on lawyers, pleaders, writers, and the like, who have,
up to now, been in abject submission to them. They say little, hut
after all they are the most important fagots in the great bundle of
communities, and all the glib bunkum in the world would not pay for
their estrangement. They have controlled the land."

"But I am assured that experience of local self-government in your
municipalities has been most satisfactory, and when once the principle
is accepted in your centres, don't you know, it is bound to spread, and
these important--ah'm people of yours would learn it like the rest.
I see no difficulty at all," and the smooth lips closed with the
complacent snap habitual to Pagett, M.P., the "man of cheerful
yesterdays and confident to-morrows."

Orde looked at him with a dreary smile.

"The privilege of election has been most reluctantly withdrawn from
scores of municipalities, others have had to be summarily suppressed,
and, outside the Presidency towns, the actual work done has been badly
performed. This is of less moment, perhaps-it only sends up the
local death-rates-than the fact that the public interest in municipal
elections, never very strong, has waned, and is waning, in spite of
careful nursing on the part of Government servants."

"Can you explain this lack of interest?" said Pagett, putting aside the
rest of Orde's remarks.

"You may find a ward of the key in the fact that only one in every
thousand af our population can spell. Then they are infinitely more
interested in religion and caste questions than in any sort of politics.
When the business of mere existence is over, their minds are occupied by
a series of interests, pleasures, rituals, superstitions, and the like,
based on centuries of tradition and usage. You, perhaps, find it hard to
conceive of people absolutely devoid of curiosity, to whom the book, the
daily paper, and the printed speech are unknown, and you would describe
their life as blank. That's a profound mistake. You are in another
land, another century, down on the bed-rock of society, where the family
merely, and not the community, is all-important. The average Oriental
cannot be brought to look beyond his clan. His life, too, is naore
complete and self-sufficing, and less sordid and low-thoughted than you
might imagine. It is bovine and slow in some respects, but it is never
empty. You and I are inclined to put the cart before the horse, and to
forget that it is the man that is el