tion; and the head of an Indian the growth of its civil and institution in England should judicial administration, and of be a tutor who has acquired its racial types, castes, and at Oxford or Cambridge ex- religions. A competent knowperience in the difficult and ledge of the vernacular is, delicate task of superintending as the Civil Service Comand controlling the discipline missioners say, of the first of a college. A retired Indian importance; but it is only civilian, or one who has been & sound knowledge of the connected with an educational grammar which can be acinstitution in India, would quired in England. The ophave had no training in the tional subjects are Hindu and management and guidance of Muhammadan Law, Sanskrit, young Englishmen. The ex- Arabic, and Persian. Every disperiment of making an Indian trict officer should have some educational officer of consider- knowledge of the Hindu Law of able Oxford distinction the Inheritance and the Law of the head of a Scottish university Hindu Joint Family. Every did not prove a success. settlement officer should have Many of the Fellows of the a knowledge of Economics, and College would be retired Political Economy should be an Indian officials, fully ac- obligatory subject. A part of quainted with Indian ideas the course of a Forest man is and ways. attendance at lectures on the The extension of the period of probation to two years must necessitate a change in the curriculum of studies. At present the obligatory subjects are Law (Indian Penal Code, Code of Criminal Procedure, and the Indian Evidence Act), Indian History, and the most important vernacular language of the future civilian's province. The Civil Service Commissioners, in "the requirements" which they demand in Indian History, lose sight of the fact that India is a continent and Indian History a vast subject. The present extensive programme is a premium on cram. The probationer should read the outlines of Indian History; but he should have a thorough knowledge of the political history of his own province, of VOL. CLXXXVIII.—NO. MCXL. general principles of Agriculture, and a knowledge of these general principles would be most useful to the Revenue administrator. The course of professional studies for the Forest men, Engineers, and Telegraph men would be settled on the recommendation of a body of experts. Men who intended to follow a mercantile career and future planters would be admitted to the college. In course of time the Imperial College might undertake the training of all the men intended for the Asiatic and African services. The peace and good order of the social fabric of a vast continent depend on the maintenance of British rule in India, and the permanence of that rule mainly depends on a small, efficient European execu 2 N never tive. How small it is few the conciliation of the Hindu persons realise. The Indian politician, but how to suffiCivil Service, which supplies ciently reward those native the necessary instruments for officials who have rendered us obtaining the benefits of secure loyal service at a critical time. property and protected life over If you employ a native in a every region of a great empire, responsible office, usually held comprises little more than by a European, you ought twelve hundred persons. The to give him the status and natives can enter that Service salary of a European. It is to by the open road of competi- the men who have proved their tion. Many have joined the loyalty in the Provincial SerIndian Civil Service, and the vice that we must give freer highest posts are open to them. access to the higher adminisA native civilian is now a trative functions. But while member of the Indian Council. we behave honestly and generThe suggestions we have put ously to the Indian officials forward for the future recruit- who support our name and ing of the Service will still leave ascendancy, we the road by competition open to them. The Government of India should also have the power to nominate every year a certain number of natives who have taken the nighest degrees at our Indian universities, and they should be sent to the Imperial College at Oxford at the cost of the State. The Hindu politician demands that a simultaneous examination for the Indian Civil Service should be held in London and in India, but this would tend to destroy the English character of the examination-meant to test, not Oriental, but English qualifications, and it would chiefly benefit the class and race to which the politician belongs. The important question at the present time is not hesitate to declare boldly that a permanent English official element is necessary to secure an administration which will make manifest to the masses our supremacy, promote their prosperity, and confer on the most humble native of whatever despised race or caste the justice, humanity, and civic privileges British rule. England has undertaken this noble work, and stands pledged by the Great Proclamation to perform it. If, however, we disown our moral right to rule India, if we pursue a policy calculated to discourage friends and give confidence to enemies, we are certain to produce another great catastrophe. G. W. FORREST. FANCY FARM. BY NEIL MUNRO, AUTHOR OF 'JOHN SPLENDID,' 'THE DAET DAYS,' ETC. CHAPTER XXVIII. LIFE in Schawfield is at its best when the first of the winter fires are lit, and we sit in the privacy of the lengthening nights, hearing the rain upon the roof, the gurgle of the rhones; or when the snow is deep upon the gardens, drifted on the highway, muffling sounds of traffic. 