No More Learning

"Where have you come from? " said I.

"From the East," said he, "and I am hoping that you will give him the
message on the square--for the sake of my Mother as well as your own. "

Englishmen are not usually softened by appeals to the memory of their
mothers; but for certain reasons, which will be fully apparent, I saw
fit to agree.

"It's more than a little matter," said he, "and that's why I asked
you to do it--and now I know that I can depend on you doing it. A
Second-class carriage at Marwar Junction, and a red-haired man asleep
in it. You'll be sure to remember. I get out at the next station, and I
must hold on there till he comes or sends me what I want. "

"I'll give the message if I catch him," I said, "and for the sake of
your Mother as well as mine I'll give you a word of advice. Don't try
to run the Central India States just now as the correspondent of the
'Backwoodsman. ' There's a real one knocking about here, and it might
lead to trouble. "

"Thank you," said he, simply; "and when will the swine be gone? I
can't starve because he's ruining my work. I wanted to get hold of the
Degumber Rajah down here about his father's widow, and give him a jump. "

"What did he do to his father's widow, then?
"

"Filled her up with red pepper and slippered her to death as she hung
from a beam. I found that out myself, and I'm the only man that would
dare going into the State to get hush-money for it. They'll try to
poison me, same as they did in Chortumna when I went on the loot there.
But you'll give the man at Marwar Junction my message? "

He got out at a little roadside station, and I reflected. I had heard,
more than once, of men personating correspondents of newspapers and
bleeding small Native States with threats of exposure, but I had never
met any of the caste before. They lead a hard life, and generally die
with great suddenness. The Native States have a wholesome horror of
English newspapers, which may throw light on their peculiar methods of
government, and do their best to choke correspondents with champagne,
or drive them out of their mind with four-in-hand barouches. They do not
understand that nobody cares a straw for the internal administration
of Native States so long as oppression and crime are kept within decent
limits, and the ruler is not drugged, drunk, or diseased from one end
of the year to the other. They are the dark places of the earth, full
of unimaginable cruelty, touching the Railway and the Telegraph on one
side, and, on the other, the days of Harun-al-Raschid. When I left the
train I did business with divers Kings, and in eight days passed through
many changes of life. Sometimes I wore dress-clothes and consorted with
Princes and Politicals, drinking from crystal and eating from silver.
Sometimes I lay out upon the ground and devoured what I could get, from
a plate made of leaves, and drank the running water, and slept under the
same rug as my servant. It was all in the day's work.

Then I headed for the Great Indian Desert upon the proper date, as I
had promised, and the night Mail set me down at Marwar Junction, where
a funny little, happy-go-lucky, native managed railway runs to Jodhpore.
The Bombay Mail from Delhi makes a short halt at Marwar.