened and Christian, and having been created in the image of God!

The old station life again. The blessed books, the gardens and the duties of each day occupied my attention.

One day I received a note, asking me to meet a committee. A new road was to be opened, and as it affected my property, I was to be consulted. I went at the appointed time. A friend introduced me to several I had not met before, and then “Mr. Smith, this is Mr. Japhet.” “O, yes!” said he, “I have seen Mr. Japhet, and gad! I never hear that name, but I am reminded of the story, ‘Japhet in search of his father!’” and he chuckled at his bright saying. I replied, “Mr. Smith, I have heard you make that reference several times. Once you asked me if I was in search of my father, and I told you I was, and wished you to help me find him. Now I can tell you that I have found him, and perhaps you would like to see his photograph, here it is.” And I pulled the picture out of my coat pocket, and held it up for him to see. “I have lately been down to Jalalpur to see him. He is Mr. H. J. Smith, the commissioner, and may be some relation of yours?” The fellow turned white, then red. There was a tableaux, a quiet scene for some moments, when one of the party blustered out, “Come fellows, let’s get to work, as I have got to go to Mrs. Tinkle’s to see about some confounded party.”

Our business was soon finished, and as I was going out through the yard my friend remarked, “I say, Japhet, what was that deuce of a joke you got off on Smith?” “Joke?” said I, “There was no joke at all.” “Great Scot!” he exclaimed, “you don’t mean to say that you and Smith are half brothers?” “I have said nothing of the kind,” I replied, “only I know this, that H. J. Smith, commissioner at Jalalpur, is my father, and if he is also this Smith’s father, you can draw your own conclusions, I am not bound to make any statement.” He fairly shouted, “Great heavens! you don’t tell me! Well, ta, ta, I must hurry, or the devil will be to pay with Mrs. Tinkle.”

We had no newspaper in our station. A paper is an expensive luxury to the publisher, and besides we didn’t need any. Mrs. Tinkle, the wife of the colonel, was our newspaper and news-carrier all in one, a host in that direction. If we had anything good, bad or indifferent, that we wanted to circulate, and there were many things that no living man would dare to print unless he was prepared for death, we got them all to Mrs. Tinkle, and they went with the wind, or as fast as her ponies could take her. When my friend said he was going to Mrs. Tinkle’s, I knew and could have sworn to it, that before they had closed their eyes in sleep that night every one in the station would learn that Smith and Japhet were half brothers! Confound the impudence of the fellow! If he had only treated me with the least respect I would have never given a hint, but his continued bullying I could not endure. I felt as badly about the relationship as he possibly could. It would not be a credit to either of us. I will say, however, that he never troubled himself about “Japhet in search of his father” again. Some one told me that Smith had denounced the story as a red-hot lie, and asked if they would take him to be a fool. Yet everybody believed the story, for they knew the character of old Smith too well to doubt it, and probably believed young Smith to be a fool. About that photograph, how did I happen to have it in my pocket just at the right time?

I knew that Smith as a magistrate was on that committee, that he couldn’t well turn his back on me, as he had before done, that if he noticed me at all he would give me a shot or a thrust of some kind, so with deliberate forethought, or malice prepense, if that is a better term, I put the photograph in my pocket, ready for I knew not what, anything that might come. In time of peace, prepare for war. So did I.

It may be thought that I had some streaks of wickedness in me. I have often thought that myself. I have gone through enough ill-usage in my life to make a saint profane and revengeful. As I do not believe in any erasing or washing away of sins or forgetting them, I try to be as good as I can be under adverse circumstances, and never sin unless I am absolutely compelled to. I have ever desired to live a life of peace and righteousness, if only others would let me do so. If a dog snarls or bites at me, when I am quietly passing, I feel like striking him, or when a fellow mortal deliberately hurts me, I am inclined to give him one in return, treating him as I do the dog. The many kicks and insults that have come to me along the way have reminded me that Cain and I were alike in this respect, that we both had a mark put upon us, but with this difference, that his mark was that any one seeing him should not kill him, and my mark was to let any one who saw me wipe his feet on me if he could, or give me some mean thrust. But who is there that has not a mark of some kind?

CHAPTER XXIII.

I often called on my friend Mr. Jasper. One morning he had just laid down his daily paper as I entered. “Did you see this?” he asked, “that the Pope and the Romish Church propose to dedicate England to the blessed Mother of God, and to St. Peter, to consecrate the whole country to the Holy Mother of God, and to the blessed Prince of the Apostles.” These are the exact words. Where does God come in? He, the Creator and Preserver of the universe, and, as we believe, of England, is left out, ignored altogether. How can one read such blasphemy as this without being shocked and angry? Such a proposal is not only an insult to all the Protestants and non-Christians of the British Empire, but is an outrageous imposition on the common sense of mankind! It is a sin against God. What must be the cheek and impudence of any men to dare propose such a thing as giving England over to the protection of a woman and a man who died nearly two thousand years ago, and taking it out of the hands of Almighty God?

The world is shocked at the idolatry of the heathen, but what is there in their systems worse than this deifying a woman and a man, and placing them above God? It is awful, profane, wicked and insulting! “Most holy!” No stronger words could be used of God himself, and these applied to a woman! As if the eternal, infinite God without a beginning, should have a mother, and she a woman, an ordinary finite being! I had rather be a heathen, an infidel, or even an atheist, than to be guilty of such sacrilege and driveling nonsense.

But who is this they set up as the most holy mother of God? A woman, a Jewess, the wife of Joseph. She was not known except as the mother of Jesus, no claim that she was more than an ordinary woman, but blessed in being the mother of an excellent son. Taking the New Testament, which gives the only account we have of her, it scarcely mentions her, and then without giving her any prominence. No allusion is made either to the time or place of her birth, or of her death. Even her son Jesus scarcely treats her with common respect. When he wandered away from his parents, and gave them great trouble and anxiety in finding him, he did not show her any special regard when they found him. At the marriage in Cana, when she spoke to him, he addressed her in the style of orientals, not even calling her mother, but “Woman! what have I to do with thee?” He apparently neglected her, and never mentions her, his own mother, and at his death he had little to say to her. The apostles seldom refer to her, and then only as the wife of Joseph, the mother of Jesus. I defy any one to show a word or line in the Bible to indicate she had any special regard shown to her by either her own son Jesus, or by his apostles. It was not until several centuries later that she began to be reverenced, then prayed to, and finally to be deified and worshiped in the place of God. Her virginity was of no importance to the evangelists, as they never refer to it, and the theory was not taught during the first three centuries. In the fourth century she was first styled the mother of God. Augustine repeatedly asserts that she was born in original sin. Anselm declares that the virgin herself when He (Jesus) was assumed was conceived in iniquity, and in sin did her mother conceive her, and with original sin was she born, because she, too, sinned in Adam, in whom all sinned. Others expressed the same views.

The explicit doctrine of the immaculate conception was first taught about 1140, at which time a festival was established in favor of it. Bernard of Clairvaux opposed this. “On the same principle,” said he, “you would be obliged to hold that the conception of her ancestors in ascending line was also a holy one, since otherwise she could not have descended from them worthily, and there would be festivals without number.” The Franciscans favored the feast of the conception without the immaculation, which the Dominicans under Aquinas opposed, and a severe and bitter controversy ensued between these rival sects. In 1854 Pope Pius IX promulgated the bull ineffabilii deus, by which the doctrine of the immaculate conception became an article of the Romish faith, to disbelieve which is heresy. All history shows that this doctrine is but a modern invention. There is not a particle of proof that God had anything to do with it. It is assumed that God could be born of a woman, then that he must be without a human father, his mother a virgin, and to improve the situation that she must be immaculate, born without sin. The frame-work once set up, the fabric has been completed by additions from century to century, until this obscure Jewish mother of the man Jesus has become in the Roman church the most holy mother of God. The very idea is sensuous, born of the flesh and not of the spirit, repulsive to a refined mind, and degrading to the character of God.

The whole structure reminds one of an English medieval house that has been added to and patched upon, and so changed that the first occupant, should he come to the earth, would not recognize his own birthplace. Without a doubt, if Mary and Jesus should rise from the dead, they would be astonished at their modern portraits; and Jesus, honest man that he was, would lash these libellers out of the house of God for making it a place of lies, deceit and merchandise. Among the heathen or pagan nations such an apotheosis was not uncommon or strange, but that an intelligent people, claiming to have exalted views of almighty God, should invent such wicked, degrading nonsense, is astonishing. It was customary among the earlier Romans to deify their rulers, and place their prominent men among the gods, but it was reserved for the modern Romans to bring God down and make him a man among men.

As to Jesus, he was the son of Joseph, as much as any man is the son of his father. Leo, the patriarch, published in A. D. 726, an edict prohibiting the worship of images, declaring that Jesus was but a mere man, born of his mother in the common way. It is evident that Jesus was an observant, studious youth, given to devout meditation, and on this account greatly esteemed by the ignorant people around him, and stimulated by this admiration, he became somewhat of a fanatic, but a good one, absorbed in grand and noble thoughts, and fell in with the Jewish notion of the redemption of their race from the enemy, but he took a still higher view, the deliverance of his people from their slavery to rites and ceremonies, from their hypocrisy and wickedness, to a life of purity and uprightness. A noble effort of a noble man, worthy of the world’s profoundest respect and admiration. Not a word was said while he was alive, or until centuries after his death, of his being God, or equal with God, or anything but a great teacher, a noble man, worthy to be styled the son of God, as all good men were and are the sons of God.

John Stuart Mill says of him—and his opinion is worth as much as the Pope’s—“A man charged with a special, express and unique commission from God to lead mankind to truth and virtue.”

If Jesus was God he must have been conscious of it, and would have shown or disclosed the fact in his life, but nowhere did he do this. He was aware that a prophet is not without honor save in his own country, thus likening himself to a prophet. When in the course of time he was deified, and as they could not do away with God, they made Jesus a part of God, or one of three Gods in one, a medley the most absurd ever attempted by the human mind, and tried to explain it in the Athanasian creed, the most nonsensical puzzle of the world. If the greatest of modern lawyers or scholars should now go into any court on the globe and try to make a statement of a fact in such a jugglery of words and nonsense, he would at once be sent out of court or be committed to a lunatic asylum.

I cannot understand how religious people, believing in one God and accepting the Ten Commandments, can accept this doctrine. I cannot comprehend how, obeying the first and second commandments, any one can take the likeness of a man born of woman and put him before God, and worship him as God. How can they, believing in one God, the Eternal one, the Creator of all things, take this, as they say, part man and part God, created only a few centuries ago, deify him and worship him as the Creator, and place the eternal destiny of all the souls in the world in his hands! It is awful, the extent of human credulity! It is a monstrous assumption and a fearful sin, contrary to common sense and abhorrent to the moral and enlightened sense of mankind. How is it possible for Christian people to tolerate such a degradation of God! Yet Christian people wonder that men of intelligence and judgment do not accept without a murmur this heathenish jargon as truth, or bow down along with them in their idolatry.

The Romish Church very likely will soon drop God altogether, and put in His place the Jewish woman. One of its most prominent priests, in a sermon not long ago, said, “He prepared her virginal and celestial purity, for a mother defiled could not become the mother of the Most High. The Holy Virgin, even in her childhood, was more pleasing than all the cherubim and seraphim, and from infancy to the maturing maidenhood and womanhood, she grew more and more pure. By her sanctity she reigned over the heart of God. When the hour came the whole court of heaven was hushed, and the trinity listened for the answer of Mary, for without her consent the world could not have been redeemed.” What could possibly be more impudent and blasphemous than the statement that the Almighty maker of the Universe could not save mankind, whom he created, unless he got the consent of a woman!

I put it as a question of good taste, leaving out religion altogether, would not the feelings of a refined man be shocked at the suggestion that the Infinite God had a human mother?

It is assumed that Mary conceived by the Holy Ghost. Such stories are common in the world. Buddha is said to have been born of a virgin. It was a common occurrence when people wanted to set up a new god or hero to assert that they were born of a virgin by the help of a god. It was claimed for all of them that there were wondrous signs, portents and occurrences about them, and that these beings to be exalted were not, like ordinary men, born of a human father.

The virgin mother of Egypt, Isis, was represented holding her infant son Horus in her arms. She is also shown as the Queen of Heaven, holding in her hand a cross. On one of the tombs of the Pharaohs, Champolion found a picture, the most ancient of a woman ever found, bedecked with stars, with the form of a child issuing from her bosom. The Hindu virgin is shown as nursing Krishna, a golden aureole around the head of each.

In the caves of Ellora is a figure of Indruna seated on a lounge, with her infant son god pointing toward heaven, with the same gestures as of the Italian Madonna and her child.

Horus, Ishter, Venus, Juno, and a host of Pagan goddesses, have been called Queen of Heaven, Queen of the Universe, Mother of God, Spouse of God, the Celestial Virgin.

The Buddhists believe that Maha Maya, the mother of Gotama, was an immaculate virgin, and conceived him through a divine influence.

Perictione, a virgin, immaculately conceived Plato through the influence of the god Apollo.

The ancient Mexicans, though they believed in one Almighty Invisible God, had minor deities, the chief among them being the god, born of a virgin, conceived by a ball of light colored feathers floating in the air.

Says a writer, “Hundreds of Christs and virgins are being continually born into the world in Russia, and find thousands of worshipers and disciples.”

So great is the resemblance of these virgins and goddesses to the alleged character and adoration of Mary, that the Romish Church should be indicted for its false claims to a patent to which it has no right or title. Bishop Newton, of the English Church, asks, “Is not the worship of saints and angels now in all respects the same that the worship of demons was in former times? The name only different, the thing is identically the same ... the very same temples, the very same images, which were once consecrated to Jupiter, and the other demons, are now consecrated to the Virgin Mary and other saints ... the whole of Paganism is consecrated and applied to Popery.”

The testimony of Abbe Huc, a Romish priest, of what he saw in Tibet, is not to be doubted. “One cannot fail being struck with their great resemblance with the Catholicism. The Bishop’s crosier, the mitre, the dalmatic, the round hat that the great lamas wear in travel ... the mass, the double chair, the psalmody, the exorcisms, the censer with five chains to it, opening and shutting at will, the blessings of the lamas, who extend their right hands over the heads of the faithful ones, the rosary, the celibacy of the clergy, the penances and retreats, the cultus of the saints, the fasting, the processions, the litanies, and holy water, similarities of the Buddhists with ourselves. Besides, they have the tonsure, relics, and the confessional.” The Catholics, to account for these things, attribute them to the devil.

“Bad as he is, the devil may be abused,

Be falsely charged and causelessly accused,

When men, unwilling to be blamed alone,

Shift off their crimes on him, which are their own.”

Instead of the thousands of imaginary gods and semi-gods of the ancients, the Christian Church has its calendars of saints. In place of the oracles of mythology, the church has its priests, who presume to know all the purposes of the Almighty and to speak for Him. The old system in new clothes.

The Romish notion of purgatory and the use of the rosary is evidently derived from Tibet. Every Tibetan prays with his string of beads. The fear of a Buddhist is the six-fold existence after death. The long purgatory is his dread. Believing that he can pray off much of it in this life he keeps his whirligig praying machine going continually. In that country they have little grinding mills that are turned by the mountain streams and common to all the community. When a man goes with his grist to mill, he takes along a roll of paper prayers, yards in length. Having put his grain into the hopper, he winds the prayer around the mill shaft and turns on the water. He then smokes his pipe while his grain is being ground and his prayers repeated by water-power. Is not this much easier and as beneficial, as much of the church religious praying?

In Ladak there are long lines of walls on which prayers are inscribed. Walking back and forth along the walls each works off so much of the dreaded hereafter.

Do I believe that Jesus was conceived of the Holy Ghost? Not at all, any more than any other child. He was the son of Joseph and Mary, just as I am the son of my father and mother. My reason, my common sense, my sense of honor, and my deep reverence for Almighty God will not allow me to think otherwise. I cannot think of the Infinite God being born of a woman. Such a thought is most degrading, it degrades the character and being of God, and it degrades men to have such a thought about Him. If Jesus could be conceived in that way, why not others? This has actually been claimed again and again.

I read not long ago of a man and a number of women in a harem, not far from Chicago, in America. The women had children whom they claimed were all conceived by the Holy Ghost, and why not, if Mary could have a child in that way? The account says that some Christian people assembled in a church, made angry speeches, passed resolutions to bring the man and women into court, and some proposed to mob them and burn down the premises. The only charge against them was the claim of the supernatural conception of the women, as in every other respect they were irreproachable. These Christian people, whose very fundamental dogma of their faith is the unnatural conception of Jesus, attacking this first principle of their belief, is like thieves berating a thief for stealing.

Who was this Peter, under whose protection it is assumed to place England? An ordinary man, unstable in character, impulsive, blowing hot and cold at a breath, declaring he would never leave Jesus, and then swearing that he never knew him, as much a betrayer at heart as Judas, but not as manly, for Judas showed his consciousness of the wrong he had done by killing himself, while Peter, shrewd as a modern Jesuit, shuffled out of his brazen falsehood around to the winning side. In mental ability he was inferior to any of his fellows, a bigot in his belief and in his character, far less to be admired than any of the others. Supposing him to have been transcendent in virtue, wisdom and goodness above all other men who have ever lived, and to have been absolutely perfect, yet he was only a man. Then why should he be made a saint, or be invested with divine power and made protector of anything, in the place of God? In respect to mankind, the veneration of Peter and attributing to him power or authority above all other men is absurd, but when considered in respect to God, it is outrageous blasphemy and idolatry. It is placing a creature, and a very insignificant one in the place of the Creator.

CHAPTER XXIV.

One day, reading in my library so intently that I did not hear the sound of wheels, my bearer brought me a card on which was the name “Mrs. Clement.” I told him to show her into the drawing room. Soon I went in and saw an elderly lady, slender in form, with snow-white hair drawn up in curls at the side of her forehead and with a very bright, intelligent face. She was old in years, but evidently young in heart and mind. All this I saw at a glance. With her was a young man whom I judged at once to be her son, slender and delicate with a bright face partially covered with a beard and a heavy moustache. On my entering the room they rose and greeted me, the mother introducing the young man as her son. We then seated ourselves, and had some introductory talk, probably about the weather, or some such interesting, novel subject. In fact I had become so absorbed in reading Plato’s “New Republic,” that I was still in a dreamy state and supposed they had called on some matter of business.

The mother then spoke. “Are you the Mr. Japhet who was in the St. George’s School in 18—.” “Yes,” I replied. “I must be the one as I know of no other. The Japhets by that name are very scarce, as I never met one in my life.” “Well!” she replied. “Johnny has always been talking of you and of coming to see Mr. Japhet, and I thought I would come with him.” This was what she said, but she had scarcely uttered the name, “Johnny,” before I aroused from my stupor, sprang from my chair and taking both his hands in mine, exclaimed, “Johnny, is it you?” I put my arms around him and gave him a real brotherly hug, and would have kissed him after the good German fashion, but let my tears of joy flow instead. Taking his hands again I studied his features, asking: “Is it really true that you are Johnny?” Then turning to the widow, “Mrs. Clement, I wish to shake your hand again for Johnny’s sake.” I saw the tears glistening in her eyes as she observed us, for was not he the only son of the widow, the treasure of the mother’s heart and life! Had she not a right to be proud of him and of the love I showed him? Why should we not give full play to our sympathies and feelings, the noblest traits of our human nature? Have we not enough in life to make us hard and unfeeling that we should not soften our natures by yielding to our affections when we can do this sincerely?

I have seen husbands and wives, parents and children meet and separate as coldly as if they were only strangers or ashamed to show any feeling. How very strange, and is it not unnatural? Surely I did not take time just then to philosophize for I was too excited even to think. Recovering myself, I ordered the bearer to tell the Khansaman to bring some tea and toast, to open the two guest rooms, to bring in the luggage and dismiss the gari, and all this in one sentence and a breath. I was in a state of delightful excitement and I yielded myself entirely to it, and why not? No more of Plato’s New or Old Republic, but the pleasure of the old and new friendship. I have often recalled Mr. Percy’s saying, “Charles don’t dawdle! When you have anything to do, either work or play, give to it all your might, mind and being.”

I need not say we were busy, not a moment wasted either before or at breakfast. I insisted on the midday rest, that my friends might not become exhausted, but Johnny found me in the library. I call him Johnny for he was always that to me, and ever will be and why not? Later in the afternoon we had our walk in the garden, and then our long drive about the station, but I doubt if either of us saw anything. The pleasant time was after dinner, when we had our coffee in front of the fire in the big room. It reminded me of the old times when we three, Mr. Percy, Cockear and I, sat before our fire and were like boys together. Ah! those happy, joyous days! How much has passed since then?

In this more quiet time Mrs. Clement gave me a little of their history. When Johnny’s school days closed, several years after my time, he tried in various places for a situation, but failed completely. The world seemed harsh and dreary to the widow and her son, the future without any prospect on which to rest a hope. Without friends or influence, what could they expect? Just then a letter came that like the wand of a fairy swept away all the clouds and darkness. It appeared that years before Johnny was born, his father had befriended a lad by helping him to a situation in Bombay, where he commenced at the bottom, and by diligence and honesty rose step by step, until he became one of the partners of the firm. He had lost track of his friend, but on the evening of the day on which he was admitted to the firm, he was recalling the past, and thought of the time when he was a homeless orphan, and almost friendless, and of the one to whom he owed his position and the success of his life. From that moment he could not rest until he had found his benefactor. He wrote letters to him, not knowing that he was dead. One of these letters reached the widow. The writer gave an outline of his life, told of his gratitude, and that if in any way he could do a favor to the one to whom he owed everything, he was not only ready, but anxious to do it. It was like a debt, and almost a burden to him, and he could not be happy until he had discharged it, or shown his willingness to do so.

This letter came as a message from Heaven to the widow and her son. She wrote and explained everything, with the result that Johnny got a situation, and in the course of time became a partner of the man whom, as a lad, his father had befriended. This was most natural, and such incidents would oftener happen if people would pay their debts of gratitude, and put their religion into deeds, and not so much into words.

“So, Mr. Japhet,” said the mother, sitting with her cup of coffee in her hand, forgetting to take a sip of it, “you have our history. I say our history, for in it all, Johnny and I have been one. He was all I had, and I think I was everything to him, though many bright eyes have tried to win him away from me, I have him still.”

“Don’t be too sure, good mother,” said Johnny, “Don’t you know that Cupid’s arrow, if the right one be used, may pierce the hardest heart. Didn’t it your’s once?”

“John, John!” she said very gravely.

I noticed she always called him Johnny, except when she gave him a reproof, and this was always so kind that it must have given him more pleasure than otherwise. He then took her hand, as he sat by her side, just as if he had been her lover. And he was. Blessed is that boy, whose first love is his mother, and happy is the mother of such a boy. I have often thought, yet it may be one of my crude notions, that a boy or man who truly loves a good mother can never go wrong.

As I sat looking at this loving couple, I could not help asking myself, with a deep, sad sigh: “Why did I not have such a mother?” Thus do the sorrows of our lives break in upon our joys.

The mother continued: “All his life, since he first met you, he has been talking about you. It was Mr. Japhet this, and Mr. Japhet that, and he has always been longing to see you. I often told him to go and visit you, but he would say: ‘No, not without you, mother,’ and thus the going was delayed until he became a partner, and was entitled to a long vacation, when I said to him: ‘Now, we will see Mr. Japhet, if he can be found anywhere,’ so we started, and here we are. So you see Mr. Japhet, he is still his mother’s boy.”

“Yes,” said Johnny, soberly, “I am not ashamed to say, it was first God, then mother and Japhet, all through my life. These three have been my trinity for good—” and as if talking to himself—“for to these I owe all my best impulses, and the happiness of my life.”

After a few moments silence we fell to talking of our school days.

“Yes,” said the mother, “Johnny has told me about them again and again. What a time you must have had! And do you know, Mr. Japhet, that he never told me about that flogging until after he left school.”

“No, good mother,” he said, “I did not, for I well knew that if I told, you would have tied me to your apron-string, and never let me go back to it.” She answered with warmth: “Indeed, I would not, to such a school as that! A great brute of a man flogging a little boy for not betraying his comrades! Often when I have thought of it, years since, I have felt like going to that man, and upbraiding him for his meanness and cruelty.”

“Mother, dear,” spoke Johnny, very gravely, for it was his turn to reprove, “I am surprised!” And then with a smile: “How funny you would look shaking your little fists at such a monster man, and all for such a little thing that occurred years ago.”

“John, John,” she replied very sternly. “It was not a little thing, John, and you know it.”

“That’s so, I surrender,” he answered. “Haven’t I felt the smart of that rattan years after, when I have thought of that scene? Not in my body, but in my sense of right and justice? Didn’t you scream though, Mr. Japhet? You never knew that I was ready to faint, and thought of dying, as those cutting strokes fell on me, but when I heard you scream, I made up my mind in an instant to be brave to the last, if I died. I would not have you think me a coward. It was your voice that gave me courage and nerve.”

Thus our talk ran on. I know these things are but trifles, but the sum total of life is made up of little things, a flogging is but a small affair, but have we not all of us received cuts that we have remembered until they have become a part of our very selves, and so have changed many a destiny for good or evil?

“But,” said the mother, “you might have let me share your sorrow.” “O, no, good mother,” replied he, “that could not be. Sorrow cannot be divided, shared, sold or given away. I might have told you and a hundred others, and you would have felt grieved and sympathized with me, but my sorrow would not have been diminished in the least so it was better for me to carry my own burdens than to have troubled you.” Brave as a man, as he was a brave boy.

The days passed only too quickly, full of delightful enjoyment to me, and I think, as well to them, and my friends took their departure. Then I was lonely and sad, yet happy in this renewal of our old friendship, and the addition of a new acquaintance, the charming mother of Johnny. I have given this account of their visit for several reasons, first because of the old friendship; then for the delight I had in their company, but most of all because of the admiration I had for this loving couple, mother and son. As the mother said, they were one. She had lived for her son, he for his mother, and thus their lives were blended together.

First of all, she was so pure. This was my first impression, and increased the more I saw of her, not from any special thing she said or did, but purity seemed to be in her every feature, in her dress, her walk, her conversation, the tone of her voice. She seemed to be made of sweetness and light, not simply of the soft and mellow kind, for she had her opinions, which she dared to defend with energy, yet a sense of goodness seemed to rule her. Such a life is a perpetual prayer. She had a great mind in her little body, and was not willing to let it sleep and rest. It was evident that she had kept up with her son in his reading, with his thoughts and his business, so she could be his close companion. There was scarcely a topic in our conversation, on which she could not converse with excellent sense, and with flashes of wit and fun. On some subjects her womanly instinct seemed to outrun our slow, plodding masculine thoughts.

I have read somewhere a criticism on woman, and probably a just one; that many of them, on becoming married, seem to think that they have reached the summit of their lives, and lose all their former pride of appearance, stop reading and thinking, and so cease to be companions of their husbands and older children, and remain as common useful articles of house furniture. It was not so with this mother. To her elasticity of youth in body and mind, she had added the culture and refinement of years, while her body seemed strengthened and matured through her mental activity.

I have but little patience with the theory of some scientific men that there is necessarily an inequality of the sexes because of the greater avoirdupois quantity of the male brain. Mind cannot be weighed with a butcher’s scales, no more than strength can be computed according to the amount of muscle. What does it prove if a difference exists between the brains of the two sexes of no less than 220 cubic centimeters per individual, more than to say that because two men live in different sized houses, the one living in the larger house should be consequently the greater man, when everybody knows that a large minded man may live in a hut, and a fool be in a palace. Therefore it seems that size and weight is no indication of quality.

Should not fineness of texture and quality give value to brains and to everything else? But, say the scientists, no difference can be seen in the composition of the male and female brain. Nor can any difference of texture be seen in the brains of an educated man and a fool. Take two rays of light of the same degree of brightness, no difference in appearance is observed, yet the one ray is full of heat, and the other of cold. Analysis by the spectrum shows a difference. My skeptical common sense suggests that our scientists have not found the right kind of a spectrum for brain analysis. Suppose we leave out the material brain altogether and consider the mind alone as we would lose sight of the house and think of the man separate from it. Is not the great mental difference between the sexes, as between individuals of the same sex, due to the training and development of that immaterial, subtle something, that no eye can see, or scale can weigh, or mortal comprehend, the mind itself? Why make the soul a clod of matter? Why try to estimate mind only by the weight or shape or texture of the brain matter it lives in and uses, any more than we should judge of the weight or worth of a man by the size or value of the house he occupies?

It is said that a fool can ask questions that a philosopher cannot answer, so I have ventured. Yet with all due respect to the philosophers I cannot always accept their dogmatic assertions without protest or questions. For instance, a great brain anatomist asserts, “Woman is a constantly growing child and in the brain, as in so many other parts of her body, she conforms to her childish type.” Suppose I assert “Man is a constantly growing child, and in the brain as in so many parts of his body, he conforms to his childish type.” What value has one assertion over the other?

CHAPTER XXV.

In all my previous acquaintance with Mr. Jasper he had told me nothing of his history. I had never made inquiries as I considered it impertinent to pry into the secrets of people and preferred to remain in ignorance unless they chose of their own accord to tell me. I knew him to be a very reserved man, one who had traveled and seen a great deal, read and studied much and was an independent thinker. His theory, was that as he was responsible for his thoughts and deeds of this life and for the life to come, he could not avoid the necessity of being free in all things. He was most courteous in hearing all sides and diligent in reading everything on every subject as an impartial judge, but at the end he formed his own conclusions to which he adhered tenaciously for himself.

One day he incidentally referred to his religious life. His parents were devoted Christians and he was brought up in their faith. His mother was the stronger willed of the two. She was of Dutch descent, of a hardy and resolute race. She had an excellent mind, though not well educated. Her good common sense answered in place of education. She exacted implicit respect and obedience from her children. She laid down no rules, but every one knew what she desired and not one dared act contrary to what mother wished. There was no harshness, but a mother’s love shown in all her acts towards her children. She did not lecture them or parley with them, but “it is right my son and must be done,” and it was. She demanded obedience first and afterwards, sometimes, would give her reasons. She seldom made mistakes. Her good judgment so calmly acted upon, impressed all that it was best to do as she directed.

One thing indicated her character. She was very particular about the observance of Sunday. On Saturday the boy’s clothes were seen in order, their boots were blacked and they had their baths and the Sunday dinner was prepared as far as possible. On Sunday morning every one in the household, even to the dogs, knew and felt it was a sacred day. All went to church no matter what the weather might be and no Sunday sickness was allowed. After the service came the dinner, not a cold water, dry biscuit affair, but the best dinner of the week, smoking hot roasts, tarts, pies and cream pudding in abundance, just what would please hungry, growing boys and make them love the mother and give them a warm regard for Sunday. After that, books and papers, no novels on that day, with singing and pleasant conversations, the mother the center of the household group; walking in the garden, orchard or fields, but no visiting or making calls, nor did she encourage visitors on Sunday. It was a day of quiet rest at home.

Outside the house the father ruled, but in the house the mother was ruler and priestess. The parents never interfered in each other’s domain. If anything was said about something outside the house, it was, “Go to your father.” If about anything within the house, it was, “Ask your mother.” The mother often counselled with her husband about the children but never before them. Their matured decision was acted upon as if they had never spoken on the subject. Such was the love and respect and implicit obedience to the parents, that the boys never went away from home without asking permission of the mother, for it seemed to be within her province to know where her boys were. This habit clung to them until they reached manhood or as long as they were at home, for during school vacations and afterwards, before going out, it was always, “I will ask mother first.” This may seem very rigid, but what could have been better for a family of energetic boys than such a system of which they were trained to venerate and love mother and home?

While Mr. Jasper was telling this I recalled what I had read in the autobiography of George Ebers, where he writes of his mother’s influence: “I had no thought, performed no act, without wondering what would be her opinion of it, and this intimate relation, though in an altered form, continued until her death. In looking back, I may regard it as a tone of my whole development that my conduct was regulated according to the more or less close mental and outward connection in which I stood to her.”

And the sisters, for there were several, dear, good, noble girls, models of the mother in every respect, a family group clinging together, the interest of each belonging to all and never sundered except by death. There was no separate purse among the children. If one needed a little money he was free to help himself, and this continued even after they had grown to manhood, each assisting the others and no account kept.

It was a sad, sad day when death suddenly removed the mother from her privileged place in the home.

Mr. Jasper stopped suddenly with tears in his eyes and a choking sob in his voice, while he sat in silence for some minutes, looking back over the years as if he saw that home and the mother again.

I had known so little, almost nothing of my mother; yet such as she was she was still my mother. It has always caused me deep, heartfelt grief when others have told me of their mothers. Why could not I have had a mother’s love and care? Why?

The loss of such a treasure is next to losing God, the greatest loss, it seems to me, that can befall a human being. I had no father, not a real one, and have no feeling about him except—I have often heard people speak with great respect of their father, but the heart’s affection always goes to the mother.

I was thinking to myself and did not realize the silence of Mr. Jasper. He then continued: “Such was my home and early training. I was kept from bad company, ‘tied to my mother’s apron string,’ as the boys said, but it was a good string, one of the best that God ever made. One incident occurred when I was in my sixteenth year that left a profound impression on my mind and on my life. A neighbor’s wife and her son—he was just my age to a day—had lately returned from a visit to a distant place where he had met some young people with whom I was slightly acquainted.

“We were in their drawing room and the mother was sewing or reading. Mention was made of a young man several years older than we were. At his name the mother remarked, ‘How sad it was! He was a young man of good family, fine ability and excellent prospects, but he had gone with bad women, became diseased and so offensive that his family could not endure his presence but had to provide him rooms outside the house.’ I do not remember her exact words. She was a refined, educated, Christian lady, and I know must have spoken on such a subject with as much delicacy as possible. I was absolutely ignorant of such things. Some might say I was a very innocent youth. I proudly bear the taunt. Such was the effect of her remarks upon me, that I went home sick with disgust and could eat no dinner.

“That feeling has never left me. Whenever in my travels I have seen a prostitute, I have had the same feelings of disgust, and when meeting men whom I knew to be licentious I would have as quickly taken a slimy toad in my hand as to have shaken hands with them. Laying aside all the morality of the subject, I never could appreciate the exquisite, refined taste of a gentleman or any man who had any self respect, who could associate with women common to everybody. And what puzzles me now is how any man belonging to a Christian church and professing to be a follower of Jesus, who was purity itself, can be guilty of sexual immorality. They are foul hypocrites, and besides, traitors to Jesus as much as Judas was.

“That lady’s talk gave me a shock that has lasted as a blessing all my life. I have often wondered why parents, ministers and teachers, should have such false modesty about these most important things to the young. They say nothing until the youth falls into the mire and slime of the ditches of sin, and then hold up their hands in holy horror and wonder how it could have happened.”

These remarks recalled Mr. Percy’s earnest talk to me when he, with both of my hands clasped in his, and tears in his eyes, gazing into mine, begged me, for the love of God and for the sake of my own soul, to keep myself pure and clean. And I remember, too, that never, in all the years of my school days, did our burly principal or the teachers utter a word on a subject that was of infinitely more importance, than all our mathematics or history or our whole school course of study. When I have thought of the ruin of some of my schoolmates, through their ignorance of danger, I have bitterly blamed the whole false or deficient system of education. Only the pure in heart shall see God, but purity is entirely left out of our school education and mostly from the services in the churches.

Mr. Jasper continued, “I joined the church of my parents during my college life, and for years afterwards, I accepted the Bible as the inspired word of God, and all that the church taught as direct from Him. I never had a doubt about these things. I often wondered when others spoke of their doubts. The fact was, that I never read or thought of anything contrary to what I had blindly accepted as the truth. I was happy in this state of mind or ignorance. This continued for years. To be as brief as possible: I engaged in business and met with reverses through the betrayal of some men professing to be Christians. What to do I did not know. I was like a man shipwrecked on a desert island, or rather cast away among savages, for those whom I supposed my friends turned against me. Men whom I had assisted begged to be excused, ‘it was not convenient,’ or ‘some other time,’ when I asked for a little assistance. Men whom I had put upon their feet at a sacrifice to myself hardly knew me when we met. Once it was ‘Harry,’ but then, ‘Mister’ of the coolest kind. I was criticised and censured for becoming poor. When a man is down everybody, even his former friends, are ready to give him a kick. Mankind is very much like the vultures we see in India. Not one of them in sight anywhere until a poor brute is wounded, when they are seen coming in every direction to pull their victim to pieces and devour him. The world can forgive anything but poverty.

“I expected to find some sympathy and kindness in the church where I had taken a prominent part, but instead, I was told in effect that I had better take a back seat. This seemed to me intensely cruel and unjust.

“To be excluded from the church of my parents, to be slighted by those professing to be Christians, and by whom I was once respected and treated as a brother, without any reason given, was unendurable. I was grieved beyond measure, astonished and broken-hearted. My poor wife nearly died from grief, and my children, though I tried to conceal it from them, saw my agony. I tried to think what might be the reason of such harsh treatment, until my head seemed ready to burst, and such was the intense agony of my feelings that I was in fear that my heart might fail me, for it sadly ached. At last the question came. How is it possible for Christian men to act in this way? Are they followers of Jesus, who can hurt me so much without giving any reason whatever? As I have said, I never had a doubt about religion before, not one, but now the question came, Can a religion be true, and of God, that can allow men to treat me so unjustly and without mercy? I walked in my garden for hours, many a time till late at night, to retire to a weary, restless sleep.

