No More Learning

The delegates write from England that they are out of pocket for
working expenses, railway fares, and stationery--the mere pasteboard
and scaffolding of their show. It is, in fact, collapsing from mere
financial inanition. "

"But you cannot deny that the people of India, who are, perhaps, too
poor to subscribe, are mentally and morally moved by the agitation,"
Pagett insisted.

"That is precisely what I do deny. The native side of the movement is
the work of a limited class, a microscopic minority, as Lord Dufferin
described it, when compared with the people proper, but still a very
interesting class, seeing that it is of our own creation. It is composed
almost entirely of those of the literary or clerkly castes who have
received an English education. "

"Surely that's a very important class. Its members must be the ordained
leaders of popular thought. "

"Anywhere else they might be leaders, but they have no social weight
here. "

Pagett laughed. "That's an epigrammatic way of putting it, Orde. "

"Is it? Let's see," said the Deputy Commissioner of Amara, striding into
the sunshine toward a half-naked gardener potting roses. He took the
man's hoe, and went to a rain-scarped bank at the bottom of the garden.

"Come here, Pagett," he said, and cut at the sun-baked soil.
After
three strokes there rolled from under the blade of the hoe the half of a
clanking skeleton that settled at Pagett's feet in an unseemly jumble of
bones. The M. P. drew back.

"Our houses are built on cemeteries," said Orde. "There are scores of
thousands of graves within ten miles. "

Pagett was contemplating the skull with the awed fascination of a man
who has but little to do with the dead. "India's a very curious place,"
said he, after a pause.

"Ah? You'll know all about it in three months. Come in to lunch," said
Orde.





VOLUME V PLAIN TALES FROM THE HILLS




LISPETH

Look, you have cast out Love! What Gods are these
You bid me please?
The Three in One, the One in Three? Not so!
To my own Gods I go.