s move; but they are not
nice to talk to. This man's name was Mellish, and he had lived for
fifteen years on land of his own, in Lower Bengal, studying cholera.
He held that cholera was a germ that propagated itself as it flew
through a muggy atmosphere; and stuck in the branches of trees like a
wool-flake. The germ could be rendered sterile, he said, by
'Mellish's Own Invincible Fumigatory'--a heavy violet-black powder--'
the result of fifteen years' scientific investigation, Sir!'

Inventors seem very much alike as a caste. They talk loudly,
especially about 'conspiracies of monopolists'; they beat upon the
table with their fists; and they secrete fragments of their
inventions about their persons.

Mellish said that there was a Medical 'Ring' at Simla, headed by the
Surgeon-General, who was in league, apparently, with all the Hospital
Assistants in the Empire.

I forget exactly how he proved it, but it had something to do with
'skulking up to the Hills'; and what Mellish wanted was the
independent evidence of the Viceroy--'Steward of our Most Gracious
Majesty the Queen, Sir.' So Mellish went up to Simla, with
eighty-four pounds of Fumigatory in his trunk, to speak to the
Viceroy and to show him the merits of the invention.

But it is easier to see a Viceroy than to talk to him, unless you
chance to be as important as Mellishe of Madras. He was a
six-thousand-rupee man, so great that his daughters never 'married.'
They 'contracted alliances.' He himself was not paid. He 'received
emoluments,' and his journeys about the country were 'tours of
observation.' His business was to stir up the people in Madras with a
long pole--as you stir up tench in a pond--and the people had to come
up out of their comfortable old ways and gasp--'This is Enlightenment
and Progress. Isn't it fine!' Then they give Mellishe statues and
jasmine garlands, in the hope of getting rid of him.

Mellishe came up to Simla 'to confer with the Viceroy.' That was one
of his perquisites. The Viceroy knew nothing of Mellishe except that
he was 'one of those middle-class deities who seem necessary to the
spiritual comfort of this Paradise of the Middle-classes,' and that,
in all probability he had 'suggested, designed, founded, and endowed
all the public institutions in Madras.' Which proves that His
Excellency, though dreamy, had experience of the ways of
six-thousand-rupee men.

Mellishe's name was E. Mellishe, and Mellish's was E.S. Mellish, and