“Then one night the crisis came. I had a fearful dream. I do not believe in dreams, but this one, whether the fancy of a disordered brain or whatever it was, had a terrible result. I thought I saw a great treeless plain, in the center a low spot of ground from which arose a dense white mist and I heard a voice saying of the mist: ‘This is your God and beside it there is nothing else.’ I awoke in horror, bathed in a cold perspiration. I tried to recover my senses, but for all I could do, I felt myself a changed man. Completely worn out I fell asleep again. In the morning I began to tell my wife my dream but she checked me saying, ‘It is too awful, don’t speak of it!’ But I could not get rid of it. The mist was as real to me as myself. It overpowered me. I was a changed man as much so as if I had been metamorphosed into another being. A thousand times I have tried to analyze that dream and to account for it. I never had a doubt in my life about the existence of God, for I had always believed and trusted in Him implicitly, to my great comfort and peace. The only doubting question I ever had was whether a religion could be from God that could allow its believers to treat me as I had been treated. Whatever caused the dream I was another being from what I was the day before; I had no belief in a God whatever. My faith in the divinity of Jesus and in the divine inspiration of the Bible had ceased entirely. I had no feeling about the matter. I could not pray, for I had nothing to pray to. I had no fear, none in the least. I had done nothing to bring me into this condition and felt no responsibility for it. I had not the least desire to go back into the church and would not have accepted the highest place in it, if they had come on their knees begging me to take it. Strangely enough, though the day previous and for weeks and months I had been in an agony of distress, I was now serenely quiet and at peace; all the old conflict had gone.

“I lost breath in my soul sometimes

And cried, God save me if there’s any God

But even so, God saved me; and being dashed

From error on to error, every turn

Still brought me nearer to the central truth.”

“I am not trying to explain anything, but simply stating the truth as to my condition. Some good Christians might say that I had become a hardened sinner and God had withdrawn the light of His countenance from me. This would be false, for I had committed no sin of which I was conscious, that would cause such a terrible transition. All through my life I had considered atheism an impossibility and looked upon any one who professed to be an atheist with horror, and if any one had suggested the day before that I would fall into this state I would have been shocked. I yield to no living being in honesty of purpose. It was my interest to be right and do right and to know why I was so changed in a few moments and by a dream. I had no thought or desire to be without God. Why should I, when all my life I had loved and tried to serve Him? It was a wonderful strange feeling, as if I had just been born into a new life, for not only my mind but my body seemed to have been transformed.

“Weeks and months passed while I engaged in business with the greatest peace and tranquility. Yet the thought was always present: ‘There must be inevitably an Infinite Creator, God.’ My reason told me this and that I ought to pray to Him. This belief gradually increased until one day, like a sudden light, my faith in God returned, filling my whole being with joy and peace that has never left me. He is now my life, my all. Nothing gives me so much peace and happiness as prayer when I can talk with God, to my Father who knows me infinitely better than I know myself. But I never got back my old faith in the Bible nor in the divinity of Jesus.

“I have a great respect for the Bible as a wonderful book, and a love and regard for Jesus as a great man and teacher. Yet I cannot but believe that the deification of Jesus was the most appalling blunder of all time. I do not wish to offend you, but truly, when I go to church and hear Jesus addressed as God I feel shocked more so than when I see a heathen worshiping a stone image as a god. My reason, my heart, and all my feelings rebel against putting anything in the place of the Infinite God. I am as honest in this as it is possible for a human being to be in anything, and if it is possible for any one to have a witness within himself that he is right, I have that. I go direct to God. He can hear me as easily as He can hear any one else, and I believe and know that He is always ready to listen unto me when I come. I want no mediator, nothing of any kind to stand between me and God. I know that if my father were living and I should send any one to intercede for me he would feel hurt and ask, ‘Am I such a father that my own son cannot come to me instead of sending some one else?’ Why should we make out God to be such an unnatural Father that He will not admit His own children to His presence without being paid for it or through some one else as an intercessor? ‘All’s love yet all’s law, in the star, in the stone, in the flesh, in the soul and in the clod.’

“As to original sin and an atonement to satisfy a broken law, these to me are mythological stories begotten from men’s fertile imagination. The best atonement is a repentant heart, a contrite spirit and a pure life. ‘As a father pitieth his children so does the Lord love them that fear Him. Who shall ascend unto the hill of the Lord? or who shall stand in His holy place? He that hath clean hands and a pure heart. For thy name’s sake, O Lord, pardon my iniquity for it is great. What man is he that feareth the Lord? Him shall He teach in the way that He shall show, his soul shall dwell at ease. The secret of the Lord is with them that fear Him and He will show them His covenant. The eyes of the Lord are upon the righteous and His ears are open unto their cry. The Lord is nigh unto them that are of a broken heart and saveth such as are of a contrite spirit.’

“There is scarcely a Psalm that has not a passage showing that God is willing to forgive and receive all those who come to Him direct and in the right spirit. Why mystify and muddle a thing that is so plain that any one can easily understand? I cannot conceive how a holy God, and more, a God of infinite mercy, could be willing to accept, much less take delight in, any worship or sacrifice that would cause suffering to even the most insignificant animal. No one can think of vivisection, though for philanthropic purposes, without a sense of pain. I cannot see the slaughter of an animal or bird, even when they are for food, without a feeling of pity. How then can I, though a weak mortal, yet having such feelings, bow down and worship a God who is declared to take pleasure in the destruction of life and offerings of blood! May God forgive me if I am wrong, but I cannot help thinking and feeling as I do. I would rather believe that all mankind are in error than to hold such an idea of the God I love and worship.

“Vicarious atonement is contrary to all the principles of justice. The sufferings of innocent victims to appease the wrath of an angry God is repugnant to the noblest instincts of the human race and a degrading superstition of which only the lowest heathen should be guilty. Moral justice can never be satisfied by the death or punishment of the innocent for the guilty. Nowhere on earth is one allowed to suffer in place of another. To buy off justice is bribery and to accept a bribe is a crime. How then can people attribute to a just God what is considered by universal mankind an act of infamy?

“Jesus is to the world an example of what a human being should be, and not as a sacrifice to an offended God or to satisfy a broken law.

“Having escaped from the old theological dogmas, how was it possible for me to go back to them? How could I accept such a horrible statement as this, made by a very prominent divine, who wrote text books on theology still used in the divinity schools? ‘The saints in glory will be far more sensible how dreadful the wrath of God is, and will better understand how dreadful the sufferings of the damned are, yet this will be no occasion of grief to them, but rejoicing. They will not be sorry for the damned, it will cause no uneasiness or dissatisfaction to them, but, on the contrary, when they see this sight it will occasion rejoicing and excite them to joyful praise.’

“Another equally prominent divine writes: ‘The happiness of the elect in heaven will in part consist in witnessing the torments of the damned in hell, and among them it may be their own children, parents, husbands, wives, and friends on earth. One part of the business of the blessed is to celebrate the doctrine of reprobation. While the decree of reprobation is eternally executing on the vessels of wrath, the smoke of their torment will be eternally ascending in view of the vessels of mercy, who, instead of taking the part of these miserable objects, will say amen, hallelujah, praise the Lord. When the saints shall see how great the misery is from which our God hath saved them, and how great a difference He hath made between their state and the state of others who, by nature and perhaps by practice, no more sinful and ill-deserving than they, it will give them more a sense of the wonderfulness of God’s grace to them. Every time they look upon the damned, it will excite in them a lively and admiring sense of the grace of God in making them so to differ. The sight of hell torments will exalt the happiness of the saints forever.’

“I have candidly and truthfully given you, Mr. Japhet, my experience for what it may be worth to you, but my conclusions are all of life to me.”

CHAPTER XXVI.

Some business, as well as a desire for a change in the monotony of station life, took me to Calcutta. I was the guest of a well-to-do Eurasian family whom I had met. This gentleman, by inheriting some property and by profitable investments, was able to live quite independent and very comfortably. The family, on account of its wealth, was on the verge of society, sometimes inside, but oftener on the outside. “Society” has always been a puzzle to me. I can understand the Hindu caste system, for that is something well defined and natural. All the castes accept the position in which they are born. One caste is as proud of its place as another, and there is no trying to pass from one caste to another. There are strict rules for each, settled by immutable laws and recognized by government, even among the criminals in the jails. Everything is definite and satisfactory to everybody. As an instance, among Hindu fishermen there are these castes: those who fish from the rocks, those who fish from boats, those who catch turtle, those who cast nets, and those who fish with a rod. There is no chance here for mistakes, as each one knows where he is; but among Europeans everything is higgledy-piggledy, no one knows who’s who or what’s what. It is a sarcasm on western civilization to allow the heathen to be so far ahead in such an important matter.

From the high caste English Brahmins down to the lowest caste of English Shudras there seems to be no boundary lines or rules. No one knows where he is, and is forever in danger of being snubbed and humiliated, except, perhaps, the very high mucky-mucks, who assume a kind of divine air of superiority and immaculateness.

It appears that a man who acts as wholesale agent for a firm in England, occupying a little office only large enough to hold a table and chair, is in “society” because he is a wholesaler. Another whose business takes up a number of buildings, selling anything from a steam engine to a hairpin, giving employment to a thousand or more people, is not in society because he is a retailer. He is obliged to be a man of superior ability, while the wholesale agent may be but a popinjay. The one can draw cheques for lacs of rupees at a time, while the boarding-house keeper and dhoby of the other have to wait months for their pay.

I was told of a case where a clerk in a large firm fell in love with a daughter of his landlady, a bright, intelligent girl, the mother owning considerable property. They were married. The next day his fellow clerks, receiving each a couple hundred dibs a month, and often overdrawing their wages to get tennis suits and neckties, drew up a petition requesting the benedict to resign his clerkship, as they only associated with gentlemen.

This miserable, degrading notion about caste or labor often inflicts the greatest hardships. A Scotch lady, a neighbor of my hostess, called. She was of excellent family, formerly in good financial circumstances, but now greatly reduced by some misfortune. She had two grown up daughters, well educated and in society. She was lamenting over the impoverished condition of the family, and said, “I know how to take care of sick people, and would gladly go out as a nurse and so earn some money to help keep the pot boiling, but what would society say, and what would become of my daughters? Their prospects would be ruined, and they would always be spoken of as ‘the daughters of that old Scotch nurse.’ So I am obliged to sit idle at home, when we need a little money so badly.”

As to shop-keepers, tradesmen, they are another breed or caste altogether, and never taken into consideration by “society.” This is a strange thing under the sun to me. When the English are a nation of shop-keepers—and Napoleon knew what he was saying—when the very substructure of England’s life and prosperity is commercial business, buying and selling truck, I cannot see why they should so despise their own trade.

In the “service,” why one man who receives a thousand a month is in “society,” and a five hundred or a two hundred rupee walla is excluded, though the latter may be superior mentally, morally and physically to the other, is a conundrum to me. They are all naukars, servants, work for wages, and are at the beck and call of others, and even the best of them at times have to do a little shinning for the sake of a few paltry rupees.

Evidently God has not formed me with intelligence enough to comprehend these intricate society matters, so that whatever error there may be in my questions, can be imputed to my imbecility and ignorance. I candidly admit that I am sometimes a fool. I do this the more readily to escape the major conclusion in the saying, “He that is not a fool sometime, is likely to be a fool all the time.” Still I cannot forbear giving my opinion that this blind running in respect to the unfixedness of “society,” has gone on long enough, and in this advanced stage of civilization such an important matter should at once be so well defined that an outsider, though a fool, need not err thereat.

If St. Peter should make it a question of admission through the pearly gates whether we had been in “society,” or to what caste or grade we belong, too many might be puzzled for an answer, and so miss the privilege of treading the golden pavements.

Another question is the status of gentleman. This has never been settled. Some one has said that “a gentleman is one who does not have to work for a living.” This might not suit India, as it would almost exclude everybody, for all here have to work, or pretend to do so, and most of them, from what they say, deuced hard to get their grub. I might come in under this definition, for through the kind providence of Mr. Percy I have never been obliged to do a hard stroke of work. Yet I would very likely, judging from my experience, be objected to on account of the color of my integument. So I am left in the dark as to my position, under the shade of my skin—an undefined, crude, protoplasmic nonentity; a very undesirable position. There are always so many little things to upset one’s calculations. The slightest extraneous matter, as I have read, will destroy the distinctive flavor of a vintage, or, as we well know, the sight of a tiny fly in the soup will destroy our relish for the dish, so the slight tinge that God or the Devil put into my face has often offended the delicate sensibilities of colorless people.

As I have a personal interest at stake in this question, I would like to know who I am and where I come in, anything to settle the matter, and not for myself only, but for thousands of other unfortunates.

I am always curious to know the breed of my horses and dogs, and the strain of my chickens, why not about my own status and that of the different humanities I meet?

The world is so careful about the breeding and grading of every kind of domestic animals, and the improvement of machinery, but the breeding of humanity is left to luck, haphazard chance, and the devil to take the hindmost. This ought not so to be.

I cannot refrain from giving another definition of gentleman: “A man distinguished for his fine sense of honor and consideration for the rights and feelings of others.” This suits me, as there is nothing in it about color, lineage or wages, or whether one sits at table with shop-keepers.

Lord Lytton makes one of his characters say, “I belong to no trade, I follow no calling. I rove when I list, and rest when I please, in short I know of no occupation but my indolence, and no law but my will; now, sir, may I not call myself a gentleman?”

Some one says, “No one is a gentleman who has not a dress suit.” There must be something in this, as every one knows the power of the tail of a coat in social life; yet the statement is not more definite than the definition of the word “network” in Johnson’s dictionary, “Anything reticulated or decussated at equal distances, with interstices between the intersections.”

A clearer definition of a society gentleman is, “One who can break all the commandments genteelly and keep his linen scrupulously clean.”

Another word is often used, excellent when rightly applied, that of “Christian,” “as to a person acting in the manner, or having a spiritual character proper to a follower of Christ.” But is this the world’s use of it?

I do not know just what started me on this gait, but I frequently find myself going off on a tangent. I am no heavenly body, so have no fixed orbit, and often take the privilege of a wanderer.

During my visit to the city I was greatly interested in looking at “society” and upon the moving world. It was as good as a circus to see the maidan of an evening. The very High Highs of natives in their phaetons, followed by horsed spearmen, as if these swells were afraid of bandits capturing their sweet selves, then a load of bareheaded, barefaced babus, with a number of ragamuffins clinging on behind and shouting at the top of their voices, while the driver was trying to run down every one in front of him. In one of the grand phaetons was a swell rajah, with a servant sitting near him, carrying a spittoon to receive the royal spittle. He probably is one who is clamoring for representative government. What would he represent? I never see such a nest of natives but I think the government erred in not passing a law a century ago restricting every native to his ancestral bullock hackery. A native is by nature a squatter, and is as much out of his place in a phaeton as he is among European ladies in a drawing room. A babu said to me, “If you go to the houses of these fellows who appear in public in great style, you would find the most of them living in mud huts surrounded by filth and stinks, while everything they have is mortgaged to keep up their appearance when they go on parade.” He knew no doubt what he was saying.

Then the traps of the Europeans, the extremes could be seen at a glance. A slender, six foot youth, wearing an enormously high collar and the highest kind of a narrow-rimmed hat, seated on a six foot cart, while alongside of him was a pompous porpoise of a man in a trap nearly touching the ground, drawn by a limping, half-starved pony. Then the people, scarcely one good looking, but ugly and so so, all kinds and conditions as various as the crowd that once assembled in Jerusalem, not omitting the painted bedizened females in grand style, flaunting their characters before everybody—evidently in “society”—the whole scene a vanity fair, fit for the pen of a Bunyan or a Thackeray.

The Bengalee is a study by himself. He has the reputation of being the monumental liar of the world, and those who know him best, his own race, say that truth is an absolute impossibility to him. This may be slightly exaggerated, as I met some fine honest fellows among them, very few and far between, as I wish to be truthful. One of his features attracted my attention, and that was his stare, impudent enough to make a brass mule hang its head. In this I think he takes the lead of all the world. Always going bareheaded, he has become so accustomed to looking the sun out of countenance that nothing on earth fazes him. It is said that as each new statue was put upon the maidan the Bengalees stared so at it that the image blushed all over with a blueish tinge. I have not the least doubt of this, as I myself saw the cerulean color on all the images. It is this arrogant stare that is so offensive to European ladies, and characteristic of the educated babus, for it is said that they are taught everything in the schools except manners and morality. A writer in an English paper says of them, “They are a soft, supple, quick-witted youth; utterly destitute of manly qualities, largely without the Englishman’s truthfulness, equity and resource, good subordinates but abominably bad superiors, and everywhere hated and despised by their countrymen.”

Another says of him, “Though he may be dressed in the finest European clothes, speak English fluently in the well finished style of Addison and Macaulay, and have the superficial manners of a gentleman, yet scratch him, as you would a Russian to find a Tatar, and in this native of India you will always find the heathen.”

As to their religion, Macaulay says of it: “All is hideous and grotesque and ignoble.” De Tocqueville: “Hinduism is perhaps the only system of belief that is worse than having no religion at all.”

Another subject was brought to my attention. I did not desire to know about it as in my life and the circumstances of my birth, I had been compelled to know so much of the degradation of mankind in licentiousness that any reference to it fills me with disgust and makes me wonder how a just God or decent people could tolerate such iniquity. I was informed that sexual vice was so prevalent that scarcely any one, from the highest down to the lowest classes, was not blackened by it. It was so foul a story that I soon stopped it with a request that I be told no more. Zola could come to Calcutta and write a score of books, not from his imagination, but of real facts, with names of living men and women involved in seductions, intrigues and foul crime that would astonish the world. Some one should do it, unmask these hypocrites as he would report a den of thieves, reveal the sources of some fearful epidemic or anything inimical to the well being of mankind. What surprised me most was that the prominent actors in all this, are in “Society,” and many or all of them professed Christians, pretended followers of the pure and holy Jesus! They have, perhaps, such unbounded faith in him that they dare revel in vice to their lust’s content, and think that at the end of life his blood will wash all their guilty stains away. What a delusive, deceptive, accursed belief!

One reflection of mine was, what a story the Monument on the Maidan could tell if it only had a voice? It must have heard and seen so much of wrong-doing that if it had any feelings it must have had many a heart ache.

Professor Hitchcock, writing upon light in the formation of pictures, says: “It seems then, that this photographic influence pervades all nature, nor can we say where it stops. We do not know, but it may imprint upon the world around us our features as they are modified by various passions, and thus fill nature with daguerrotype impressions of all our actions; it may be too, that there are tests by which nature, more skillful than any photographist, can bring out and fix these portraits so that acuter senses than ours shall see them as on a great canvas spread over the material universe? Perhaps, too, they may never fade from that canvas, but become specimens in the great picture gallery of eternity.”

What if the monument has photographs and phonographs of all it has seen and heard and some day, some acuter scientist than now living comes along and reproduces all these scenes and voices in a historical panorama! What a consternation it would produce! What worse hell could there be to some people than the eternal possession of such a picture in which they would appear in their real characters stripped of all disguises and hypocrisies?

Omitting other things I was greatly interested in the Eurasian question. It appeared that there were about twenty-two thousand in Calcutta. A very few were in Government service, few others in shops, factories and minor employments, the great majority living, no not that, but existing when and how, God and the Devil only knew. I follow the religious orthodox fashion in giving the Devil a place along with God in managing the world.

I did some slumming, for it was to the slums I went, to the disgust of my sense of smell, and the detriment of my boots and clothes. I had never been to such places, and if any one had told me that Christian human beings existed in such conditions, I would have thought he was stuffing me. The little court in which I was compelled to see my first daylight, with its mud-walled huts, yet clean, was a palace compared to the filthy, odorous, dingy holes where many of the Eurasians stay. And the poverty! That was hardly the name for it. Absolute want of rags for covering their nakedness, and the total absence of the coarsest, cheapest stuff that the lowest animals could eat. I was told that when one went out to look for employment, or do a little work, he would either go barefooted or borrow a pair of boots from one, different articles of cheap apparel from others, and the lenders would have to wait in their nakedness, or with a rag around them until he returned. There were children, grown up young men and women, skinny old people, all wan and cadaverous, as if they had never enjoyed a good meal in their lives. Some of the poor children were packed off to some charity school to spend the whole day, where an attempt was made to cram their heads with knowledge, when there was not a particle of food in their stomachs. What a farce is this kind of civilization and Christian charity!

I could not help thinking of the comfort and happiness of my heathen villagers compared to the condition of these so-styled Christians. The longer I live the more I conclude that more food and less knowledge, less religion and more justice, is what the world needs. Stop building expensive cathedrals and churches, throw down the palaces of the archbishops and bishops, and give them and their brethren a chance to imitate Jesus, who had not a place where to lay his head, and let them go about doing good as he did. Melt down the gold and silver of the churches, the tiaras, crosses, amulets and jewelry of the altars and idols, and lay up treasures in Heaven by taking care of the bodies of the poor as well as trying to save their souls.

And the rooms of these wretches, holes, places in which grown up young men and women were huddled together! What chance for modesty or virtue to be retained under such conditions? Is it any wonder that many Eurasians are not better than they are, brought up in such adverse degrading circumstances? Of what use is prayer to them in Church, one hour of one day in seven, when every day and hour of the whole week the devils of poverty, misery and uncleanness reside and exist in their homes?

What are the chances, the outlook for these people? The Government refuses to enlist them as soldiers. The railway companies put up notices, “No Eurasians need apply.” Few of them are in Government offices. There are almost none in the banks. The mercantile firms will have none of them. A very few are in the shops. The factories prefer cheap labor. The Government provides schools for the natives, but leaves the Eurasians to take care of themselves. The natives will not favor them. They provide for their own, leaving the Christians to appear that they are worse than the heathen in not providing for those of their own households. These people are outcasts, accursed by the Europeans and natives, placed between the Devil and the deep sea, and probably the best thing for them to do would be to take to the sea, either to cross it, and get into some country where they might get, at least enough to eat, or else to go down into it, and end their misery and disgrace with their lives.

The bone that sticks in my throat in all this is, that many of these unfortunates are the descendants of lust and crime, as I was one, and still am. They were begotten or their ancestors, of Christian gentlemen. This is one of my reasons for wanting to know what the word Christian means, and also that of gentleman, in connection with the wretched condition of these people. They, who by no fault of their own, are in this miserable existence, the children of Christian gentlemen, should be the special proteges of the Government, of the Church and of the European people, are cast out and despised as social dregs.

It may be said that these gentlemen were not Christians when they sinned. This reminds me of the story of an English fox hunting priest. When he was asked how he could reconcile such sport with his profession, he replied that he did not hunt as a priest, but as a man. “But,” asked his questioner, “when the Devil gets the man, where will the priest be?” So one might ask, “When the Devil gets these sinners, where will they be as Christians or gentlemen?”

One evening a young woman came in on her way from a shop where she was employed. She was meanly clad, but evidently making the best use of what she had. Her wages were sixteen rupees a month, out of which she had to pay rent, purchase food and clothing. She was obliged to be in the shop from eight in the morning till seven in the evening, with a little rest for a scanty tiffin at noon. All the girls were obliged to stand on their feet the whole time in the shop. If they sat down or leaned against the tables they were fined. She seemed to be in great distress, and had come to my hostess for sympathy. She said that it had been a terrible hard day. She became tired, and her feet ached so that she had to remove her shoes, and stand on the marble floor to cool her feet. The European clerks had annoyed her by calling her “Eurasian,” and they often called the girls “half castes,” “niggers,” “sooars” and such like names. The assistant manager had found fault with her clothes; that she looked too slovenly to be seen. Summoning up courage she went to the manager, and asked him if he couldn’t increase her wages a little. He asked what she was receiving, and then said it was considerable, and with a bland smile he asked, insinuatingly: “Haven’t you some young gentleman friend who could help you out a little?” As she told this she fell to sobbing.

After a little my hostess said: “Mary, what did you tell him?”

She answered with much hesitation: “At first I could not comprehend what he meant, and then I was so shocked that I seemed stunned, and turned and left him without a word. Had I resented what he said, he would have dismissed me at once, and then what would I do? How I wish I could end this cursed life, I am tired of it!” She fell to weeping again, and no wonder.

And this bland, smiling, Christian Mephistopheles, manager and part owner of the big shop, was a member of the church and an official, and probably often resting his hands on his fat paunch, talked about the fearful unchastity and lack of honesty among the rising generation. I don’t believe in a place of hell, but I think there ought to be a fiery pen where such sleek hypocrites could have a good roasting. But he will get all he deserves, else there is no use in having a just God or any faith in justice.

I could fill a book with such stories of want, temptation and wretchedness, but of what use? There must be a screw, or many of them, loose in this inhuman social arrangement of life, or else I am a fool.

The first mistake, or rather crime, was in begetting this hybrid race to be scorned and accursed as long as they live. The next crime is that the Government and Europeans do not assist them, and the next is that the better class of Eurasians do not look after these despised unfortunates of their own race or caste. They in their pride try to appear what they are not, and try to conceal the pit from whence they were digged. They may powder as much as they please, but there is not chalk enough in the world to conceal or remove the pigment in their skins. They may put on style, live in wealth and luxury, and in their egotistical imbecility ape the Europeans in everything; yet they will remain Eurasians still, as I am one.

If these more favored ones would stand up for their rights and let Government and everybody know that they had some pride and manhood left; would organize, defend and help their unfortunate people, there would soon be a change. The voluble babus have their representatives in the legislative councils, and nearly every other tribe, no matter how obscure, except the Eurasian. These get nothing, because they have not the courage to demand anything.

In self-vindication I must say that I assisted the poor girl of whom I have spoken by leaving some money with my hostess for her. I only mention this to show that my practice corresponds with my theory. I have always contributed with an open hand to assist Eurasians, as I considered that they had a claim on me, or rather that it was my privilege to assist them as far as I could; yet I prefer rather to leave the recording of such things with the angel who keeps these kind of accounts.

I had heard enough of evil, want and wretchedness to make me long again for my quiet home, so I quickly hied myself thither.

An afterthought. It might be said that I am somewhat of a “kicker.” I admit it. I always kick at the disagreeable, against imposition, wrong-doing, hypocrisy, and if my mouth was filled with bitterness and curses, they would not be sufficient to show my utter abhorrence of lust and licentiousness, especially among what is termed “society,” by people who style themselves Christians, ladies and gentlemen, for the reason that I was accursed in my birth and have been accursed all my life by the sin and crime of a Christian gentleman. Aside from this, I think I am acknowledged to be one of the mildest and most kind-hearted of men.

It is said that if you wish to know the character of a man, ask his neighbors. Well, one of mine told another that Japhet always built a fire on cold mornings on purpose to warm the flies. Another said, “Japhet never sees a lame cur on the road but he takes him in and puts splinters and ointment on his legs.” If I know myself I think my chief characteristic is to sympathize with the under dog in a fight, particularly if he is a weak, helpless creature and the other a great bull dog of a thing. Alas! there are so many big dogs in the world. I am wicked enough, but do not like to be considered worse than I really am.

Another thought. I am not opposed to marriage between people of different races, if it be a true marriage. If a European wishes to marry an Asiatic or an African woman, by all means let him do so, and then let him treat her as his wife in every respect. If he have children, let him be man enough to acknowledge them as his, educate and take care of them, so that they may love him as their father instead of despising and cursing him.

Here beginneth another chapter of my life.

CHAPTER XXVII.

One day at some sports enjoyed by the public I was introduced to a Mr. and Mrs. Wentworth, visiting at our station and just from “home.” The lady, for I am sure she was a lady, from the grateful news she brought me, said, “I have some pleasant words for you. At Brighton we met Mrs. Beresford, a charming woman, and just as we were leaving she remarked, ‘When you return to India, if you ever meet a Mr. Japhet, give him my kindest regards,’ and with a smile she added, ‘and my love.’ You know what it means, I suppose; I don’t, and Mrs. Beresford hadn’t time to say anything more.”

This was so sudden from a stranger, and so incomprehensible, as I could not think who could send me such a greeting and in words so full of meaning, that I felt a blush running all over me. I tried to be as cool as possible, and calmly remarked that I was not acquainted with any Mrs. Beresford, and could not surmise who she could be. Mrs. Wentworth replied that she was formerly Miss McIntyre, that her husband had died and she was now a widow.

At the mention of that name my heart commenced a thumping as if this was its own affair entirely, as it certainly was. If ever I was grateful that my color did not permit me to blush in the Caucasian fashion, it was then. I replied in an off-hand manner that I remembered having met Miss McIntyre somewhere. However, I was very careful to ask where she was residing and to get her post address, and also requested Mrs. Wentworth when she wrote to her to give her my kindest regards, and in a joking way I added, “also my love.” It was no joke to me though. The very mention of that name sent a thrill—but why should I pin my heart on my sleeve for every daw to peck at?

A new chapter in my life was commencing. I felt it and knew it. I lost no time in sending off a letter stating the great pleasure it gave me to hear even her name again, and thanking her for the pleasant greeting she had sent me; I hoped she was well and happy; this was about the gist of it. The letter was according to my best ability, sufficiently expressive to show my feeling, yet cautious enough so as not to appear intrusive. I knew well enough what the response would be. How, I cannot explain, except on the theory of mental telegraphy or spiritual affinity or something. I also stated that I did not recognize her by her new name; that I also had been married, but was now alone, my wife having died several years previous. By a slip of the pen I was about to write that I regretted she had become a widow, but my heart would not let the pen tell such a lie as that.

The months seemed to be years before the answer came. She wrote that she had often thought of me, if I was living, if I was happy, and wondered if she would ever see me again; that she had been most unhappy in her marriage, assumed to please her parents; that she was now a happy widow, if to use such an expression was not improper, but as she was Irish she had the privilege of her race in using such a phrase. The letter was modest and courteous, yet expressive enough to be most satisfactory to me. It is hardly necessary for me to state that I was in a great state of mind, or heart, to be exact, after the receipt of this most welcome epistle.

My plans were at once made. I wrote that I had often thought of seeing Europe, which was the truth, and as I had nothing to keep me in India, and I might have added, very much, just then, to take me out of it, I proposed to leave at once, that I might possibly come to England on my tour. Why I made such an indefinite, round-about statement I do not know. It is a species of fencing that pertains to our human nature, I suppose. The real truth is, I was going principally to England. I did not care more about Europe than about last year’s crop of figs, or of the trees in the valleys of the moon. I wrote that if I went to England at all, my address would be at my banker’s, at such a number in Leadenhall street, and that if she would allow me to call on her I hoped she would kindly drop me a line to that address. That was another little deception to which I plead guilty. I was going to Leadenhall street as quickly and as straight from Bombay as steam could carry me, and I knew, as well as I knew why I was going, that a note from her, the only object of my voyage, would be awaiting me there.

I boarded an old P. and O. boat, far too slow to suit me. One day I suggested to the captain that a little more speed would not hurt any passenger’s feelings. He then coolly and deliberately began a calculation, or rather a rehearsal of what he had probably told a thousand times, of the amount of coal it took for a ten mile speed, and the ratio of increase of coal for every mile of increased speed. What did I care about his coal bill? It was heartless in him to talk in that cold way about his coal. What did he know about Leadenhall street, or why I was going there? Nor would I have told him for all his old boat was worth. It is said that physicians, by their constant acquaintance with suffering and grief, become as insensible to them as wooden men; so, probably, these captains, so familiar with the heart longings of their anxious human freight, become as indifferent to them as the dummy at the bow of the boat is to the rush of the waters.

There was no help for it. So many days had to be consumed to save consuming extra coal, while my heart was consumed by insatiate longings. I had my doubts and my fears, for who has not in such enterprises? though before I started I was so positive about the matter. I wished I had not resorted to any tricks, as we always do in such cases; may be I was making a fool’s journey, may be some luckier fellow would carry off the prize while I was lagging along at a snail’s pace. But what gave me a little comfort was, that there were others in a worse predicament than I was, going at a venture, not knowing when and where, afraid that not a girl in the United Kingdom would have them, so I consoled myself somewhat. This is a strange thing in human life, that no one ever finds himself in such a plight but he knows some other worse off than himself. I have never yet found the last man in the line who could not look down upon some one lower than himself.

It is not pleasant to relate what is derogatory to myself, but a strict regard for truth compels me to state that my situation on board the steamer was far from agreeable. There were a number of English, military and civilians, as passengers, returning home. Nearly all of them shunned me with a cold disdain, as if I was some outcast unworthy of their notice or regard. I overheard several inquiries as, “That Eurasian; who is he?” I had become so accustomed to this kind of treatment, hardened to it, that I cared very little about it; as long as they dropped me and let me alone, I did not care either for their smiles or their sneers. This statement is only partly true, for I could not help thinking and feeling on the subject. I could not, however, bear so easily their treatment of another passenger. He was a very quiet, unassuming gentleman, of fine appearance and well dressed. He was not an Englishman; that was evident at first sight, nor did he belong to any of the nationalities subject to Great Britain, but it soon appeared, by the remarks of some of the English, that he was an American. He did not intrude upon them, but several of the military officers seemed to take special pleasure, even during the first day out, in making offensive remarks about Americans. They continued this throughout the voyage.

This gentleman could not appear on deck anywhere near these swells but they would address him with a sneer, and in a mimicking nasal tone, about something connected with his country and its people. As I had never met an American, I could not understand these allusions, and they seemed to me most discourteous and unbecoming from a set of men who pride themselves upon being gentlemen. He certainly gave them no cause for such remarks, for in his language, voice, courtesy and intelligence he was the superior of all on board. He bore all their banter and sneers very quietly, and isolated himself as much as possible, as if he was a pariah to these high-bred people, as I was. We naturally came together, which was most fortunate for me, and we spent many an hour in some quiet corner. That he was a man of fine natural ability and education was self-evident. He had traveled much and seen most of the countries of the world, and made good use of his observation. He could talk of history, science, art, manufactures, agriculture and literature. He was an all-round man and full of information in regard to the countries and people he had seen, and abounded in anecdotes which whiled away my time very pleasantly. What the rest lost I gained by his acquaintance. I am not quite a misanthrope, for I have as much admiration for some men as I have dislike for others. I am a good admirer as well as a good hater.

One day as we were seated in the shade of one of the boats several of the cads came along, and one of them remarked, talking through his nose, “Wall, stranger, I guess you don’t have such kind of weather in America!” My friend made no reply whatever, and the trio left us. I referred to his quiet way of treating these fellows. He said “I have found that the much better way is not to notice the disagreeables.” This hit me, but no matter. “If one was to notice every puppy that snips at his heels, he would have little time for anything else. It is the English nature to make themselves disagreeable to foreigners. Everywhere, all over the world, the same story is told of them, that they are always sneering at what does not belong to their country, their people and their set. They are born grumblers. They have a special dislike to Americans. Why, I do not understand. It is true that many Americans have peculiarities, but so have the English, and even more noticeable than those they ridicule in us. In fact there is not a man or woman living but could be ridiculed and caricatured, so as to appear not only amusing but offensive. Ridicule is a most dangerous weapon, and I have known the best of friendships severed by it. I regret the English use it as they do when they have so many weak places in their own character.

“The English come to America and we receive them with the greatest cordiality, and try to make everything pleasant and comfortable for them as our guests. They take all that we do as a matter of course, a tribute of an inferior people to them as a superior nation. They will not admit that we have any manners, society, literature, art or science, or if they make any concession it is that the little we have got is borrowed, or as most of them plainly put it, stolen from them. They regard our kindness as presumption and officiousness, and resent it, some by ridicule and others by contempt.

“To give you an instance: when the great Dickens came to our country we received him as no Englishman had ever been received. Every one was ready to do him a favor, so as to make his visit as pleasant to him as possible. At an inland city, where he was to give a reading, the proprietor of the hotel where he stopped went to his room and said, ‘Mr. Dickens, I am the proprietor of the hotel, and I come myself to say that if there is anything needed to make you comfortable, if you will only let me know what it is I will take great pleasure in providing it.’ The proprietor did not send a servant, but went himself. This was his idea of hospitality and kindness. The great man, without rising from his chair, with a wave of his hand and a gruff, insolent voice, retorted, ‘I wish you would not bother me; when I need anything I will ring the bell.’ The landlord was a retired officer of the army, a gentleman. We have no castes as in England. We have gentlemen in every kind of business. A man is taken at his real worth, no matter what his employment. Some of our best men are merchants—shop-keepers, as they are styled and despised in England.

“They say we have no manners. A Duke came to see America. He did not think it worth while to get any letters of introduction to such a boorish people. The English accuse us of thinking a great deal of titles. This is so, for we have an idea that titles mean something, and that those who have them are somebody. In this we have been deceived, but who were the deceivers? The Duke happened to make a few acquaintances, and was invited to a dinner party by one of the best families. He delayed his coming so long that the dinner was kept waiting, and when he appeared it was in a tweed bob suit, such as he would wear at home in a morning stroll with his dogs. All the guests were in full dress, and at once noticed his neglige attire. The hostess, after recovering from her surprise, sent him word by a servant that she would excuse his absence, as it was evident that he did not wish to meet a dinner party. He took his leave, probably cursing the impudence of those upstart Americans.

“Another instance. When Lady Brassey came to the United States in her yacht, the ‘Sunbeam,’ she went to call on General Grant, the President, and asked to be shown into his private office. Mr. Fish, the Secretary of State, who happened to be present in the ‘White House,’ suggested that he would confer with the President and appoint a time for calling. When the time came she appeared dressed in a riding-habit and bringing a small dog, which she proposed to take in with her. Mr. Fish ordered a man in waiting to remove the dog. At this the Lady protested.

“‘It is against the rules for dogs to be allowed to enter the parlor.’ And still she insisted. Said the Secretary, ‘Madame, you must choose between the removal of your dog and your being admitted to the President of the United States.’ She then very reluctantly consented to its removal.

“I doubt if such an instance of ‘cheek’ has ever been equaled by any ‘green’ American in England. The English are never backward in showing up the forwardness of Americans, but they can go us two to one to their discredit.

“One time, going from Liverpool to New York, there was an Englishman and his wife on board, both great burly, ruddy beef-eaters. They acted as if they thought the steamer was for their special accommodation. On reaching port, each passenger was presented with a printed form on which to declare all dutiable articles, according to law. He refused to do anything, declaring that he would not submit to such a bloody custom. In consequence, their luggage was sent to the Custom House, and while all the other passengers were off and away, this haughty Briton had to open every package and display every article for inspection, and besides had to strip himself of most of his clothes for a personal examination, and the female Britisher had to go through the same operation, in another apartment, before the Customs woman. Probably neither of them were much pleased with their American reception.

