No More Learning

The side-issue was debated, at great length on Pinecoffin's side, till
Nafferton owned that he had been in the wrong, and moved the previous
question. When Pinecoffin had quite written himself out about
flesh-formers, and fibrins, and glucose and the nitrogenous constituents
of maize and lucerne, Nafferton raised the question of expense. By this
time Pinecoffin, who had been transferred from Kohat, had developed a
Pig theory of his own, which he stated in thirty-three folio pages--all
carefully filed by Nafferton. Who asked for more.

These things took ten months, and Pinecoffin's interest in the potential
Piggery seemed to die down after he had stated his own views. But
Nafferton bombarded him with letters on "the Imperial aspect of
the scheme, as tending to officialize the sale of pork, and thereby
calculated to give offence to the Mahomedan population of Upper India. "
He guessed that Pinecoffin would want some broad, free-hand work after
his niggling, stippling, decimal details.

Pinecoffin handled the latest development of the case in masterly
style, and proved that no "popular ebullition of excitement was to
be apprehended. " Nafferton said that there was nothing like Civilian
insight in matters of this kind, and lured him up a bye-path--"the
possible profits to accrue to the Government from the sale of
hog-bristles. " There is an extensive literature of hog-bristles, and the
shoe, brush, and colorman's trades recognize more varieties of bristles
than you would think possible. After Pinecoffin had wondered a little
at Nafferton's rage for information, he sent back a monograph, fifty-one
pages, on "Products of the Pig. " This led him, under Nafferton's tender
handling, straight to the Cawnpore factories, the trade in hog-skin
for saddles--and thence to the tanners. Pinecoffin wrote that
pomegranate-seed was the best cure for hog-skin, and suggested--for the
past fourteen months had wearied him--that Nafferton should "raise his
pigs before he tanned them. "

Nafferton went back to the second section of his fifth question.

How could the exotic Pig be brought to give as much pork as it did in
the West and yet "assume the essentially hirsute characteristics of its
oriental congener?
" Pinecoffin felt dazed, for he had forgotten what
he had written sixteen month's before, and fancied that he was about
to reopen the entire question. He was too far involved in the hideous
tangle to retreat, and, in a weak moment, he wrote:--"Consult my first
letter. " Which related to the Dravidian Pig. As a matter of fact,
Pinecoffin had still to reach the acclimatization stage; having gone off
on a side-issue on the merging of types.

THEN Nafferton really unmasked his batteries! He complained to the
Government, in stately language, of "the paucity of help accorded to me
in my earnest attempts to start a potentially remunerative industry, and
the flippancy with which my requests for information are treated by a
gentleman whose pseudo-scholarly attainments should at lest have taught
him the primary differences between the Dravidian and the Berkshire
variety of the genus Sus. If I am to understand that the letter to which
he refers me contains his serious views on the acclimatization of a
valuable, though possibly uncleanly, animal, I am reluctantly compelled
to believe," etc. , etc.

There was a new man at the head of the Department of Castigation.

The wretched Pinecoffin was told that the Service was made for the
Country, and not the Country for the Service, and that he had better
begin to supply information about Pigs.

Pinecoffin answered insanely that he had written everything that could
be written about Pig, and that some furlough was due to him.

Nafferton got a copy of that letter, and sent it, with the essay on the
Dravidian Pig, to a down-country paper, which printed both in full. The
essay was rather highflown; but if the Editor had seen the stacks of
paper, in Pinecoffin's handwriting, on Nafferton's table, he would not
have been so sarcastic about the "nebulous discursiveness and blatant
self-sufficiency of the modern Competition-wallah, and his utter
inability to grasp the practical issues of a practical question. " Many
friends cut out these remarks and sent them to Pinecoffin.

I have already stated that Pinecoffin came of a soft stock. This last
stroke frightened and shook him.