'Tis then we know each other bettercut off from the stranger, members of a single family; to no travel or adventure tempted, content to look at the fire, read the old books, hear the old stories, muse as in the cave where our forefolk hugged the embers till their legs were freckled. I speak of common people; not those restless soaring spirits who make history heaven help them! Late autumn always stirred the maggot in the brain of Captain Cutlass; his whims strengthened as the night lengthened; he grudged the hours that darkness stole from day, chafed at the lamplight, lapsed into moods of utter nonsense, became, to his Aunt Amelia, incomprehensible. Often he seemed like a man in drink-he who but rarely drank anything but water, and could find in it, at an effort of the mind, the flavour of the hills, the stimulus of wine. In those days was he more peculiar than ever-finicky in neckties, savagely unsystematic in respect to food, standing up to snatch a scrap of what was nearest to his hand when hunger took him, staving it off like a shameful passion. "I wish I could feed on grass," " he said to her once; "there is some unholy brute within that thrives on flesh and cannot rest; I would have the imperturbability of oxen. Don't you wish, aunt, sometimes, that you were cow?" "Eh?" she exclaimed, quite startled, unbelieving her own ears. "A cow," he repeated loudly, looking from the window at the little herd of Ayrshires munching placidly upon the river-bank. "Life's no puzzle to a cow, nor has it any sense of duty. It is self-contained and self-sufficient, incapable of sin, without the need for selfexamination, repressing no desire, just flowing flowing "You are positively indecent, Andy!" she exclaimed nervously. "Am I?" he said anxiously, regarding her reddened visage. "I didn't know. Beg pardon! That's the worst of being so long at sea: it makes a man indelicate. I'm afraid I shall never understand women." "Why don't you get married?" she asked him bluntly. It was the first occasion on which she had broached a theme so personal, though it was often in her mind. "Why don't I get married?" he repeated in a non-committal spirit rare with him. "Why does the miller wear a white hat? Why-oh! it is a long story, aunt. You see there is the north east wind, likewise the sou'-east; then there are the Trades, the flying-jibboom, and the little pink parakeets that flit among the bushes. Also there is Great Circle sailing, and the how, and the why, and the when. Eh? Especially when the button is on the top, and there is no soap, and the powder runs out at the heels of the boots." "Heels of the boots! I don't understand one single word you're saying!" said his aunt despairingly. "Well, that is exactly the reason why," said Captain Cutlass. It was the day on which Norah had gone off to meet her poet, and a mood of devilment had possessed him more or less since he learned that Maurice was returning. He played an unseemly prank on Peter Powrie, who had, for the first time, got a livery, high tops, cockaded hat and all, to the manifest pride of his wife and Miss Amelia's satisfaction. It was she who had, without consulting him, imposed this dashing innovation on the unpretentious baronet's establishment. He surveyed the gorgeous coachman with amusement; Peter himself was obviously unhappy, having imbibed the Schawfield sentiments about timents about the folly of ostentation, and he turned the cockaded hat about in his hands like a boy at Hallowe'en caught stealing apples. a "Oh, Peter! Peter!" cried his master, "what hae they gone and done wi' ye? Stamped, by God, for flunkey! Buckskin breeks and a'! Put on the hat, man! Put it on! Now, just awa' oot wi' ye, the way ye are, and sweep the yard!" And the glorious coachman, clad immaculately, had to sweep the yard in a raining torrent. Sir Andrew watched him, grimly, watched the livery soak, and the hat give up its shining splendour. It was in garments more befitting the weather that the driver drove that evening from Duntryne. An odd restraint, something indeed of coldness, was in Sir Andrew's welcome of the visitor, but it lasted only for a little. To find a man wildly in love with shipbuilding and garrulous on the subject when he had expected a cynic and a poet, bereft him of the only fault he had ever found in the lad. He had always liked Reginald, even when he chaffed him on his more affected humours; now he could not but recognise change of character. They sat up late that night and talked of ships; it seemed to the younger man as if his host, at times, was talking simply to cry down internal voices. beneficent They disputed on a point of never mentioned her in that bulkheads, neither budged an connection, and Maurice seemed inch from his first conviction, as ready as himself to leave the as is the way in disputation topic till the morrow; Norah's which is only dear to men fears and Norah's outburst with their minds unalterably endowed it with the character made up. "Let us reason!" of a powder-magazine. said the shipbuilder. Captain Cutlass laughed. "We may reason, Reggy," he replied, "until we're black in the face, but our reason—as we call the feeble enemy of our intuition—never guides us; that is in other hands, the hands that rule our appetites, passions, and emotions. I have taken the word of Pen for it; we are no more rational than a skep of bees when it comes to the vital acts on which our lives depend. Had our elaborate reasoning any influence on destiny, we should long ago have been the equal of the gods." Next to his own shipyard, it seemed the wynds to Reginald were most interesting; he had to go down to see them at the earliest opportunity. And it was, of course, impossible to see the wynds with the conscience-stricken landlord's workmen freeing windows from their iron bars, and opening drains, and storming, generally, the redoubts of insanitation, without meeting Penelope Colquhoun. A little wan with recent cares and close confinement, the snap gone from her eyes, her manner less assertive, it was well her patients had begun to make less claim upon her ser "We think- -" said Mau- vice or she would have fallen rice. "Yes, yes, we think in words! And what are words but the gibbering of apes elaborated? It is not logic that controls the actions of the best and wisest men; I'm sometimes half inclined to think, like my grandfather, that it is the liver. I can see the logician in me stand aside and politely shut his eyes when the reins are handed over to inclination - that's the true postboy of destiny !" All of which seemed irrelevant, and far from the theme of bulkheads to Reginald, but who shall guess the chain of thought in a man like Captain Cutlass? If his mind was ever upon Pen in the wynds, he ill herself. She used to come out in the afternoons and shop for half-a-dozen families; "the regular cut of a housewife!" said observers when they saw her trudge from shop to shop with a basket; "she's the boy to drive a bargain!" said the flesher. Maurice met her suddenly, with her basket, in a throughgoing close; it was he who blushed for the basket, as if he had found her in deshabille, but a silly shame like that could never lodge in the mind of Pen; the basket might have been a Grecian lyre. She greeted him almost joyously; he was not in the plot to hurt her pride, and he was all that was left unchanged from those |