“It is strange that there is such a difference between people, living under the same government, and so near to each other, but the Scotch, the Irish and the Welsh are another kind of people altogether. They are unselfish, courteous and agreeable. Have you noticed that Scotchman who is so ready to offer his chair to any one? Catch an Englishman doing that! You saw just now that seasick lady on deck for the first time, and was seated in a chair, when one of these English gentlemen came up to her with, ‘Madame, if you please, this is my chair,’ and waited till he got it, while an Irishman close by gave her his.

“Here is a paragraph I cut from an English paper: ‘It is curious to watch on board a steamer how the men of different nationalities behave to a lady, no longer young, who is traveling alone. The Frenchman is absolutely rude, if he gets the chance; the German simply takes no notice; the Australian is frigidly polite; the Englishman takes the trouble to be kind if his aid is solicited; the American is kind from habit and without effort; the British colonist is attentive because women of any kind are scarce in his country.’

“As an old traveler, I am greatly interested in noticing these peculiarities in different races. The English are a queer lot, not really bad at heart, I think, but it is in their domineering, arrogant natures to act as they do, and which has made them such a powerful nation. They are dull and slow, and almost lacking in the courtesies of civilized life. I seldom meet an Englishman, but he gets in some remarks against Americans, and I scarcely take up an English paper, but I find some slur, or carping criticism on the ‘Yankees,’ as they call us. Yet, they have the cheek to say to me, ‘If, in the event of a great European war, you Americans would certainly side with us, as we are of the same race, speak the same language, and our interests are the same.’ They do not seem to be trying very much to make us their friends. It may be only their way, however. A hundred thousand or more Americans go abroad every year, and all spend some time, as well as money, in Great Britain. Except a few favored ones, all tell the same story about the arrogance and sneers of the English. These travelers return and tell their acquaintances their experience, and it is not surprising if our people have a dislike to our ‘English cousins,’ a phrase they use when they wish to give us taffy.

“But we Americans should not complain, for it is to this same aristocratic bull-dog spirit that we owe our independence. Otherwise, America would still be an English colony. The Puritans were persecuted, and were glad to go anywhere, not for freedom only, but to save their necks. Under George the First, large numbers received ‘royal mercy,’ by being transported to America. Many, driven from their homes in England, found a refuge in Holland, and then in America. King George the Third hated the colonists, and was their bitterest enemy, mainly because they escaped from his tyranny. He proposed to tax them for the benefit of England. The first predominant idea of an Englishman is taxation. This seems to be as necessary to him as the air he breathes. With a swarm of non-producing royal drones, the emoluments of the aristocracy and the interminable lot of highly paid office-holders, and the hangers-on of the government, and their sitting commissions, this taxation may be necessary. If they enjoy it, then it is just what they ought to have.

“Our forefathers hated taxation as a kind of tyranny, and were bitterly opposed to the stamp act. We keep down our taxes, except on luxuries, and have not a stamp, but for postage, and this stamp is more for convenience than otherwise.

“Everybody knows the sarcastic description of English taxation by Sydney Smith, but I lately met with something on stamps, by an English writer, that I copied in my note-book, and here it is: ‘The Englishman was a stamped animal; he was tattooed all over. There was not a single spot of his body corporate, that was not stamped several times. He could not move without knocking his head against a stamp, and before he could arrive at any station of responsibility, he must have paid more money for stamps than would have set him up for life. The stamp penetrates everywhere, it seizes upon all things, and fixes its claws wherever there is a tangible substance. Sometimes, indeed, it flies to the intangible, and quarters itself upon the air, the imagination of man, his avocations, his insanity, his hopes and prospects, his pleasures and his pains, and does not scruple to fasten upon his affections. Even love is stamped. A man cannot fall in love and marry a lady without an acknowledgement of the omnipotence of the stamp. An Englishman is born to be stamped, he lives in a state of stamp, and is stamped while he is dying, and after he is dead.’

“No wonder the English are cross-grained with all this embarrassment of stamps, and ever in fear of being caught delinquent by some excise officer.

“To show you the difference of taxation in the two countries, I will read you a note I have on that subject. In the United States the government receives five per cent on the products of the country; capital, in the shape of interest, rent and dividends, twenty-five per cent; and labor the balance, or seventy per cent. In Great Britain the government receives twenty-three per cent; capital thirty-six; and labor forty-one per cent. Another item I have noted from an India paper, ‘England spends twenty-three pence, America one hundred pence, and India seven-tenths of a penny per head of population for primary education.’ The paper says that India spends seven pice a head. A pice is such a curiosity to me that I have one in my pocket, and a pound weight of them in my trunk, taking them home as presents to my friends. Yet, I am told, there is still a smaller currency, a cowrie, a glaring proof of the poverty of the people. No wonder that Dr. Marshman wrote that ‘The Bengalis reckoned in cowries.’

“You see from this that the two systems of government, the English and the American, are the reverse of each other. The one exacts all it can from labor, and deprives the poor of education, while we favor the laborer in every possible way, and provide that every youth in the United States can have a good school education, whether the parents pay a penny of taxes or not, and in many states, school books are also provided free of charge.

“We begin to build our social structure at the bottom with education and the elevation of the poor; the English system begins at the top and builds downwards.

“Our prevailing idea is that wealth obtained by extortion to feed the pampered tastes of the few, while the poor may groan in their undeserved poverty and ignorance, is contrary to the dictates of morality, religion and sound political economy.”

Then we were interrupted by the excitement caused by a shoal of porpoises racing alongside the steamer. This over, we resumed our seats under the life-boat, and he continued, “The aristocracy favored this taxation, as it would lessen their own contributions to Government. The time serving church, to ingratiate itself with the king, encouraged it. The court was notoriously composed of incapable men and pliable flatterers most suitable to the nature of his majesty. The king, thus encouraged, too arrogant and pig-headed to listen to the few sensible patriots in his realm, took the best possible means—brute force—to alienate the colonists, to compel them to rebel and fight to the death or for independence, ‘a war,’ says an English historian, not American, ‘most disgraceful to a civilized nation. An army with its foreign mercenaries desolating the country, giving no quarter and employing the savages to outrage and massacre helpless women and children.’

“We still have an inheritance left us by that Hessian army, the Hessian fly, that every year attacks our fields of grain and is said to have been brought over by them, a perpetual reminder of those foreign mercenaries. Among the war expenses laid before Parliament was a bill for scalping knives that had been given to the savage fiends and paid for by Christian England for the benefit of her exiled people.

“I am not talking at random for some of my ancestral relatives were the victims of those barbarities, and horrible are the recitals handed down to us, one of the survivors being fortunate in living years afterwards, but with a scalp made of other material than that which nature had endowed him. It was a war most unjust, atrocious in its ferocity and horrible cruelties, inflicted upon a people, the kinsmen of the English as they now call us, whose only offense was that they objected to being robbed of their properties and their just rights; to taxation without representation.

“They say, why bring this up now? If the English can gloat over their victory at Waterloo and their various conquests, why should we not be proud of our victory? If any American should forget the sufferings and heroism by which the freedom he now enjoys was obtained, he should be outlawed and kicked through the country and out of it. I said that the church encouraged the war against the colonies. It did more. This is what a clergyman of that church said in a sermon against the ‘rebels,’ as they were styled. ‘How will the supporters of this anti-Christian warfare endure their sentence, endure their own reflections, endure the fire that forever burns, the worm that never dies, the hosannas of heaven while the smoke of their torments will ascend forever and ever?’ He now, poor fellow is where he can probably see what a donkey he made of himself.

“Says an English historian: ‘In all ages of the world, priests have been enemies to liberty, and it is certain that this steady conduct of theirs must have been founded in fixed reasons of interest and ambition. Liberty of thinking and of expressing our thoughts is always fatal to priestly power, and to those pious frauds on which it is commonly founded. Hence it must happen in such a government as that of Britain that the established clergy, while things are in their natural situation will always be of the court party.’”

CHAPTER XXVIII.

Another day I got my fellow passenger started on American history. He said: “The greatest crime of England against the United States was the introduction of African slavery into the colonies. There were fortunes to be made in kidnapping the people of Africa and transporting them to the colonies.

“Queen Elizabeth lent her own ship, the ‘Jesus,’ to Sir John Hawkins, for the African slave-trade, and also owned shares in the African Company. By these investments she made more than the Dutchman’s one per cent to supply herself with pin-money and to provide those innumerable court dresses we read of.

“When the ship ‘Jesus’ was near the equator the water gave out and the four hundred slaves came very near perishing from thirst. The pious Hawkins wrote in his log, ‘The Almighty God would not suffer his elect to perish.’

“What a combination! The ship ‘Jesus’ named after the Redeemer of mankind, not the enslaver, carrying kidnapped men and women to slavery; this pious captain calling himself the ‘elect’ of God and the owner of the ship ‘Good Queen Bess,’ as she is styled!

“If there was a meaner or more damnable business than capturing people to sell them as slaves I have not heard of it. The horrors of the whole business from beginning to end was awful. The details were sickening and makes one ashamed of humanity. Such things are enough to make men skeptical, whether God watches over the events of the world. The most astounding part of it is that Christian people claimed it was for the Glory of God! ‘O, religion! What crimes have been committed in thy name!’

“Did you ever think of the power of profits in controlling the tastes, judgments and consciences of mankind?

“Slavery was confined mainly to the southern states and created a different kind of people and a different condition of society from that of the northern states. These owners of their fellow men, traffickers in human flesh and blood, claimed to be gentlemen, as they did not have to labor for a livelihood. They assumed to be the aristocracy of the whole country and so affiliated with the aristocracy of England. They certainly had much in common. Both despised labor for themselves, but enjoyed it in others for their sole benefit. These aristocrats of the South, with plenty of money they never earned, could be educated, travel abroad and acquired a kind of culture with pride and arrogance, while they treated the poor whites among them as ‘trash,’ not much better than their ‘niggers,’ just as the aristocracy in England treat the lower classes. All was game to them within their reach. Nearly every boy over fifteen had his wench and the owners of slaves, like a lustful aristocracy, gave free reign to their fancies and desires, and did not scruple even to sell their own flesh and blood in the auction slave marts as they sold their cattle and cotton.

“It is not surprising then, that the aristocracy of the South and of England should have similar tastes and a liking for each other. The result was that in our civil war, waged solely on account of slavery, our worst enemies were the aristocracy of England. They would have swallowed African slavery, head and tail, with all its abominations for the sake of aiding their fellow aristocrats. It is to the middle class, the working people of England, that we are indebted for the non-recognition of the southern confederacy as an independent government. As it was, armed vessels were built and fitted out in the ports of England to destroy our commerce and with the connivance of her government. This was her way of being neutral.

“Many Englishmen made fortunes by sending blockade runners from England to furnish supplies for the South. They have told me this, rubbing their hands with great satisfaction at their skill in outwitting the ‘Yankees.’ Can they expect the ‘Yankees’ to forget these things when sometime a nation or colony may give their lion’s tail a twist? The bill for their little fun in being neutral was however settled, and the bitterest pill probably that John ever swallowed was when he had to pay fifteen millions of dollars for the destruction caused by his Alabama.

“All this is history and we would not refer to it but for the over-bearing arrogance and assumption of these islanders. When they ever treat us civilly it is with a patronizing air. If there is anything which I think a true man dislikes it is to be patronized, for this insinuates an inferiority in the one receiving the patronage. With this spirit the English often refer to their colonizing America. We admit, to the shame of England, that some of our earliest settlers were obliged to leave that country to escape persecution and death but their settlement in America was compulsory. Large numbers, ‘Puritans,’ as they were styled, were deported, not for any crimes, but for their belief that they had a right to worship God according to their own consciences. Just one instance. A cargo of 841 human beings were sent to the West Indies to be sold as slaves. These, mind you, were not negroes, but white English people. They were not suffered to go on deck and in the holds below all was darkness, stench, lamentation, disease and death. The Queen of England had an interest in this shipment. The profits which she shared in the cargo after making a large allowance for those who died of hunger and fever during the passage cannot be estimated at less than a thousand guineas. This is the statement of an English historian, not an American.

“But the fact is that some of our best people were from Holland. Manhattan Island, now New York, was settled by them, and for many years there was not an English speaking person in that settlement, and many of the old wealthy families now in New York are descendants of the Hollanders. At the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, when fifty thousand of the best people of France were exiled, many of them went to the United States. Another large class are the descendants of the Scotch-Irish who had to flee from the tyranny of England, while the Irish now in America outnumber those in Ireland itself. The minority of the people are the descendants of the English.

“At times, in a patronizing way to curry favor with us, the English claim relationship, but none scarcely admit that we have anything except what we borrow, that is stolen from her, and even that we do not speak the English language. I have really been asked by educated Englishmen if we speak English in America.

“Whatever we have from England we owe nothing to her aristocracy or her government that should fill her with pride.

“I have lately read a book on the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel. The writer claims that they are found in the English, his own people. He goes to prophesy, which is convincing. There is such a similarity between Israel and the English that there should not be a doubt hereafter on the subject. The Jews believed in a God who belonged solely to them, looked after their interests and fought for them. Their wars were always righteous while those of their enemies were always wicked. The English also have their God and believe He is always on their side. The Jews consider all other people as Gentiles created for their benefit. Do not the English the same?

“As long as the United States were colonies there was not a factory allowed in them or the people permitted to make their own hats or shoes or clothing. The raw products had to be shipped to England for the profit of her manufacturers and the goods returned at a great cost to the poor colonists. Here is an interesting note that I made a few days ago; ‘To help their manufacturers of woolen goods a law was passed in 1678 that all dead bodies should be wrapped in woolen shrouds.’ One of their writers says of England, ‘It formed colonies that the mother country might enjoy the monopoly of their trade by compelling them to resort only to her markets.’ It is only a few years since Ireland was allowed to spin and weave her own flax or to manufacture anything. It is not long since India was permitted to establish its first factory, and is it not true to-day that although India has an abundance of iron, coal, cotton, timber, everything needful, yet all the government supplies must be indented for from England for the benefit of her manufacturers and commission men? Is not England jewing India at every turn for her own benefit? Did not the Jews believe in subduing the nations for the glory of God and their own pockets? Do not the English have the same belief? Moses and his band believed they were to spoil the Egyptians by ‘borrowing’ from them and then claimed that their God had taught them this trick of amassing wealth. Do not the English believe also in spoiling the Egyptians? But they reverse the order and instead of borrowing, they loan to the dwellers by the Nile at exorbitant rates of interest like an uncle with brass balls, and then like a Shylock, demand the pound of flesh and blood nearest the heart of their victims; but unlike him they take the interest and on the plea of securing their bonds, seize upon the government of that country with an army of occupation, and further increase the burdens of poor Egypt by fostering upon it a horde of English place-hunters to do nothing, at high salaries, and besides make the wretched natives, groaning under an intolerable burden of taxation support a theatre for the special pleasure of the usurpers. Nero fiddled while Rome was burning; the English make merry while the miserable Egyptians are toiling and starving.

“The Jews believed in their divine right to live off the Gentiles, and the English follow their example. In short, there is so much of the Jew in the English nation I wonder that the Ten Lost Tribes were not found long ago.”

After a pause and some conversation on minor matters, I asked a question about the Republican form of Government. He said: “We believe in the rights of man, that as an individual he should be free to act for himself, for his own good, the only restriction that he should not interfere with the rights of his neighbor. We believe that all men are equal, with the same political and social privileges, that each should govern himself, and all acting together, the majority to rule for the good of all, or, as President Lincoln tersely put it, ‘a government of the people, by the people, and for the people.’

“For ages it was supposed that mankind were not capable of self-government. Thence came into life, chiefs, tyrants, kings, emperors and monarchs. This was followed by the creed of the divine right of kings to place their feet on the necks of humanity. Men were enslaved, in accordance with divine laws, as it was claimed. They were made serfs, bought and sold with the land, and kept like cattle. A strong-willed man by intrigue, force and bribery, acquired an ascendency over his fellows, became the chief of a tribe, or the head of a nation, and his descendants claimed a right, by the grace of God, to what he had obtained by the number of scalps he could hang at his belt, or the number of human skulls over his gate-way; by the amount of cruelties he had inflicted, by the cities he had burned, or the lands he had devastated. The farce of it is that civilized, Christian people, appeal to Heaven, and claim that all this is by divine right and the grace of God. Is it not contrary to reason and common sense to say that any one man or family has any right to rule over another against his will? Take Napoleon? Who was he? How did he obtain his power? By what right did he acquire a privilege to rule over his fellow men, and lead four millions of them to destruction? Why should he make other nations food for his powder?

“It is passing strange that vast numbers of people, many of them very intelligent, will submit to be used by tyrants for their aggrandizement, and to gratify their personal and vain ambition! It is also strange that intelligent men, will like sycophants, toady to these self-made gods, worship and bow down before them, and consider it one of the greatest favors to be admitted to their presence and receive but a word or a look from them. They say that ‘Britons never, never never will be slaves,’ but they are the worst of toadies to those above them. This toadyism to royalty or aristocracy is one of the conundrums of modern life. Another is the cheek or impudence with which these royal aristocrats receive the homage of men, not only of the illiterate, but of those who are far superior to them in every respect. For almost without exception these ruler gods have been noted for their immorality and vices, that would make the lowest peasant blush. But few of them have been men of intellectual power, or known by their virtues, and history tells us that few of them came to their thrones like gentlemen, without violence, plundering of the public treasury, and other such refined acts. Inheriting their positions, they have been kept in their places by men of ability, whose interest or vanity it was to surround these state figureheads with an aureole of kingly glory to dazzle the masses. There is not a monarch to-day, but is in his place by might, rather than by right or by the will of the people. With all of them it is always the sword of the Lord and of Gideon, but the Gideon part of it is always to the front.”

With this interesting voyager, whatever the others thought of him, he was so breezy and full of good things, the days were very short to me. He became so well acquainted with me that he related a little incident touching that old subject which could not be dropped, though far away and out of India. He said that when walking alone the morning previous, one of the English officers accosted him with the remark, “You have become quite intimate with that Eurasian.” “With whom?” my friend inquired, not quite understanding the word. “O, that half caste,” said the gentleman. “Why, what about him?” asked the other. “He seems to be very much of a gentleman in his manner, thoughts and education, so I have taken quite a fancy to him and find him very interesting. What have you against him?” Replied the gentleman, “Nothing against him personally, but he is an Eurasian, a half caste, you know, and in India that class of people are not in society, and we never meet them in a social way, you know.”

This much my friend told me, but he said that they had quite a talk on the subject, in which he did not butter his words in denouncing such an unjust social custom and the crime that produced it. He said it was own brother to the deeds of the slave owners of the southern states of America, begetting children by their slave women, and then selling their own offspring as slaves. He remarked that one evening in a hotel at Calcutta, a planter told him that many of the planters led the freest kind of a life; that few of them were married, as they did not care to be bothered with families of their own. He mentioned a number of prominent planters by name, all of them connected with well known families in England. The planter said there were a number of titled men among them, living the most riotous, lustful lives; that nearly all these men had children by coolie women employed on their plantations; that it was customary for these planters as they went about during the day to make their selections and then order their peons to bring the women selected to their bungalows at night. He said this was so common that nothing more was thought of it, than if a man had ordered some grain for his horse. One of them, of a very aristocratic family in England, who would blush with shame if they knew his manner of life, when asked if he was married, replied, “Married! No. What the devil do I want with a wife?” Yet he had a number of children by his coolie women. When asked what would become of his children, he carelessly answered, “I have nothing to do with them. When I leave I shall give the mothers a few rupees and let them scratch for themselves.”

Continued my friend: “A man is a hardened wretch who will treat his own flesh and blood in that way. And probably all these planters call themselves gentlemen and Christians. The Turkish or oriental harems are places of virtue and honor compared with such a system of lust and injustice carried on, not by heathens, but by educated Englishmen.”

It appeared from this and other remarks, that my American friend had not traveled through India with blinkers on his eyes or cotton in his ears; yet who has not heard of such things?

I could have told him the story of my own life, that, alas! I knew too well; but self respect or prudence or something restrained me.

One day as I was standing beside the captain, looking down upon the lower deck, he asked me if I noticed a man walking there. Said he, “I doubt if you can imagine what his business is.” I replied that I had no idea of it. He said, “It is marrying and selling his wives.” I expressed surprise at that kind of a trade new to me. He continued, “He and a number of men like him go to Europe, get acquainted with some innocent, pretty peasant girl, makes love to her, marries her, and then takes her to Bombay as his wife, where he goes with her to what he calls a hotel, and after getting a big fee from the landlord, deserts her and goes back to marry again and bring out another wife to sell. This is their sole business.” “But,” I inquired, “why don’t you or your company do something to prevent this fraud and crime?” “What can I do?” he replied. “This man buys tickets for himself and wife as passengers, and he returns alone as a passenger. They conduct themselves very properly, so how can I interfere?” “But,” said I, “why don’t the English government in India prevent such outrages on innocent women and punish these degraded wretches of men?” He turned quickly towards me with an inquisitive look, as if he thought me a simpleton, and asked, “Were you born yesterday? Hadn’t you better go home to your mother?” These questions were so abrupt that they nearly knocked me off my pins, and I could only wait in silence for his explanation. He asked, “For whom are these brought out? Not for natives, but for Europeans. Who are the Europeans? Mostly officers of government. Do you suppose they are going to interfere and break up a business that is for their sole pleasure?”

The captain was an old, grey-headed man, and knew the ways of the world and of wicked men, and well acquainted with the seamy sides of life, while I was fresh, very fresh, on my first voyage away from home. I could say nothing, and beside was afraid that he might again suggest that I go back to my mother. I kept silent, except to utter a few denunciative adjectives. I several times noticed the betrayer of innocence and wife-seller along with his companions, from my place on the upper deck. Did I not recall the infamous betrayer of the governess, and did not I remember how I felt when I found that she was mine and not somebody else’s sister, and alas, seduced by my father and by her father? Yet these betrayed innocent women are some mother’s daughters, and may be some one’s sisters. Ye gods! How I hated those men and wished that in some way they could be thrown into the sea, and thus their despicable, villainous traffic be ended with their corrupt lives.

Then my reflections came. What a sin-cursed world this is, I thought. When there is so much sublime beauty in the heavens above us, and in the pure sea around us, and on land, so much in nature to charm the eye and delight the ear, yet one cannot go anywhere, even far away at sea, from the wretched abodes of mankind, without being afflicted with the knowledge of the filthy deeds of men. The earth may be cursed with briars and thorns, and man may have to toil and live by the sweat of his brow, but what is all this compared with the degrading sins of men? What a virtue is the chastity of brutes in comparison to the lusts of those who are said to have been created in the image of God? Blessed is the innocent, ignorant man who knoweth none of these things. Surely, it is folly to be wise when ignorance is bliss. Far better and happier for my heathen villagers to live, and toil, and die in their ignorant simplicity, than to have their souls scarred by the vices and knowledge of a corrupt world and of society.

“And bitter shame hath spoiled the sweet world’s taste, That it yields nought but shame and bitterness.”

As everything comes to an end some time, so did my voyage. The only regret of it was in parting from my American friend, for without him I would have been alone and my trip most monotonous.

CHAPTER XXIX.

I soon found Leadenhall street, and sure enough, the warmest kind of a letter, just as I had expected and was so sure of, bidding me come at once to her home in the country. Delays are dangerous, so I delayed not, and soon the object of my voyage was accomplished. If I were writing a novel, and wished to make it a two or three volumed one, I would enter into the details, but the story I can tell is so simple and well known that it is better to save time, as the captain saved his coal, by not using it.

To be sure, after the first greetings were over, and the serious part of our business was settled, we told to each other the story of our lives since we parted. Mine I have related. She had objected to marriage, though she had had a number of offers, for her heart had been given away and had not returned. During our conversation she quoted these lines from some author, “A woman may marry this man or that man; her affections may shift and alter, but she never forgets the man she loved with all the wonder and idealism and devotion of a girl’s early love.”

One of her suitors was a Mr. Beresford, of a family of rank and wealth. This was about all he could boast of. Disagreeable in appearance, though he was polished in all the ways and style of society, with much of the affectation of a man of the world. He was persistent in his attentions, and used all his arts of fascination, and was so obtrusive that she hated the sight of him. She knew that he was heartless, and by instinct that he was very far from being above reproach. Her parents became angry with her for throwing away such a chance of marriage into a family of name and rank. Did I not remember their anger? She defied them at first, but the incessant worry day and night continued, until from sheer exhaustion, she yielded by giving her hand but not her heart. There was a marriage of ceremony, but not of hearts or lives. He had won and there was no further need of disguise or dissimulation. He taunted her with never having cared for him; that because she was so proud and haughty he had only married her to break her in, just as he would have subdued a spirited horse. He had inherited the profligacy of his ancestors and maintained the reputation of his family by his vices. He returned at once to his dissolute life and made her, as she said, wish for her own death or his. Her parents saw, when it was too late, that they had driven their daughter to a life worse than death, for the sake of name and rank. Her only relief was when he was away with his sporting friends. One day, riding to the hounds, he was thrown from his horse and killed. He had been drinking heavily and could not sit the horse.

Said she, “I could not shed a tear. That is an awful thing for a wife to say when she loses her husband, but it was impossible for me to be so false as to express even a regret, so I refused to see any one. I had never loved him nor had the least respect for him. It was a marriage only in form. I put on mourning, but that was a black lie to keep society tongues from wagging. And now as we are united again I can say frankly to you that I have often thought of the different life I would have had but for the interference of my parents.”

Concluding her narrative, she said, with one of her most loving smiles, “So, Charles, I shall not keep you awake nights talking about the virtues of my first husband.” This remark was of infinite comfort to me, for I had often wondered how a man must feel after marrying a widow whose husband had been noted for his excellent traits. If she was careful not to mention them, yet he could but think at times that she was making comparisons between himself and the departed. Another thing gave me great satisfaction, that I was getting no second hand article of a heart, as hers had been always and only mine. Yet I could but feel a tinge of remorse that I had once given part of mine to another, though under necessity, as I supposed the object of my first and only real love in life had gone forever from me.

There was love but no love making or giddy flirtation between us, so I have no foundation for a thrilling story, even if I wished to make one. Marriage has always seemed to me such a sacred thing as to be a solemn matter rather than something to be treated in a joking manner. It is next to birth and death, the most important event in a person’s life, and I never could understand how a young woman or a man could talk about their marriage as triflingly as they would about their chances in a lottery or a game of cards.

No wonder there is so much marital disagreement and unhappiness, when the married life is entered upon with so much thoughtlessness and frivolity. I had received an impression from Mr. Percy, when he talked so sacredly of his affianced, and this never left me. How much I have to thank him for the good influence he made upon my whole life. I try to keep my heart grateful and ever mindful of the favors I receive from others. It seems to me that one of the great sins of humanity is ingratitude. It may possibly appear greater than it really is, because people take so little pains to show their gratitude. I have, at considerable sacrifice at times, granted favors, and those to whom they were given, took them as a matter of course, very indifferently, thus injuring themselves, and depriving me of considerable pleasure. But I am running wild again. This is a habit of mine, as those acquainted with me well know, and my wife, later in life, often laughed at me, for always wanting to point a moral, or adorn a tale with some of my practical remarks. But as there are many worse habits than this, I am content.

I returned to London as light-hearted and happy as if I had won a kingdom, and I was to be crowned its king. My business was finished, but I had much to see in that great kaleidoscope of the world. The top of an omnibus was my point of observation at first. What a collection of moving things, hurrying, scurrying, joggling and jostling each other, apparently without any purpose, except to keep going! I thought if I were able to write a book I would make one on, “What I saw from the top of an omnibus in London.” All sorts and conditions of men, the staid men of business, the “crows” in long black gowns, the obsequious shopmen, the swells, the cabbies, the bewildered countrymen, the beggars ready to carry your cane to get “a penny for a bite to eat for a poor man,” the sweepers, the cat’s meat men, and the fellows on the corners crying, “a penny a shine, sur,” castes, castes, no end of them. One day an Englishman remarked to me, “You have a great many castes in India?” “Yes, I replied, about as many as you have in England.” He looked at me with a stare, as if he thought I was guying him, and then said, “I think you are about right.”

There is something so peculiar in that stare, a concentration of the negation of intellect and intelligence in appearance of an Englishman’s face, when listening; a dull, cold look, as expressionless as the countenance of a heathen stone idol, that freezes one, and makes him feel that he is saying something foolish or impudent. Whether it is from lack of quick comprehension, or considered good form, I do not know. The English, I should judge, are not a smiling nation. They are as solid and substantial, even in the expression of their faces, as their heavy meat and drink can make them. They are slow-witted, and their jokes, except what they import, are so ponderous that they reminded me of our perfunctory religious exercises on a cold morning at school, and of our tasks in reciting the Litany, only that the jokes lacked the response, “Good Lord deliver us.”

I had purchased some books for light reading in my off hours, and among them was “Pelham” by Lord Lytton. I was greatly surprised to find this passage, a severer criticism on his countrymen than I am capable of making. This was probably written on the view that a man may call himself a dog, but let another beware of saying it of him. “The English of the fashionable world make business an enjoyment, and enjoyment a business; they are born without a smile; they rove about public places like so many easterly winds—cold, sharp and cutting; or like a group of fogs on a frosty day, sent out of his hell by Boreas, for the express purpose of looking black at one another. When they ask you ‘how you do,’ you would think they were measuring the length of your coffin. They are ever, it is true, laboring to be agreeable, but they are like Sisyphus, the stone they rolled up the hill with so much toil, runs down again, and hits you a thump on the legs. They are sometimes polite, but invariably uncivil; their warmth is always artificial—their cold never. They are stiff without dignity, and cringing without manners. They offer you an affront, and call it ‘plain truth,’ they wound your feelings, and tell you it is merely to ‘speak their minds,’ at the same time, while they have neglected all the graces and charities of artifice, they have adopted all its falsehood and deceit. While they profess to abhor servility, they adulate the peerage; while they tell you they care not a rush for the minister, they move heaven and earth for an invitation from the minister’s wife. Then their amusements! The heat, the dust—the sameness—the slowness of that odious park in the morning, and the same exquisite scene repeated in the evening on the condensed stage of a rout room, where one has more heat with less air, and a narrower dungeon, with diminished possibility of escape! We wander about like the damned in the story of Vathek, and we pass our lives like the royal philosopher of Prussia in conjugating the verb, ‘je m’ennuie.’”

I wanted a Sunday in London to hurry about alone without any “sweet encumbrance.” That I obtained on the promise to her who had already assumed the right to have a good share of my attention and time, that it should be the only one I should have alone.

Some one has said that the best form of government is a monarchy, if the monarch be a perfect one. I had chosen my monarchess, and was not all disinclined to obey her sweet will.

On this privileged day I took a cab, and went from early morning into and out of a number of churches. In one of them I lingered longest, for there was to me a grand tamasha on the boards, so to speak. There were a number of priests dressed as gorgeously as clowns in a circus. They were processioning, genuflecting, beating their breasts, and rolling their eyes, as if in great distress from an inward pain. There were innumerable candles, though it was broad daylight, an indication of their religious darkness, or a reflection on the Almighty that He had not made light enough for them, or else that He was not able to see what they were doing without the aid of their flickering dips. There was incense burning, floating everywhere, in the stifling air, that brought tears, not of contrition, but simply of water, to my eyes. It was a show worth seeing, yet it made me think of the story of the boy, who, when making his first flies for fishing, impatiently asked his mother, if God made everything? “Yes, everything.” “And flies as well?” “Certainly,” she said. “Then God has horrid fiddling work to do,” replied the boy. I thought if the Infinite God could be pleased with such a performance, styled a religious service, then He is interested in horrid fiddling, trifling matters. But, as I am only a heathen, my opinion may not be worth the breath spent in giving it.

The contrast to this was in a place really named a “circus,” where there were a lot of paradings, shoutings and groans accompanied by a band of base drums, base horns, base viols, base voices and a base crowd. The people shouted and tooted as if their god was deaf or asleep, or had gone on a journey. I could not help asking myself, “Is it possible that God can be pleased with all this noise and confusion?”

The other performance had something æsthetic about it, that while I could admire it as quite a decent Sunday show, there was nothing to grate upon my physical senses though much to disturb my religious sense, but the other was so bombastic and horribly discordant that I delayed not in leaving it.

Then to other churches. To be really truthful, and that is what I aim at in all things, even if I tell the truth to mine own hurt, I did not care so much about my own religious welfare as to see how other people took theirs. I think it is a feature of human nature that we all are anxious that everybody else should obey the laws, whether we do or not. Many people though unjust themselves, dislike injustice in others. Probably most people go to church more to see that their neighbors are there, than to repent of their own shortcomings and sins. I think this statement, however, would not be quite true about that Sunday as only a few people were present in any of the churches.

Here I wish to observe that it has always appeared very strange to me, that since Christian people insist so much on the vital importance of religious duties, they should be so indifferent in the performance of them. One would naturally suppose then in a Christian city like London, every mother’s son and daughter would go to church. They perhaps believe that the priests or the church in some vicarious way can get them tickets for heaven, so they need not bother themselves to work out their own salvation. Yet, I cannot help liking to see a man honest, though he be a Christian, and practice what he professes. This may be a stupid idea of mine, still I cannot get rid of it.

I was told that one of the Sunday sights was Vanity Fair in Hyde Park, so after a hasty tiffin I directed my cabby thitherward. He was a jolly good fellow, rotund as a beer barrel, and red in the face as if he had lived on boiled lobsters all his life and their complexion had gone into his. I had liberally tipped him on starting in the morning and remarked to him that there was nothing like food and drink for either horse or man, and he agreed heartily with me.

There is nothing so omnipotent in London as shillings, except it be sovereigns. With them in sight, I think my cab would have driven me to the devil, if not back again. One day I wished to see the houses of Parliament. The six foot guards were shooing the people away as if they were chickens bound to depredate in a garden. I walked up towards one of these stalwarts, putting on all the dignity I could command, with my hand in my pocket making a very significant movement of drawing out my purse, asking, “Do you ever show any one about this place?” He replied, “Come this way, sur,” and we went behind a big pillar where I dropped some shillings into his hand. He then took me anywhere and everywhere, and showed me Lord’s this and that Lord’s gown and wig and told me all I wished to know. He got the money, and I the money’s worth, so we were both agreeable. Nothing like shillings, unless it be sovereigns. A man might as well be without them in London, as to be without rupees when he has a case in court in India.

I cannot refrain from quoting what the greatest poet of the world says:

“Money—This yellow slave

Will knit and break religions; bless the accursed

Make the hoar leprosy adored; place thieves

And give them title, knee and approbation

With senators on the bench.”

“Money is more eloquent than all the poets, preachers or philosophers, and has the only tongue that, strange to no one, needs no dictionary to explain it to the simplest unlearned soul.”

Columbus in a letter to Ferdinand and Isabella says, “Gold is an excellent thing. With gold one forms treasures. With gold one does whatever one wishes in this world. Even souls can be got to Paradise by it.”

“’Tis gold that buys admittance, oft it doth,

and ’tis gold

Which makes the true man kill’d, and saves the thief

Nay, sometimes hangs both thief and true man,

What can it not do and undo?”

The cabbies are a strange caste—a kind of wandering mendicants always on the go, and high caste enough to look down on all their fares. I rather liked them, so good-natured when well tipped, but probably like other humans, the other thing when squeezed and why not? Some one told me this story. An old timer just returned from India going from a station, thought his cab was taking him round about to increase the mileage. Not thinking where he was, he shouted up in his India patois, “Turn sooar ka batchcha kidhar ko jaoge?” You son of a pig, whither are you going?

Cabby with as much force hurled down, “Tum gaddha ka bhai, ham khub jante hain.” You brother to a donkey we know very well; showing that he had also been in India.

We were soon at Vanity Fair and such it really was, a fair of vanity. I doubt if the sun anywhere else shines on such a scene. It was an after service aristocratic parade. “Miss Vavasor went to church, as it was the right thing to do. God was one of the heads of society, and his drawing rooms had to be attended,” so it seems to be good form as an adjunct to divine service to have this assembly. It was a big show to me, but I could not see the reason of it. It was a dumb performance, as very few appeared to talk,—a kind of pantomime. There may have been lots of fun in it—as it is said the English take even their pleasures very sadly—which my lack of education prevented me from seeing. It was probably a divine dress parade, as all seemed to wear clothes of the newest kind of cloth and the latest cut, especially the guanty jaunty young men who paraded back and forth. They may have been hired by some fashionable tailor to show his latest styles. There were castes, the high Brahmins on a certain set of chairs and so on, each set by itself. A profane low-class man outside the ring pointed out to me a dowager with the wise remark, “She’s taken many a nip by the looks of her mug.” Another of a duchess, “She’s a rum un.” This was as bad as the cabbie’s reply when I asked him on the way, “What is that building?” “Buckingham Palace, sur.” “Who lives there?” I queried. “The old cat,” he answered. I don’t like such talk. It’s “deucedly vulgar, you know,” and as bad as swearing. The fact is, I often needed an interpreter. The language and pronunciation were so peculiar, and yet they would have taken it in high dudgeon if I had requested them to speak to me in English.

At length the show dissolved or rather moved away as silently as it came, and without any one saying “To your tents, O Israel.”

The next scene was in another part of the Park, a meeting of strikers or the victims of “Sweaters” in some trade. The crowds! They came from every direction. There were also castes in numbers, each with a style of its own, but all evidently of the lowest grade, most of them in the cheapest clothes, rags and tatters, a wonderful contrast to the Vanity Fair party.

There were carts in different places from which speakers bawled out their grievances and made their demands. The hucksters, with their baskets and little stands, offered shrimps, winkles, pop, roasted chestnuts and other cheap stuff, with little success, as the crowd appeared as anxious to keep their pennies, if they had any, as these fellows were to get them. There were many strong, robust men, probably willing to labor, but compelled to idleness, their garments stitched and patched, yet not sufficient to conceal their nakedness. Such able-bodied men begging people to buy a pen’worth of something!

