No More Learning

Ruskin writes something like this somewhere, I think; but in ordinary
life a few kisses are better and save time.

About a month after he had lost his heart to Miss Venner, and had been
doing his work vilely in consequence, the first idea of his "Native Rule
in Central India" struck Wressley and filled him with joy. It was, as he
sketched it, a great thing--the work of his life--a really comprehensive
survey of a most fascinating subject--to be written with all the special
and laboriously acquired knowledge of Wressley of the Foreign Office--a
gift fit for an Empress.

He told Miss Venner that he was going to take leave, and hoped, on his
return, to bring her a present worthy of her acceptance. Would she wait?
Certainly she would. Wressley drew seventeen hundred rupees a month. She
would wait a year for that. Her mamma would help her to wait.

So Wressley took one year's leave and all the available documents, about
a truck-load, that he could lay hands on, and went down to Central India
with his notion hot in his head. He began his book in the land he was
writing of. Too much official correspondence had made him a frigid
workman, and he must have guessed that he needed the white light of
local color on his palette. This is a dangerous paint for amateurs to
play with.

Heavens, how that man worked! He caught his Rajahs, analyzed his Rajahs,
and traced them up into the mists of Time and beyond, with their
queens and their concubines.
He dated and cross-dated, pedigreed and
triple-pedigreed, compared, noted, connoted, wove, strung, sorted,
selected, inferred, calendared and counter-calendared for ten hours a
day. And, because this sudden and new light of Love was upon him, he
turned those dry bones of history and dirty records of misdeeds into
things to weep or to laugh over as he pleased. His heart and soul were
at the end of his pen, and they got into the ink. He was dowered with
sympathy, insight, humor and style for two hundred and thirty days and
nights; and his book was a Book. He had his vast special knowledge with
him, so to speak; but the spirit, the woven-in human Touch, the poetry
and the power of the output, were beyond all special knowledge. But I
doubt whether he knew the gift that was in him then, and thus he may
have lost some happiness. He was toiling for Tillie Venner, not for
himself.

Men often do their best work blind, for some one else's sake.

Also, though this has nothing to do with the story, in India where every
one knows every one else, you can watch men being driven, by the women
who govern them, out of the rank-and-file and sent to take up points
alone. 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. ".