No More Learning

His business was to obey orders and keep abreast of his files instead of
devastating the Club with "isms. "

He worked brilliantly; but he could not accept any order without
trying to better it. That was the fault of his creed. It made men too
responsible and left too much to their honor. You can sometimes ride an
old horse in a halter; but never a colt.

McGoggin took more trouble over his cases than any of the men of his
year. He may have fancied that thirty-page judgments on fifty-rupee
cases--both sides perjured to the gullet--advanced the cause of
Humanity. At any rate, he worked too much, and worried and fretted over
the rebukes he received, and lectured away on his ridiculous creed out
of office, till the Doctor had to warn him that he was overdoing it. No
man can toil eighteen annas in the rupee in June without suffering. But
McGoggin was still intellectually "beany" and proud of himself and his
powers, and he would take no hint. He worked nine hours a day steadily.

"Very well," said the doctor, "you'll break down because you are
over-engined for your beam. " McGoggin was a little chap.

One day, the collapse came--as dramatically as if it had been meant to
embellish a Tract.

It was just before the Rains.
We were sitting in the verandah in the
dead, hot, close air, gasping and praying that the black-blue clouds
would let down and bring the cool. Very, very far away, there was a
faint whisper, which was the roar of the Rains breaking over the river.
One of the men heard it, got out of his chair, listened, and said,
naturally enough:--"Thank God! "

Then the Blastoderm turned in his place and said:--"Why? I assure you
it's only the result of perfectly natural causes--atmospheric phenomena
of the simplest kind. Why you should, therefore, return thanks to a
Being who never did exist--who is only a figment--"

"Blastoderm," grunted the man in the next chair, "dry up, and throw
me over the Pioneer. We know all about your figments. " The Blastoderm
reached out to the table, took up one paper, and jumped as if something
had stung him. Then he handed the paper over.

"As I was saying," he went on slowly and with an effort--"due to
perfectly natural causes--perfectly natural causes. I mean--"

"Hi! Blastoderm, you've given me the Calcutta Mercantile Advertiser. "

The dust got up in little whorls, while the treetops rocked and the
kites whistled. But no one was looking at the coming of the Rains.

We were all staring at the Blastoderm, who had risen from his chair and
was fighting with his speech. Then he said, still more slowly:--

"Perfectly conceivable--dictionary--red
oak--amenable--cause--retaining--shuttlecock--alone.