I cannot stomach the nakedness of a white person. There is something in it so leprous-like. I have heard travelers remark that a half-naked black or dark skinned person, is not at all repugnant compared to one of a white skin. Naturally I am inclined to a dark skin, and cannot but think that God knew what He was doing when He gave colored skins to people living in the tropics where clothes are a burden, that their dark complexions might take the place of clothes, and they be protectively colored.

On the same principle nature clothes animals and insects with the colors of their surroundings. Still, I think, human animals ought to get their color as well as their being in a legitimate way. I know this reflection is to mine own detriment.

All this poverty showed this one thing, at least, that the present organization of society is at fault, or that God had made a failure in creating these people. It may be, as Alexander Knox says, “The mass of these people in our towns are spawned upon the world rather than born into life.” Or as another has said: “Born into the world only to be a blight to it.”

Their very existence as they are, plainly declares that there is a fault somewhere by somebody.

This poverty plead for itself. It reminded me of the story of a beggar sitting silently by the wayside. A passer-by asked, “Why don’t you beg, man? Why don’t you speak?” “Speak!” said the beggar, “when every rent in my clothes is a mouth that proclaims my wants with more eloquence than I could with my tongue!”

Going from Vanity Fair to this crowd, was like going from heaven to hell, only a short distance apart; the one a picture of the arrogance of the rich, the other the debasement of the poor. I do not like to compare the church parade to heaven, as it was only a show, a mock heaven at best, but there was no hunger there, nor rags, though, no doubt, plenty of lust, vice and crime under those rich clothes. Yet the outward contrast was very great.

Should it not be a subject of serious reflection that after six thousand years of the world’s progress, and nearly two thousand of the teachings of Christianity, a few people in the world should live in exuberant luxury, and the great majority in squalid poverty, the world a hell for millions of poor, in order to create a paradise for the very few rich?

“Famine gnawing at their entrails, and despair feeding at their hearts,

Gropes for its right with horny, callous hands,

And stares around for God with bloodshot eyes.”

“Let us be patient, lads,” said a pious weaver, “surely God Almighty will help us soon.”

“Don’t talk about your goddlemighty,” said one, “there isn’t any, or he wouldn’t let us suffer as we do.”

Why all this poverty and misery? There must be an adequate cause for it, some powerful disorganizing element to produce such a condition of things.

A tract-man handed me several leaflets, from which I culled the following:

“The drink bill of Great Britain annually amounts to one hundred and forty million pounds sterling. This is about five pound sterling per head of the inhabitants. It is estimated that sixty per cent. of this, or eighty-four millions, comes out of the wages of the working classes. There are one million six hundred thousand acres in England cultivated for barley and fifty thousand for hops. Seventy million bushels of grain are worse than wasted in manufacturing drink. Allowing forty pounds of flour to a bushel, and sixty pounds of bread, the total would be one billion and fifty million, four pound loaves, or one hundred and seventy loaves for each family of five persons throughout the United Kingdom. In twenty-five years there have been four million two hundred and sixty-eight thousand and twenty-two arrests of drunk and disorderlies, and probably not one in twenty of the drunkards arrested. There are one million forty thousand, one hundred and three paupers in England and Wales, or one in nineteen of the whole population, nine-tenths caused by drink. There are one hundred and forty thousand criminals, mostly owing to drink, and twenty-five thousand policemen required to keep public houses in order and protect life and property; forty-three thousand lunatics in the asylums. In England, one in every one hundred and seventy of the total population is convicted of drunkenness.”

Lord Chief Justice Coleridge states that nine out of every ten gaols would be closed but for drink. Justice Fitzgerald says that drunkenness leads to nineteen-twentieths of the crimes; Mr. Mulhall, that forty-eight per cent. of the idiocy in England arises from the drunkenness of the parents, and one-third of the insanity in the United Kingdom is the effect of drink; Sir James Horner, that seventy-five out of every hundred of the divorce cases are brought about by drink; Mr. Gladstone, that drink has caused greater calamities than the three great historical scourges, war, famine and pestilence.

A distinguished English writer says that, “the poverty of the poor is the chief cause of the weakness and inefficiency which are the causes of their poverty, dire poverty and the frequency of public houses act and react upon one another, poverty increasing public houses, and public houses increasing poverty.”

A Government report shows that it costs five and three quarter millions sterling a year for the repression of crime in England, and while they spend one hundred and forty millions sterling a year for drink, the British spend only two millions a year on books.

With such facts, showing the waste of food, the unnatural bill of costs and the inevitable losses caused by the demoralization of the people, can any one doubt the cause of the squalid poverty of the masses of Great Britain?

And it is a civilized Christian nation that tolerates and encourages such things!

Further, it found heathen India sober, and it is doing its best to make it a nation of drunkards like itself, by means of liquor and opium. An Archdeacon who has spent thirty years in India makes the statement that for every convert to Christianity made by the missionaries, the Government makes one thousand drunkards.

Another item. The United Kingdom has 330 packs of fox hounds, at a yearly cost of £414,850. The 33,000 riders and 99,000 horses cost £3,500,000, or the whole hunt maintenance at £4,000,000 a year, to keep up a cruel, inhuman, degrading sport. Most likely all who uphold this waste of money and cruelty were confirmed in the church as Christians, and partake regularly of “holy communion” as followers of Jesus, while several millions of their fellow beings go naked and hungry. What a grim satire on profession and practice!

While I hate the opium business in India, I cannot but think that with such an appalling record as the above, that the people “at home” would better cleanse their own filthy door-yards before criticising those of India. Would it not be more consistent, more honest, more commendable, if the English people would do away with their greatest curse, their liquor traffic, and look after their paupers, criminals, and the brutally oppressed innocent victims, the wives and children of drunkards, and all this damnable encouragement of vice, before they send out junketing commissions at an enormous expense on the poor, overtaxed serfs of India, to investigate the opium traffic?

It is so easy and gratifying for some people to meddle with the affairs of others while they neglect their own, and to condemn those far away, but quite overlooking their own immediate vices and sins.

While I was in Glasgow a request was made upon the Provost to call a public meeting to protest against the Tsar of Russia for expelling the “scurvy Jews” who rob and demoralize his people by their usury and promotion of drunkenness, and at the time I was astounded at the poverty and squalor, the numbers of deformed, debauched people, and shocked with the fights and brawls of drunken barelegged women and brutal men on a Saturday afternoon on one of the main streets of that city.

Consistency may be a jewel, but it is a very rare one. The people of Great Britain should get it as quickly as possible. It would be of more honor and credit to them than that stolen Kohinur.

I spoke to a man near me about the great crowd of poor. He replied, “This is only a handful, only a few drops. Let the degraded poor of all London come out and they would more than fill the whole park.” I asked him about their morality. “Morality,” said he; “they do not know what it means.” And he told me such tales of misery, vice and crime that would make, not only angels, but the very devils, weep to know that humanity had fallen so low.

Are civilization and religion failures, that they cannot provide a remedy for such ulcers on the social body that must affect the very life of the nation?

For very shame’s sake the Christians of England should heal their own sores before they damn the heathen, for I doubt from what I saw and heard if there is any city in all heathendom so sunken in degradation and vice as this famous metropolis of a so-called Christian country.

This question is not only for the Christian, the philanthropist, but for the statesman or politician, if it be true what Mr. John Bright says:

“I believe there is no permanent greatness to a nation except it be based on morality. I do not care for military pomp or military renown. I care for the condition of the people among whom I live. There is no man in England less likely to speak irreverently of the crown and monarchy of England than I am, but crown, coronets, mitres, military displays, pomp of war, wide colonies, and a huge empire are in my view, all trifles light as air, and not worth considering unless with them you can have a fair share of comfort, contentment and happiness among the great body of the people. Palaces, baronial halls, castles, great halls, and stately mansions do not make a nation. The nation in every country dwells in a cottage.”

CHAPTER XXX.

I was not surprised to find castes in England, high castes, middle castes, low castes and also outcasts, as I had personal experience of these among the English in India, but what seemed strange was that among these civilized Christian people, there was such a deep-rooted prejudice against tradesmen. A story was told me that illustrates this. A tailor, who had plenty of money as well as brains and education, often assisted a young lord, and quite an intimacy sprang up between them. The lord took his friend to Scotland for the shooting season, where they were the guests of a laird, and met a number of distinguished people. In his cups the lord was quite abusive, and his friend, the tailor, had to suffer. His best whip was merely to say, “Well, my lord! to-morrow morning I shall introduce myself to your friends here as your tailor.”

“For heaven’s sake,” begged the lord, “don’t do that or I shall be disgraced forever.”

What also surprised me was that there were two kinds of justice; one for the rich people of rank and another for the poor.

It appeared that there was a Mary Joyce in the city. Her husband was a mechanic, a good workman, temperate and industrious. She was a careful, prudent woman. They lived well upon his earnings. One day he was killed by an accident. It took all the wife’s savings to bury the body of her husband. Then, to sustain herself and child, the articles in her rooms were sold, one after another, until nothing was left but the clothes on her body, a tattered quilt, some straw on the floor, an iron spoon and a dish or two. She had tried to get work time and again, but failed. She had asked for help, but was refused. One night, hungry herself, but thinking only of her starving child, she wrapped it in the quilt and placed it upon the straw and went out into the darkness. She came to a baker’s shop. Without a thought but of her dying babe, she seized one of the loaves and rushed away. A cry was raised, a policeman caught her and took her to prison, and the next morning at the Mansion House Court she was sentenced to six months’ imprisonment. She was placed in a foul smelling cell, given the smallest allowance of the coarsest food for herself and babe. By day she had to be in the company of the vilest humanity, and submit to the insults and cruelties of the gaolers, and all this for taking a loaf of bread to keep her child from starving.

The other case was of a duchess, a woman of intelligence, position and wealth. She knew better than to do wrong. There was no need for her to violate the laws. She committed a crime, and the judge stated his regret that he was obliged by law to convict her. If he could possibly have found an excuse he would have released her on account of her rank and wealth, as he expressed himself, so he gave her a sentence of six weeks, and all “society” stood aghast to think they should be attacked in that way. She was allowed two large, airy rooms in a prison. The floors were carpeted. Fine furniture was placed in them. She was permitted two attendants of her own. Excellent food was prepared outside and brought to her. She had books and papers, and was allowed to receive visitors, and to have her daily walks without seeing the other prisoners. She was an aristocrat, a lady in “society,” and it would not do for a judge to place her on a level with a poor woman of lower class blood! What would “society” say?

But is there an aristocracy in crime? Is not a thief a thief? Did not the higher rank and intelligence of the duchess entitle her to a greater punishment? Poor Mary Joyce, obeying a God-given instinct to save her starving babe, took a loaf of bread. The duchess, to gratify a whim of her haughty nature, committed a greater crime than the other and was not punished at all but slightly disgraced, which society readily condones and regards her as a martyr. Such is impartial English justice!

We have, however, something like it in India. A rajah has amassed wealth by oppressing his ryots and taking usury from the poor. On account of some paltry gift to the Dufferin Fund or subscription to some begging paper to raise a monument to some man whom the people would not care to remember, he is granted the privilege by Government of not obeying a summons to appear as a witness in court. He could be driven there every day and it would be only a pleasure nor would there be any loss to him in any way.

Another, a ryot of this man, is obliged to go from twenty to fifty miles on foot. He is compelled to hang around from a week to twenty days or has to go several times. While away from home his fields are neglected and the crop on which he and his family depended for the year’s food is lost. What recourse has he? None whatever. What is the difference in the two cases? It is this. The one is a wealthy rajah and the other a poor devil of a ryot. Such is justice in India so like that in England.

My best argument for immortality is this, that there must be, in all justice, some other place or some future when the accounts of this life shall be balanced, for there is no equity here.

These were my reflections in my room at my lodgings at the close of my privileged leave.

However, in vindication of myself, that to make some atonement,—as I am not without good impulses at times—for the misdemeanors of the morning, if such they may be called, in going to see the ranks of the city, high rank and low rank, the latter of the rankest kind,—I went to a church in the evening where there was a very quiet unpretentious service in which there was a real sincere worship of God. I felt better for it, thanking God that while there was so much of vanity, vice and want in the city, there were also some righteous people, truly noble, belonging to the nobility of heaven.

Our wedding day was fixed at an early date and we were to try “the terrible test of wedlock” as Carlyle hath it. We were married already in heart and mind, but to conform to the usages of society there was an outward ceremony required. The father and mother were invited from their home in Ireland. I had not yet met them in this new phase of affairs and had some considerable curiosity about our first meeting. I had no fear of them as I had outgrown that. To be really truthful I had but little regard for them such as a man should have for his prospective parents-in-law. They had cruelly treated me as well as their daughter. Worse still, they had insulted me and deliberately. However it may tell against me, I must confess that I can never forget an insult. I can forgive it, and treat the offender with civility and all that, but I can never regard him as if he had not injured me. This lapse of propriety shows the nature and make-up of the man and I am always on my guard lest he should wound me again. My former respect and friendship has gone and I doubt if anything he might ever do would restore him again to me as he was. I know that some say they can forget as well as forgive and act as if nothing unpleasant had ever occurred, yet I doubt if they have really analyzed and understood their feelings. I have not been made of that elastic kind of material and each one must act for himself.

The parents received me most cordially and made no reference to the past. Very prudent in them, as I was in a position to first throw down the gauntlet or to take up their’s at the slightest hint from them. It was not long before the wedding was referred to and I do not know just why, but I could not help suggesting that I hoped there would be no shooting or burying this time. I would have rather lost a year’s income from my villages than to have missed the blushes and confusion of the pair at this remark. “O no,” said the mother. “I have left my pistols at home, Mr. Japhet.” “And I,” said the father, “have no intention of becoming a sexton.”

The daughter enjoyed this intensely, and when the laughter had subsided, remarked, “I married once wholly to please you, now I am going to marry to please myself.” No reference was ever made to this subject again.

We were married and the bonds duly ratified by some sovereigns to the high priest of the occasion. For further particulars read the society papers in which it was stated that an Indian Prince had made a captive of one of Albion’s fairest daughters. I could not help forgiving and blessing the ignorance of the penny-a-liners, for if they had told the truth that I was not an Indian Prince but only the son of a —, and my wife was not of Albion, but of the Emerald Isle, the paragraph would have appeared with a different kind of aurora about it.

If the real truth were known and told about people and things, what a different appearance they would make! The gloss of the world is like the apocryphal mantle of charity, covering a multitude of defects and sins.

We were extremely happy, as might be supposed, and everything wore a roseate hue as is usual in such cases, so there is no need of going into any ecstasies of description. I recall what a great English writer has said, “Of all actions of a man’s life his marriage does least concern other people, yet of all our life ’tis most meddled with by other people.” So I will act upon his suggestion, be wise for once, and not give people a chance to meddle with what does not concern them. We had passed the giddy stage of life and had not reached that, when it could be said of either of us, “There is no such fool as an old fool.”

Of course we had to visit the parents and they treated me so kindly that I was tempted to forget, as I had forgiven them, their former outburst of anger towards me. What rather modified my feelings was the remark of the mother to her daughter in the privacy of her bed chamber, that if she had known Mr. Japhet was such a fine man, a real gentleman, indeed, she would never have objected to him. This my wife related to me with much satisfaction, as it was a compliment to her former good judgment, as well as to myself. They accepted the inevitable with such good grace and kindness that I almost fell in love with my mother-in-law, and that is saying all that is necessary.

We visited various places of interest, in “Ould” Ireland and I was delighted with the quaint manners, and charmed with the open hospitality of its people. One incident I will relate. One day at Larne I took a stroll alone and then fell in with a couple of foreign gentlemen from a steamer for New York that was laying to for the day. We sauntered out towards the country and passing by a field where there were some beautiful cows grazing in clover, I suggested that we go to the house and ask for a cup of milk. The gentlemen expressed surprise that I should think of such a thing. I saw no harm in it as I proposed to pay for what we received, so we would not be beggars, and as I persisted, they said they would follow me. I accosted a man raking the yard and made my request. He replied that he would see the maister, and soon the latter appeared and invited us by the front door into his drawing room, beautifully furnished. He then called a maid and she soon brought a large glass pitcher of creamy yellow milk, that was a sight to me from India where we have to be happy with dudh pani, but with more pani than dudh. She also brought a large plate of biscuit and glasses. Our host handled the pitcher and served us with generous hospitality. We meantime had a delightful chat. He had just returned from the continent and was full of fresh incidents of his trip and asked many questions about India. He then took us into his garden where he showed, and also gave us some of his ripe gooseberries large as pigeon eggs, that he was reserving for the Annual Fair, stating that the year previous he had taken thirty-two prizes for various exhibits. All this greatly interested me. He then took us to his raspberry bushes laden with ripe fruit and bade us help ourselves while he picked liberal handfuls for us, we all the while keeping up a running talk. On leaving we thanked him again and again, and especially I, who had been the leader in this foray. I handed him my card and received his, when he informed us that the place was the Manse and he was the Presbyterian minister. He pressed us to call again when we came that way and stated that he would always remember us with pleasure. I could not help making a comparison between him and our Indian padris. It is true they have no gooseberry or raspberry bushes or such cream, and yet—but as comparisons are odious to those on whom they reflect, I will cease my mental meanderings. My two foreign comrades, the one from Vienna, the other from Berlin thanked me most courteously for the treat I had given them. I doubt if they knew that I was an Eurasian and do not believe it would have made any difference to them as they were real gentlemen.

My wife and I went to the huts of the poor, as I was anxious to see this phase of life. The status of a country is shown by the condition of its poor people and not by that of its few grasping rich. The glamour of India in its great cities and scenery in the cold season, seen by the racing globe-trotters, no more conveys an idea of the real condition of its vast millions, than a peasant’s holiday attire does of his everyday clothing and impoverished life. We heard the stories of poverty and oppression, and they were not Irish exaggeration for the one fact alone of the exorbitant rents they had to pay, was proof sufficient of the truth of their stories. Yet with all their poverty, ignorance and superstition, the Irish are said to be the most virtuous race on the earth. This to me will atone for all their other sins.

We never entered a hut, however poor the inmates, but they offered us some token of their kindness, even if it were only a roast potato raked from the ashes. If there is anything that makes tears come into my heart, it is the generosity of the poorest poor, sharing their needed mouthfuls with others. How often have I thought with moistened eyes, of those famine stricken people in that old court of my childhood, sharing their scanty grains of rice with me and my little sister, and of that old faqir.

What delighted me most was the courtesy and grace, the sparkling witticisms of these people when receiving us, so natural and free from any of the snobbery and formalities of society. We were entertained by the rich and they were polished and educated and I can speak in the highest praise of them, and yet I think I felt more grateful when eating a potato from the bare board-table in an Irish hut with the good dame pressing me to take just another one, than I did with my feet under the mahogany of some wealthy host, the table loaded with silver and served with the richest viands. This may be strange in me, yet I cannot help it, for God has made me up in that way.

We visited Scotland, the “land o’ cakes,” as well as “the land of the leal,” and I was delighted with the brusque, frank manners of its people.

They are an honest, manly race, careful to keep all they have and to get as much as they can, but honestly. One of them said: “We are sair strict in making a bargain, but when it is closed we abide it, aye to our ain loss.” They are all aristocrats by nature, of the manly kind, and the mechanic with grimy hands and greasy clothes at work, will look one in the eye, and talk as nobly as if he was the chief of some Highland clan, to doff his cap to no man.

They were a study to me in many ways. A little incident I recall. One morning, going out of the hotel, my boots rather tarnished with the everlasting mud—for as they told me that it always rains there except when it snaws, there is always mud—I hailed a boy boot-black with cheeks as red as ripe cherries. While he was doing his job, I asked a policeman near by how much I should give him. “A penny,” he said. On handing this to my little friend, he, raising his cap with all the politeness of a polished courtier said, “Wad ye no gie me the other wing o’ that?” My hair was so thick that his meaning did not penetrate my understanding until he had bowed and gone, and I then realized his idea of the necessity of two wings for anything to fly properly. One great mental fault of mine is nearly always being a little behind time. My best thoughts often come just after their opportunity. I was pleased with the rosy cheeked lasses, so full of health and purity, and I think I rather offended my wife by saying that if I was not already wifed I would try to win one of Scotia’s fair daughters.

Then back to England, in a round of sight-seeing and visits among the Britons, where, led by my wife, I was well received, though inwardly I felt with some questioning as to my rank and station. This is the great characteristic of the English. Their first question is, not what you are as a man, in ability, attainments or morals, but what is your standing or caste in “society.” And probably the newest made, the fledglings in society, with the thinnest kind of blue blood in their veins, would be the most exacting, whose pedigree would be greatly damaged by the slightest investigation.

This society fad notion of the English, is worse than their oppressive fogs, and, like the sight of a black pall at a funeral, making one tread softly and speak in whispers. Some one, remarking of this, said that when out calling the lady of the house came up close to her without bowing, with a prying, inquisitive look, saying, “I really don’t know who you are,” but after learning the rank of her caller she became amiability itself. To give them their due, when once you are inside their ring, and are acquainted, you know, they are very kind and agreeable.

I had often read of the Arctic regions, and traveling to my humor inclined, I suggested to my traveling companion that we go to the extreme, or as far as we could, and see the contrast, if not of Greenland’s icy mountains, then those of Norway, with India’s burning sands. And a contrast it was, so much so that my oriental bones ached with the cold, and I was glad when our steamer turned its prow southward to come under the sun again.

Yet I shiver even now as I think of that indescribable, penetrating cold, for the blood under my tropical skin seemed to stagnate and congeal. I thought of Dr. Johnson’s remark about his visit to the Hebrides, “worth seeing, but not worth going to see.” But he was such an old egotistic exaggerator that I do not accept everything he says as gospel true.

Yet one saying of his I could heartily endorse, remembering the tips I had to make in England, worse than the baksheesh among the natives in India. “Let me pay Scotland one just praise—there was no officer gaping for a fee; this could have been said of no city on the English side of the Tweed.”

The constant tips to every one at every turn is a real nuisance. England may boast of her freedom, yet all her people are in the bonds of slavery to the tipping custom. I fell in with a couple of young English gentlemen just starting for China to spend their holidays. They said they could better afford a foreign tour than to accept invitations from their friends, as it would be less expensive, for at each house they might visit, they would have to tip everybody, not with shillings, but with sovereigns. My American friend spoke of this as one of the fads that the Anglo-maniacs were trying to introduce into his country, because it was good form, “like the English, you know.”

Anent this, I must mention a couple of incidents, though not about “tips,” rather of sharp tricks, which reflect on myself.

On our steamer reaching port I was approached by a well-dressed man, who handed me his card, saying that he was connected with Grinder & Co., my bankers, and that he would be pleased to assist me in every way. I told him that I had only a small amount of luggage, that I myself could easily look after, but as his offer was so friendly I could not abruptly decline his services, so he gave an order to a porter to carry my baggage to a cab. A few days afterwards, when I went to look over my account at the Grinders & Co., I found that I was charged twenty-five shillings for the distinguished services of this very plausible clerk. I do not recall the items exactly, but I think there was a shilling for the bit of card he offered me.

Another. Just after arriving at my first lodgings in Craven street, Strand, and had dressed to go out to some restaurant for dinner, the man of the house, with the most saccharine smile and tone of voice, said that they were just about to sit down to a family dinner, and he would be pleased to have me join them. An uncle or aunt, if I had either, could not have invited me with more grace and suavity. It was a very good dinner, and I tried to do the agreeable in conversation, telling them about India, as it seemed I ought to give some return for their kindness, but I had a different feeling when I came to settle my bill, and found myself charged with four shillings for the dinner.

I was cutcha in the ways of the civilized world, that is, green, unripe, and am so still, even in my old age, and doubt if I ever shall be ripe, for I am often taken in by the plausibility of men and also women. After some such experience a kind of mental gloom comes over me, and I feel like repeating Hamlet, after his grandest eulogy of man, “And yet to me what is this quintessence of dust? Man delights not me, no, nor woman neither.”

Talking about tips, one day my American fellow voyager told me this: “A Yankee, standing on the stern of a steamer leaving Liverpool, held up a shilling and cried out, ‘If there’s a man, woman or child in this island I’ve not tipped, come forward now, as this is your last and only chance.’”

CHAPTER XXXI.

Returning, we soon thought of setting our faces toward the east, though first to the Continent, to see which, I had said I was leaving India, but had forgotten it for something else, and yet would have obtained forgiveness of that something for this slip of my pen had I asked it. I had seen Great Britain, England, the home of my Government, yet not my home, as some Eurasians style it, or as I have heard some Europe-clad natives speak of England, as if they had been born there. The fact is, I was so badly mixed up in my make-up that I hardly knew where my home really should be. I am in somewhat of the quandary of a man who was born of an English father, a Scotch mother, on an American ship, in African waters.

I had made good use of my time in seeing England. I had studied the solid, smileless, arrogant Englishman, who acts, particularly in India, as if he felt that when God had finished making him and his set, He had but little earth from which to make the rest of mankind. He is born a grumbler and a grasper. He is ever finding faults in other people. He is always reaching out to get something, and ever kicking when others try to get a little wealth or a small share of the earth’s surface. In one of my rural tours I saw some swine—and a noble breed of hogs they were, such as we never see in India. When they were fed, one fat old fellow stood sideways to the trough to keep the others away, and when he had got his fill, what did the brute do but lie down lengthwise in the trough to prevent the others from getting anything. Why the very hogs seemed to be characteristic of England. She has more than half of North America, the richest part of Asia, all the Antarctic continent, many islands of the ocean, and while she keeps all she has got she grasps for more. Without conscience as to her own methods of acquisition, she kicks when poor old Russia wants a few barren frozen steppes of central Asia, useless to anybody else, and unmindful that she has just absorbed Burmah, she kicks when France wants a little slice of Siam; she holds Egypt for the benefit of a lot of usurers, and took Burmah on the plea of protecting a sharp trading company. It is curious to note that all the annexations and usurpations of England have been preceded by some trading company, and yet her society folks and aristocracy have such a dislike to trade and tradespeople.

Whether it is the climate, the rain, the fog, the sticky mud, the solid, half-cooked food, and the heavy beer that has made England what she is, yet she is a great nation in her way, the power of the world, with very grand, noble impulses.

“Is not their climate foggy, raw and dull,

On whom, as in despite, the sun looks pale,

Killing their fruit with frowns?”

I am a great believer in climate and food in the making of men. A man is what he eats, and, according to the climate he lives in, robust or feeble. Go from the Arctic or colder regions, toward the equator, and every few hundred miles there can be seen a physical degeneracy of mankind, and the mental qualities must also be affected. Italy is an approach to India, and Egypt more so. The ready memorizing people of tropical Bengal are as exuberant as the vegetation around them, and like the vegetation, they are watery, without strength or firmness. How different from the sturdy hardwood forests of the north and its hardy, brave people! Take a Hindu, a Bengali, with his slender worm-like fingers, and transplant him to Norway. What would he do with an axe trying to fell a sturdy pine? It would be a sight worth going to see. What would those rice-eaters do in stemming the stormy blasts of a northern winter? I once saw a fight in the streets of London, of men with brawny arms, and fists that came with sledgehammer force upon each other! Some day, when I can get leisure, I am going to write an article on fists, and the people who can make them. There is so much of human character in a fist.

I never saw a native of India make up a fist for a fight. When they do not attack each other with their tongues, at which they are experts, the bamboo lathi, native to the climate, is their natural weapon, and then it is not a face to face, but a behind the back attack, a sure sign of weakness and cowardice. I am an admirer of the Anglo-Saxon in the English in this, that they have such a steady, stolid pugnacity, never knowing when they are whipped, and fight for what they think is right till there are none left to fight; always keep their backs behind them and their faces toward their foes, and it never need be asked of them when they return from battle, “Have they their wounds in front?”

Take another country. Where would the grim theology, philosophy and metaphysics of the German people be without their cold, sluggish climate, the black rye bread, the beer, the rank cheese, the sauerkraut, the sausages, and everlasting pipe? It is a wonder they can think at all, so clogged and befuddled their minds must be, and the results of their thinking is just what might be expected, heavy and cloggy. We went to Germany, and it was among her people that I got this impression.

We spent most of our time, nearly a year, in France, that paradise of the world, neither too hot nor too cold, and would ever have remained there if possible; the land of bright skies, of fruit and flowers, with its happy, contented, courteous people. Better a dinner of herbs in France, with its sunshine, than roast beef in England and fog therewith. No wonder that the French think so little about heaven when they have such a beautiful country to live in on earth.

What shall I say of the lively, entertaining, vivacious, polite people? They were another kind of human animal, altogether different from any that I had met. They are native to their own climate, light and airy. We were constantly reminded that we were in a land of epicures, among a people of good taste, for whom exquisite cooking was a necessity as well as a pleasure. I could well understand the remark of a Frenchman about England, as a country of a hundred religions and not one good soup.

It may be heathenish in me, but I have always had a liking for good food, probably because there was such a fearful lack of it to me as a child. In the first part of our lives we are mostly growing animals, and think more of provender than we do of piety, or many other good things. I might have swallowed the Athanasian creed, and all like it at school, if only our grub had been a little more palatable. I recall Mr. Jasper’s remark that the boys in his father’s family were more obedient, and so more religious, because of the good Sunday dinners the mother gave them. I also remember that my villagers were very indifferent about the improvements I suggested, or to anything I told them, until they got enough to eat, and then I could have led them with a hair. But I am wandering again.

I do not wonder that the sea-girt isle envies France the richness of her possessions and the prosperity and happiness of her people, yet I cannot understand why she should antagonize her and carp at everything she does, except it is in the nature of an Englishman to do so. He tries to speak French but fails egregiously. The attempt of a grumpy Englishman who speaks his own language as if he was afflicted with chronic catarrh trying to use that sprightly spirited tongue, is as grotesque as it would be to see an elephant trying a sword dance. Some one has said that if he spoke to God it would be in Spanish, to his mistress in Italian, to angels in French, to butchers in English and to hogs in German. I am not scholar enough to discuss this statement, yet I think he is correct in regard to French and English.

Not only in their cookery, but in their homes, the French have fine taste. They are great admirers of the beautiful in art, and cultivate it in nature, even among the poor. As to their dress, especially of the women, even the servant girls, however cheap the material, had their clothing fitted with such grace that they might have stood as fashion models for the rest of the world. But as I am only an outside barbarian I may be mistaken. I can only tell of the way it appeared to me.

I was struck with the extreme courtesy and kindness of the French. Once in London I wished to ask the direction to some place and stepped into a counting-house and with all the politeness I possessed, made my request. The pompous little god of the establishment, with no more expression in his face than in that of a marble statue, looked at me as it seemed for some minutes and then blurted out, “Do you take this for an intelligence office?” I was so completely whipped that I had not a word to reply and got out of the door as quickly as possible. In France, whether from the blue blouses or the exquisites, I never received anything but the most delightful courtesy. They not only directed me, but more frequently offered to go and show me the way. Manners make the man, and as the men, so will the nation be.

While in Europe we went everywhere with our guides and guide books until we were weary and surfeited with sight-seeing. I am no artist, still I do not like to be considered quite a muff in regard to art works. Some artists are so conceited as to think that manufacturers of art alone are capable judges of it. A man can have an excellent idea of a well-fitting suit though he never touched a pair of scissors or a needle, why not of painting, though he never smelled paint or handled a brush?

I know this, however, that we saw enough of the old masters to last us for this world and the next, flaming daubs of color, plump madonnas, fat babies and gorgeous fleshy angels with wings. I never could understand why angels should be provided with wings, unless their excursions are confined to our atmosphere, and they never get beyond our earthly region. Christians attack materialists for their lack of the spiritual, but if there is anything more materialistic than is found in the Christian religious descriptions of heaven and heavenly beings, then I have been too much of a heathen to discover it. There is, however, this difference in the two kinds. The one is solid and real, based on facts, the other is fluorescent, fantastic, built of dreams.

Another thing we had enough of and that was church museums, and my wife begged of me not to mention church this, or church that, to her again. We were constantly asked, “Have you been to such a church, seen such a painting or piece of sculpture? Did you hear the music in such a church?” Not a word about the worship. Some ancient writer has said that the churches were first adorned so as to attract the heathen. That may be the case still, as probably many Christian heathen now go to them, but as I am only a Barbarian heathen I certainly was not attracted or pleased. Why the house of God, the place of prayer and spiritual worship, should be turned into a curiosity shop, art gallery, a museum for relics, or as a charnel house be profaned with dead men’s bones, is something I am too ignorant to explain. There seems to be a blasphemous incongruity in all this to my untrained mind. Religious worship seemed to be but a showy performance and the churches, places of amusement, all to please the senses. Frequently as we entered a church a priest would be having some service before an altar, paid to mumble by the hour, with a few old women or crippled men in front or rather at his back. These seemed to be the only people in church except on gala days. Our guide, also a priest, would take us from chapel to alcove and point out all the curious things, and passing within a few feet of the performer chatted as gaily as if he was chief showman expecting a pour boire, as he was. It all went on as a matter of business and reminded me of a Hindu temple where the priest is muttering prayers before an idol, while the people are chattering, buying and selling around him. The only difference, the one was in Europe and the other in India; the one more grand and beautiful than the other. The spirit and show of idolatry was the same. Is it any wonder that men become irreligious, infidels, when they see all this insincerity, hypocrisy, the heartless form and ceremonies in pretense of worshiping the Almighty? It is impossible for thinking men to be such fools as to suppose that God is pleased with all this parade and show.

A Frenchman summed up the matter thus: “The people, that is the masses, need some serious amusement and there is nothing so innocent and harmless as religion, so let them enjoy it.” An Italian said: “If you want to find real religious life in the Catholic church, Rome is the last place in which to seek for it. Religious faith has died out of the Italian mind.” The French as a people have thrown away their religious performance, not faith, as they probably never had any faith in it, and could not have done otherwise as thinking beings with the spurious article offered them, but the Italians are head over ears in their religious galas and carnivals as a pleasant pastime. There is not a more idolatrous, religiously frivolous nation on earth than the Italian.

They prove the truth of the statement that where religious ceremonials predominate there is an absence of morality and the highest spiritual life.

Newman in 1832 wrote: “Rome, the mightiest monster, has as yet escaped on easier terms than Babylon. Surely, it has not yet drunk out the Lord’s cup of fury nor expiated the curse. And then again this fearful Apocalypse occurs to my mind. Amid the obscurities of that Holy Book one doctrine is clear enough, the ungodliness of Rome, and further its destined destruction. That destruction has not yet overtaken it; therefore it is in store. I am approaching a doomed city.” Did he tell the truth, or did he afterward fall into error when he became a cardinal of that same Rome?

The Roman church is but a huge excrescence, an abnormal fungus, supported perhaps by an unseen slender stem of truth. Its greatness compels our wonder and astonishment. Strip this church of its grand architecture, its fine art, its beautiful music, its gorgeous ceremonies, and there would be little left of it, and that little, its creed and outrageous assumption, would command scant respect from a rational intelligence.

I could not help asking myself frequently: What would Jesus say if he were to visit these churches? If he drove the changers of money and the sellers of doves from the ancient temple, what would he not do in these modern places of luxury, show and tips?

He never built a church or gave a hint about one. He had nothing to do with reliquaries, feretories, calices, crosiers, crosses, pyxes, monstrances, chasubles, capes, embroidered stoles, altar antependiums or silk banners. As a philanthropist, a lover of men, he went about doing good among the poor and needy. What would he say to the vast expenditure of money on immense structures, receptacles for statues, idols, paintings, ornaments, relics, when the poor all around them are starving, not only for the bread of life but for crusts for the body? What about the high salaried church officials, from the Pope and archbishops down, when Jesus had not where to lay his head? Are all these followers of Jesus? They may be, but a long way behind.

The best of the sermons Jesus ever preached was from a fisherman’s boat at the water’s edge to a multitude seated on the ground of the shore. He had no vestry into which to retire, no clerical garments, no ornamented pulpit, no pompous processions, no trained choir, no incense or perfumery, but an abundance of good things for the souls of men. He evidently was not a caterer to the sight or senses of the people, but aimed to reach their hearts with the truth.

Let any one read the advertisements of what is to occur in some of the big churches. No mention is made of the religious part, but of the selections from some famous operas, the performance of a brilliant mass, the presence of some noted opera singers, who, from the play houses on week days, take their parts in the churches on Sundays—are the main objects of attraction. The worship of God seems to be a secondary affair, as entirely unworthy of notice. The church busies itself with architecture, painted windows, vestments, surpliced choirs, splendid and impressive services, which appeal to the senses of the flesh, while it becomes dulled to the great pressing sins of the individual and the great wrongs of society.

Let there be museums, art galleries, opera houses and music halls, but there should be no mixing up of the services of God with the pleasures of the world, so that when a heathen like myself happens to go to church, he need not become confused and have to ask the guide if he has not come to the wrong place.

The inconsistency is not all, but the outrageous, sinful incongruity to an honest man, of all these forms and shows, is that the people taking part in them appear as if they were playing a sharp trick on the Almighty in trying to make Him believe they are worshiping Him, when all they are doing is to please themselves. This reminds me of the Romish priests in southern India substituting an image of the virgin for that of Krishna. When remonstrated with, the priests replied that the people did not know the difference, and the virgin would get all the worship. I cannot help thinking that there is no necessity for a man to be a trickster or a hypocrite, even if he be a Christian.

CHAPTER XXXII.

At last we were homeward bound, having “done” Europe, Turkey, Egypt, and seen various objects of interest in Bombay.

It gave me the greatest satisfaction that my wife was delighted with my home, our home. We had made many purchases, and for several months, as we were in no hurry to end this great pleasure, we were busy in unpacking and arranging our treasures. One of our chief delights was in the large stock of excellent books added to my already quite extensive library. I had always delighted in books, and those of the best authors on every variety of subjects. It is a gratification to find so many different views, even on the same subject, and one can appreciate the wise saying, “It is one of the special dispensations of an all-wise Providence that every plank has two sides, and that no man is able to see both sides at once.”

When in trouble enough to crush life out of me, I resorted to my library, and when despised and shunned by those around me I found never-failing friends and companions in my books, and pleasure in my flowers, so that I could well appreciate the beautiful lines of Lander:

“The flowers my guests, the birds my pensioners,

Books my companions and but few besides.”

