and so they seemed altogether detestable.
Yet another day's jolting, enlivened by the philosophy of Ram Baksh, and
then came Nasirabad. The last pair of ponies suggested serious thought.
They had covered eighteen miles at an average speed of eight miles an
hour, and were well-conditioned little rats. "A Colonel Sahib gave me
this one for a present," said Ram Baksh, flicking the near one. "It was
his child's pony. The child was five years old." When he went away, the
Colonel Sahib said: "Ram Baksh, you are a good man. Never have I seen
such a good man. This horse is yours." Ram Baksh was getting a horse's
work out of a child's pony. Surely we in India work the land much as the
Colonel Sahib worked his son's mount; making it do child's work when so
much more can be screwed out of it. A native and a native State deals
otherwise with horse and holding. Perhaps our extreme scrupulousness in
handling may be statecraft, but, after even a short sojourn in places
which are dealt with not so tenderly, it seems absurd. There are States
where things are done, and done without protest, that would make the
hair of the educated native stand on end with horror. These things are
of course not expedient to write; because their publication would give a
great deal of unnecessary pain and heart-searching to estimable native
administrators who have the hope of a Star before their eyes and would
not better matters in the least.

Note this fact though. With the exception of such journals as, occupying
a central position in British territory, levy blackmail from the
neighbouring States, there are no independent papers in Rajputana. A
King may start a weekly, to encourage a taste for Sanskrit and high
Hindi, or a Prince may create a Court Chronicle; but that is all. A
"free press" is not allowed, and this the native journalist knows. With
good management he can, keeping under the shadow of our flag, raise two
hundred rupees from a big man here, and five hundred from a rich man
there, but he does not establish himself across the Border. To one who
has reason to hold a stubborn disbelief in even the elementary morality
of the native press, this bashfulness and lack of enterprise is amusing.
But to return to the native States' administrations. There is nothing
exactly wrong in the methods of government that are overlaid with
English terms and forms. They are vigorous, in certain points; and where
they are not vigorous, there is a cheery happy-go-lu