y, are, said one man, "making a family affair
of it altogether. You see all those men turning brass and looking after
the machinery? They've all got relatives, and a lot of 'em own land out
Monghyr-way close to us. They bring on their sons as soon as they are
old enough to do anything, and the Company rather encourages it. You see
the father is in a way responsible for his son, and he'll teach him all
he knows, and in that way the Company has a hold on them all. You've no
notion how sharp a native is when he's working on his own hook. All the
district round here, right up to Monghyr, is more or less dependent on
the railway."

The Babus in the traffic department, in the stores, issue department, in
all the departments where men sit through the long, long Indian day
among ledgers, and check and pencil and deal in figures and items and
rupees, may be counted by hundreds. Imagine the struggle among them to
locate their sons in comfortable cane-bottomed chairs, in front of a big
pewter inkstand and stacks of paper! The Babus make beautiful
accountants, and if we could only see it, a merciful Providence has made
the Babu for figures and detail. Without him, the dividends of any
company would be eaten up by the expenses of English or city-bred
clerks. The Babu is a great man, and, to respect him, you must see five
score or so of him in a room a hundred yards long, bending over ledgers,
ledgers, and yet more ledgers--silent as the Sphinx and busy as a bee.
He is the lubricant of the great machinery of the Company whose ways and
works cannot be dealt with in a single scrawl.

CHAPTER II

THE SHOPS.

The railway folk, like the army and civilian castes, have their own
language and life, which an outsider cannot hope to understand. For
instance, when Jamalpur refers to itself as being "on the Long Siding,"
a lengthy explanation is necessary before the visitor grasps the fact
that the whole of the two hundred and thirty odd miles of the loop from
Luckeeserai to Kanu-Junction _via_ Bhagalpur is thus contemptuously
treated. Jamalpur insists that it is out of the world, and makes this an
excuse for being proud of itself and all its institutions. But in one
thing it is badly, disgracefully provided. At a moderate estimate there
must be about two hundred Europeans with their families in this place.
They can, and do, get their small supplies from Calcutta, but they are
dependent on the tender mercies of the bazaar for their m