and a gentleman in the
Railway was explaining to him the real reason of the decadence of the
Empire. It was because, the Rajputana-Malwa Railway had cut all its
employes twenty-five per cent. It is ungenerous to judge a caste by a
few samples; but the Englishman had on the Road and elsewhere seen a
good deal of gentlemen on the Railway, and they spend their pay in a
manner that would do credit to an income of a thousand a month. Now they
say that the twenty-five per cent reduction deprives them of all the
pleasures of life. So much the better if it makes them moderately
economical in their expenditure. Revolving these things in his mind,
together with one or two stories of extravagances not quite fit for
publication, the Englishman came to Nasirabad, before sunrise, and there
to an evil-looking tonga. Quoth Ram Baksh, proprietor, driver, _sais_,
and everything else, calmly: "At this time of the year and having regard
to the heat of the sun who wants a top to a tonga? I have no top. I have
a top, but it would take till twelve o'clock to put it on. And behold
Sahib, Padre Martum Sahib went in this tonga to Deoli. All the officer
Sahibs of Deoli and Nasirabad go in this tonga for _shikar_. This is a
'shutin-tonga'!" "When Church and Army are brought against one, argument
is in vain." But to take a soft, office-bred unfortunate into the
wilderness, upon a skeleton, a diagram of a conveyance, is brutality.
Ram Baksh did not see it, and headed his two thirteen-hand rats straight
towards the morning sun, along a beautiful military road. "We shall get
to Deoli in six hours," said Ram Baksh the boastful, and, even as he
spoke, the spring of the tonga bar snapt "mit a harp-like melodious
twang." "What does it matter?" said Ram Baksh. "Has the Sahib never seen
a tonga-iron break before? Padre Martum Sahib and all the Officer Sahibs
in Deoli--" "Ram Baksh," said the Englishman, sternly, "I am not a Padre
Sahib nor an Officer Sahib, and if you say anything more about Padre
Martum Sahib or the officer in Deoli I shall grow very angry, Ram
Baksh."

"Humph," said Ram Baksh, "I knew you were not a Padre Sahib." The little
mishap was patched up with string, and the tonga went on merrily. It is
Stevenson who says that the "invitation to the road," nature's great
morning song, has not yet been properly understood or put to music. The
first note of it is the sound of the dawn-wind through long grass. It is
good, good beyond expression, to s