No More Learning

A good man once started, goes forward; but an average man, so
soon as the woman loses interest in his success as a tribute to her
power, comes back to the battalion and is no more heard of.

Wressley bore the first copy of his book to Simla and, blushing and
stammering, presented it to Miss Venner. She read a little of it.

I give her review verbatim:--"Oh, your book? It's all about those
how-wid Wajahs. I didn't understand it. ". . . . . . . . .
Wressley of the Foreign Office was broken, smashed,--I am not
exaggerating--by this one frivolous little girl. All that he could say
feebly was:--"But, but it's my magnum opus! The work of my life. " Miss
Venner did not know what magnum opus meant; but she knew that Captain
Kerrington had won three races at the last Gymkhana. Wressley didn't
press her to wait for him any longer. He had sense enough for that.

Then came the reaction after the year's strain, and Wressley went back
to the Foreign Office and his "Wajahs," a compiling, gazetteering,
report-writing hack, who would have been dear at three hundred rupees
a month. He abided by Miss Venner's review. Which proves that the
inspiration in the book was purely temporary and unconnected with
himself. Nevertheless, he had no right to sink, in a hill-tarn, five
packing-cases, brought up at enormous expense from Bombay, of the best
book of Indian history ever written.

When he sold off before retiring, some years later, I was turning over
his shelves, and came across the only existing copy of "Native Rule in
Central India"--the copy that Miss Venner could not understand. I read
it, sitting on his mule-trucks, as long as the light lasted, and offered
him his own price for it. He looked over my shoulder for a few pages and
said to himself drearily:--"Now, how in the world did I come to write
such damned good stuff as that? " Then to me:--"Take it and keep
it. Write one of your penny-farthing yarns about its birth.
Perhaps--perhaps--the whole business may have been ordained to that
end.