I have been an omnivorous devourer of books, and cannot enumerate them. Sydney Smith, when asked of the books he had read, replied, “I cannot tell you a thing about them, neither can I catalogue the legs of mutton I have eaten, and which have made me the man I am.” What now greatly pleased me was that my wife also was a great reader, not of the flippant, superficial stuff, but of the more substantial sort, so that with our mutual tastes and an abundant supply of books, we were a world to ourselves, and society was not a necessity to us. She knew enough of India to be aware that those not in the ring or clique of the civil or military services were tabooed as not in society. This prejudice or class pride is something I never could comprehend.

This is a queer, mad, man-made world though Providence has provided the materials.

It is amusing to watch the antics of society. Once, on a train, two young officers traveling third-class to save money, at a station just before they reached their journey’s end, slipped into a first-class compartment to save appearance, and make their friends think they traveled first-class. This was but an innocent deception compared to that of an officer in high position who always went second class, yet signed a declaration on honor, that he traveled first-class, and so got his first-class allowance.

Society has a horror of anything not first-class in India. It will pinch and pare in private, that it may spread its tail feathers like a peacock in public. The Stoics had a belief that the peacock was created solely for its tail, and these society folk may have the same notion about themselves. I have known a woman, a lady, cut down the wages of her half-starved servants, and squabble over the price of some cheap vegetables, who would put down a large subscription for a testimonial to some swell whom she had never seen or cared a pin about.

We, that is, my wife and I, had never spoken of my Eurasian descent, yet I could but feel that she was conscious of its disadvantages. Who could be in India, among its Christian people, only for a few months, without seeing the upturned noses of refined, Christian ladies and gentlemen, when a reference was made to any one who had been touched with the racial tar brush?

“But why the——do you always bring this up?” some one may ask. I don’t bring it up, for it is always up with me.

“For that dye is on me,

Which makes my whitest part black.”

I might as well be asked why I carry my nasal organ about with me, or if people should ever be hitting this facial protuberance of mine, why should I take offense? Even a worm will turn if trod upon. When we were on our train in the railway station in Bombay, a lady looked into our apartment, and remarked to her friend: “There’s an Eurasian in there, we will find another place.”

At one of the stations where we stopped for breakfast, as soon as I took my seat at table, a man, I only knew he was a padri by his clothes, arose and went to the other side. He probably, the next Sunday in his service, read, “Since God hath made of one blood,” etc., but this was in his prayer-book, and what he did at table was of a weekday color. In company, at times when others were introduced with a smile and a shake of the hand, some were so afflicted with frigid faces and stiffness in their necks that I scarcely got a smile or a nod.

I would not lisp a word about this if it were not for their passing as people of culture and refinement, and more, or worse, as Christians.

While away from India, I almost forgot that I was born under a curse, but I was so forcibly reminded of it on the steamer, returning, and on reaching Bombay, that my old feelings came back with renewed vigor, more so on account of my wife. I endeavor to act like a man. I will not say gentleman,—as that seems to be a special society made article of which I think God is ashamed and disowns—and with courtesy and kindness, but I am instantly and always in India, made to feel that I am an intruder, as I really am. But who was the author of my intrusion and the cause of my confusion? Therein is the sting and bitterness.

Instead of asking why I, or we, cannot let this subject drop, should not you, high-toned merchants, ladies, gentlemen, teachers, preachers, Christians, followers of Jesus, all of you, show that your practice has some relation to your creeds and professions? My experience had taught me what to expect, and I was prepared for anything that might happen, even the worst, and this nearly always did occur. A man may rough it and bear any amount of brunt for himself, but if he has a particle of soul of manhood in him, as a husband, he cannot bear the thought of a slight or a snub to his wife without taking offense, especially when he is the innocent cause of it.

We were a kingdom by ourselves, and supremely happy, yet I knew we must see people and I was in constant dread. The time soon came.

There were to be some sports, and all the station were expected to be present. Even society likes a crowd to look on, though the unregenerate residuum are kept outside the ropes. I thought this a good opportunity to make our first public appearance, so in our phaeton, drawn by a pair of the best steppers in the station, we were driven to the parade ground. I saw that our coming excited considerable curiosity, and to tell the truth, I was not the least displeased at this. A number of my acquaintances came up to greet me, for I had some friends, and don’t wish it to be understood that because there are lots of cads and snobs, that I think all the better class of people belong to these grades. I was proud of this recognition. I have always had pride as every one should have, and mine, myself being the best judge of it, was an honest kind, based on my good intentions and self respect as a man. I never forgot the saying of Mr. Percy, “Charles, be a man.” He was a man who hated any false way, a manly, noble man, pure and clean, true as steel, and one in whom Jesus, or any other good person, would have been delighted as a companion, a friend without guile. To be a man, to have subdued all the baseness that pertains to the flesh, and to have the honesty, purity, courage and nobility that belongs to real manhood, is what it seems to me to be Godlike. When one has reached that condition he has obtained what the religious call “salvation,” and is prepared for the life to come. There are so many pigmies—no that is not the word—as they are only pigmies in goodness, but giants in evil—coarse-minded, foul-worded, sordid and base in everything, deceivers and seducers, living in the slime and filth of vice. They are the eels and slugs of humanity, living in the mud, while the pure and good are like the delicate trout that can live only in the springs at the source of the streams, but here I am going astray again.

I said that I had pride. I was proud of my wife and the way she received my friends. There was not a woman present who was her superior in appearance, manners or dress, and I knew, with her spirit, she could hold her own with the best of them, and I was not mistaken. As others came up to our company a white-haired, white-faced, flashily dressed swell, with an air of self-importance, putting his one-eyed glass to his eye, bowed to my wife with the remark, “Pardon me, but doncher know, I think I must have met you before.” This was said with a bold, patronizing air, with a London cockney tone and accent. My wife not at all disconcerted, with a laugh in her voice, replied, “Oh, yes, Mr. Smith, I remember you well. It was years ago, in Roorki, at a croquet party, when you told me that if I preferred that Eurasian I could do so. And to show you that I made use of the liberty you gave me, allow me to introduce you—Mr. Smith, Mr. Japhet, my husband.”

I would rather have lost the value of my best horse than to have missed that scene. It was so sudden—a flash of Irish wit. Mr. Smith scarcely nodded, though I made as graceful a bow as I could. His white face turned scarlet, and he seemed to be stricken dumb with all eyes upon him. I think he would have blessed his stars if the stand had broken down at the risk of killing a score of people, if a woman had fainted or a horse had rushed among us, but nothing happened.

I think it was not her words alone, but the sight of me, “That Eurasian,” one who had claimed to be the son of Mr. Smith, the Commissioner. This seemed to give a paralysis to his mentality. For a few moments, an age it seemed, he stood gazing as if trying to get the remnants of himself together, he, slightly bowing, turned away with his blushes thick upon him. I saw at a glance of the company that my wife had made her first innings with great eclat. There is nothing like winning at the start. It gives courage to the winner and commands respect from others. I need not say that I felt intensely pleased with my wife, not only for the independent, capable spirit she showed, but for her brave recognition of me, her husband. How else could I feel? I must also say that I was greatly pleased with the utter discomfiture of my white-faced brother, Mr. Smith. Some very goody-good people might say that such a feeling was wicked, but I cannot help that. I confess to being a little wicked at times, but my wickedness is not of the low, debased kind. I despise stealing, and yet I would delight in tripping up a thief who was trying to escape. In the same spirit, I am delighted when impudence and arrogance takes a tumble. The theory is, that when you are smitten on one cheek you should turn the other also for a smite, but when is it ever put in practice? I doubt if it is practicable. I know that if I had acted in that way, I would not only have had both my cheeks knocked away, but would have lost my head as well. I have a theory of my own, which is this, especially in dealing with Christians. They always teach the turning the other cheek doctrine, though they never act upon it. Yet, as a man of honor, I am bound to take them at their word, that they always do as they wish to be done by. So, when any one of them hits me on the one cheek, I must logically believe that, as a gentleman and a Christian, he wishes me to do unto him as he did to me, and I give him as good in return, and, to show my generosity, go him a little better as interest on his investment. How am I to do differently?

If, when he states his doctrine, I should doubt his word, he might say I was no gentleman, so when I take him to mean just what he says, he certainly should not find fault with what he gets.

I know there is much of preaching that becomes extorted, tired out, completely exhausted before it reaches practice. It is strange what different notions there are. Once a prominent Christian defrauded me out of quite a sum of money that I had loaned to assist him. He was not poor, or I could have overlooked the debt. After waiting, running and dunning him until my patience was exhausted, my temper raised to welding heat, and I was on the verge of using, not the Queen’s English, but rather that of King George the Fourth, this very religious debtor of mine said, “Mr. Japhet, I am afraid you are not showing a Christian spirit.” The cheek of this pious cheat and thief, talking “Christian spirit” to me! I scarcely need say that I gave him a little of his personal biography that he probably did not relate to his family or friends. There is a great deal of what the English call “rot” in all this pious twaddle among some religious people that is repugnant to my taste, heathen though I be.

I accept what the noble Lord Tennyson has said, “I am Calvinist enough to have a willingness to be damned for the glory of God, but I am not willing to be damned to satisfy the hatred, pride and hypocrisy of men no better than I am.”

One morning one of the headmen of my villages came to my house in a great state of excitement. It appeared that an ofiun walla sahib had come into the district and had sent his police to take away a number of the cultivators. To understand the matter myself, I went without any delay, and found that some of the best men had been taken, for what purpose the people did not know. I went several miles further, where I found a large tent under a tree. In front, at a table, sat a European surrounded by a number of policemen. Before him were several hundred natives seated in rows upon the ground. I sent my card and asked for an interview, which was granted. I explained who I was, that I was the owner of some villages, that as some of my ryots had been taken I had come to make inquiries. He replied that he was the agent of the Opium Department, and had been ordered by Government to come into the district and arrange for the cultivation of opium. He said it would be a good thing for the people, as he would make contracts and give advances on the crop. I made no objection to his statements, knowing well the absolute and despotic power of a Government officer, and that any argument in opposition from me would defeat my purpose; that it was the best policy for me to be as docile as possible. I wished to get my people released, and I well knew that if I showed any fight he would exercise his power and I would inevitably be defeated. The Hindu proverb is a good one. “Soft words are better than harsh; the sea is attracted by the cool moon, and not by the hot sun.”

After hearing all his statements, I replied that I was trying some experiments with new kinds of seeds, in the rotation of crops, deep ploughing, and in the introduction of imported cattle, and that it would greatly interfere with my plans if the people were diverted from them. He at first demurred, because his men had told him that there was very rich land in the villages best suited for opium; that he would like also to experiment in his line. This he said with a smile, as if taking me on my own ground, that a few patches of poppy would not interfere with my purposes. I then went on my knees, metaphorically speaking, and begged him as a special favor that he would grant my request. My earnest pleading as a suppliant must have touched him, for he at once said, “Mr. Japhet, as a special favor, under the circumstances you have stated, I will release your men, though it may make discontent among the people of other villages.” He then gave an order for my ryots to be called, and they went away greatly relieved, and as they afterwards told me, were very grateful for what I had done. After thanking the officer for his kindness, I took my departure.

I have often thought of this incident, and to tell the truth, have been ashamed of my cringing attitude in order to carry out my purpose. But what else could I have done? When one, unarmed, meets a brigand who points a pistol at his breast, even the bravest of men will deem it best to surrender and deliver the contents of his pockets, expressing thanks to his assailant for his courtesy in not discharging his weapon. It is very easy to talk about courage when there is no danger in front of you.

The natives of India are accused of being cringing and truculent, of being invariable liars and deceivers. How could they be anything else? They have been subjects of tyranny and deception for a thousand years or more, when not only their little property, but their lives, were at the absolute disposal of their rulers and the robber minions of Government, so they have become inevitably what they are.

As I left the presence of the Sahib and had reached the road, a rather elderly Hindu of fine appearance threw himself on his knees in front of me, and putting his arms around my legs, he touched his forehead upon my boots several times. This was done so quickly that I had not time to check him. Then lifting up his head and still on his knees, he held up a paper in one hand and five rupees in the other. He said that the ofiun walla sahib had made him sign a contract by which he was to cultivate a certain amount of land for opium, and had given him five rupees as an advance on the crop. He said that it was contrary to his religion, against his caste and his dastur or custom to raise opium; that he wanted to raise food for his bal batchas, children, and begged of me to intercede with the sahib and get his contract annulled. He pleaded most piteously. I lifted him up and talked with him. I told him that the sahib was a Government officer, while I was only a zemindar, and that if I went to him he might become angry and double the contract. I certainly was disposed to help him, but I knew that if I interceded for him I would have hundreds of others at my feet, and there would be no end of a hullabaloo, and the sahib would have his own way in the end and make it even worse for the people. “Why awaken sleeping leopards?” “It is no use to sharpen thorns,” are common Hindu proverbs.

I learned afterwards that numbers went to the Collector of the District, who was as much of an autocrat and a despot in his way as was the other. He always resented any one foraging in his pasture. He wrote an indignant letter to the opium agent, and the latter replied that if the collector would attend to his own business he might find enough to do.

Such was the commencement of opium growing in that district. There were about a million people in the district, and I doubt if any one of them had ever seen a poppy head until it was raised under the forced contracts of the opium agent. I was well acquainted with the district, had traveled everywhere in it, and had never seen a sign of opium either among the people or in the fields; and I question if there ever had been an ounce of opium used unless in medicine given by the doctors. The people did not want it in any shape, either for use or cultivation.

Why then was its cultivation forced upon these heathen, as Christians delight to call them? Simply and solely for revenue, for the money there was in it. The contracts were of the strictest kind, and the slightest violation of them would make a man a criminal. The plots of land were measured and recorded, the methods of preparing the soil, the time of sowing the seed, the collection of the juice and the saving of the refuse, were all minutely detailed. Every particle of the plant worth anything had to be delivered to Government under pain of fine and imprisonment, and for all his labor and anxiety the ryot got only a pittance, while the Government received a profit of nine hundred per cent. No one ever raised opium under these contracts but at a loss compared with what he could have received from his usual crops.

There was no local market for the opium when produced. Probably not a pound a year would have been purchased by the inhabitants if left to themselves. In order to facilitate the use of a drug of which the people were happily ignorant and did not want, the Government licensed men in different places to sell it, and even then there were no sales. To begin the trade these licensees were then ordered to give away samples, and so by degrees the people were educated in the opium habit. In a few years quite a number became confirmed opium users, and the evil, like the virus of a disease inoculated in the blood, spread over the district with its usual demoralizing effect.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

It was the same with liquor. For years I never saw a drunken man in the district. There were no spirits made, none to be obtained and none used. It is contrary to the religion of the better classes of Hindus to have anything to do with liquor in any manner, and the Muhamedan religion prohibits its use entirely. The people were in blissful ignorance of the use and effects of liquor. Along came the abkari agent of the Revenue Department of Government who saw a great field for his operations and he at once arranged for the erection of four distilleries. Natives in the Government service, both Hindu and Muhamedan were placed in charge. At first the distilleries were idle, but by sending out agents to offer big prices for sugar cane refuse, the natives were induced to bring the stuff for sale. Then the liquor was not used and the same methods were employed as for the introduction of opium. Places were licensed and liquor at first given away for the encouragement of trade and the benefit of the Government revenue. The result was that in a few years there were drunkards, and the nights were made hideous by their revelry. Idleness, poverty and crime increased. Broils destroyed the good order of the communities. The Muhamedan officer in charge told me that every year there was a large increase in the amount of spirits produced and the annual reports of Government were exultant over the increased revenue from this department. One of the members of the Board of Revenue, an Englishman, in one of his tours of examination boasted of the increasing success of the liquor traffic among the natives and the consequent advantage to Government. A man might as well boast of his seduction of innocence, of his robbery of widows or of defrauding the simple-minded. But what of the officers of Government, intelligent men, calling themselves Christians, representing a civilized Christian people, deliberately planning a scheme with the all-powerful, despotic, brute force of Government to debauch and degrade the ignorant, simple-minded people of India? The devil himself, if there be one, as the Christians devoutly believe, must have made hell ring with laughter when he saw what these Christian officers of a Christian nation were doing to help him damn the world.

It may be asked why did the people submit to such tyranny and raise opium? Only an innocent, unacquainted with the power and methods of the Indian Government would ask such a question.

What else could these helpless people do but to go when seized by the policemen of the opium agent, and to take the contracts forced upon them? The Collector of the District was snubbed by the agent for his interference and when he referred the matter to the Government of the Province, he was told in polite, but very emphatic terms, that he was not to meddle with things outside his own department. As this is a true story I could name the place, the year, and give the names of all the officers concerned, but as such methods of raising revenue were no secret, why be personal? A European, writing of the Eskimos, says: “Our civilization, our missions and our commercial products have reduced its material condition, its morality and its social order to a state of such melancholy decline that the whole race seems doomed to destruction.” Would not this be applicable to India, especially as regards the introduction of European vices?

Why did the natives continue to cultivate opium after the Government pressure had been removed? Because there was a little ready money in it. They are so desperately impoverished that the offer of money is a temptation not to be resisted. Nothing is so attractive to a native as an advance of money, peshgi. He will often make a ruinous bargain or take a losing contract if he can get a prepayment, trusting to fate to help him out in the end. Though heathen, they are not more able to resist temptation, when money is in question, than their Christian fellow men. I learned when in England that the business of a publican was considered degrading and disgraceful, yet there were many church members, both Catholic and Protestant, engaged in it.

Such is the power and worship of wealth that even Her Majesty, the Queen, and her eminent advisers make peers of brewers and distillers, and it is not wholly a concealed secret that some prominent ecclesiastics hold shares in breweries and distilleries. If such things occur in the civilized Christian light of England, is it to be wondered at, that the wretched natives of India are tempted by money?

I frequently took pleasure in tantalizing the natives connected with the distilleries for having to do with a business contrary to their religion and customs. They replied that it was utterly hateful to them in every way, but as servants of Government they had to obey orders or lose their situations, and this would be poverty and starvation to them and their families. A Tahsildar was in charge of one of the distilleries. I said to him, “You are a strict Mussalman, you say your daily prayers, you rigidly fast during all the Ramazan, and yet you superintend the manufacture of spirits forbidden by your Koran.” He replied, “I have been in the Government service over thirty years, and have to obey its orders. Should I refuse, I would receive my dismissal and this would greatly reduce my pension on which I retire soon. I am helpless in the matter and compelled to have charge of a business, of which I am ashamed and more than that, every day when I go to the distillery I am afraid that the curse of the Prophet may come upon me for doing what is contrary to my religion.”

If the natives of India were asked about the liquor and opium business, nine-tenths of them, heathen as they are, would say “abolish it at once.” Why then is it continued? For the sake of the revenue. Were there no gain from it, the Government would not tolerate it for a day. The most detestable feature of the whole matter is the philanthropic, for-the-glory-of-God air, that the Government supporters assume, when they try to uphold this crime against a conquered and helpless, ignorant people. One can have some respect for an outspoken, frank man, though he be wicked, but I have yet to learn that a truckling hypocrite has ever been regarded with anything but contempt. If the Government of India would frankly say that it didn’t care a blanked ha’penny about the morals, happiness or eternal welfare of the people of India or China, but what it wanted was revenue from opium and spirits, it would be telling the truth and one might respect its frankness, though detesting its principles. When it claims that it is cultivating opium and fostering the liquor traffic out of pure philanthropy, it is presuming too much on the capacity of human credulity. The statement that if India does not raise opium, China will do it for herself, or that India should supply the pure drug, otherwise the Chinese would get it badly adulterated, is simply twaddle of the thinnest kind, such as any villain might use as an excuse for his wrong-doing and none but a knave or an idiot would accept.

Being such as I am, I have great sympathy for these poor, oppressed people. I have seen the constantly increasing degradation of India, through opium and liquor. Year by year it is becoming worse and worse through the fostering help of this so-called Christian Government. Years ago, one might travel through the length and breadth of the country, and not see a man drunk with opium or liquor, now he can see and hear them everywhere, and the end is not yet. The seed has been sown, and the harvests are coming.

Every native, and all Europeans, who are not in the service, and have not their own selfish interests at stake, will lay the blame where it properly belongs, on the Government. All the blessings that England has conferred upon India, will never outweigh this curse of drunkenness, directly caused by Government authority.

As I had an experience in regard to the cultivation of opium, so I had to thwart a plan for the introduction of liquor. Anyone could see, at a glance, that these villagers of mine were prosperous, and had money to spend; so the greedy eyes of the agents of the Abkari Department did not overlook them. One of these men, in one of the villages, by his oily tongue, and the offer of a big rent, had nearly obtained the lease of a house, for the sale of liquor and opium. This was at once reported to me, and I was soon upon the ground. The opportunity afforded me a chance for a temperance lecture. The people were all collected one evening under the big tree in front of the school-house. I explained to them that their ancestors had never used opium or liquor; that their religion was opposed to the use of these things; that it would be a violation of their caste and custom, to degrade them all, and make them mlecchas or outcasts; that the use of them would be a waste of money. I portrayed all this with explanations, and begged of them that they would not degrade themselves, and destroy the good name they had got among the surrounding people. I wanted to touch their pride, as well as to encourage their feeling of moral responsibility. I saw that I had gained my point, and might have rested, but I reminded them of what I had done for their improvement and happiness, and as they well knew that I had never done anything to their hurt, they should trust me still, but if they should allow the sale or use of these injurious things, contrary to my wishes, I would have less interest in helping them in the future. Instead of this method, I might have given an order, forbidding the sale, and it would have been obeyed, but it was not my way of treating these people. I wanted them to take the responsibility, and to make them feel they had done the work, not I, by an order.

After the assembly broke up, the man who had lost his chance of getting a big rent for his house, stopped to ask some questions. “If the use of opium and liquor were so bad, why did the Sircar, who was the mabap to all the people, urge and compel them to raise opium, build distilleries and license places for the sale of sharab? Was the Sircar so bad as to be willing to injure the people? He had heard in the bazar of the station, that all the sahibs drank liquor, and that the khitmutgar of one of the Collectors had said that his sahib would often be drunk after dinner. All the sahib log were Esai log, Jesus people. If the Christian religion was the true one, then how could these Christians make opium and liquor for sale, and use them if it was wrong to do so?” A great question, as difficult to answer, as it is to excuse Jesus for making wine; and make an apology for Paul, recommending Timothy to take wine for his stomach’s sake. It is an unpleasant task to have to apologize for the wrong-doing of Christians. I explained that the sahibs were only men, and many of them often did wrong, which was no excuse for others. If other people should steal, it was no reason why he should become a thief, no matter who they were.

Why should he not ask such questions? They are asked daily throughout India. The occurrences in the European households, the tiffs between husbands and wives are freely discussed in the bazars, and are as well known as if they had been performed in the street in open daylight. The people may be heathen, and uneducated, yet they know a great deal more than they are credited with.

There was no more trouble after that about the culture of opium, or the sale of liquor in the villages. The people saw enough of the evil effects in the communities around them, where the government had established liquor and opium dens, to convince them that they had happily escaped a great calamity and nuisance.

Not long after this, one of the villages had an object lesson, when I happened to be present. A sweeper had been away to a village, attending some festival among his brethren, and returned in a great state of hilarity. At first he was only amusing, then began to take liberties, which the people resented. In return he gave them gali, pouring upon them the foulest abuse. I suggested, they tie him to a tree, and drench him with water, which they did till he was sober, a great crowd in attendance, to whom I gave a temperance lecture, with the subject before me. The next day the village committee came to me to inquire what punishment should be given to the man for his foul, abusive words. I suggested they put him on a donkey, with his face tail-wards, and as a dead vulture had been brought to me, from under one of the trees, that the skin of this stinking bird should be put on the sweeper as a headdress. He was soon in position, with his regalia upon him, and the donkey was led up and down the streets for an hour, while the crowd, including many from the other villages, for the report of the coming fun soon spread, made all possible sport with their victim, while the boys pelted the sinner with bits of earth and rotten vegetables. This I considered sufficient for the time, but the committee decided, that if he, or any one else, should commit a like offense, they should be tied up, drenched with water until sober, and then be flogged. I never heard of a case of drunkenness in any of the villages afterwards. The people became a law unto themselves in opposition to the philanthropic government that tried to make them drunkards.

Life with us went on with the monotony usual in an India station. From month to month scarcely anything, not even the unexpected, happened. The military officers were longing for a break out somewhere, no matter with whom, the French on the south-east, the Russians on the north-west, or with the border tribes, so long as it would give them something to do in their line. Their trade was war, and war they wanted, something to take the place of the everlasting drill, and to break up the tiresome routine of cantonment work. The members of the civil service had their daily grists to grind, and like toilers on a tread-mill, were glad when the days were ended. Though excluded somewhat, I could hear the murmurs of discontent. Few seemed to have any real interest in their work. They considered themselves as exiles driven away from home by necessity, to become naukars, and their great hope was in furloughs and the prospect of retirement. As I was at home I made the best of it, and my wife joined me heartily in promoting our mutual happiness. We had our books, magazines and papers, which gave us an abundance of enjoyment. Our large garden gave us recreation and pleasure, while our villages gave us work.

We often spent days with our friends, the villagers. My wife became the mama to all the women and girls and they were very quick to profit by her teachings. She visited them in their houses, criticised their ways of keeping house, and advised in regard to making their homes pleasant and comfortable. She showed them how to make various cheap articles. Soon all hands were busy in trying to excel each other in having the cleanest and best furnished house. There were no zananas, and the women had become so accustomed to seeing me at our assemblies that they freely welcomed me in company with my wife. It may appear very insignificant, but it has been one of the delights of my life to recall the great improvements made in the habits of these simple-minded villagers. The cost was so little and the results very great, showing what a little teaching and encouragement can do. Cleanliness became a pride, as well as a habit. If some kept their houses clean, others did not dare to do otherwise, if not from choice, for fear of remarks.

The houses were, however, not satisfactory, and my wife suggested that we build a model house. I selected a spot in a central place, and built one upon it as cheaply as possible, with a view to substantial use and comfort. It had two rooms, a small veranda in front, and an enclosed yard at the back, where the cooking could be done and various articles be stored. The walls were plastered with clay by the women with their skill at such work. Then came the furnishing. This model house, matted, charpoyed, stooled and cupboarded, with pictures cut from illustrated papers upon the walls, was good enough for a king, and probably much neater than what some of the lords in England not many years ago enjoyed. When completed, at one of our evening assemblies I called attention to it, and promised to give ten rupees to every one who would build a house like it. I explained to them that by joining together they could mould the brick, thatch the roofs, and do all the work themselves, without any outside help—all to work together like busy bees.

I suggested to the committee that the ground plot of the village should be enlarged, so as to allow of back yards, with alleys between the yards. This done, the work went on apace, and soon a number of houses were built. There was an abundance of grass on the borders of the fields. I engaged a mat-maker from the city, and set him to instruct the women as well as men to make mats. At first some hesitated, as it was not according to their caste to do such work, but they soon fell in, and it was not long before every house had mats for its floors. Many of the people had slept on the ground from sheer laziness or custom. I had a carpenter make same cheap charpoys and then thick mats were made for them. It was a mat-making community for a while, as no one wished to be outdone by his neighbor. Then came the making of rude shelves, on which they could place their trinkets, and soon every house had such a cupboard. Then little low stools, with twine grass bottoms, on which they could sit cross-legged if they chose, instead of on the floor as formerly. The desire for these new things became contagious, and their eagerness gave us great amusement.

My wife had offered to give the twine for the mats, the wood for the shelves, and the pictures for the walls, and still better than all that, she would give a looking-glass like the one she used, for each house when it was complete. This last offer took the cake, as every Eve’s daughter of them was bound to have a looking-glass, and gave her men folk no rest until they had built a house. I might have planned for days and nights together, before I could have caught on such a trick as effective as that. It was a woman’s instinct that did it. My advice and offer of ten rupees were nowhere compared to the looking-glass for the erection of new houses.

The result of our model house suggestion was that within a year there was not an old house in all the village. Each one was in line, matted, shelved and pictured, and last but not least, judging by the expressive faces and appearance of the women, each house had its looking-glass.

My other villages, seeing what was going on, became extremely jealous, and their committees called on me and asked what they had done to turn the hearts of the sahib and mem sahib away from them—to favor one village and not the others. I was greatly pleased with this sign of life, and after letting them talk a while, as each member of the committee had to tell his story of their regard for me, how anxious they were to please me, and how heartbroken they were to think that I had forgotten them.

I asked what they wanted. Were they willing to build new houses? And they all responded yes, as with one voice. I then promised to do the same for their villages as I had done for the other, when they fairly embraced me, and departed with protestations of love for me and the mem sahib. They had not left her out, for they had probably been well instructed before they left home, as they very politely asked, “And the looking-glasses too, mem sahib?” She responded, with a laugh, “Yes, to every house a looking-glass.” Soon we had a model house in each village, and for days I was occupied in staking out the ground for houses, alleys and yards.

Before another year all the old houses had disappeared, the rubbish removed and everything was spick and span new and clean, a wonderful change compared to the filthy places formerly occupied.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

One evening my wife came into our rest house, from the other villages where the houses were nearly finished, and I saw that she was greatly pleased at something that had occurred. She said that the women had all come to her and almost their only question was about the looking-glasses. She asked, “Suppose there are no looking-glasses in Calcutta, then what am I to do?” Almost a wail of despair went up from the crowd. “O mem sahib, mem sahib! you must not say that, you promised and we know you won’t break your promise.” “All right,” she replied, “I will get you the glasses if I have to go to Wilayat for them,” and they were all as happy as some little girls would be at the promise of dolls from Paris. Bundles of twine, loads of pictures and boxes of looking-glasses were duly given and all were happy for many a day.

The greatest aid to me in making improvements was the village committees, each composed of five men, the majority ruling. For the selection of these committees I had appointed annual election days when all the men over twenty years of age, were each allowed to cast a ballot for the man they wanted. On the morning of the election days the school teachers took their places apart and the men one by one went to them and got a ticket written, of the names they chose. These tickets were folded and the men slipped them into a closed box, a teacher checking the names of the voters in a list that had previously been made. The only collusion possible was with the teachers and they were strictly enjoined not to utter a word of suggestion but only to write the five names given to them. There was probably considerable electioneering beforehand and many an hour’s talk as they smoked their hookas, about the make-up of the new committee. There was considerable excitement over these elections and it increased year by year and made everybody feel that he was somebody, though he was only the village sweeper. There was great interest among the crowd at the close of the polls when the names of the candidates were read off and counted.

The committees thus chosen were clothed with authority and felt their responsibility. They acted with such discretion that I never heard a word of dissent against any action of theirs. This may be accounted for that there were no ranting babu pleaders among them and they had not learned the tricks and bribery of civilized people. They were very deliberate and assumed such a magisterial air and dignity, that could not be excelled by the judges of any High Court, and I do not doubt that their rulings were just as equitable. There was no Court of Appeals though the committees often came to me for advice and suggestions, but I never interfered after they had given their decisions, so that it became a saying amongst the people “The Committee has spoken,” as if nothing further was to be said or done. I had formed a set of rules which the committee executed. They settled all disputes, had charge of the tanks and fishing, looked after the drains and saw that the houses and streets were kept clean and in order. The system was one of self-government, and made the people think and act for themselves.

I had built only one tank near one of the villages. One day not long after the new houses in the other villages had been completed their committees came to me in a body. Their spokesman said that I had been very kind to them, that they did not wish to make any complaint and hoped I would not be angry with them for making another request, but as I had built a tank for one village from which its people had water for their fields and plenty of fish for food, they hoped that I, as their mabap, would also supply them with tanks. I asked if they would give the land. Certainly they would do this as they would make allotments of other fields to those occupying ground where the tanks would be placed. I gave them a favorable answer and received their hearty thanks. The tanks were soon dug, the people of the different villages, coming with their cattle and carts making gala days in helping each other. After the rains the tanks were stocked with fish which in a few years became very plentiful.

The villages were now in a most prosperous condition. I had insisted on their saving all the refuse and the soil became rich. My theory was that the man who impoverishes his land steals from his own pocket. There was an abundance of fuel from the trees that had been planted, so that the manure was not burned as formerly. There was a rotation of crops with different kinds of grain and vegetables. Every third year new seed was imported or got from other parts of India. Grass was grown which with the green stuff was preserved in silos so that there never was any scarcity of fodder. The silos were for the preservation of feed, what the manure pits were for the preservation of manure. The cattle were from imported stock and excellent, quite a contrast with the poor half-starved beasts of the surrounding villages.

I had quite a tussle with my friends on the milk and cow question. It was formerly the custom for them to let the calves run with the cows and no milk was procured. I insisted that the calves should not be allowed to go to their mothers even for a day after their births. The people said this was not the custom with their forefathers, that it was not possible, the cows would not give milk or allow themselves to be milked unless the calves were present. There was very near a rebellion. After reflection the committees quieted the rest, by saying that the sahib knew everything and should have his own way, which he had, with the result that the cows became as good milkers as on any dairy farm in Europe.

It was the custom when a calf died to stuff its skin with grass and every time the cow was milked this imitation calf was placed beside her.

I learned indirectly that I was extolled as a wonderful sahib, that I not only knew how to make lightning with a machine, but all about cows and how to make butter. I had thoroughly studied this latter subject during my foreign trip as well as about silos.

There was plenty of fruit from the trees that had been planted. The committee passed a rule that those appointed to gather the fruit should bring it to the Chibutra where at evening it was counted or weighed by the committee and each family given its portion.

The new houses were abodes of neatness, health and comfort, and each family took pride in keeping everything in good order. My wife instructed the women in various industries, among them making articles to adorn their houses and themselves, so that they were most willing to accede to her wishes. She gave them flower seeds and every house had its pots of flowers. The women instead of idling, were very busy in their household duties or carrying water for their flowers. The people from the surrounding country for miles came to see my villages as to a fair. It was something strange for them to see common natives enjoying so much health, comfort and pleasure and their admiration was a stimulant to the people.

I could but pity those around them living in poverty, squalor and filth, with constant sickness, whilst their landlords lived in cities, grasping everything they could from their miserable half-starved ryots.

There were several things from the absence of which we were blessed. There was not an accursed opium den, liquor shop or money-lender within our boundary, and I might add no oppressive, grasping zemindar. I had prevented these evils from the first and the committees insisted that no one should use opium or liquor; that no one should borrow money outside of their own circles, and passed a usury law that no one should charge more interest than six per cent per annum on pain of forfeiture of the amount loaned, so that these village committees, unlettered heathen, were considerably in advance of the great Government of India, that next to the twin curses of opium and liquor, fosters the other curse, the robbing of the poor by tolerating the incredible percentage of the money-lenders.

The Collector of the district in his cold weather tour, once encamped not far from one of the villages. The committee concluded to make up a present for the Barra Sahib. They collected vegetables, fruit, flowers, fish, milk and butter, quite a cart load. When well dressed they appeared before him, to his surprise and astonishment, as he afterwards told me, for he could not have got as good supplies from his own house and garden. This reception greatly pleased them, and he promised to pay them a visit on the following morning. Bright and early every one was at work. The clean streets were sprinkled, and all put on their gayest apparel. Nearly all went to the boundary to meet him, and followed him in procession with the village band in the lead. This band was quite a feature at our evening assemblies, melas and fairs. The instruments were all native, and the music was not such as is heard in the Grand Opera House in Paris, but it suited the people, so what more could be asked? The Collector was completely taken aback at the sight, and still more astonished when he saw the well built houses, every veranda adorned with flowers and the clean sprinkled streets. They escorted him to the Chibutra under the big tree, when he told them how pleased he was, and thanked them for the presents they had sent. The women were particularly happy when he complimented them on their appearance, the neatness of their houses, the beauty and variety of the flowers on their verandas. I was not aware of his going near the village, or I would have been present, but I was glad that the people had acted of their own accord and pleasure.

I have great faith in nature, that if man was not distorted by beliefs, traditions, customs, education and society, he would be as virtuous, honest and good as other animals; but that is another subject.

The committee sent me word of the Collector Sahib’s presence, so I went out to show him due respect as a loyal zemindar. The committee had a reason for my coming. The collector’s servants and camp followers had raided the gardens, fields and fruit trees, taking what they chose and refusing payment, as usual with them. Besides, some of them had nets and were catching loads of fish of all sizes. To excuse themselves they said they were the Barra Sahib’s servants, and wherever they went they took what they wanted and paid nothing. This was the truth, but did not make their robbery and insolence any more palatable to my people. On hearing this I told the committee to come with me to call on the sahib. I had not met him, as he was a new arrival in the station, and had not called on me for the probable reason that the cantonment magistrate—somewhat of a cad, always in debt to his servants and shop-keepers, having a lot of gambling IOU’s against him in the club at the end of every month—had dropped my name from the calling list which was in his charge, giving as a reason to some one that newcomers might not care to become acquainted with Eurasians. But then he was the second generation from a London tailor, and as some society expert has observed that it takes seven generations to make a gentleman, he was only two-sevenths of one, so no matter.

The Collector received me with great kindness. He told me of his public reception, how surprised and pleased he was, that the village was a paradise compared with others, that it was the model village of all he had ever seen. When about to take leave, I told him that the committee were outside the tent. We went out. They hesitated, expecting that I would talk for them, but I preferred to let them tell their own story. Their leader began by saying how glad their hearts had been made by his honor coming to them, that they were all his servants, that everything in the village was his, and they hoped his highness would not be offended if they said that some worthless fellows in his honor’s camp had gone into the fields and taken vegetables and fruit and had caught fish from the tank with nets which was against the rule, and given nothing in payment except gali, and threatened if they were reported to take much more. He told this with great effect in his own eloquent village language which would lose all its force by translation.

