No More Learning

PIG.

Go, stalk the red deer o'er the heather
Ride, follow the fox if you can!
But, for pleasure and profit together,
Allow me the hunting of Man,--
The chase of the Human, the search for the Soul
To its ruin,--the hunting of Man.
--The Old Shikarri.

I believe the difference began in the matter of a horse, with a twist in
his temper, whom Pinecoffin sold to Nafferton and by whom Nafferton was
nearly slain. There may have been other causes of offence; the horse was
the official stalking-horse. Nafferton was very angry; but Pinecoffin
laughed and said that he had never guaranteed the beast's manners.
Nafferton laughed, too, though he vowed that he would write off his fall
against Pinecoffin if he waited five years. Now, a Dalesman from beyond
Skipton will forgive an injury when the Strid lets a man live; but a
South Devon man is as soft as a Dartmoor bog. You can see from their
names that Nafferton had the race-advantage of Pinecoffin. He was a
peculiar man, and his notions of humor were cruel. He taught me a new
and fascinating form of shikar. He hounded Pinecoffin from Mithankot
to Jagadri, and from Gurgaon to Abbottabad up and across the Punjab,
a large province and in places remarkably dry. He said that he had no
intention of allowing Assistant Commissioners to "sell him pups," in the
shape of ramping, screaming countrybreds, without making their lives a
burden to them.

Most Assistant Commissioners develop a bent for some special work after
their first hot weather in the country.
The boys with digestions hope to
write their names large on the Frontier and struggle for dreary places
like Bannu and Kohat. The bilious ones climb into the Secretariat. Which
is very bad for the liver.

Others are bitten with a mania for District work, Ghuznivide coins or
Persian poetry; while some, who come of farmers' stock, find that the
smell of the Earth after the Rains gets into their blood, and calls them
to "develop the resources of the Province. " These men are enthusiasts.
Pinecoffin belonged to their class. He knew a great many facts bearing
on the cost of bullocks and temporary wells, and opium-scrapers, and
what happens if you burn too much rubbish on a field, in the hope of
enriching used-up soil. All the Pinecoffins come of a landholding
breed, and so the land only took back her own again. Unfortunately--most
unfortunately for Pinecoffin--he was a Civilian, as well as a
farmer. Nafferton watched him, and thought about the horse. Nafferton
said:--"See me chase that boy till he drops! " I said:--"You can't get
your knife into an Assistant Commissioner. " Nafferton told me that I did
not understand the administration of the Province.

Our Government is rather peculiar. It gushes on the agricultural and
general information side, and will supply a moderately respectable man
with all sorts of "economic statistics," if he speaks to it prettily.
For instance, you are interested in gold-washing in the sands of the
Sutlej.