then that they are fatalists?  They do not speculate on the mysteries of existence, they are content to be, to labour, to suffer, to die when their time comes like a dog, because it is Kismet—­their fate.  Many of them never strive to avert any impending calamity, such, for example, as sickness.  A man sickens, he wraps himself in stolid apathy, he makes no effort to shake of his malady, he accepts it with sullen, despairing, pathetic resignation as his fate.  His friends mourn in their dumb, despairing way, but they too accept the situation.  He has no one to rouse him.  If you ask him what is the matter, he only wails out, ‘Hum kya kurre?’ What can I do?  I am unwell.  No attempt whatever to tell you of the origin of his illness, no wish even for sympathy or assistance.  He accepts the fact of his illness.  He struggles not with Fate.  It is so ordained.  Why fight against it?  Amen; so let it be.  I have often been saddened to see poor toiling tenants struck down in this way.  Even if you give them medicine, they often have not energy enough to take it.  You must see them take it before your eyes.  It is your struggle not theirs. You must rouse them, by your will. Your energy must compel them to make an attempt to combat their weakness.  Once you rouse a man, and infuse some spirit into him, he may resist his disease, but it is a hard fight to get him to TRY.  What a meaning in that one word TRY!  TO ACT.  TO DO.  The average poor suffering native Hindoo knows nothing of it.

Of course their moods vary.  They have their ‘high days and holidays,’ feasts, processions, and entertainments; but on the whole the average ryot or small cultivator has a hard life.

In every village there are generally bits of uncultivated or jungle lands, on which the village herds have a right of pasture.  The cow being a sacred animal, they only use her products, milk and butter.  The urchins may be seen in the morning driving long strings of emaciated looking animals to the village pasture, which in the evening wend their weary way backwards through the choking dust, having had but ‘short commons’ all the day on the parched and scanty herbage.

The police are too often a source of annoyance, and become extortionate robbers, instead of the protectors of the poor.  It seems to be inherent in the Oriental mind to abuse authority.  I do not scruple to say that all the vast army of policemen, court peons, writers, clerks, messengers, and underlings of all sorts, about the courts of justice, in the service of government officers, or in any way attached to the retinue of a government official, one and all are undeniably shamelessly venal and corrupt.  They accept a bribe much more quickly than an attorney a fee, or a hungry dog a shin of beef.  If a policeman only enters a village he expects a feast from the head man, and will ask a present with unblushing effrontery as a perquisite of his office.  If a theft is