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refused to admit him into her favour ", and as having been left in the dark to rot on the same pay these twenty-one years", desired, "at this fag end of life to have the honour of being a Member of Your Lordship's personal establishment".

Sometimes an even more exacting request would be put forward. A young man who was employed in a Native Press, finding himself in grave financial straits, thus addressed me :

Evidently I am so tired of my miserable life that on oath I say I most egregiously wish my death. It may perhaps be my foolishness to take undue advantage of Your Most Excellent Majesty's popular philanthroposy, but it is easily to be apprehended that I (a wretch of course) and not in the least way at blame when the unfathomable ways of God and the most astonishing boundaries to which necessity runs are slightly touched.

The petitioner thereupon asked me, “just taking him as a son", to "rescue him on such critical moment by sending, if not more, at least Rs.7000 ".

Now and then a different vein would be explored. A correspondent who described himself as a student of Shakspeare, wrote to say that he admired my speeches :

A wandering sinner in search of Solomon the Righteous and Solon the Wise, best identified in Your Excellency, so far as he can fathom Y.E.'s speeches, when they reach him in these untrodden wilds of India, where he reads sermons on stones, books in the running brooks, and Good Gracious God! in everything.

Another native correspondent, when I was having trouble with the Mahsud Waziris on the north-west

frontier, suggested to me a quite original method of dealing with those unruly tribesmen :

If the Waziris knew that he who represents our Queen was the giver of such help as artificial arms and legs to them, it would do more to calm the ruffled waters than any punishment is likely to do.

On the other hand, when I made inquiries about the status of a very persistent petitioner, I was informed that he was "addicted to wine and women; he associates himself with loud company, and there is no vice which he is not capable of. When drunk he spares nobody and even maligns his venerable grand-father-in-law."

Frequently my correspondents broke into verse. One who had apparently been unsuccessful in business, wrote:

Curzon, once I was a Marwar merry.

Once my sons were mirthful men.
Lord once I was a prosperous very
Next to Jeypore in state's ten.

Another gave me a lucid description of pastoral life :

Then wakes up the husband healthy after a sound sleep.
And bathing he howls to a believed God,

Then he milks the mild cows and sheep

And drenches the milk to children playing on sod.

While I was in India a native paper itself pub lished the following specimen of forensic eloquence in the Mofussil, which was actually delivered by a Hindoo pleader at Barisal :

My learned friend with mere wind from a teapot thinks to browbeat me from my legs. But this is mere gorilla warfare. I stand under the shoes of my client, and only

seek to place my bone of contention clearly in your Honour's eye. My learned friend vainly runs amuck upon the sheet anchors of my case. Your Honour will be pleased enough to observe that my client is a widow, a poor chap with one postmortem son. A widow of this country, your Honour will be pleased to observe, is not like a widow of your Honour's country. A widow of this country is not able to eat more than one meal a day, or to wear clean clothes, or to look after a man. So my poor client had not such physic or mind as to be able to assault the lusty complainant. Yet she has (been) deprived of some of her more valuable leather, the leather of her nose. My learned friend has thrown only an argument ad hominy upon my teeth that my client's witnesses are only her own relations. But they are not near relations. Their relationship is only homopathic. So the misty arguments of my learned friend will not hold water-at least they will not hold good water. Then my learned friend has said that there is on the side of his client a respectable witness, viz., a pleader, and since this witness is independent so he should be believed. But your Honour, with your Honour's vast experience, is pleased enough to observe that truthfulness is not so plentiful as blackberries in this country. And I am sorry to say, though this witness is a man, of my own feathers, that there are in my profession black sheep of every complexion, and some of them do not always speak gospel truth. Until the witness explains what has become of my client's nose leather he cannot be believed. He cannot be allowed to raise a castle in the air by beating upon a bush. So, trusting in that administration of British justice upon which the sun never sits, I close my case.

There were, of course, many cases in which the native exuberance of fancy and fondness for hyperbole in language found suitable vent, and one of the most pleasing of these was the address from the

little Himalayan Hill State of Bushahr, which expatiated with pardonable pride on its own beauties:

Let us first of all thank our Heavenly Father, Whose Grace has to-day enabled us to see Your Honour and Her Ladyship in the Country of Bushahr. O Lord, these beautiful mountains, covered with the lofty trees, clothed in the Aaron's beard, embraced by the lovely Virginia creepers, bearing the leaves and flowers of the bright green, yellow, pink, and crimson colours, yielding the nourishment to the eyes of the travellers passing by, these fine shrubs, nearly concealed under the air-creepers, bent down by the weight of the small pearl-like flowers of the sweetest fragrance, these huge stones that have gathered abundant velvety moss, situated naturally and beautifully here and there along the valley, these silvery streams and the picturesque waterfalls, that purely flow down to and fro all around the Sutlej Valley, and these invisible Nymphs of the forests, as well as of the eternal snow, do welcome to your Honour and Her Ladyship, by the sweet voice of the warblings of the pretty little birds and hummings of the black bees. O my Lord, the songs of Your Honour's spotless glory, of the impartiality, the love of honesty, the sincerity, and the benevolence to the poor people (which are the real ornaments of the human beings) are cheerfully sung by the celestial maids in heaven.

Finally, I will conclude with the following veracious summary of the Life of Henry VIII., which was written by the Babu student at about the same time :

Henry the Eighth was a good looking man, he had a red beard, he was very well proportioned, but he had a hot temper. He was very religious and he pulled down a great deal of churches and monasteries, he built Colleges with them and schools with them too, the school he called the Blue Coat School, and a College called Oxford College.

He turned the monks out who were rich once but had to go into the workhouse afterwards, he married Katherine of Arrogant for twenty years. He got to know Anne Beloyn; she waited on Katherine that is how he got to know her. Anne became a Queen and Katherine was sent away. She became religious and became a monk.

Henry got to hear things about Anne, and she had her head cut off-though the things were not true, for she had but a little neck. Henry was left a widow, but he soon got married again-this time it was to Jane Seymour.

He liked Jane Seymour, she had a son a few days after she died. So Henry was a widow again, and he married another Anne; this time Anne Cleves this Anne he did not like, for she was floundering mare, and not Pretty so he sent her away again and gave her some gold to live upon without him, while he got married to another Katherine Howard. She was not a very good wife, and Henry got to hear things again as he did before-so she had her head cut off, and he married Katherine Parr who looked after his bad legs.