r own
particular employments, I suppose that they would sit down and kill
themselves. But their weakness is wearisome, particularly when the
listener knows that he himself commits exactly the same sin.

Even the Secretariat believes that it does good when it asks an
over-driven Executive Officer to take census of wheat-weevils through a
district of five thousand square miles.

There was a man once in the Foreign Office--a man who had grown
middle-aged in the department, and was commonly said, by irreverent
juniors, to be able to repeat Aitchison's "Treaties and Sunnuds"
backwards, in his sleep. What he did with his stored knowledge only the
Secretary knew; and he, naturally, would not publish the news abroad.
This man's name was Wressley, and it was the Shibboleth, in those days,
to say:--"Wressley knows more about the Central Indian States than any
living man." If you did not say this, you were considered one of mean
understanding.

Now-a-days, the man who says that he knows the ravel of the inter-tribal
complications across the Border is of more use; but in Wressley's time,
much attention was paid to the Central Indian States. They were called
"foci" and "factors," and all manner of imposing names.

And here the curse of Anglo-Indian life fell heavily. When Wressley
lifted up his voice, and spoke about such-and-such a succession to
such-and-such a throne, the Foreign Office were silent, and Heads
of Departments repeated the last two or three words of Wressley's
sentences, and tacked "yes, yes," on them, and knew that they were
"assisting the Empire to grapple with serious political contingencies."
In most big undertakings, one or two men do the work while the rest sit
near and talk till the ripe decorations begin to fall.

Wressley was the working-member of the Foreign Office firm, and, to keep
him up to his duties when he showed signs of flagging, he was made
much of by his superiors and told what a fine fellow he was. He did not
require coaxing, because he was of tough build, but what he received
confirmed him in the belief that there was no one quite so absolutely
and imperatively necessary to the stability of India as Wressley of the
Foreign Office. There might be other good men, but the known, honored
and trusted man among men was Wressley of the Foreign Office. We had a
Viceroy in those days who knew exactly when to "gentle" a fractious big
man and to hearten up a collar-galled little one, and so keep all h