icultural implements, and published a yearly blue-book on
the "Moral and Material Progress of the State," and the Foreign Office
and the Government of India were delighted. Very few native States take
up English progress altogether, for they will not believe, as Purun Dass
showed he did, that what was good for the Englishman must be twice as
good for the Asiatic. The Prime Minister became the honoured friend
of Viceroys, and Governors, and Lieutenant-Governors, and medical
missionaries, and common missionaries, and hard-riding English officers
who came to shoot in the State preserves, as well as of whole hosts of
tourists who travelled up and down India in the cold weather, showing
how things ought to be managed. In his spare time he would endow
scholarships for the study of medicine and manufactures on strictly
English lines, and write letters to the "Pioneer", the greatest Indian
daily paper, explaining his master's aims and objects.

At last he went to England on a visit, and had to pay enormous sums to
the priests when he came back; for even so high-caste a Brahmin as Purun
Dass lost caste by crossing the black sea. In London he met and talked
with every one worth knowing--men whose names go all over the world--and
saw a great deal more than he said. He was given honorary degrees by
learned universities, and he made speeches and talked of Hindu social
reform to English ladies in evening dress, till all London cried, "This
is the most fascinating man we have ever met at dinner since cloths were
first laid."

When he returned to India there was a blaze of glory, for the Viceroy
himself made a special visit to confer upon the Maharajah the Grand
Cross of the Star of India--all diamonds and ribbons and enamel; and at
the same ceremony, while the cannon boomed, Purun Dass was made a Knight
Commander of the Order of the Indian Empire; so that his name stood Sir
Purun Dass, K.C.I.E.

That evening, at dinner in the big Viceregal tent, he stood up with the
badge and the collar of the Order on his breast, and replying to the
toast of his master's health, made a speech few Englishmen could have
bettered.

Next month, when the city had returned to its sun-baked quiet, he did
a thing no Englishman would have dreamed of doing; for, so far as the
world's affairs went, he died. The jewelled order of his knighthood went
back to the Indian Government, and a new Prime Minister was appointed to
the charge of affairs, and a great ga