peg."

This very opportune meeting results, naturally enough, in a pressing
invitation to stay over and recruit up for a day, a programme to which I
offer no objections, feeling rather overdone and in need of rest and
recuperation. Mine hosts are police-commissioners, having supervision
over the police-district of Uniballa. One of their number is on the eve
of departure for his summer vacation in the Himalayas and, in honor of
the event, several guests call round to partake of a champagne dinner,
the sparkling Pommery Sec being quaffed ad libitum from pint tumblers. At
the present time, no surer does water seek its level than the
after-dinner conversation of Anglo-Indian officials turns into the
discussion of the great depreciation of the silver rupee and its relation
to the exchange at home. As the rate of exchange goes lower and lower,
and no corresponding increase of salary takes place, the natural result
is a great deal of hardship and dissatisfaction among those who, from
various causes, have to send money to England. From the Anglo-Indians'
daily association with Orientals and their peculiarly subtle
understandings, it is perhaps not so surprising to find an occasional
flight of fancy brought to bear upon the subject that would do credit to
a professional romancer. One ingenious young civil officer present
evolves a deep, deep scheme to get even with the government for present
injustice that for far-reaching and persistent revenge speaks volumes for
the young gentleman's determination to carry his point. His brilliant
scheme is to retire on a pension at the proper time, live to the age of
eighty years, and then marry a healthy girl of sixteen. As the pension of
an Anglo-Indian government officer descends to his surviving widow, the
ingenuity and depth of this person's reasoning powers becomes at once
apparent. He proposes to take revenge for the present shortcomings of the
government by saddling it with a pension for a hundred years or more
after his retirement from active service.

Tusked and antlered trophies of the chase adorning the walls,
and panther and tiger skins scattered about the floor, attest the
police-commissioners' prowess with the rifle in the surrounding jungle.
The height of every young Englishman's ambition when he comes to India is
to kill a tiger; not until with his own rifle he has laid low a genuine
Tigris Indicus, and handed its striped pelt over to the taxidermist, does
he feel entitled t