men
will become one nation.

CHAPTER XXXV

SERVANTS IN INDIA

Government officials and missions. The honest native
Christian. Christian servants. Housekeeping in India. The
heathen butler. The _Dasara_ festival. Countenance of
Hinduism. The visitors to Parbatti. The festival of the
cattle. S. Anthony's Day.

There are a few Government officials in India who are not disposed to
smile on missionary enterprise, or on those engaged in it. They think
that natives had better be left to themselves, so far as religion is
concerned, and that the efforts of the missionary are a disturbing
element; and his reasonable complaints to officials of this type about
ordinary matters, such as the state of the roads in his district, or
the supply of water, often meet with slight recognition, or none at
all. How far this attitude on the part of the official may be due to
the faults, or want of tact of the missionary, I cannot say. Want of
appreciation of what missions are doing for the people of a country
often arises merely from lack of knowledge, and most Government
officials show generous recognition of the work, and give it their
kindly aid, when they come into real contact with it and its results.

It was a pleasant relief from the stereotyped "board-ship" saying,
that all native Christians are rascals, to hear the following from one
of the engineers of the great irrigation system of the Panjab. In the
course of ordinary conversation he happened to say that, in all his
experiences, he had only met with one really honest native, and that
he was a Christian. "In fact," he went on to say, "the other men led
him such a life, just because he was honest, that I had to transfer
him to a new district." This testimony was the more significant,
because there is no sphere in which there are greater opportunities of
exacting unlawful commission than in the department which deals with
the distribution of water.

[Illustration: THE INDIAN BUTLER.]

The common criticism of the casual Englishman, when he is talking
about missions, that a Hindu servant is better than a Christian one,
has an element of truth in it. That is to say, the Christian servant
will not be so submissive as the heathen one. His Christianity has
developed his grit, and he will be less willing to put up with
injustice, or violent language, or the habit, once common but now
almost universally reprobated, of cutting his pay as a punishment f