No More Learning

That smell is the true smell of the Himalayas, and if it
once gets into the blood of a man he will, at the last, forgetting
everything else, return to the Hills to die. The clouds closed and the
smell went away, and there remained nothing in all the world except
chilling white mists and the boom of the Sutlej River.

A fat-tailed sheep, who did not want to die, bleated lamentably at
my tent-door. He was scuffling with the prime minister and the
director-general of public education, and he was a royal gift to me and
my camp servants. I expressed my thanks suitably and inquired if I might
have audience of the king. The prime minister readjusted his turban--it
had fallen off in the struggle--and assured me that the king would
be very pleased to see me. Therefore I dispatched two bottles as a
foretaste, and when the sheep had entered upon another incarnation,
climbed up to the king's palace through the wet. He had sent his army
to escort me, but it stayed to talk with my cook. Soldiers are very much
alike all the world over.

The palace was a four-roomed, white-washed mud-and-timber house, the
finest in all the Hills for a day's journey. The king was dressed in a
purple velvet jacket, white muslin trousers, and a saffron-yellow turban
of price. He gave me audience in a little carpeted room opening off the
palace courtyard, which was occupied by the elephant of state. The great
beast was sheeted and anchored from trunk to tail, and the curve of his
back stood out against the sky line.

The prime minister and the director-general of public instruction were
present to introduce me; but all the court had been dismissed lest
the two bottles aforesaid should corrupt their morals. The king cast a
wreath of heavy, scented flowers round my neck as I bowed, and inquired
how my honored presence had the felicity to be.
I said that through
seeing his auspicious countenance the mists of the night had turned
into sunshine, and that by reason of his beneficent sheep his good
deeds would be remembered by the gods. He said that since I had set my
magnificent foot in his kingdom the crops would probably yield seventy
per cent more than the average. I said that the fame of the king had
reached to the four corners of the earth, and that the nations gnashed
their teeth when they heard daily of the glory of his realm and the
wisdom of his moon-like prime minister and lotus-eyed director-general
of public education.

Then we sat down on clean white cushions, and I was at the king's right
hand. Three minutes later he was telling me that the condition of the
maize crop was something disgraceful, and that the railway companies
would not pay him enough for his timber. The talk shifted to and fro
with the bottles. We discussed very many quaint things, and the king
became confidential on the subject of government generally. Most of all
he dwelt on the shortcomings of one of his subjects, who, from what I
could gather, had been paralyzing the executive.

"In the old days," said the king, "I could have ordered the elephant
yonder to trample him to death. Now I must e'en send him seventy miles
across the hills to be tried, and his keep for that time would be upon
the state. And the elephant eats everything. "

"What be the man's crimes, Rajah Sahib? " said I.

"Firstly, he is an 'outlander,' and no man of mine own people. Secondly,
since of my favor I gave him land upon his coming, he refuses to pay
revenue. Am I not the lord of the earth, above and below--entitled by
right and custom to one-eighth of the crop?