The Collector at once became very angry and calling his servants denounced them for committing robbery and disgracing him, and threatened that if any of them dared to go near the village again he would have them brought up and flogged. He offered to pay for the stuff stolen but the committee refused payment as they did not care for the value, but did not like the insolence and abuse. The Collector then thanked the committee for reporting the matter. He remarked to me that this probably happened wherever he went, and no one dared to report to him for fear of ill treatment. I replied that I had heard of men boasting that they liked to travel with Government officials, as it never cost them anything to live. He asked me about the villages and I gave him their history, of the fish supply in the tank and the rules about taking fish, not omitting the committee compelling Gulab, as a punishment, to eat the fish raw that he had caught, at which he was greatly amused. He afterwards made several visits to the village, calling upon me. We had some excellent fishing in the mornings at the tank, for he was one of Izaak Walton’s followers. On his return to the station he and his wife called on us, and we became the warmest friends, dining with each other frequently, in spite of the fellow who had charge of the calling list.

I had another experience soon after, that was not quite so pleasant. The time for the settlement or re-assessment of the village lands arrived, and I went out to look after my interests while the Settlement Officer was present. I had never met this man, but I knew all about him from a to zed. I called at his tent and sent in my card, when it came back written upon, “Please state your business.” Had I not known it before, this would have shown me at once that he was English, for this is one of their ways of showing their self-importance and of snubbing, as I never met it in any other class. I wrote that I was the zemindar of the village, and left him to infer what he chose. Had I stated that I wished to become acquainted with him, he would likely have replied that he did not wish my acquaintance, or some similar remark to show that he was a gentleman; or if I had stated my business he might have sent word that he would send for me when he wanted me; and this would also have been English, you know.

I was admitted to the august presence, with scarcely a nod from him, nor was I offered a seat. “Well,” said he with a brazen stare, “what can I do for you?” treating me as if I were some itinerant beggar. I was flustered and angry, for he had brass enough in his face and insolence in his manner to upset the temper of a saint. I mildly replied that as zemindar of the village I had come out of courtesy to him. “Well,” said he, “as I am about to take my bath, I will bid you good morning,” and out he went into another apartment.

I concluded to remain at the village, come what would, without expecting the pleasure I enjoyed with my Scotch friend, the Collector. The village committee took the Settlement Officer a fine present, but he treated them with such contempt that they never went near him again. His servants robbed the gardens and fruit trees, but I suggested to the people to say nothing. He every morning fished at the tank and made large hauls, while his servants came with nets and took away loads of small fish as well as large. This was done daily, until it became irritating beyond endurance. The committee came to me with complaints, and I saw that I must do something or lose my position in their estimation; so I concluded to beard the lion or jackass, whatever might happen. I saw him seated in front of his tent. He did not rise or even nod, or say anything. I did not know why he should have treated me with such insolence, unless it was in the nature of the beast to do so.

“Well, what is it?” he finally asked. I replied, “I hope you will excuse me for troubling you, but your men have gone into the gardens of the villages and taken vegetables and fruit and abused the people when they objected.” He stopped me with, “I don’t believe a word of it; Chuprassi!” and up came a sleek villain whom I had seen in the gardens. “Did any of the servants go into the village gardens and take vegetables?” “Khudawand!” said the fellow with his hands together. “Lord, why should we become bastard thieves when we have all we want in his highness’ camp?” “There!” said the Khudawand, “I told you that it was not so.” “But,” I remarked, “I saw this very man in the garden with his arms full of vegetables.” He made no reply. I continued, “The people do not mind the loss of the stuff, but they don’t like the abuse they receive.” He only listened. Have you ever remonstrated with a man when he only stared? Is there anything more irritating? I went on, “I built a tank and stocked it with fish at considerable expense, and the rules are that no outside natives shall fish in it, and the villagers themselves shall not take fish under a certain size, and that no nets shall be used; but your servants are daily using nets and carrying away loads of small fish.” At this he sprang to his feet, blustering out, “I have had enough of this. That is a public tank, and my servants shall fish there if they want to.”

“No,” I said, “that is my tank,” when he cut me short, saying, “I have had enough; I want to hear no more. It seems to me that you are putting on a good deal of side for a damned Eurasian, if I must tell you so.” “Eurasian or not,” I replied, “my father was and is H. J. Smith of Jalalpur, and as you are his nephew we are cousins; and it comes with bad grace for you to twit me of being an Eurasian when it was from no sin of mine, but at the pleasure of your own virtuous, Christian uncle.” This all came out in a volley before he had time to interrupt me. He sprang to his feet, for he had taken his seat, his face all aglow with anger, and shaking his fist at me while he stamped upon the ground, he fairly shouted, “It’s a lie; all a damned lie! Do you wish to insult me? You must leave at once. Chuprassi!” But I was off and away before his minion could come around the tent.

It was some minutes before I recovered from my terrible anger, and then I cursed myself by the hour for being such an ass, such an extra long-eared one, for making a stupid blunder as to quarrel with a Settlement Officer who had the valuation and taxation of all my lands in his power. Though I had the satisfaction of telling the truth and getting rid of some of my bilious indignation, it would have been better not to have gone to him after the repulse of the first call; rather to have lost all the fruit and vegetables, all the fish, both small and great, before angering a settlement officer.

It is said that there are two parts in a man, right and left, to dominate the brain in turn. When one part had spoken as above, the other said, “Who cares what such a man can do? Is it not better to be a man and stand up for your rights than to cringe like a coward and quietly submit to the oppression of a tyrant? Was not the heavy blow that you gave that insolent bully’s head worth more than all the increased assessments he can make?” Thus the two parts of me alternately held the floor, the one lamenting the probably increased taxation, the other pleading for the rights of my manhood.

The officer did not depart for some days, and though I could do nothing, I also remained. The whole of the camp followers, taking their cue from their master, ravaged the gardens and fruit trees. Their delight was in fishing with nets, a score of them, taking loads of small fish, out of sheer sport. I remonstrated with them, but they replied with the insolence of their master that their sahib had told them to catch all the fish they wanted. The result was that there was not a minnow left in the tank. The villagers were terribly wrought up. They proposed to attack the thieves, but this would only have increased the trouble, as my party would have got the worst of it, not in a fight, but in the courts, where they would have been brought up for riotous conduct. Many or all of them would have been taken away from their work or their homes, kept in jail awaiting trial, and then likely be imprisoned for years as criminals, for the sahib and his whole camp would have sworn that my people were the aggressors. “He should hae a lang-shafted spune that sups kale wi’ the deil,” and I knew that our “spune” had a very short shaft compared with that of the English gentleman and his crew.

To vindicate myself, I explained to the villagers what I had done, and was obliged to let them know what I thought of the sahib. The whole village was intensely agitated, and nothing was talked of but the tyranny of the settlement officer, comparing him with the collector sahib, who was so kind and pleased.

It happened just as I anticipated, the assessments were increased twenty per cent. Great stress was laid on the rich productive land, compared with adjoining villages, on the valuable fruit trees, the comfortable houses, on the tank yielding a large amount of fish.

On hearing of the officer’s report I wrote to the Government in the Revenue Department, making a long statement, showing in what condition I had found the villages, a lot of dilapidated huts; that I had contributed several thousand rupees for the construction of houses; that the soil had been very poor, which I had enriched with fertilizers and judicious cultivation; that many acres were absolutely barren, usar land, which I under-drained and fertilized with lime and manure, and after years of labor and much expense, had changed it to productive soil; that I had built drains for the streets, and made the villages healthy; and lastly, I had built the tank and stocked it with fish, employing men to go a great distance, and bring the best kinds. I might have told how the tank had been robbed by the camp of the Settlement Officer, but caution controlled me to say nothing that would irritate, as I was now a supplicant for mercy, since I knew I could not get justice. I prayed that under the circumstances, the assessment might remain as formerly, or at the same rate as of the villages in the vicinity.

My application was denied, on the plea that the Revenue Department could not upset a report of the Settlement Officer who had been upon the ground and thoroughly understood the whole matter.

I went to the Collector and laid the whole subject before him, asking for justice, omitting all mention of anything unpleasant that had occurred. He wrote to the Department stating that he had spent some days at these villages; that they were models, not only of the district but of all India; that he had never seen any to compare with them; that they were like villages at home; that he was surprised and delighted to find that such improvements could be made in India; but it was all due to the energy and personal attention of Mr. Japhet, who had spent large amounts of money in the improvements. He hoped, therefore, that the Board would reconsider its decision, as it would only be just to Mr. Japhet to make some concession. The reply was that in view of the representations of the Collector the assessment would be reduced to ten per cent. above the former rate, but “further than that it would not be advisable, etc.”

This was a gain, and somewhat satisfactory. If a robber waylays you, and empties your pockets, it is better to accept a sovereign that he generously offers you out of your own purse, than go without supper and bed.

I had then the pleasure of re-stocking my tank with fish and in the evening after it was finished, at our assembly, we had a kind of a jubilee meeting, thanking our stars that another settlement officer would not come again for thirty-three years.

CHAPTER XXXV.

This arbitrary assessment of lands without regard to the expense of the improvements, is one of the greatest drawbacks to the prosperity of India where there is not a permanent settlement. I have been told by many zemindars that any improvement of their villages would only be to their detriment, that the digging of wells and tanks, the planting of trees and the enrichment of the soil, would only increase their assessment. I have known of villages where lands were allowed to remain idle, and become barren several years before the settlement, so that they might be assessed as waste land. As soon as the settlement was made these lands were again cultivated. The Government forces the people to become deceivers. My experience showed me that the zemindars were correct in their statements. That if one did not wish to be punished for making improvements he should do nothing. It is a pitiable condition in which to place the people by a civilized government that is continually appointing commissions to formulate voluminous reports and getting the opinion of scientific book farmers on the improvement of the agricultural condition of India. What is the inducement for any one to plant a tree, dig a well or tank, or improve the soil, when he knows as sure as the sun rises, that the Government will fine him for all he does?

If I had not an income aside of that of my villages, I could not have done what I did. As it was I was rewarded by an increased assessment. I could afford to pay the fine owing to the kindness of the friend of my boyhood, but what about the millions of poor wretches who have no income but from their daily toil?

It is now all passed with me except the taste of the bitter pill that I was compelled to swallow, and still this is not satisfactory considering that the pill never did me any good. Let it go, as there are so many bitter pills in life, it is best to forget them if we can, yet I trust and hope that at last there will be a permanent settlement of all of life, whether for good or ill, so that we may know that everything is settled, finished for ever.

One incident occurred that I do not like to mention, yet it comes along with my story. One night the gentleman in camp sent his head servant as a panderer to the village to get a woman. No sooner was his errand known than the women rose in a body, flogging him with sticks and pelting him with dirt. The fellow got away with his life, but not with a whole skin, nor with scarcely a rag on his body. This greatly pleased me, as I was aroused from sleep to hear what had occurred. This attitude of the women was a recompense for all the robberies that had been committed. Here were these heathen women, who had never heard the name of Jesus, and knew no more about the creed and the theology of the Christian Church than they did about the differential calculus, fighting for their virtue and their sacred rights of womanhood, while there was that English Christian gentleman who probably had been taught to pray at his mother’s knee, and often rattled off the services in church, as I had seen him do, waiting in his tent, with his thoughts bent on lust.

I was once in a dak bungalow when in the room adjoining mine was this same gentleman with an officer of a regiment, a gentleman also, as all officers in her majesty’s army are so ranked. As I was about to retire I heard the chaukedar of the bungalow inquire, “Who goes there?” A woman’s voice replied. “What do you come here for?” he asked. She answered that the sahib’s bearer had come to the bazar for her. The watchman indignantly told her to leave at once, as she had no business there for any one. Is it a wonder that the heathen do not rush to embrace Christianity when they see such worthy examples of Jesus people? I well know that this same gentleman once intrigued with the wife of a magistrate, and while the two were out riding and driving, billing and cooing, the broken-hearted husband, left alone, sought the company of the brandy bottle and killed himself with drink within a month, leaving his wife a happy widow. Was not my cousin a worthy nephew of his virtuous uncle, my distinguished paternal parent?

To show another phase of the character of this man. On one of his morning rides he had gone through the main street of a large village. He then sent back his sais to summon all the men he had passed. When they were assembled before him, sitting on his very high English horse, he said, “When I came through your street not one of you made his salaam.” Brandishing his long riding whip at them and standing up in his stirrups, he shouted, “If, when I come again, you do not salaam, I will flog every one of you.” They all salaamed profoundly to the ground, and very likely they did not forget his threat. Why should not these people respect and love their conquerors?

Home again, with its quiet and rest, was a paradise after the unpleasant scenes in the village. There was a stillness that at times was oppressive, such as happens in an up country station when there is little business; the bungalows situated in large compounds away from the roads, and where for days in the cold season scarcely enough breeze to rustle a leaf. We were seldom interrupted with callers. We did not seek them, and by most of the society circle we were on the taboo list. Yet we had a few special friends with whom we spent delightful hours.

We sometimes went to church as a diversion or as something required by good society. The Chaplain had never called. He was no doubt an excellent man in his way, and performed all the duties required of him. He was an official paid by government to minister to the members of the service, and the government, knowing how badly these people needed a religious guide and teacher, did wisely in making this provision for their wicked souls. Jesus looked after the poor, the outcasts. Discarding society, he went into the by-ways and hedges, among the lowly, but his modern followers, keeping step with the age, have reversed his practice. Perhaps the modern rich society people are the biggest sinners, so it is well, and why complain? Yet I could not help thinking at times, that as one of the outsiders I had to pay taxes to provide these reverend gentry with gowns, bread, butter, carriages and wines, we might have received a little attention out of courtesy, if nothing more. An outspoken native once suggested that if the Europeans wanted a guru or priest and fine churches, why should they not pay for the support of their religions, and not from public taxation? But he was only a heathen, and what better could be expected from him? The simplicity and ignorance of these people at times is astonishing.

One day we had a call from a missionary, a very little, pawky sort of man, yet in the gelatine stage. He wore a black stuffy coat reaching to his feet as to make up by it, what nature had stinted him in stature, and it was buttoned close to his throat, reminding me of the scabs in London who follow a similar fashion to conceal their lack of shirt. His face and head were not as good a recommendation as his clothes. He certainly was not the survival of the fittest, only an exception to it. My wife, after seeing and hearing him for a few minutes, remarked afterward, with the instinct of a woman, that he would never die of brain fever.

After seating himself he said that he had often heard of me. I felt that this was something in my favor at least, for what can happen to any mortal man worse than not to have been heard of? He said that he had never called because he had heard that I seldom attended church, and that I was, well, to state it plainly, not quite orthodox. Such a statement from such a popinjay was amusing. I gravely suggested that if he considered me the lost sheep he should have left the ninety-and-nine safe in the fold and sought after me. “Well,” said he, “I hope it is not too late, and I trust you are not as bad as they make you out to be.”

This was encouraging, and I was hopeful. I inquired in what respect I was said to be bad. I was becoming interested, as if in the presence of a fortune-teller. He did not seem to know what to say, so I asked, “Do they say I lie, steal, commit murder, gamble, slander, defraud, get drunk or run after women?” “No,” he quickly replied, “nothing of the kind. You have the reputation of being about the most upright man in the station, and very kind to the poor; that no one comes to you but finds a friend.”

He would have seen my blushes at these compliments to my virtues if nature had not enabled me to hide them. I made up my mind at once to give him a subscription to the paper I felt sure he had in his pocket.

Here let me observe that I am not at all opposed to subscriptions, for I believe a thousand times more in paying than in praying, and if I were to make a church catechism I would place as the first question, “How much do you pay?” and the very last one, “Do you pray?” In most people the nerves of the pocket are more sensitive than those of the heart, and should be touched first. I said, “I am greatly obliged to you for so good a character, though I do not see where the badness comes in.”

He replied, “That is not it. It is not what you are, or what you do, but what you believe. They say that you do not believe in Jesus.”

“That is a great mistake,” I answered. “I do most profoundly believe in him, that he was the best man that ever lived, the wisest teacher that the world has ever seen, and in that respect the light of the world, the Savior of mankind if they follow his example.”

“That is it, you do not believe that Jesus was the son of God.”

I replied, “That is another error, for I believe that he was the beloved son of God, for the reason that so far as we know, he was the best man ever born, and lived the nearest to God, and so was His well beloved son; that as we are all the offspring of God by creation, and by pure and upright lives all become the sons of God, but as Jesus was the best of all, he was the son of God, our elder brother in the great human family.”

He asked, “Do you not believe that Jesus is God?”

“Most certainly not. I would feel that I was an idolator, and committing sin in accepting such a belief. There can be only one infinite God, without body or parts, one and indivisible.”

“Do you not then believe that Jesus was conceived of the Holy Ghost?”

“Positively not. It is absolutely impossible for me to believe that the Infinite God could be born of a woman, or have a son by a woman. Such an idea was born of paganism, and is a degradation of the Almighty to the notion that the pagans had of their gods.”

“Mr. Japhet!” he exclaimed, “I am really shocked that you should say such things. It is too serious and sacred a subject for such remarks.”

I answered: “There is nothing too sacred for examination by honest reason, and a devout common sense. I was afraid, when this conversation commenced, that something might be said to displease, if not to offend you, but you asked me straightforward questions, and I have told you in reply what I believe and do not believe. I know that such expressions, as I have used, might shock many, and they might wonder that I was not killed instantly by fire from heaven, or be stricken with paralysis, for uttering them. Yet, I have no fear of either. I have weighed these subjects, and thought of them for years with the utmost reverence and fear of God, and with devout prayer to Him for light and help, so I do not speak lightly or in haste. I am just as jealous of my faith in the God I worship, and try to obey, as you can be of yours. As to one of the expressions I used, do you not make as strong and plain statements against the heathen notion of gods, when you are preaching in the bazars?”

“Yes,” he answered, “we do use strong expressions when we are speaking against idolatry, for ours is the only and true God.”

I replied, “Your own conception of God, you believe to be the true one, but what about those of other men? Can they not also have their ideas about God, and be as honest as you are? The trouble is that Christians ‘reduce their God to a diagram, and their emotions to a system,’ and then demand that everybody else shall believe and feel as they do, or be considered not orthodox, heretics and infidels.”

He did not reply to this, but said, “I am sorry that you do not know Jesus as your Saviour, and feel that his blood washes away your sins.”

I answered, “I do know Jesus, but I prefer to trust the Infinite God, my Heavenly Father, as my Redeemer and Saviour. I want no one, not even an angel from heaven to come between me and God. If my father, God over all, cannot, or will not save me, who else can? As to the blood. Blood of any kind is offensive to me. I shudder at the sight of it. And the idea of washing or cleansing anything with it is so contrary to my reason, and repugnant to my feelings, that I cannot think of it without repulsion.”

“But, it was shed as an atonement for us,” he suggested.

“Take it in that light,” I replied, “It is assumed that God, the Creator and Preserver of men, is a pitiless tyrant; that his wrath must be appeased, or bought off by sacrifice. At first the fruits of the field were given to Him, then the blood of animals. Then the notion grew until the blood of something higher than that of a common animal was deemed necessary, the blood of men, and then the blood of a god. How was it to be got? It must come from heaven, of course, and finally resulted in the notion of an incarnation of God in a woman, a horrible thought to me. The whole idea is heathenish, brutal and debasing. Everything of this kind, whether in the Bible, or elsewhere, is of man’s own invention, degrading the Infinite God to a creature like to their own depraved natures. Take the better thoughts of the Bible, and God is a spiritual being, delighting in spiritual worship, and caring only for the intents and purity of the heart, but this was not satisfactory to mankind. It was too pure and simple to suit their coarse, corrupt natures, but they must put in a lot of mysterious rubbish of their own, to suit a god of their own devising, and with tastes like theirs. It was more pleasant for the ancient Hebrews to atone with hecatombs of burnt offerings for their transgressions, than to practice purity and justice. It is far easier for people, at the present time, to accept the creeds, perform the sensuous, pleasant ceremonies of the church, and believe their salvation, however sinful they continue to be, will be obtained in some vicarious way, than to save themselves by living pure and upright lives.

“Men are never satisfied, unless they reach the extreme, always delighting in the mysterious.

“What do these notions of men teach? That God created men, with power to violate His laws, and then became vengeful and full of wrath, that they did just what He gave them power to do, and was ready to damn them all, for doing just what they could not help doing? Man’s explanation of the matter does not correspond with the character of God, as given by these same men. They describe Him as omniscient, omnipotent and omnipresent, a God of infinite wisdom, love and tender mercy. It is stated that God made man, and pronounced him good, but the creeds teach that God afterward found out that He had made a mistake, that His work was evil. He discovered, when too late, that man, whom He had made good and upright, would violate His laws, which was a surprise to Him, and He must find out some excuse, so as to avoid the execution of His own laws.

“The whole story is a muddle, evolved from superstition and ignorance, in fact, the whole scheme is of man’s invention, not from the highest ideals of mankind, but from the lowest instincts of the human race. It degrades the character of the Almighty, and places Him on a level with the most ignorant human brute of a tyrant. They make their god, not mine, in the likeness of sinful men, fashion him, giving him their hates and revenges, and in their arrogance, assuming that they know all about him, demand that all the world should bow down and worship this image of their own manufacture.

“I had rather be an infidel, and take my chances, than accept the blasphemous nonsense that many people believe about God. I cannot believe that an infinitely all-wise God could be guilty of the mistakes attributed to Him, or that a God of love and tender compassion could be propitiated, and delighted with blood from the slaughter of innocent animals, or the blood of men, or as they call it, ‘the blood of the Son of God.’” The little man was greatly excited, and would have interrupted me, but I kept on.

After a pause, he said, “Our belief is founded on the Bible as the inspired word of God; don’t you believe that?”

“Yes,” I replied, “as the production of men, some of it the grandest truth ever given to mankind, and other not fit to be put in the same book.

“First, as to the authenticity of the Bible. The authors were men, not differing from other men, with limited faculties, fallible as all men are, and liable to mistakes. They may have been honest, with the best of intentions, yet this is no warrant that they could not be mistaken. It is evident that they were affected by the times in which they lived, were influenced by their surroundings, and directed by their education, though very meager. It is well authenticated that the writers never wrote all that is attributed to them; that many things were interpolated by others, several centuries later, to make up a creed for the church to suit themselves. It is not known just when the Bible was written, nor the authors of the different parts, or whether any one part was written wholly by the one to whom it is ascribed, or afterward compiled from various sources. It is well known that there were many writings, and that those now composing the Bible are selections from them all. If any were inspired, why not all? If all were from God, why should some be chosen and others rejected? It was a daring, sacrilegious thing to do, men becoming the judges of the revelations of God, that is, if they believed they were from God. There must have been doubts about the authenticity of them. If there were doubts about some, why not about others, about all? If men in ancient times, no better or worse than we are, could have their doubts and make their choice of what they supposed to be the word of God, why should we not have the same right to use our judgments? In fact, the knowledge of every kind that the world has acquired, the distance from the events recorded, uninfluenced by the prejudices and associations affecting the writers of the books of the Bible and those making the selections, make men of modern times more capable of considering what is truth and what might be considered the word of God. Scientists of all kinds do not accept all the ancient theories, not because they are indisposed to do so, but for the indisputable reason that these theories or dogmas do not harmonize with the truth or demonstrated facts.

“If any beings higher than men had composed the writings and made the selections then all questions of mankind would be idle. Or if the writers and selectors were proved to have been of a superior class, above the weakness and limitation of ordinary men, then there might be great hesitation about expressing any doubt, and no desire to investigate or criticise. But as they all were only men, sinful, weak men, all of them, why should any one hesitate to think or act for himself as to what they wrote? They have given no authority or proof of any superiority, or power delegated to them to dominate the beliefs and actions of mankind. God is our God, just as much as he was the God of the Jews, and He is just as near to us as He was to them, and we cannot admit that He is not as willing to reveal Himself unto us as He would do to them, nor can we allow that He selected a certain number of men, several thousand years ago, from an obscure and inferior race, and made them the depositories of all His truth and laws to suffice for all the rest of the world, for all ages, and that He then retired from the spiritual vision of mankind. This is so inconsistent with His constant watchful care over every other interest of the world that such a thought cannot be entertained for a moment.

“If one supernatural revelation, why not another, and many? Or why restrict it to one people, or to one period of the world’s history?

“The conclusion is, mine at least, that the writers of the Bible, and those who selected it and interpolated the different parts, were men, and did the best they could, according to their ability and the light they had, and being only men, they and their works are to be estimated and judged by men, as all other things are judged. We read the works of ancient or modern authors, we criticise the style, admire the knowledge and truth, expose the errors, and value the books for what they are worth according to our best honest judgments. Why then should we not pursue the same course with the books of the Bible, written also by men?

“I know that it is claimed that the writers of the Bible were inspired. How do we know this? There is not a particle of proof of this except their own say so; that God favored them any more than other men, or that they had any more knowledge of the secret councils or purposes of God than other seekers after truth and lovers of righteousness. All truth is hidden for our search, as are the precious things of earth, of science, art, philosophy, and those who seek most diligently attain their rewards in finding the best things that God has provided for those who strive and search.

“You asked me questions and I have given you my best answers. They are my sincere convictions and honest beliefs.”

“Well, I must go,” he said very sadly. “I think you are an honest man, but badly deceived, and hope you will pray for light on these great subjects.”

In return, I suggested that I would gladly help in his work if he needed money, so his subscription paper came out, and he left, probably happier in his pocket than in his mind.

After he left I had some such thoughts as these with my books: All religions start with remarkable personages, gradually elevated into gods and semi-gods. A distinguished English writer says of Buddha, “It has almost invariably happened that the later followers of such a teacher have undone his work of moral reform. They have fallen back upon evidence of miraculous birth, upon signs and miracles and a superhuman translation from the world, so that gradually the founders in history become prodigies and extra natural, until the real doctrines shrink into mystical secrets, known only to the initiated disciples, while the vulgar turn the iconoclast into a mere idol.” Would not this apply to Christians as well?

Another says, “All popular theology, especially the scholastic, has a kind of appetite for absurdity and contradiction. If that theology went not beyond reason and common sense, her doctrines would appear too easy and familiar. Amazement must of necessity be raised, mystery affected; darkness and obscurity sought after and a foundation of merit afforded to the devout votaries, who desire an opportunity of subduing their rebellious reason by the belief in the most unintelligible sophisms.”

Ignorance begets superstition. Then easily comes a belief in the miraculous, and from this, creeds are formulated and faith placed in them. People have but little sense where their hearts are concerned, in religion as in love. There has never been a proposition so absurd or outrageous but has had believers in it. The more impossible and mysterious a thing can be made, the more readily it will be accepted. Mystery not only fascinates many people but makes them its devotees.

One of the strange things is, that people who demand a reason for everything about them, become dupes of that which is afar off, which they cannot know and which no mortal can explain. Objecting to that which is reasonable, they rush to accept that which is absurd and incredible. Human nature is fascinated by the mysterious. The clergy have to perform and preach something, and that something would lose all its awe and force if there were no mysticism in it. What would jugglery be if every one understood the tricks of the juggler?

If human testimony could establish anything, there has never been an error but could be made an apparent fact by any number of witnesses. Probably hundreds of thousands could be found to testify to miracles at Lourdes, and to any number of so-called miracles elsewhere, and here in India millions of people could be got to affirm the reality of events as improbable. Before science was known every mystery was a miracle. Miracles are not required to prove a truth. Facts need no authority. Yet a belief in a personal devil and a literal hell seems to be a necessity to restrain and influence those who could be reached in no other way. As ghost stories are used to frighten children to be quiet, so a belief in hell seems to be required for a certain class of people of infantile mental capacity, or of vicious propensities and habits, that no refined, moral instruction could reach. They are below philosophy, art or science, and must be cudgeled or frightened into decent behavior.

To the poor, who have never had a shilling ahead in their lives, a heaven paved with gold is the greatest thing to be desired. To those who have spent their lives in a one-roomed hut, a heavenly mansion of many rooms is their notion of comfort. To those whose lives have been filled with weeping and sorrow, a hereafter, where there shall be no more trouble or tears, is a hope of greatest bliss. To a Greenlander, a hell of fire would be heaven. One who has no intellect or capacity of thought, and hence no conscience, could not appreciate a spiritual condition of the soul as heaven or hell, and must be reached through his body, his material nature, which makes up ninety-nine hundredths of his being. He can realize no other than a hell of fire, a gehenna of physical torture. For such people a real, live demon of a devil, and a real hell fire, is an ecclesiastical necessity. Uneducated people, like children, must be kept in order by bugbears.

Said Dr. Johnson, “Sir, I would be a Catholic if I could, but an obstinate rationality prevents me.”

Strip Christianity of its mythology and its doctrines are simplicity itself. The moral law is as plain and simple as the multiplication table. Tell a child that two and two make four, and it needs no argument to make him believe it. The laws of God, either in the religious, moral or scientific world, are self-evident. Thou shalt not commit sin. Everybody, even the most illiterate savage, knows what it is to sin. The soul that sinneth, it shall die. This every one can readily comprehend. These two facts are enough, without any of the mumble of mysticism or any ecclesiastical trickery.

Says Savonarola, the martyr for freedom and truth, “God is essentially free, and the just man is the free man after the likeness of God. * * * The only true liberty consists in the desire for righteousness. * * * Dost thou desire liberty, O Florence? Citizens! would you be free? Love God, love one another, seek the general welfare. We despise no good works, nor rational laws, albeit they proceed from the most distant places, from philosophers or pagan empires, but we glean everywhere that which is good and true from all creeds, knowing that all goodness proceeds from God.”

To be good and to do good is the highest aim of man. It is to know the physical, moral and social laws and to obey them. A good man, from the necessity of his nature, will do good. To be good and do good, is good or Godlike, and to be Godlike is to be saved. This is the sum total of life. O God! help me to be good and do good, that I may be saved.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

The years were passing and very little occurred to break the humdrum of our life. We never were idle, for if not occupied in the duties that succeeded each other, as the night the day, we were engaged in our mutual studies. I had never told my wife of my father, or of Mr. Smith being my half brother. Somehow, I never could muster up courage enough to do this. Not only that, but I felt that if I should once begin, I should have to go through the hateful story from a to izzard, and I shrank from the task. The longer I delayed the less inclined I was to do it. There was so much in it that was awful and disgusting, that I would have given much to have blotted it from my own memory, and did not wish to soil her pure mind with its recital. Somewhere, I have read of a painter who said that he never looked upon a bad picture but he carried away a dirty tint. My wife was to me as a priceless painting by the greatest of masters, and I wished to preserve her in all her loveliness and purity. I tried constantly to cultivate this feeling, and with this thought uppermost, I very often restrained myself from saying or doing what might soil her mind. I may be peculiar in this, as I am in so many things, yet I am what I am, and what else should I be?

I am reminded of something Mr. Jasper told me in one of his interesting conversations. It was about one of his visits in Paris. One evening, looking at a shop window on one of the boulevards, he was approached by a young man who presented his card and offered to be his guide. “What have you to show me?” asked Mr. Jasper.

The proposed guide enumerated a list of the most disreputable sights and places, and then Mr. Jasper interrupted him with “Who goes to see these things?” And the reply was in a list of prominent men, distinguished divines from London, a prominent minister from Brooklyn, some from New York and Chicago, and other noted men. He had a long list of those he had shown around to these stys of vice and pollution, and as Mr. Jasper questioned him about the characteristics of the different men, they were so correct it was evident that the guide had not made up his story.

Said Mr. Jasper to me while relating the story: “I wonder if these men ever thought that their names would be quoted as recommendations to future visitors. They probably thought, as they were away from home, their salacious doings would never be known, but if so they were greatly mistaken. The world now is very small, only a large neighborhood in this age of fast travel, and there is no concealment of anything from your fellow men, much less from yourself and the all-seeing eye of God, yet people fool themselves that it is otherwise. When the guide had completed his descriptions of the sight-seers, I asked: ‘For what purpose did these men go with you?’ He was somewhat taken aback by the question, and then with hesitation replied: ‘Some of them for scientific purposes, but the most of them to see, and they seemed to enjoy the sights.’ Then I said, ‘Young man, you see my clean clothes, should you throw any filth on them I would knock you down, yet I could easily have them washed, and it would be only an offense, but here you deliberately propose to take me around and show me foul sights that would make filthy stains upon my mind to remain for life and throughout eternity, that neither I nor God himself could ever remove. You are an infamous dirty dog, and the sooner you leave me the better, or I will give you something to remember,’ and the guide shrank away like a dog that had been kicked.”

I have often thought of this lesson taught me by my friend and further added my own reflections. Suppose I had some valued painting by one of the great masters that I was protecting with the greatest care and some one should soil it, if only just for a joke, what would I think of him or do to him? Yet I have heard of men, and I regret to say, some Christian men and clergymen too, and of women in society, who take special pleasure in gathering up all the obscene bawdy stories they can find and pride themselves on being racy raconteurs of these unsavory bits to their fellows. They are the devil’s best agents in corrupting humanity, that is if they are not each a devil himself. What puzzles me is that some people passing good at home, should take special pleasure in hunting up the nasty things when they go abroad.

What affects me more than all, is what relates to myself, for it has always been a habit of mine to bring everything to a personal test, to weigh it upon my own scales. These questions I have often asked, “Why was I created as I was, in a condition where I had to come in contact with vice in my earliest years? Why was I thrown on to the dirt heap of the world? If the all-wise, loving God, intended me to be pure in heart, why did He not with His almighty power create me where I could have had the best opportunities for a noble life?” My questions have never been answered.

Another question might be asked that would be personal and from which I do not shrink. Why do I tell the story of my life that has so much of evil in it? If I told anything, what else could I tell but the truth? A man can only paint what he himself has felt. I have not told it with pride, but with the deepest humiliation. I have not rolled my story as a sweet morsel over my tongue. I have had a motive of good in the telling, to show up the wrongs I have suffered and to reveal the infamies of others who have made me suffer, as a warning, or as the theologians say when they excuse the scripture descriptions of the frailties and sins of the Bible worthies, that these are given as warning lessons to mankind. So I am on safe ground. But I have wandered again.

I think I was speaking of my wife as my choicest treasure, the priceless painting of my life and home, which I wished to keep from every evil touch or injurious thought. This is why I never told her of the worst, the meanest parts of my life. With her I always followed the Hindu proverb, “Tell your troubles to your own mind, tell your happiness to the world.” An incident occurred to remind me again of the old subject. I tried to forget it and to do this more effectually, became absorbed in various things, yet doing our best we cannot always avoid the disagreeable. Even the best of roads will have holes in them. There is an irony in fate, something in our destiny that ever upsets our wisest endeavors, plan them as we will. I have frequently noticed that when I have congratulated myself on the smoothness of my life, the success of my plans, something suddenly came to upset them all. “The best laid plans of mice and men gang aft aglee.”

That sister of mine, no longer little, but the mother of several bouncing boys had, with her husband, paid us several visits. They were leading a busy, happy, prosperous life. She had been well educated, so my wife found in her a genial companion, and their coming to us made a kind of festival in our home. On one of these visits an uncle and aunt of my wife’s had come to see us on their tour through India. Our Collector and this gentleman were old acquaintances, so we were all invited to a large dinner party at the Barra Sahib’s. On entering the drawing room we found quite an assembly of the society people of the station. As we went up to greet the hostess, to my consternation there stood my venerable father and my distinguished half brother. They were so placed that they could not escape if they had desired to, and we had acquired such momentum that we could not retire. There was no alternative but to face each other. My heart beat at a thumping pace, and every one of the seven hundred thousand pores in my body became an aqueduct, and in a moment I was in a glow of heat and perspiration. This was not from fear, far from it. Had I not been dared by this parent of mine, and had I not met him and thrown his insults back into his own face? I had no fear of him whatever, nor did I fear that white-haired, white-faced half brother of mine; he, too, had fallen before my well barbed shafts. It was not of myself that I thought. Had I been alone I would have risked my soul, but I would have given them each something to keep as a memento of our meeting. I truly confess that I would have hugely enjoyed this, let others say what they might about such a feeling.

There was my wife. She knew nothing of my relation to this couple, nor would I for the life of me have revealed a word and I knew she could hold her own in any tilt with them, but my sister, the daughter of the one, the half sister of the other, to meet her own father who had betrayed and seduced her! Since that fearful time when I had rescued her from his baneful power, we had never mentioned his name. We would have erased and annihilated from our thoughts and lives every remembrance of him if we could. I know this was my feeling and I am sure it was hers. She was beautiful, as my little sister, as I think I have said before, but now developed into a very handsome matron. As she had been educated in the best schools in France and England and been polished by travel in different countries, she could appear in any society with dignity and grace.

But to my story. We were in a tight place, at least I was. I doubt if ever I thought so quickly in my life as then. The thoughts came like flashes. I had the most anxious solicitude to shield this beloved sister. Our hostess received us most graciously, and then began to introduce us. At first to those nearest her, who were Mr. Smith and his son. I bowed. Then my wife acquitted herself nobly, as if the two, sire and son, had been members of the royal family, and if this had been her first meeting with Mr. Smith, Jr. I was proud of her, for she was a queen to me, then as always. Then Mrs. Edwards, my sister, the daughter to her father who had been mistress to him.

There was a scene. Not a word was said, only a bow, but I saw from the flushes of paleness to red on the old man’s face that he was conscious of all the past. He no doubt had his turn of nervous thinking as I had mine. I certainly would have prevented this meeting had I had any suspicion of it, but as it was I had—call it a wicked pleasure if you will—a delight in thus facing my enemy and giving him something to remind him of his sins. All this took place in a moment, for others coming up, we passed on and into another room. Then I saw my sister greatly agitated. She did not utter a word, as if she was conscious that I understood as well as if she had told me all with her lips. I led her to a seat, and my wife remarked about the crowd and the heat in the big room. Such a relief to always have that to which we can attribute our troubles as well as our sins. Every heart knows its own sorrows, and what a blessing it is that every one else does not know them. So far so good, but I still had my anxiety. I was fearful that our hostess in her ignorance might arrange that another face to face encounter would take place at the dinner table. I was in a quandary and probably in a greater state of excitement than was Napoleon at Waterloo. Our hostess soon came up, saying, “Mr. Japhet, you are to take Mrs. Shanks to dinner.” “And my wife and sister?” said I, interrupting her. “O,” she replied, “Mr. Smith, Sr., will take your sister, and Smith, Jr., your wife.”

