Mr. Westland, whose name is at the bottom of the
currency notes, the Oriental Life Assurance Company, and the Bengal
Government all rolled into one. At first, when a stranger enters this
life, he is inclined to scoff and ask, in his ignorance, "_What_ is this
Company that you talk so much about?" Later on, he ceases to scoff; for
the Company is a "big" thing--almost big enough to satisfy an American.

Ere beginning to describe its doings, let it be written, and repeated
several times hereafter, that the E. I. R. passenger carriages, and
especially the second-class, are just now horrid--being filthy and
unwashen, dirty to look at, and dirty to live in. Having cast this small
stone, we will examine Jamalpur. When it was laid out, in or before the
Mutiny year, its designers allowed room for growth, and made the houses
of one general design--some of brick, some of stone, some three, four,
and six roomed, some single men's barracks and some two-storied--all for
the use of the employes. King's Road, Prince's Road, Queen's Road, and
Victoria Road--Jamalpur is loyal--cut the breadth of the station; and
Albert Road, Church Street, and Steam Road the length of it. Neither on
these roads or on any of the cool-shaded smaller ones is anything
unclean or unsightly to be found. There is a dreary village in the
neighbourhood which is said to make the most of any cholera that may be
going, but Jamalpur itself is specklessly and spotlessly neat. From St.
Mary's Church to the railway station, and from the buildings where they
print daily about half a lakh of tickets, to the ringing, roaring,
rattling workshops, everything has the air of having been cleaned up at
ten that very morning and put under a glass case. There is a holy calm
about the roads--totally unlike anything in an English manufacturing
town. Wheeled conveyances are few, because every man's bungalow is close
to his work, and when the day has begun and the offices of the "Loco."
and "Traffic" have soaked up their thousands of natives and hundreds of
Europeans, you shall pass under the dappled shadows of the trees,
hearing nothing louder than the croon of some bearer playing with a
child in the verandah or the faint tinkle of a piano. This is pleasant,
and produces an impression of Watteau-like refinement tempered with
Arcadian simplicity. The dry, anguished howl of the "buzzer," the big
steam-whistle, breaks the hush, and all Jamalpur is alive with the
tramping of tiffin-seekin