rough the Department, which might be
subordinate to the Educational Department, under the same penalty as
that attaching to the transfer of land without a stamped document. But
Government won't take suggestions. It pretends that it is too busy.
However, I will put my notion on record, and explain the example that
illustrates the theory.

Once upon a time there was a good young man--a first-class officer in
his own Department--a man with a career before him and, possibly, a K.
C. G. E. at the end of it. All his superiors spoke well of him, because
he knew how to hold his tongue and his pen at the proper times. There
are to-day only eleven men in India who possess this secret; and they
have all, with one exception, attained great honor and enormous incomes.

This good young man was quiet and self-contained--too old for his years
by far. Which always carries its own punishment. Had a Subaltern, or a
Tea-Planter's Assistant, or anybody who enjoys life and has no care for
to-morrow, done what he tried to do not a soul would have cared.
But when Peythroppe--the estimable, virtuous, economical, quiet,
hard-working, young Peythroppe--fell, there was a flutter through five
Departments.

The manner of his fall was in this way. He met a Miss
Castries--d'Castries it was originally, but the family dropped the
d' for administrative reasons--and he fell in love with her even more
energetically that he worked. Understand clearly that there was not a
breath of a word to be said against Miss Castries--not a shadow of a
breath. She was good and very lovely--possessed what innocent people at
home call a "Spanish" complexion, with thick blue-black hair growing low
down on her forehead, into a "widow's peak," and big violet eyes
under eyebrows as black and as straight as the borders of a Gazette
Extraordinary when a big man dies. But--but--but--. Well, she was a VERY
sweet girl and very pious, but for many reasons she was "impossible."
Quite so. All good Mammas know what "impossible" means. It was obviously
absurd that Peythroppe should marry her. The little opal-tinted onyx
at the base of her finger-nails said this as plainly as print.
Further, marriage with Miss Castries meant marriage with several other
Castries--Honorary Lieutenant Castries, her Papa, Mrs. Eulalie Castries,
her Mamma, and all the ramifications of the Castries family, on incomes
ranging from Rs. 175 to Rs. 470 a month, and THEIR wives and connections
again.

It would