This gave me a shock as from a battery, and I broke in, “Why not let my wife go with Mr. Smith, Sr. She would like to meet him.” This was a lie, unintentioned, as I was at my wit’s end, and on the impulse of a moment did what most, even the best of people might do in such a case, told the smallest, whitest lie I could. “It is well,” she said; “I will arrange it at once.” And she did. So my father took out his daughter-in-law, my wife; and my half brother his half sister. The two couples were seated some distance apart, so I was somewhat at ease. Nothing further occurred to disturb me, and I made some excuse to take away my company soon after dinner. I never wanted such another encounter. Life is too short to have many such excitements that set the heart going like a runaway engine under an extra pressure of steam.

On our return home my wife and sister seemed to have enjoyed their company. The one certainly never suspected that her consort was my father, her father-in-law. Though now aged, he was an accomplished man of society. I say it, though he was my villain of a father, he could pose anywhere with the outward grace of a gentleman. Outwardly in “society” he observed the decencies of life, but his hypocrisy was a sufficient cloak to conceal his immoralities. The other did not realize that her escort was her half brother and mine as well. Why tell them? This question often came to me during years afterward. Why did I allow them to go out with these men? I cannot tell. We are not always able to give a reason why we do thus and so. Another question. What would these ladies have said and done had they known who their gentlemen were? I can surmise about my wife. Had she learned at table who he was, my venerable parent would have thought himself in a hurricane storm off the Irish coast, as she would have given him such cutting strokes of her native wit that he would have preferred a dish of bitter herbs to the elaborate spread before him, so her ignorance was bliss to him.

It appeared that my sister in her agitation at seeing Smith Sr. did not catch the name of the other man when she was introduced, so after our return home she asked his name. I quickly replied Smythe, Smithers, or some other name commencing with S. She asked no further and I was content. Now comes a question in morals, whether it is ever right to deceive. One of the maxims of the Roman church is that “it is an act of virtue to deceive and lie when the church might be promoted.” If the church can do this by a pious fraud, why not an individual mislead another for his good? But I will not discuss the subject. Had she suddenly become aware that she was seated by her half brother, the son of her father, she would have fainted or rushed away in fright and disgust.

It is well we do not know everything about others, nor in fact all about ourselves. Any one will loathe his own skin when seen through a microscope. A traveler once dined well and heartily, praising the roast, but on being informed that it was monkey, was suddenly afflicted with a mal de mer, and was ill for a week afterward. To make him turn pale it was only to say “monkey.”

But how did the gentlemen feel? I don’t know. The one I think was so blasé in sin that he would have bluffed either an angel of light or the devil himself, and without a blush. I have often imagined a little scene, a catastrophe that I might have made by some introductions, as “Mr. Smith, my father, your daughter-in-law, my wife,” or “Mr. Smith, your daughter, my sister,” or “Mr. Smith, my brother, this is your sister.” I am glad now that I was not fool or rogue enough to have done it. Yet there would have been lots of fun to me in the doing of it, and lots of misery to two of them at least. We get pain and trouble enough without trying to make it.

I ought to state that the Smiths were unexpected visitors in the station. It seems that the senior, then an old man, had retired from the service and was living in a hill station and had gone on a holiday visit to his son. The latter concluded to take a run up to our station, and brought my father with him. The old man had probably a desire to look over his old stamping ground, but did not expect to run against his son, that is me, or to see his daughter, the once governess whom he had met years ago on the parade ground, and whom he had betrayed under promise of marriage. I might have invited him to visit Lucknow with me, to go out through that old gully to the little court where my mother, his wife, had lived, but why surmise any further?

The above was my last meeting with those two relatives of mine. I never cared to know where they were or to trace them, and would most willingly have ascribed to their memory the Romish letters R. I. P.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

There is always plenty of work if one is inclined for it. I was always busy. My wife once remarked to a neighbor that if Mr. Japhet had no work he would invent some. I could never understand why any one having common sense, any strength or energy should be idle. I took great pleasure in setting people to work. I was not always successful, who is? Charity is often more hurtful than otherwise, unless the recipients be in ill health or incapable of labor. It degrades the one who receives it, lowers his manhood, deprives him of that self respect so necessary in every vocation of life.

My duty and pleasure was especially to help Eurasians, those of my own unfortunate caste or race. I knew them so well, for was I not one of them, yet so highly favored? From the time I had met my unfortunate schoolmates repulsed from many a door of the mercantile Christian gentleman in Calcutta, I felt a special yearning towards this class. My experience at that time was a life lesson to me. From that time never a poor wanderer came to me searching for work or food but I thought of what I might have been but for that dear friend of my childhood. Further, it seemed to me that I was in a measure his steward, having in trust his wealth to use for him. I never forgot his often saying, “Now Charles, let us go to our religious service in feeding God’s poor.” He never talked about religion and I never knew from his lips what his creed was. His life was a creed in itself, and it might be put in these words: “Be good yourself and do good to others.” What more can man do or God require? This little simple creed seemed to permeate his whole being, his thoughts, his soul, all his actions. I recall now his intense earnestness, his tearful eyes, and the prayerful expression of his face when he gave out the money or the food. He did this with such devotion as if it was a sacred religious act in the presence of God, and was it not? I have said something of this before but it will bear repeating again and again. Was not this truly following Jesus? Canon Farrar says: “Religion does not mean elaborate theologies, it does not mean membership in this or that organization, it does not depend on orthodoxy in matters of opinion respecting which Christians differ, but it means a good heart and a good life.”

Jesus never made a creed or said anything but what the simplest mind could understand. He went about doing good, giving his life for our imitation, following which we may become pure in heart and see God, his Father and our Father. Mr. Percy was a follower of Jesus. Often when I was about to turn some one away without relief, the question would come, “What would Mr. Percy do if he were here?” The answer at once came, a gift was bestowed and I enjoyed many a blessing in this sacrament of giving.

I think we may often be too careful in our charity as if we knew everything and bore the whole responsibility. Some never give because they were once “taken in” by some unworthy one. This is simply an excuse for their own selfishness and stinginess. Better be deceived half the time, than fail to help the real deserving, the other half. It is our duty to give with the best discretion and then leave the responsibility with God. Surely He will regard us as having done our duty to the best of our ability. The world has no use for a man who never helps another. He is only a useless part of humanity and the sooner he dies and is put out of sight the better. Let him go, who cares? The man who has no poor or distressed to mourn over his death has failed in life, a sad failure.

I remember of reading an incident that, somewhat hardened as I am, brought tears to my eyes. A little girl, the daughter of a poor woman, going up to the coffin of her mother took hold of one of the cold hands saying: “This hand never struck me.” It was a simple childish saying and I don’t know why it should have affected me so.

What better epitaph could one have than that made by a crowd of poor around a coffin pointing to the lifeless hands saying, “Those hands were always ready to help us.”

“Not he that repeateth the name, but he that doeth the will,” is worth remembering. “As long as thou doest well unto thyself, men will speak well of thee” is a worldly maxim, but a heavenly one might be added: “When thou doest well unto others then God will regard thee with favor.”

But I am moralizing again.

As I said, all during my life I had been giving assistance especially to the Eurasians, but these favors were desultory, scattered like the floss from the ripe pods of the semul tree, blown no one knows whither. The angel above, no doubt has a record of them, and I in the consciousness in having tried to do good, and so far it was well, but I wanted to see some tangible results.

There was a large number of these people in the station. Only a few of them had employment. The rest were like sheep without a shepherd, or rather, to use a truer expression, they were like mongrel pariah dogs, owned by no one and kicked by every one, and like such dogs getting a living by picking up any stray bones they could find. They were not inside anywhere. At the sports, races or any festivity they hung around the outskirts. If they went to church they were seated in the tail end of it and got only the drippings of the sanctuary. Only a few ever went to church. They felt they were not wanted even in the so-called House of God. Is it any wonder that they lost all ambition, all energy, lacking faith in everything good and noble, despised and cursed their own abject condition and helplessness? Tell a boy constantly that he is going to the dogs or devil and the chances are that he will make your words become true. The devil comes when he hears his name often called. The seeds of ill once planted will grow and come to maturity no one knows when, where or how. These people slunk away to their dens, where they lived in idleness and squalor and became acclimatized to evil. Not all of them I am glad to say, but too many of them I am sorry to admit. Some of them indulged in vice of the most degrading kind. Their worst enemy was the cheap liquor, provided for them by a benevolent Government, and every one who has visited this class of people in their huts, not houses, knows what the curse of drunkenness is to them.

To remedy this condition of idleness I got together a number of this class, and after talking over the situation, suggested that we start a factory of some sort in which only Eurasians would be employed. The idea was accepted at once. It was made a joint stock company with the shares so small that any one could get an interest in it. One proviso was that when any one wished to buy a share, the one having the largest number would be obliged to sell his extra shares at their first cost, and so on, until no one would own more than one share if there were buyers. The object of this was to get as many as possible to have a personal interest in the factory. All the stockholders were to vote according to the number of shares they held, for the officers and direction of the business. There were no paid directors to meet whenever they chose for the sole purpose of getting their fees, nor any agents to get a commission on the product without doing anything. We had a long discussion on this latter topic, and it was repeatedly iterated that the great curse of every business in India, is the agents or middlemen, who, with the directors, take the largest share of the profits. We would have none of them. We would sell our goods at low prices direct to the purchaser and consumer.

The project was soon successful. Every workman soon had a share or shares, as it was considered an honor to be a shareholder. There was to be a meeting once a month, or oftener, if the manager or any ten shareholders deemed it necessary, when each shareholder had a right to give his opinion and a vote was taken, the majority to rule. At these monthly meetings it was customary to have a lecture or discussion on something connected with the business. One was given on the proper use of tools, another on machinery, one on the saving of material. The speaker on this latter topic referred to Samuel Blodgett, called the “Successful Merchant.” This gentleman, who knew every part of his business, from cellar to garret, was one day watching a boy do up a package. When it was finished he said: “My boy, do you know that if every one in the house doing up a parcel should use as much paper and twine as you do, it would almost ruin us?” Then he untied the package, and made a much neater one with half the paper and half the twine. Turning to a clerk he asked how many packages they sent out a year. He then computed the waste of paper and twine, amounting to quite a sum. “There, my boy, you see what a waste there would be, so don’t let such a mistake occur again.” Then the lecturer urged the workmen to be very careful in saving every bit of wood, iron or any material, and then appealed to them that if each only wasted a quarter of an ana a day during the year, it would be a great loss to all, giving the amount. The speaker on tools and their use, went into all the details, showing the value of a good implement over a poor one, and the benefit of keeping it in the best condition. Another talked on the value of time, of being punctual, and showed the loss there would be if any were late or indolent or had to run around the shop looking for tools.

These lectures had a very beneficial effect. Besides, there were others on subjects not immediately connected with the business, such as health, temperance, morals. In brief, the project ceased to be an experiment, as the business became a means of livelihood to many, and better still, made them men.

This business was exactly in line with my theory. That in order to reform men, to lift them up from a level with the brutes, you must first give them a means of earning a living, give them enough food to eat, clothes to wear, and a decent place to live in. Until this is done, what is the use to talk to them about their souls, or preach to them about sin, or unfold to them the glories of Heaven, when they are sunken in the mire of earth up to their necks, and cannot get out of it? Why teach them how to fit themselves for Heaven, and not how to live on earth unmindful that the latter comes first? “Why fence the field when the oxen are within devouring the corn?” Man is first an animal, and what he needs first is food. Feed him, and then preach to him, if you choose. Poverty destroys honor and self respect, and so long as a man is tortured by cold and hunger, he cannot be reached by moral forces. The best way to prepare mankind for a home in Heaven, is to make it decently comfortable for them on earth. Says a distinguished writer, “Give to a man the right over my subsistence and he has power over my whole being.”

Our success in this matter was all we could expect. Still there was something wanting. Outside of the business the men were left to themselves each to wander in his own way.

At times I had invited them all to my house with their families, and my wife joined me heartily in entertaining them, but this was not quite satisfactory. There was naturally restraint. There was no place of public resort for them. I could sympathize with them, for I had been excluded from the club, yet had my pleasant home, my garden, my books, and far above all, my wife. We could have our daily drives, and often pleasant company, but where could these people go? I had resources enough and it has always been in my nature to be independent, for I had rather sit down on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than to be crowded on a velvet cushion.

One night, as I lay awake or half dreaming, my guiding angel gave me a suggestion. Years agone, the magistrate of the station, my paternal relative, though I was not aware of the connection at the time, had forbidden me to proceed with a building I had commenced. From that time this ground had been unused except as a pasture for my cows. The suggestion was, why not use this ground on which to erect a hall or building of some kind where the Eurasians could resort? I was willing to devote the ground, but the building, who was to erect it?

At our chota hazri the next morning I had no sooner mentioned the suggestion than my wife exclaimed: “The very thing! Let’s do it at once!” If it might be allowed me to use the words of a great man, I would quote the remark of Edmund Burke about his wife, and apply it to mine: “She discovers the right and wrong of things, not by reasoning but by sagacity.” She never opposed any good proposal of mine, and when she differed from me, it was with such a sweet reasonableness and loving persuasion that I took real pleasure in yielding to her suggestions. Never once did I have to ask like the Scotchman, “Wha’s to wear thae breeks, the day, you or me?” Carlyle says: “The English are torpid, the Scotch harsh, and the Irish affectionate.”

My wife was the latter, and if she ever guided me, it was through her affections, but this is beside the story.

My next thought was to see Mr. Jasper, not only to get his opinion, for I had determined on my plan, but more to hear myself talk on the subject, and to judge from his manner on hearing me, if the thing was feasible and best. There is something in hearing one’s self talk over his own plans, but I must check myself, or I shall be dreaming again.

He heard me all through very calmly, and replied:

“Yes, it is a good scheme, but can you carry it out?”

“Will you help?” I asked quickly in my enthusiasm. He did not reply at once, but sat silently, looking towards me or away beyond me, for some moments, and then said, “You have asked me a very important question. You know how I feel towards you, Mr. Japhet.”

“Yes,” I replied, “I know and wish to say that there is not a man living whom I respect more for his good judgment and kindliness of heart towards me than I do you.”

I said this because it was the truth, and I wished him to know it, not that I intended to bait him with any sugared words. Had he declined to help me even with a rupee, I would have said what I did.

He continued, “You know me too well to take offense at what I am going to say. You know the Eurasians, what they are?”

“Don’t I know?” I exclaimed. “Am I not one of them to my sorrow and shame?”

Without regarding my remark he said, “The natives are bad enough in every way, just what their ancestors and circumstances have made them. They are born deceivers and liars. They are capable liars, and can tell a lie with a semblance of truth in it, and then to protect the first will thatch it with another, and so on indefinitely as they build their roofs, one thatch upon another. The Europeans are not noted for lying. They will stave off everything they don’t like to admit, with a bluff, or a ‘mind your own business.’ They are licentious. I think this is their greatest and worst vice in India, if not at home.”

“Do I not know this?” I asked. “Do I not carry the proof of this in my face every hour I live?”

Said he, “To come to the point. The Eurasians, not all of them, but many, have all the vices and scarcely any of the virtues of both races. They will tell lies of the weakest, flimsiest kind, with not the shadow of a leg to support them. They make promises and break them without any hesitation whatever. They are indolent and indifferent, without any of the stamina of manhood. They are weak-minded, soft-hearted and careless. They are lacking in courage and manly character, destitute of ambition, easily offended, and will throw up a position because some little thing does not please them, when they know it to be almost impossible for them to get another situation. When one leaves his place, if unmarried, he is most likely to take some little silly young fool for a wife to starve with him. And then they breed like rabbits, as is the case all over the world; the poorer a people, the more children they have. I have seen so many of them, and you know I have assisted them; yet they have so often abused my favors and kindness, that I sometimes question if they are worth saving.”

I interrupted, “This is a very severe indictment, yet I cannot help admitting that there is much truth in it, for have I not also had experience with them? But who made them such as they are? Are they not the effect of a sufficient cause? Am I to blame for what my father, a Christian gentleman, made me, an Eurasian? Are not these poor people made what they are by no fault of their own, and to be pitied rather than cursed and shunned? Do they not of all people in India need sympathy and help? Would it not be the will of God that we should give them assistance and lift them out of the pit into which they have been cast?”

“Yes, yes, Japhet, you are right, and I am pleased to hear you talk as you do. Your reference to God reminds me of a story. A street urchin who had just lost his mother was sitting on the kerb-stone, sobbing as if his heart would break. He began to pray to God for help, when one of his chums sneered at his praying. He retorted out of his sobs, “What is God for if not to help a feller when he needs Him most?” So I suppose if we are to do the will of God we should assist those who need our help the most, and I don’t know of any people who need our help more than the Eurasians. Mind you, I don’t promise anything, but will think it over, and will let you know to-morrow if I can do anything.”

I took my departure, believing in my soul as surely as I expected the sun to rise the next morning, that he would help me. He was that kind of a man, though he had given a very poor opinion of some of the Eurasians, yet I knew that not one of them ever went to him in distress without receiving help of some kind.

The rest of the day and night my head was full of plans and schemes. I could think of nothing else. And my wife was as excited as I was. Why should I not give way to my enthusiasm? Why should one made of flesh and blood, with feelings, appear like a man carved out of wood or stone?

Early the next morning a chuprassi brought a note from Mr. Jasper. It said: “My dear Japhet: I like your scheme, and will do this—double every rupee you expend from other sources, until it is fully carried out. I am, &c.”

As I read this I sprang to my feet with a bound, and my wife, who had been looking over my shoulder, fairly danced. I know that tears of gladness came into my eyes, not only for the princely munificence of his offer, but for the magnanimous character of the man I then esteemed as my best and truest friend. I like to give way to my joys, as I have too often had to yield to my sorrows.

I replied to the note in unbounded thanks, expressing a hope that he might never have occasion to regret his magnificent proposal.

The ground was already provided, and now half of the expense was secured, so the project was assured of success. I at once drew up a sketch for a building, the foundation to be four feet above the ground, so as to be no down-in-the-mud affair; a large carriage way in front, an entrance hall, a library and lecture hall to be separated by purdahs, curtains, to be used as one room in case of necessity, a billiard and smoking room, and a refectory.

My wife, looking on, remarked, “That is all very well for you men, but where do we women come in? Have you forgotten us? I have some money to invest in this enterprise, as well as an interest in looking after the rights of the women.”

I might say here that she had considerable money, over which she had entire control, and with which I never interfered except to advise her about it when she asked me, which she often did. I believe in the equal rights of a woman with a man; that she should have an absolute control over her own property, and an equal share with her husband in all wealth acquired after marriage. They both should be equal partners in the marital firm.

“Certainly, my dear,” said I, “the women must have their rights and privileges, and to show our appreciation of them we will place them over us, give them the story above, where they can look down on us, for this is only the ground plan.” And she was satisfied.

My next move was to draw up a prospectus, or a statement of what was proposed, and the necessity for it. I made no mention of Mr. Jasper’s offer, or what my wife and I would do. I wished to get every Eurasian in the station to have an interest and share in the affair. I had no idea of leaving any one out, no matter how poor they were, even if they could only subscribe a rupee. I do not believe in one or two, or a few, bearing all the burdens for the many. Besides, it was not so much for the money as a personal interest, to develop the manhood of even the poorest, and make them feel that when they came among us that they had a right there.

I started out with the paper to get subscriptions. The first I went to was the personal assistant to the Commissioner of the Division. I knew he resented being classed as an Eurasian, and kept aloof from them, claiming that he was of French descent, but if he was not a dusky son of the sun then his color lied. Everybody knew that his grandmother was as puckhi a native woman as ever sat cross-legged and ate dhal bhat with her fingers. He never associated with Europeans, and had only two intimates of a like grade as himself. He declined very abruptly, as he had no interest in the matter. He held himself very lofty and reserved, as if he had been made chief toe-nail cutter by appointment to the Viceroy. I did not waste any time on him or upon his two friends, who made the same excuse. I was rather glad of their refusal, and only went to them to prevent their saying afterward that I had not applied to them. They were very important personages in their own estimation. Their money was not needed, and their manhood had no basis on which to develop.

Among all the others I had great success.

The plan was settled and the building commenced and pushed on as fast as possible. I wanted everybody to see that we meant business. All seemed to acquiesce in feeling that I should manage the affair. In fact I never had a thought about this but went ahead. Then my engineering education came into use. I assumed the whole responsibility, and whether the subscriptions were few or many, I concluded that my wife and I, if required, would balance every rupee of Mr. Jasper’s with one of ours. What I wanted most from the subscribers was their personal interest.

As the building progressed it became quite an object of attraction. Every morning and evening, numbers would come to see how their building was going on. Not the least interested was Mr. Jasper, for he seemed to be always there, watching and anxious with pleasure. He greatly admired the plans, and gave many valuable suggestions. He had great taste and pleasure in gardening, and one day proposed to lay out and prepare the grounds. I suggested that he keep an account of the expense, to be deducted from his subscription. “No,” said he, “you go on with your work; do not mind me. This is my affair entirely.” I did not object, as I was not willing to deprive him of the pleasure this would afford him.

It was not long before the building was finished. It was a work of art, and would have been the pride of any station or city. It was as substantial as lime, brick, stone and iron could make it, with the finest of wood work and marble floors. The grounds were very ample, and by the time the building was completed they had been, through Mr. Jasper’s efficient supervision, converted into a park, with flower gardens.

In the meantime we had a number of meetings of all the subscribers at my house, and various suggestions received as to the furnishing. The upper apartments were left entirely to the women, with my wife in lead. There sprang up a great rivalry between the sexes as to which should have the best furnished rooms, and various were the questions asked of us men about our plans. My wife put on her sweetest smiles when interrogating me, but I was dumb except to say that we would not interfere with their arrangements, and she would reply, “If you think you will get ahead of us you are very much mistaken.” And I knew we would be.

I had frequently observed our non-subscribing Eurasian fellows driving by on the road and looking at our work with a good deal of interest. One morning the one of French descent came to me where I was superintending some work, and greeting with a good morning, said, “After all, Mr. Japhet, I don’t know but what I ought to help you in this.” I cut him short by replying, “Thank you very much, but we have now got all the money we need, and so do not care for any more subscriptions.” He seemed quite taken back by the reply, and began praising the building, but as I was very busy he soon left. I took a perhaps wicked pleasure in giving him this rebuff, more so, that he had received me with such haughtiness on my going to him.

Several had expressed their pleasure that this man and his two friends had declined to subscribe, as from their position as head clerks they imitated their English examples, and had presumed to be of a higher class than the other Eurasians in the station; that had they come in they would have had a great deal to say. They never ceased to regret the attitude they had taken after seeing our success, and were probably very much chagrined that we could get along without their advice or money. They never came to us, except by special invitation to some of our entertainments, and then were only invited to see what a pleasant place, and the enjoyable times we had. This may not have been the best of motives, but let those who are without fault in such matters, hurl stones at us.

In an up country station, where everybody’s business is known, and inquired into by everybody else, such a building as ours, two-storied, when there was not another of this height in the station, a very large puckha one too, with large, ornamental grounds around it, could not fail to excite attention.

The station club-house, frequented by all the civil and military swells and their families, was a low down, mud-walled, tawdry affair, with a dingy, thatched grass roof, the building having been erected during years by additions, so was without form or comeliness, becoming more disreputable in appearance in proportion as our building grew in size and beauty. Through some of my acquaintances in the club, I learned that our enterprise was a subject of daily talk at their evening gatherings. They had discovered that it was to be for an Eurasian club, as they put it, though we had not yet named our infant. One, who lived in a two-roomed, cheap bungalow asked, “What do the half castes want with such a building as that? It is a blanked sight too good for them!” Another remarked, “Why did the Collector allow them to put up such a building just opposite to ours?” Then one replied, “It is no matter, they will not be able to keep it, and then we’ll get it for ourselves, as it would just suit us.” One made a remark that hit me home. “That Japhet is the leader in it, and it seems to me that he is putting on a good deal of side.” “Why the devil shouldn’t he, when he has got the money to do it with?” asked an impecunious sub, whom I had favored with several accommodations.

This, and much more, was the line of their daily conversation, but little to our credit, taking their words at their full meaning, but greatly to their discredit, judging from the motives of the speakers.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

One morning, as I went to look at the work, I saw a well dressed European walking about, and examining the building, with the air of a Lord Moses at the head of the public works department. I paid no attention to him. He came up to me, and without a nod, or salutation, asked in an authoritative tone, “What is this building for?” as if I was some native mistree. I replied that it was for a library and reading room, with a lecture hall to be a resort for the Eurasian community. He asked, “Is it not too large for them? Could they not have done with a cheaper building? It is a very fine building, too good for them, it seems to me. In fact, I have not a very good opinion of the Eurasians.”

I interrupted, “You are talking to one now, and I do not think your remark very becoming, at least, it is not pleasing to me, for you, a European, to speak so of a class of people, who are here, or the most of them, through the lusts and licentiousness of your Europeans.”

I was angry, and he saw it. He reddened up and said, “Excuse me, but I did not know you were an Eurasian, and you know that present company is always excepted.”

Either he was guilty of dullness, in not perceiving my complexion, or else of lying, and either was the same to me. I turned, and went to look at some work, and thus began and ended my only interview with the Commissioner of the Division. This little matter quite upset me for the day, for this reason. This man of pink eyes, white eyebrows, and yellow complexion, in appearance, manner and insolent words, was so like that paternal ancestor of mine that the sight of him, with his insolence, brought all those black, hateful scenes of my earlier life to my mind again, not that I cared so much for the name Eurasian, as applied to myself and others, for I had given him the word, but on account of his insolence and insulting remarks.

On another morning came the Collector of the District, quite a different type of man altogether from the Commissioner. He was very courteous, praised the building and grounds, hoped our undertaking would be most successful, as it was just what was needed. “By the way,” said he, “why didn’t you send your subscription paper to me, for I would gladly have subscribed.” I thanked him, saying that except two, all the subscribers were Eurasians, as we preferred to have them own the building, and feel that it was theirs. “A very good idea,” he answered. “As you will not let me help you with money, I will give you my best wishes for your success, and bid you good morning,” and shaking my hand, he left. There was such a wide contrast between this man and the Commissioner, that I enjoyed as much pleasure from his call, as I felt angry and disgusted with that of the other.

Still another caller, and he the Chaplain. Though he had been more than a year in the station, he had never called on us. We had never met until he appeared that morning, at our house. He introduced himself as the Chaplain. He need not have done this, as he had the padri marks all over him. He excused himself for not calling, on account of his many duties. Considerable of a lie for a padri to tell so early in the morning, I thought, for I had often seen him going to the club to idle away his time.

After some thoughtless conversation he hemmed and hawed, as some men do when they are in a quandary, or destitute of ideas, but finally said, “Mr. Japhet, I have noticed for some time past that very few Eurasians come to church, and as you have great influence over them, I trust you will use it for their good, and get them to attend divine service.” I replied that I had no influence over them in that respect, that if the church could not draw them, I certainly could not, and would not drive them to it, even if I had the power to do so; that I always reserved my right to decide for myself in all religious matters, and conceded to everybody else the same privilege. He left this tack, and began praising the building, inquired its object, and then suggested, “You will soon have the opening, I suppose, and as the Lord Bishop will soon be here on a visitation, would it not be well to invite him to preside.” I saw through his scheme at once. It was to get his fingers into our pie, or in other words to make a grand affair of us for his own eclat, with pomp and procession by the help of the Lord Bishop. Certainly, I did not give him a hint of my thoughts, but replied that we did not know just when the building would be finished; that we had formed no plans about the opening.

Others seemed to be suddenly afflicted with an intense desire to have the opening in good form. Among them my courteous caller, the Collector wrote, suggesting that the Commissioner be invited to preside on the occasion. I silently passed the note to my wife who viewed it for a few moments and then exclaimed, “The idea! Should he dare to preside after making such insulting remarks to you about the Eurasians, I would hiss, and every woman present would follow me. If you men have not spirit enough to stand up for your honor, and are too cowardly to resent insults, we will show you what we women can do,” and she would have done just as she said, for like a good and true wife she was very quick to resent anything that disparaged me. Then she laughed, one of those joyous inspiriting laughs, “Wouldn’t it be fun, though! Do it, Charles, do it; get him to preside, and I’ll give you a thousand rupees for a piano. It would be the best scene at the opening when all we women stand up and hiss until His Highness should retire.”

I wanted no such fun as that, though I would like to have pleased my wife and wanted the thousand rupees, so I calmly wrote to the Collector describing the call of the Commissioner and his remarks against the Eurasians; that some or all had heard of what he had said, and that it would be impossible for them to treat him with respect. I think the Collector was not at all displeased with the result, as there was not much love between the two men, and I mistrusted that the Commissioner had given a hint of the subject of the note to me.

Then there was a lull for awhile in regard to the opening. At length the building was finished, not a touch more needed anywhere and all as neat as a pin. I think that is the phrase to use, as good as any other. Our furniture was of the best kind, a goodly number of new books were on our library shelves, and the tables in our reading room were covered with magazines and papers, and best of all, everybody was delighted and happy.

I feel like moralizing on the new life that had come into our people. They seemed to be endowed with a new energy and inspiration, as if they felt they were somewhere and somebody. They carried themselves with an air of independence, and had thrown off that limp and God-and-man-forsaken appearance that they formerly wore. They had become proud, and that is one of the necessary elements in the making of manhood.

“Independence is the rarest gift and the first condition of happiness.”

We had a general meeting, or several of them, in the lecture hall, of the women and men, for the women had an equal share in everything, and woe to the man who should have dared to propose anything else. I think, and am proud to say, that my wife was probably the instigator in this equal rights matter.

At our meeting it was voted that our building and association should be called “Our Club.” A constitution and by-laws were adopted, a committee of management elected for one year, consisting of an equal number of women and men who were to elect their own president.

At another meeting came the question of the opening or dedication of the building. Then there was an excitement. Some one not quite in the inside who had not heard of the insulting remarks of the Commissioner, proposed that that gentleman be invited to preside on the occasion. He had no sooner uttered the words than he was silenced by a storm of noes, those of the women the most emphatic of all.

There was a little fellow so retired and diffident that I had never heard him make a remark in any of our meetings, though he was always present. He sprang to his feet, lost sight of himself and rose to the occasion. Said he, “I am utterly opposed to inviting any outside Europeans. If we get one of the swells to preside he will look down on us and talk to us as if we were children, fools or outcasts. We have been patronized long enough. We are always put in the background, crowded into the outskirts, treated as scum or menials, except when the Europeans can use us for their own advantage. Then they fawn on us as if we were dogs, to do their bidding. They do not want us anywhere, and always treat us with contempt. Even a blatant Babu is treated with more respect than we are. They will not allow us to enlist as soldiers. They insult us when we ask for employment in the Government offices. The Government Railway Companies and the merchants stick up notices ‘No Eurasians need apply.’ When they advertise for clerks they add, ‘No Eurasians wanted.’

“In the mutiny they made all the use they could of the Eurasians. They were then considered good enough to help them fight and to protect their families. But if another mutiny occurs, the Babus or the Russians may take the country for all the help these haughty aristocrats will get from me.

“Don’t I know what I am talking about. My father was a shopkeeper in Lucknow at the time of the mutiny. All of his stores he took into the residency and gave them out to be distributed among the officers and their families. While the stores lasted he was patted on the back. It was Mr. Evans here and Mr. Evans there; let us see Evans! He was put in the most dangerous places of defense. What a favor! When the mutiny was over and others received medals and honors, his name was not even mentioned. He was only a shopkeeper and worse, an Eurasian. When he suggested payment for his stores he was told that he must submit to the usages of war, so he was left without a rupee for the support of his family, and died almost a beggar, though he had taken many thousands of rupees worth of goods into the entrenchment. Officers who had drunk many cases of his wines, and whose families had been kept from dying through his supplies of canned goods, afterwards did not know him when they met him face to face on the road. I could tell of the rebuffs and insults he received from them when he applied for honest work, but what is the use? Everybody knows the story and everywhere it was the same. It is time we stand up for ourselves and demand our right to live. If we are so lacking in energy that we cannot do this, and are so degraded as to be willing to be insulted and patronized as inferiors then the sooner we die the better.”

These are only a few of his sentences. He was greatly excited and each sentence came out like the puff report from a Gatling gun. His remarks had a great effect and it was some minutes before the audience became quiet, for he was cheered again and again.

Then some one arose and very deliberately said: “I heartily agree with every word Mr. Evans has said. It is time we cease to be patronized. We have been made slaves, menials, and been done to death by patronage, as if we existed only through the mercy and favor of these haughty over-bearing Europeans who are the sources of our being and the causes of our degradation. Without any further remarks I would suggest that we have no occasion to go outside to solicit any one to honor us with his presence. We have one among us, of our own class, who is our best friend as we all know, and but for whom we would not be assembled here to-night. Need I mention his name—Mr. Japhet—”

At this I sprang to my feet, for I had been silently enjoying, listening to the various speakers, thinking that from the independence in their remarks they had already mounted several rounds of the ladder towards liberty and manhood.

“My friends,” said I, “kindly allow me a few words. We have one among us, though not of us, and as he is not present I can speak freely of him. He is our truest and best friend, and has done more for us than all the rest put together. Therefore I move that this our sincere friend, Mr. Jasper, be invited to preside at our opening and give us an address.” As I spoke his name, there was such a cheering that the rest of my sentence, was completely drowned. It showed such a unanimity that it was not necessary to put the motion to a vote.

I had never told any one except my wife, of our friend’s most generous aid, as he had requested me not to do so, but all knew him well and esteemed him as their friend and one of the noblest of men.

Thus this long mooted question was settled and the other part of the programme was soon arranged. We were to have music by some in our own circle and by some other musicians, the best we could get, besides we had our grand piano, and paid for by my wife, though she did not do it at the expense of the Commissioner Sahib’s discomfiture.

Some one asked if it would not be proper to have the Chaplain make a prayer? For a few moments no reply was given, then one with the fervor of little Evans burst out, “Who is the chaplain? Where is he? What is he? What have we got to do with him? What has he done for us? We do not even know him. We were born without him, have lived without him and shall have to die and be buried without him, unless he can find it convenient to leave his croquet or billiards and rattle a prayer over our graves.”

Nothing more was said about this, not even a motion offered, and the little chap did not so much as receive an invitation to our opening. Why should he? He had never called on any one of them, never noticed them and so was nothing to them. What else could he be? His time was so occupied in “Society,” at the grand dinners, at the lawn parties, gossiping with the women about the latest fads in church decoration and millinery, preparing sermons on the wearing of surplices, the position at the eucharist, or the sign of the cross at baptism, the training of his surpliced choir, his postures and intonations, his daily visits to the club; so engrossed with the silly sheep and the follies of his flock that he had no time or inclination to look after the poor outcasts, the goats outside, so why should these run after him?

I think this was the milk in the cocoanut in regard to the opinion and feeling about the Chaplain.

There was a disposition not to have any Europeans present except Mr. Jasper and my wife, but I proposed that the Collector and a few others be invited and no objection was made. I had a sinister motive in this which was to have enough of this set present to see what we did and to circulate the report in “Society.” There was a Mrs. Grundy, a terror, not to evil-doers, but to everybody else, on account of the wagging facility of her tongue. She resembled a busy bee in this, that she was always busy and carried a sting in her tale. Her husband was an homunculus of a man, so counted for nothing. As I knew she would be excessively flattered by an invitation when all the others were left out, and as she would make an excellent substitute for a night reporter on a morning paper, she got one of our engraved cards highly perfumed.

The women took charge of the refreshment part of the ceremony, and assisted with their good taste in the decorations, and it is not necessary to say that everything they did was worthy of them.

Mr. Jasper at once consented to preside and to deliver the address, as it was a pleasure as well as a duty he felt he ought to perform. The time came. There were a number of Eurasian friends from other stations, besides those who had aided us with their subscriptions. “Our Club” was crowded to its fullest capacity. It was a rare entertainment. The music with several recitations, the refreshments and the after social visit were very enjoyable, but the creme de la creme of the occasion was the address of Mr. Jasper, so characteristic of the man, eloquent in its rhetoric and delivery, but still better because he spoke the thoughts of his soul, with such kindly, yet severe criticisms of the Eurasian character as to make us all wince under them, and with such tender urgent appeals as to bring tears into the eyes of everyone.

The main idea was the development of true manhood and womanhood, first in purity of thought. “For you are what your thoughts make you, and remember that every thought you have and every word you utter are immortal and will effect your souls forever.” While he was describing his highest ideals of character the audience seemed lifted up above themselves with holy aspirations, and when he showed the failure of many and the causes of them, every one could see himself as in a polished mirror and feel that he himself was being described. As several said afterwards, Mr. Jasper could not have given a better description of themselves had he known every secret of their whole lives. There was not an objection to any of his criticisms as all knew they were true to the strictest line. He took an hour in the delivery of the address though it seemed not more than half that time as all were entranced by his earnest thoughts. The address was printed to be kept as a creed or a Bible among us. Why not as a Bible or Sacred Scripture as good as any other man or set of men could make for us? All truth is true, no matter who utters it. “Precepts and promises from the lips of Jesus are not made true because he uttered them, because they were eternally true in the beginning with God.”

A little incident occurred during the social part of our opening that greatly affected me. Among our guests were a woman and her husband from a distant station. She was of fine appearance and address. She came to me and taking my hand, asked, “Mr. Japhet, do you remember me?” I could not for the moment recall her, and she remarked, “Do you remember once at night rescuing a young girl from two policemen? I was that girl, and many a thousand times have I thought with tears of joy of what you did for me! And I have prayed for you almost daily that the richest of heaven’s blessings might descend on you. Where would I have been taken and what would have become of me, if you had not saved me from what would have been my fate infinitely worse than death! I owe my life here and my eternal life, all I owe to you. You were indeed my savior, and I want to thank you with all my heart and all my soul.”

