ckiness about the
arrangement that must be seen to be understood. The shift and play of a
man's fortune across the Border is as sudden as anything in the days of
Haroun-al-Raschid of blessed memory, and there are stories, to be got
for the unearthing, as wild and as improbable as those in the _Thousand
and One Nights_. Most impressive of all is the way in which the country
is "used," and its elasticity under pressure. In the good old days the
Durbar raised everything it could from the people, and the King spent as
much as ever he could on his personal pleasures. Now the institution of
the Political agent has stopped the grabbing, for which, by the way,
some of the monarchs are not in the least grateful--and smoothed the
outward face of things. But there is still a difference, between our
ways and the ways of the other places. A year spent among native States
ought to send a man back to the Decencies and the Law Courts and the
Rights of the Subject with a supreme contempt for those who rave about
the oppressions of our brutal bureaucracy. One month nearly taught an
average Englishman that it was the proper thing to smite anybody of mean
aspect and obstructive tendencies on the mouth with a shoe. Hear what an
intelligent loafer said. His words are at least as valuable as these
babblings. He was, as usual, wonderfully drunk, and the gift of speech
came upon him. The conversation--he was a great politician, this
loafer--had turned on the poverty of India. "Poor?" said he. "Of course,
it's poor. Oh, yes, d----d poor. And I'm poor, an' you're poor,
altogether. Do you expect people will give you money without you ask
'em? No, I tell you, Sir, there's enough money in India to pave Hell
with if you could only get at it. I've kep' servants in my day. Did they
ever leave me without a hundred or a hundred and fifty rupees put
by--and never touched? You mark that. Does any black man who had been
in Guv'ment service go away without hundreds an' hundreds put by, and
never touched? You mark that. Money? The place stinks o' money--just
kept out o' sight. Do you ever know a native that didn't say _Garib
admi_ (I'm a poor man)? They've been sayin' _Garib admi_ so long that
the Guv'ment learns to believe 'em, and now they're all bein' treated as
though they was paupers. I'm a pauper, an' you're a pauper--_we_ 'aven't
got anything hid in the ground--an' so's every white man in this
forsaken country. But the Injian he's a rich man. How do I kn