She wept for joy, as the contrast, of what she might have been and her present position, overcame her. I would belie myself and not be true to my manhood, if I did not admit that I also wept. What could give me a greater joy than to have been the means of saving a soul, and she an innocent helpless girl, from the jaws of a monster vice, and from a life of the foulest degradation, misery and eternal death? Better this than to be a hero in the greatest battle of the world. Such a deed, I can but think it, has an eternal record of good, while even the destruction of one fellow mortal in war, bears with it an everlasting stain and remorse, though it may win a medal or an empty plaudit to perish with this life. Some one has said: “He that saveth a soul from death shall hide a multitude of sins.” I trust this may be true for me.

She introduced me to her husband, a fine looking man. I heard afterwards that they were well-to-do and highly esteemed. She had heard of “Our Club,” and they came of their own accord, as she wished to see me and to express her gratitude for her salvation, as she called it. They were introduced to my wife and invited to our home where the whole story was retold and again she expressed her thanks with tears. There was joy not over a sinner that repented, but over an innocent one saved from sin and death. Is it not far better to keep people from sinning than to redeem them from sin?

“To prevent the commission of crime, prevent the manufacture of criminals.”

The Collector was one of our delighted guests and could not be lavish enough of his praise, and ever afterwards was one of the best friends of the Eurasians, giving employment to a number of them. Self help leads to other help, and the gods help those who help themselves. He was often a welcome visitor to Our Club and did not hesitate to make his tiffin of our soup, excellent bread and butter, and to praise our coffee, better, he said, than he could get at home and asked the privilege of getting his supply of bread and butter from our kitchen.

I need scarcely say that with our opening began a new era among the Eurasians. They took upon themselves a self reliance, an independence and an ambition to make themselves, what Mr. Jasper called in his address, true men and women. Even the very poorest of them walked more erect, when they could think of being members of the club, having a place they could call their own, and not live in a perpetual fear of being snubbed and scorned where they were not wanted. Not the least of the incitements to their energy and ambition was the interest “Our Club,” excited among the outsiders. Many sneered at what they called the “airs,” the Eurasians were putting on. Many were the insulting remarks that came to our ears. The lash of envy is often a greater stimulant than words of praise. A very few spoke well of our enterprise, though all seemed to feel a chagrin that we had such a grand building and much finer grounds than theirs.

Our work was not finished with the building. The management was yet to come, though as there was such an unanimity, there was little trouble. We had made our laws and rules. One of the most prominent matters was temperance. No intoxicating drinks were to be allowed on the premises. This was one of the laws fundamental and ever to remain unalterable. Mr. Jasper urged this with all his force of words. Another was that there was to be no gambling or betting of any kind, though there were fine billiard tables and other games for recreation and amusement, but no money to be involved in any game; no profanity, indecent stories and remarks, or improper behavior. Any one violating these laws was to be excluded from the privileges of the club at the discretion of the managing committee. No one was to be admitted without the payment of a fee, so small as to be within the means of the poorest. Nothing was to be donated by the club, as it was not to be a pauper asylum or a free soup kitchen, but it was assumed that the members might and should pay the fees of any they chose and purchase tickets for food. This would maintain the integrity of the club, stimulate benevolence among the members and tend to create independence in all. It was accepted as a part of our Gospel that all were to help each other, and especially those the most in need. Mr. Jasper made a point that the degradation of only one individual would affect the whole community as surely as that the smallest pebble thrown into the biggest ocean would make a ripple.

Our Club was for the development of manners, morals and mental growth, not for one day in seven, but every day in the year.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

I had a chance to indulge in one of my fads. I always respect a man who has a good fad, for there are so many aimless, jelly fish, fad-less people in the world. One of my notions that has strengthened with my years is—that much of the lack of energy in many people, the great cause of drunkenness, and of much of the crime, is the want of good, wholesome, stimulating food. “Pain is the prayer of a nerve for healthy food.” “A man is what he eats,” or as the Hindus put it, “The milk of the cow is in her mouth.”

It may seem absurd to some great lordly persons who know everything for others and little for themselves, for me to have such a thought, yet I do not know why I should not have my opinion about things as well as other people. The views of even the wisest and best men are attacked, so why need I hesitate or fear? Even the lean Cassius dared ask about the great Cæsar,—

“Now, in the name of all the gods at once, upon what meat doth this our Cæsar feed—That he is grown so great?” and it is allowed by common consent that even a cat may look at a king.

I have always known from my own introspection that I had more energy to work, more charity for the poor and been less inclined to meanness, when I had good nourishing food, than when as in my school days, I was hungry and faint on watery soup and half-boiled vegetables.

With these views I determined on trying an experiment in “Our Club,” as I was sure it would be for good and certainly do no harm. We engaged an excellent manager of the cookery and refectory in an Eurasian widow. Eurasian, as we had decided to employ only our own people, except for the most menial work. It is not a very good commentary on the native Christians of India, that Christian families, padris, missionaries, church committees or even the Bible and Tract Societies will not employ them, but take heathen servants to their exclusion. If Christianity in two hundred years has not been able to produce a servant that a Christian might employ, is it—but what is the use of talking?

Apropos of this is a statement made by a prominent clergyman at a Church Missionary Congress. “After a century of effort, the expenditure of many noble lives, as well as of some millions of money, the Church of England, extraordinary to say, has signally failed to establish one solitary or single native church in any part of the world—that is to say, a church self-governed, self-supporting and expanding, or exhibiting any true signs of vitality as a church. This is a tremendous indictment, I know, but for long, my heart has been hot within me and at last I have spoken, not without, however, having weighed well my words.”

This woman was a model of cleanliness. One of the mottoes on our walls was “Cleanliness is next to Godliness,” and under it printed in large type was the remark of Sir B. W. Richardson: “Cleanliness covers the whole field of sanitary labor. Cleanliness, that is purity of air; cleanliness, that is purity of water; cleanliness in and around the house; cleanliness of person; cleanliness of dress; cleanliness of food and feeding; cleanliness in work; cleanliness in the habits of the individual man and woman; cleanliness of life and conversation, purity of life, temperance, all these are in man’s power.”

It is in man’s power, God-given always, as all good things are, to make his own moral destiny for this life as for that to come. He can best answer his own prayers by putting his own shoulder to the wheel, instead of praying to the gods. There was a world of instruction in the reply of Lord Palmerston to the Scotch elders of Glasgow, when they requested him to appoint a day of fasting and prayer to avert the cholera. He replied that it was useless to do so until they had cleaned the streets of the city. He relied more on scavengers’ shovels than he did on Bishops’ prayers.

We made cleanliness one of the articles in our unwritten creed, for may it not come that cleanliness of life and living will some day be the universal creed to fit us not only for this life, but for the future life?

The next step was to have our manager understand just what we wanted and a number of us formed ourselves into an experimental catering and cooking committee having first secured an excellent range for our cook-house. This cooking really belonged to the women, but we men assumed the right to examine into it, whether it was ours or not. We saw to the procuring of the food, and therefor felt empowered to know that it was properly served. I have always felt great sympathy for Xantippe who is generally written down as a scold, for it is recorded that Socrates would often, unawares to her, invite a number of his friends to dinner when he had not provided a scrap for the larder. What true wife, though she had the temper of an angel, would not give it recriminating voice and action under such circumstances?

We provided, and so had our rights.

Our first effort was with various kinds of good substantial soup. I had enough skimmed broth in my school days to last me for life and the very recollection of it causes in me a kind of water brash.

We succeeded and made out a list of soups to be prepared in a wholesale way of the best materials, at such a price that any wayfarer or aristocrat coming to our club, could relish a bowl of it, and also that families belonging to the club, could send in their orders the day before for what they wanted. The price just above the cost, was so much below what they could be made for in their homes, and so much better, that we had many orders. We also had the best of bread, cake and biscuit, made in the cleanest possible way. If the Europeans in India could see how their bread is made by the natives in the bazars, they would eschew it forever, and diet on fruits and vegetables. It is scarcely credible the methods of the native cooks. I once at table gravely asked my khansaman, if they really strained our soup through their turbans? Putting his hands together in front of him, with a slight bow he replied: “What else can we do if their Honors do not give us towels?”

Once, as a guest, eating food provided by a zemindar, he placidly looking on, I turned and noticed two of the servants, the one pouring milk through the shirt-tail of the other, straining it for me to drink. A sahib blaming his khansaman for boiling the roly poly in one of his master’s socks, the fellow gravely replied: “Sahib! it was not one of the clean ones!”

A friend of mine eating his mutton chops and finding some cottony shreds in his mouth questioned his cook standing by, when the latter replied, that as he had no tallow, he had used the waste ends of the burned candles. The sahib at once seized his chef and holding him by the neck forced all the remaining mess down his throat, for which he was summoned before the magistrate and had to pay a fine of twenty-five rupees. “But,” said my friend, “I would willingly have paid five times that amount for the satisfaction I got in making him swallow the rest of the stuff with the burnt wicks.”

We wanted none of that kind of cooking in our club. Our next experiment was in the making of tea and coffee, and after a number of trials succeeded in producing articles that few of our people had ever tasted the like before, a nectar like coffee not to be paragoned anywhere in the world. “And they in France of the best rank and station are most select and generous,” in making this delicious drink.

Anent the native coffee-making is this told by a khansaman. His Sahib, an English doctor, was always complaining that he did not get good black coffee, such as they made in France. His cook at his wit’s end, finally took some charcoal and grinding it to powder mixed it with the coffee. His Sahib was highly delighted, and boastingly invited his friends to drink his real French coffee. The servant very considerately never told the story until after his master’s death.

Our manager fell in with our ways and suggestions and took great pride in the science as well as the art of cookery, and in having everything in the best possible condition.

It is a saying among the Europeans in India, “If you wish to enjoy your dinner never look into the cook-house.” We reversed that order to “If you wish to enjoy our food see how it is cooked.” Our restaurant was well patronized, and it was of great benefit, morally as well as physically. It was not for the poor alone, though the prices were so low, for the better class, that is, the better well-to-do, did not disdain to favor us, as everything was better than most of them could get in their homes, and I doubt if the great Commissioner Sahib, or the Commanding General, had near as good.

The only vice we tolerated was the smoking of tobacco, and this was confined to the smoking-room or to the grounds outside. In respect to this habit, we thought it best not to stretch the bow of restraint too far, lest it break with its own tension, or we be like “The man that once did sell the lion’s skin while the beast lived, was killed with hunting him.” “We may outrun, by violent swiftness, that which we run at, and lose by overrunning.”

The upper apartments were reserved entirely for the women, and reached by a wide, marble staircase from the lower entrance hall. They had their dressing-room, reading and other rooms richly furnished. They had more than an equal share, for besides their own, they had the right of our lecture hall, the library and refectory, but we were pleased with all their encroachments, for they assisted us in every way. The walls of the lecture hall and refectory were bare until we selected some mottoes, which our feminine members, with their skillful taste and hands, ornamented, making them works of art. This was done, not in a day, but during many months of most laborious work, with rivalry and pride as to which should produce the finest work. Some of the mottoes were these:

“We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths;

In feelings, not in figures on a dial.

We should count time by heart throbs.

He most lives who thinks most, feels the noblest, acts the best.”—Bailey.

“There is no religion higher than truth.”—Oriental Proverb.

“I would rather that men should say there never was such a man as Plutarch, than say that Plutarch was unfaithful.”—Plutarch.

“Sin makes us pay toll, if not along the way, surely at the end of the road.”

“Not he that repeateth the name,

But he that doeth the will.”—Longfellow.

“Every rifle should have its own bullet mold.”

“Everything is bitter to him who has gall in his mouth.”

“Truth is not drowned in water or burned in fire.”

“A fool may throw a stone into a pond; it may take seven sages to pull it out.”

“Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”—Jesus.

“Purity, even in the secret longings of our hearts, is the greatest duty.”—Xenocrates.

“A good man sees God reflected in his own soul; the cleaner the soul the more vivid the image.”

“Only through the highest purity and chastity we shall approach nearer to God, and receive, in the contemplation of Him, the true knowledge and insight.”—Porphyry.

“The doctrine of our Master consists in having an invariable correctness of heart, and in doing towards others as we would that they should do to us.”—A Disciple of Confucius.

“The thoughts and intents of the heart are deeds in the sight of God.”

“As a man thinketh in his heart, so is he.”—Bible.

“All lovers of truth are lovers of God.”

“He only truly lives who lives for others.”

“We must do one of two things—either learn to control the conditions of our lives, or let them control us.”

“The more one lives for his kind, the less need he fear to die.”—Kabalist Proverb.

“The highest service one can do is to serve himself in the highest manner.”

“Whatever good betideth thee, O man, it is from God, and whatsoever ill, from thyself is it.”—Koran.

“There is only one road to Heaven—obedience to the Golden Rule.”

“So long as every man does to other men as he would that they should do to him, and allow no one to interfere between him and his Maker, all will go well with the world.”—Ancient Pagan.

“A man obtains a proper rule of action

By looking on his neighbor as himself.

Do naught to others which, if done to thee,

Would cause thee pain; this is the sum of duty.”

—Hindu Maxim.

“I will set my camel free and trust him to Allah.” Mahomed answered, “Tie thy camel first, and then commit him to God.”—Arabian Saying.

We soon had everything in good working order. A committee of entertainment was appointed; one evening of each week was devoted to instruction and practice in singing, for which an excellent teacher was secured. Another evening was for the literary society, when essays were read and subjects discussed, the members appointed in turn, so as to give every one a chance, and all to take an interest and have something to do. This compelled them to read and think, which took up all their leisure hours from work, formerly spent in idleness and folly. We had no idea of having any one or a few do all the work and receive all the benefit, but every one, no difference who they were, was urged, assisted and required to do their part, not so much for the benefit they might give to others, but what they would do for themselves. Ours was a mutual improvement association, the weakest to be helped the most.

CHAPTER XL.

Every Sunday morning there was a lecture or a sermon read, prayers and singing. We gleaned in all fields, gathering the ripest grain we could find. For our needs the library was increased by the addition of valuable books as works of reference, for investigation of subjects for discussion. There were only a few novels, and by the best writers. We always had plenty of music and singing, and in a few years our club became quite a musical society. We had no castes, as in “society,” to prevent Mrs. Smack, the clerk’s wife, from sitting beside Mrs. Grimsby, the wife of the railway guard.

The intention was to vary the exercises, even the religious, so as to do away with that everlasting monotony prevalent in the churches; to make all of moral benefit and intellectual profit, as well as attractive and entertaining. The subjects of the lectures, articles and sermons, took a wide range from earth to heaven, from the physiology of plants and animals to astronomy, the care of the homes, the health of our bodies, the welfare of our moral natures, temperance a most prominent topic, the restraint of our passions and the immortality of our souls, everything that might make us cleaner, healthier, wiser and nobler. We believed in useful work to make people happy, to fit them to live on earth, more than in worrying them about what they might be hereafter, or in troubling them about “the ineffable relations of the Godhead before the remotest beginnings of time;” in making a heaven for them in this life and trust to God and their own fitness for the one to come; not so much in trying to penetrate the mysteries and glories of heaven, as to realize the facts and realities of every day life on earth; less in describing the many mansions and the golden pavements of the new Jerusalem, but caring more about improving the homes and cleaning the alleys of the poor, giving them good bread for which they were hungering daily, instead of wasting time on dilated descriptions of the imagined joys of the blessed, so very far away. It seemed to be a settled conviction among us that if we could get our people to live good, clean, honest, happy lives here, they would run no risk of enjoying the life to come.

Who dare say that we had not the right to try the experiment, and to do as we pleased in the matter?

Why should we not start our society, found our church, if we choose to call it such, as any other set of men to found theirs?

If the church of Rome, the church of England, the Presbyterian or any one of the other thousand heterogeneous sects could set up for itself, why should we not do the same? They did not ask us or anybody for their privileges, why need we ask anything of them? We were not responsible for them as they certainly would deny any responsibility to us. Should they say that they had divine authority, could we not make the same claim for ourselves? Since God our father created us, as we believe He did, as He created them, why could we not have a share in His divine rights as well as they? We conceded to all others the same privilege, the right to do as they deemed best, and claimed the same right for ourselves.

If that libidinous, much-wived and wife murderer, Henry the Eighth, could set up for himself in founding a church, why cannot other men of better morals and less exceptional tastes start a society, a church, a denomination? To go further back: If Constantine, who “drowned his wife in boiling water, butchered his little nephew, murdered two of his brothers-in-law with his own hand, killed his own son Crispus, led to death several men and women and smothered in a well an old monk,” and yet was the distinguished patron, and one of the founders of the Christian church, cannot others whose hands have never been stained with blood dare to think and act for themselves?

Much might be said of the bigotry and assumption of some classes of people who claim like the egotistical, over-bearing Jews of old, that they are the elect, the chosen people of God and all the rest of mankind are to be subdued, exterminated, unless they fall into the ways and accept the creeds and ceremonies of these self-assumed religious rulers of the world; claiming that “God’s actual grace is limited to those who are within the church and have the faith,” meaning thereby their little church and their very doubtful faith, and boldly inscribe on their portals, “Beware of imitations; here is the only genuine article;” that there is no truth, except what is seen under their little ecclesiastical microscopes.

What of the wisdom, justice and mercy of God in creating fifteen hundred millions of people now living, not to consider the infinite number passed away, if He only saves the few poor unworthy Christians, as they style themselves, and hands over the vast majority to some omnipotent demon to torture forever and forever, as the Christians teach?

Has God so badly bodged His work, or are these people mistaken? What gods some of these little ecclesiastics would be if they could have their own way! Their assumption of divine authority and wisdom reminds one of the remark of a French critic, “The fact is, only I and my friends possess any real knowledge, and I am not so sure concerning them.”

I have got somewhat ahead of my story. These thoughts were prompted by a conversation with the Chaplain. We had not met since his first and only call. At his approach he greeted me very respectfully with a condescending air, and I saw from the frigidity of his manner that he had a purpose in coming. I was not left long in doubt what it was. He said, “Mr. Japhet, for some time past none of the Eurasians have come to church.” He waited for a few moments, as if he expected me to say something, but I remained silent. This rather disconcerted him. Then he continued, “Since the opening of your club these people keep entirely aloof from us.” I said nothing, and this annoyed him, as I saw by his fidgeting and the reddening of his face. Then he struck me hard by asking: “Do you think, Mr. Japhet, as an Eurasian, with an influence over these people, you are doing right in keeping them away from the church and from participating in the divine ordinances, without which there can be no salvation? The church was ordained of God, He established its ordinances. Is it not wrong, then, to interfere and prevent people from attending that which is for their eternal welfare?”

He stopped for my reply, which was: “You are making a very severe accusation against me. I have never uttered a word to them against your church. They have been entirely free in the matter. As for God ordaining the church, my belief is that He has ordained it as He has everything else, no more no less. All that we know about it is what some men say, and what some can affirm others can deny; the statement of one set is as good as that of the other.”

“But,” he interrupted, “did not our Lord Jesus Christ establish the ordinances and command us to use them?”

“What ordinances?” I asked.

“Why, baptism and holy communion.”

“No,” I replied, “not at all. Baptism was an old rite used at the initiation of men into some society, or to signify their attachment to some leader or principle. Only to mention two instances: Were not people baptized unto Moses, and were they not baptized by John, the forerunner of Jesus? Jesus only continued the old rite, or custom among his followers with the same significance. The church, assuming to know more than Jesus did, has changed this rite into a regenerating and saving ordinance. Let me read what one of the Bishops of your Church says about it:

“‘In this church, the body which derives life, strength and salvation from Christ its head, baptism was instituted as the sacred rite of admission. In this regenerating ordinance, fallen man is born again from a state of condemnation to a state of grace. He obtains a title to the presence of the Holy Spirit, to the forgiveness of sins, to all those precious and unmerited favors which the blood of Christ purchased. Wherever the gospel is promulgated the only mode through which we can obtain a title to those blessings and privileges which Christ has purchased for his mystical body, the church, is the sacrament of baptism. Repentance, faith and obedience will not, of themselves, be effectual to our salvation. We may sincerely repent of our sins, heartily believe the gospel; we may walk in the paths of holy obedience, but until we enter into covenant with God by baptism and ratify our vows of allegiance and duty at the holy sacrament of the supper; commemorate the mysterious sacrifice of Christ, we cannot assert any claim to salvation.’

“Every man of common sense will reject such a statement as false, no matter who made it. It is the teaching of priests to clothe their performance with power and mystery. It is utterly opposed to the plain statements of the Bible and contrary to what any true man must believe of the character of God. I would rather accept the sentiment of the poet:

“Leave polemic folios in their dust,

But this point hold, howe’er each sect may brawl,

When pure the life, when free the heart from gall

What e’er the creed, Heaven looks with love on all.”

“As to the communion. This was a ceremony observed among the heathen long before Jesus was born, signifying friendship and a devotion to each other’s interests, and it is observed even now by the wildest tribes of men as a sign or proof of kindness and friendship. Among some people it is customary at their funerals for a cup of wine to be passed, and each one present to take a sip in memory of the dead. At first it was only a simple custom, a rite in memory of friendship, but how it has been transformed and degraded! At a Roman Council, Berengar, who had denied transubstantiation, was compelled to swear that ‘the very body and blood of our Lord Jesus Christ are not only sensibly in the sacrament, but in truth are handled in the hands of the priest, and broken and crushed by the teeth of the faithful.’

“What can be more sacrilegious and disgusting than such a doctrine? Is it strange that thinking men become infidels when such stuff is forced upon them? or that a Muhamedan sage remarked: ‘So long as Christians worship what they eat, let my soul dwell with the philosophers.’

“Baptism and communion are only rites, with a meaning, and well to be observed, but have no power in themselves, and are no more divine than are the various ceremonies among men. I claim that all forms and observances that tend to elevate and bless mankind are in a sense divine, good or Godlike, the one as another. We might say that the light of the sun, or the rain, or the cooling winds, are among the divinest gifts to mankind. So any good impulse in the hearts of men, and every noble deed, is a divine gift ordained or given from God, our Heavenly Father. Why restrict His divine gifts or ordinances to two mere ceremonies, and not include all that is good? The universe is alive with God. The thing that is natural is none the less divine and worthy of our love and reverence. Every scientific fact, or we might say, everything good, all is of divine origin.”

He asked, “Don’t you believe that the Church was specially established by God?”

“No,” said I, “not more than any other good society. In fact, I have more faith in the divinity of an association that would establish a soup kitchen to feed the starving poor, or one that would clothe the naked, or another that would help them to a means of livelihood, or for the education of their children.”

“Does not the church do this?” he asked.

“Yes,” I answered, “in a great measure, to its credit, but does this prove that it has the only and exclusive right to help mankind, or by doing so that it was established by God to the exclusion of all other good societies? Just so far as it performs good deeds it is of God, as any society or an individual that does the same kind of work.”

He replied: “Then you degrade the church into a mere human society?”

“Yes, it is only a society founded by men, but there is no degradation if it does the work of God. It is to be judged as any other human affair by its works, as your Scripture says: ‘the tree is known by its fruits,’ or as Jesus said, ‘not every one that saith Lord, Lord, but he that doeth the will of my Father which is in heaven.’ When God sends His sunlight equally upon all mankind, are you going to confine His spiritual light to any one society, called by men a Church? We should have more liberal views of God’s justice and loving mercy than that.

“One of the beautiful expressions of Charles Kingsley is this—“God demands not sentiment, but justice. The Bible knows nothing of the religious sentiments and emotions, whereof we hear so much talk nowadays. It speaks of duty. Beloved, if God so loved us, we ought to love one another. We must live nobly to love nobly.”

“God sends His teachers into every age and clime

With revelations suited to their growth.”

“I want to admit the fact that the Church in its principles, as indicated in the teachings and example of Jesus is the grandest society on earth for the amelioration and salvation of mankind, but what is it in practice? Go into the large, fashionable churches in any country, where are the poor? In many of them not there at all. If a few of them happen to be present, they are on the back seats, in the corners, while the rich and influential are on the best seats in front. Take your own church. The highest of rank in the station are honored with cushioned, carpeted pews in front, where they get the first draughts of the unskimmed milk of the word and so on down, caste by caste to the doors, where the poor may find a few plank seats if they can. Have I not seen some of the poor who have gone early into the front seats, ordered into the rear? Are there not ranks and castes in the House of God, as you call it? Did not the first missionaries in India for many years, as may be some do now,—have different cups for the communion, some for high castes, and others for low castes? Was this following Jesus in the true spirit of the communion? Jesus did not establish a church; then why should any of his followers do what he did not even suggest, and besides, claim infallibility for what they have done? Certainly in human affairs organization is essential, but principles should be first of all, and instead of wasting time over dogmas and trivial rites and ceremonies, the church, as a society, should follow and imitate Jesus in doing the work he did.”

I went on rapidly, and my caller did not seem disposed to interrupt; whether he thought my remarks worthy of his notice or not, I did not know or care.

He said, “I will not answer you, but come to the subject again,” putting on a humble, unctuous, clerical manner. “I am sorry that through your club these people are kept away from the church.”

I replied: “Let us see how far this is the case. There is a large number of Eurasians in the station. How many of them ever went to church? Not more than a score. Why the others did not attend is not for me to say, only to mention the fact. Where were the rest? Some out shooting; others at their games; the most of them in their miserable homes, spending their time in idleness, frivolity and vice, drinking the wretched cheap liquor that Government has provided for them. You have never been to their homes; you know nothing of their poverty and squalor; you have no idea of the social vice and drunkenness among them, unfitting them for any work. They seemed to be forsaken of God, as well as by their fellow men.

“I am one of their race. I know their condition. I have been down among them, and for years have seen their degradation, and have assisted them in various ways. Seeing that the church did not attract them, and did little for them, and that they were going from bad to worse, I started this club, believing that I had as much of a divine right and commission to do so, as any man or men had to start a society called a church. I am most happy in believing that if God ever sanctioned anything, He has bestowed His blessing upon us. I have no doubt of this. The change already seen in the condition of these people is wonderful. They have a clean, beautiful place, which they can be proud to call their own, to which they can resort without fear of being considered intruders—a home to them where they can be free from degrading influences. There are plenty of good books and papers, music to attract them, and in which they are instructed. There is the best of food and drink that the poorest can afford to purchase. Their ambition is stirred, their energy increased, their pride and self respect stimulated, and every tendency given to lift them up and make them better. What is this but God’s work? Besides all this help is not for one day in the week, but for every day and night.

“We go further than the church in many things, but especially in this, ours is a strictly temperance association. Every one among us is urged and required to be a total abstainer from all intoxicants. This is one of our chief principles, and is lectured, practiced and talked about, until it has permeated every life. If our enterprise has done nothing more than this, it is worth all it cost. You cannot talk in favor of temperance when you take liquor yourself, nor can you preach on total abstinence to your people in church, so how can you reach these people on that subject?

“Shall I tell you what was said in regard to you? Several of our younger men thought that our rule about drink was too rigid, and one of them said, ‘Why, the Chaplain takes wine and beer.’ I told them that we were to govern ourselves regardless of what other people did.”

He winced under this, for it was a common report that he was more often under the spirituous, than under spiritual influence. As from his office he should be a seeker after truth, I thought best to give him a little of it. I was surprised that he made no answer to this, but asked, “Would it not have been better for you to have worked with the church and had its influence to aid you?”

“When—how?” I quickly asked. He said, “I would have been delighted to assist you, and some of my people would have done the same.”

“Yes,” I replied, “they would have favored us with their presence, to direct our affairs, domineer over us, patronize us and give us advice as if we were a lot of paupers in an alms house, or charity school children. There has been already too much of this. No, the better plan is to let these people be separate and govern themselves.”

Then he inquired: “Is not that creating a class feeling and a spirit of caste?”

This touched my tenderest spot. I instantly grew hot, and abruptly asked: “Who began this class feeling? Who created this caste? It ill becomes you, one of the dominant race that is responsible for the creation of these people, who always sneer at them and oppress them in every possible way, to ask such a question. Take myself, for you called me an Eurasian. I am one, a half caste, but who made me such? An Englishman, a member of your church, took a Mussalmani, my mother, not as his wife, but as his mistress, deceiving her with a promise of marriage. When he saw fit, he threw her aside to die of a broken heart, and left two of us, his children, to starve for all he cared. Who made me a half caste, who started this class feeling in me, but that distinguished gentleman, my father?”

He stopped me suddenly by saying that he had no intention to be personal or cast any reflection by using that word. Such gentlemen are always innocent after the mischief is done. “’Tis like a pardon after execution.”

I concluded to say nothing more. He had listened to me with that bland suavity of manner, that assumed superiority of race, as if he was dealing with a simpleton, or a truant school boy, or that anything I might say was not worthy of his notice. I waited with repressed scorn while he continued to talk of the church, its divine origin, its divine ordinances, as if God was shut up within its walls, and nobody could have access to Him except through its doors or through the mediation of its priests. It was the church, and nothing but the church, as if it was the only divine infallible thing on earth, and he was one of its infallible popes.

Had he been a really spiritual, noble-minded man, working among the poor, my feelings would have been somewhat different. He was high church, so very high that he never came down to common humanity, a ritualist of the rankest kind, and cared more outside of the church walls, for good living, and inside of it, more about his intoning, the singing of his choir, the folds of his gown, and for the order of his services, than for the moral or eternal welfare of anybody. Could he have got our association to be as a tag in the tail of his church kite for his own glorification, he would have been a happy man, not that he cared the value of a pin for the soul of any of us. He went on with his church rhetorical parade until my breakfast bell rang, when he took his clerical hat and himself away, to my great relief.

This was the last I ever saw of the Chaplain.

CHAPTER XLI.

The years passed. Mr. Jasper was like a patriarch among us, revered and loved by all, his advice and friendship sought by young and old. He was a frequent guest in our home, and we loved him for his gentleness, with a reverence for his purity, and admired him for his wisdom. Our children ran to him on his entrance, often watching for him at the gate, sat upon his knees, clung to his neck, and made him their confidant, as he made them his companions and friends. I say our children, for there had come to us, two boys and a girl to the joy of our hearts and the delight of our home.

There was one thing in them that lifted a burden from my life; they resembled their mother in complexion. Before they came, I was in an agony of fear lest they should bear upon their faces that Cain-like curse that had blasted my happiness and been my constant torment. I prayed, yes, I prayed day and night, pleading, beseeching God if He had the power that He would avert that terrible stain from these innocent ones. I reasoned with Him, begged for justice and mercy, that He would not let the sin of my father be visited upon them; that I had suffered enough and made sufficient atonement. I know that my wife also prayed for this, though she never hinted a word about it. She was too good and true a wife for that. Alas! What a sad thing for a father to pray that his children might not resemble himself! I have often felt a sting when people would say to a father, “How much your boys take after you!” I never had the pleasure of such a remark, but I had more, a profound satisfaction in knowing that my own dear children had not inherited that accursed brand of shame from their father to carry through their lives.

Our prayers were answered. Whether by God or our mutual desires and ardent wishes, I would not assume to say, for having such a firm belief in God’s immutable, established laws, I am inclined to believe that we answered our own prayers, as most, if not all our prayers, are answered by ourselves.

Prayers are most essential and are answered best when we give them life and reality by our practice.

In our community we had our annoyances. What else could we expect when there were so many “taints of blood and defects of will?” These were endured as thorns among the roses, the fairer the flowers the less we thought of the thorns.

But a great calamity and grief came upon us. Mr. Jasper fell ill. He knew it was unto death. He lingered for a few days, and every one went to receive his blessing. The shadow of a great cloud hung over us. Everybody spoke in whispers. Surely death is the king of terrors, as well as the terror of kings and of everybody. Death is terrible, anywhere and always, but infinitely so when we are watching, waiting, when one we love as part of ourselves is about to leave us, and start on that eternal unknown journey,

“For none has ever returned to tell us of the road,

Which to discover we must travel too.”

No religionist or moralist, has ever, with all their fine theories, been able to prevent this dread, this indefinable, choking pain at the heart, when our loved ones are going, O so far away!

I could neither eat, sleep or rest. It seemed as if a part of myself was dying, going away from me. Under all the hardening influences of my life I have made a constant endeavor to keep my heart tender to the ennobling influence of real friendship. I have had bitterness enough, and it is well there was something to keep me from utter hardness and despair.

Our dear friend received our unremitting attention. The last moment was approaching. My wife and I, with others, were around his couch, while a crowd was outside, waiting with bowed heads, in solemn silence, his departure. Opening his eyes, with a smile upon his face, he pressed my hand, and whispered with gasping breath: “I’m going—God—bless—you—all,” and he had gone. As the sorrowful word was quickly passed outside, some one on the veranda started the hymn, “Abide with me, fast falls the eventide,” and all joined in it with sobbing, weeping tones.

This was the great second death in my life. Need I say that the first was that of my best friend, the one of my youth, Mr. Percy. Never had any one lost two better friends. My mother? Yes, my darling mama had gone. She had never died to me, only gone away, and I had not seen her go, too young to realize what it meant, however bereaved I was.

At evening time we laid his body to rest in the garden, in front of the building he had done so much to erect. Every one, from the oldest to the youngest, had gone into the garden, his garden, and plucked flowers that he had cultivated for us, and now for his own burial, and one by one, they came up and strewed them upon the coffin with sobs and lamentations. Then we all sang, as best we could through our tears, his favorite hymn, “Nearer my God to Thee, Nearer to Thee.”

The shades of night fell on us, while we lingered at the sacred, hallowed spot.

On the next Sunday morning, we had a solemn remembrance service in our lecture room, which was festooned with flowers that our friend loved so well, intertwined with mourning cloth to signify our love and joy in him, as well as our great sorrow.

It seemed to be conceded by mutual consent, that I should give a eulogy—no that would not have pleased him—an address or talk, in remembrance of him. This was a service of devotion, of joy, that we had known such a man, and of the deepest grief that we had lost him, for each could truthfully say

“None knew thee but to love thee,

None named thee but to praise!”

I portrayed his life, the nobility of his manhood, his devotion to purity and truth, and then I told for the first time what he had done for us in erecting our beautiful structure, and ornamenting our grounds, and his heartfelt interest in the welfare of every one. In closing the lessons of his life to us, I urged all, especially the younger men and boys, by all the powers of their being, to imitate him, and make themselves pure and noble.

His life, his purity, his kindness, and his beautiful death, made such an impression upon every one, as never to be effaced, and he knows now in part, and will know all in the great hereafter, the good he accomplished, and his heaven and our heaven will have a brighter glory for his having lived. In closing, I pointed to one of the mottoes as most appropriate to him, “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.”

We erected a beautiful marble monument over his grave to be a perpetual remembrance, and a daily lesson to all, of his life and character.

Mr. Jasper, as might have been expected, left all his books and many mementoes to “Our Club,” besides quite a sum in government bonds for the annual increase of the library, so his good deeds did not die with him.

Somehow, after this, the ties connecting me with India, seemed to have been sundered. One thing that greatly added to this, was the destiny of our children. I lived in perpetual dread, that if they remained in the country, they might be humiliated, if not cursed, with the sneering epithet: “The children of that Eurasian.” I was determined, if there was a place on God’s earth, where they might escape this, I would try to find it. This may seem to some a trivial matter, yet I could not help feeling intensely about it, for I am very human after all. I have suffered, only God knows how much agony, and how often, from being taunted with that accursed name, more especially when it was uttered by Christian gentlemen and ladies, from whom I might have expected better things, so it ought not to appear strange to any one if I should wish to save my own dear, innocent children from the degrading stigma of their father’s birth.

It was decided that my wife, with the children, should make their residence in southern France, where the mild climate was best suited to them, on leaving the heat of India, and where she could superintend their education, thus realizing in some degree the day dream of my youth, inspired by the reading of a most delightful book, and which I have given at the commencement of this sketch of my life.

After their departure, I sold all my property, except two villages, which I placed in the hands of trustees, for the benefit of “Our Club,” having first drawn up rules of control, so that the villagers should never be oppressed. I left many of my books and pictures to the club, to be for the good of the members, as well as a token of my regard for them.

It was not the least of my sad pleasures to visit my friends, the villagers. Poor heathen, as some might call them, had hearts to feel. Some clung to me with tears, and others threw themselves upon the ground, with loud lamentations. One of the expressions that touched me most, was from one of the old widows, who, in her sobs exclaimed, “What will become of the poor widows, when the Sahib has gone?”

⁂

The day of my departure has arrived. As I am writing these last lines my boxes are all packed, and I am only waiting. We had a farewell meeting last night at “Our Club,” and the memory of the kind words spoken, will be to me a joy forever.

⁂

The hour has come. A crowd of friends are waiting outside to say the last farewell words, and I must go.

⁂

India! The land of my birth, and the land of my degradation, of some joys and pleasures, but always embittered with fear and despair, that cannot be told, but must be felt to realize their depth. Good-bye, never again to see thee, forevermore, and I hope and pray, though I cannot forget the miserable past, that I may never again meet people, mean enough to taunt me with that miserable blasting phrase of contempt, “That Eurasian.”

THE END.

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TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

1. P. 185, changed “you have got hear it” to “you have got to hear it”.

2. P. 336, changed “what can happen any mortal man” to “what can happen to any mortal man”.

3. Silently corrected obvious typographical errors and variations in spelling.

4. Retained archaic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings as printed.

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Table of Contents

That Eurasian

PREFACE.

CHAPTER I.

CHAPTER II.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

CHAPTER VIII.

CHAPTER IX.

CHAPTER X.

CHAPTER XI.

CHAPTER XII.

CHAPTER XIII.

CHAPTER XIV.

CHAPTER XV.

CHAPTER XVI.

CHAPTER XVII.

CHAPTER XVIII.

CHAPTER XIX.

CHAPTER XX.

CHAPTER XXI.

CHAPTER XXII.

CHAPTER XXIII.

CHAPTER XXIV.

CHAPTER XXV.

CHAPTER XXVI.

CHAPTER XXVII.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

CHAPTER XXIX.

CHAPTER XXX.

CHAPTER XXXI.

CHAPTER XXXII.

CHAPTER XXXIII.

CHAPTER XXXIV.

CHAPTER XXXV.

CHAPTER XXXVI.

CHAPTER XXXVII.

CHAPTER XXXVIII.

CHAPTER XXXIX.

CHAPTER XL.

CHAPTER XLI.

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