found a racquet court or swimming bath.

In these smaller stations there is often a great deal of sociability among those who are recognised as being of society. Those of the community who are of the monde are driven by the exigencies of their position to combine for the common weal. In the absence of professional butchers and a local meat market the world has to assume the character of amateur butchers and supply its own requirements. The mutton club is an institution in nearly every small station; one member, like Norval's father feeds the flock, and four or five members share the slaughtered animals; hindquarters, fore quarters, and saddles being distributed with fair alternation-save when a station dinner involves a departure from the ordinary sequence of joints. During the hot weather, there is the ice club-ice, wrapped in blankets, being brought many miles by coolies, and as much of it as does not melt divided among the members. Then there is the book-club, an institution that frequently indulges in a short literary debauch, ordering every new book that comes out, and then undergoes a protracted literary Ramadan during which subscribers are compelled to satisfy their craving for letters by absorbing the pages of the cheap monthlies or reading over again what they have read before. And there may be cheese clubs, bread clubs, draft beer clubs, and other similar institutions of combination.

Nor does this system end with the application of private resources to the general welfare through the medium of clubs. If Mrs. A. wants to give a ball, she thinks nothing of asking for the use of Mrs. B's. house, which is the one in the station best adapted to the purpose, or the loan of Mr. C.'s dinner-service, or Mrs. D.'s épergne for the furnishing of

her supper table. So, one of Mrs. E.'s carriage-horses being lame, she will indent upon the stable of a neighbour to fill the vacancy in the shafts of her carriage. And, in fact, everybody, within certain limits, looks upon the property of society generally as his own temporarily when occasion requires him to use it.

This is all very pleasant for those who are of the monde, but the position, in a small station, of those who are out of it, or who only hold an uncertain status on its outskirts, is by no means so agreeable. Mr. Paikast, the deputy collector, is in the unenviable position of hanging suspended, like a social Mahomet's coffin, somewhere between that aristocracy of which the judge is the head, and a commonalty that has no head at all. No one of the upper ten (upper four or five more correctly) would, on the occa sion of a station ball, use Mr. Paikast's house if it were large enough (which it is not), or borrow his épergne, supposing the improbability of his having one. If fortune favour him, he may obtain a position in some or all of the station clubs. He may divide a sheep with the judge, the collector, and joint magistrate; he may pore over those pages of the cheap magazines that have been skimmed by his official superiors, and he may enjoy other corporate privileges. He may be invited to station dances, or unexclusive dinner-parties, as a matter of form, but though joining in these festivities he is but a passive actor in them. He goes to the ball to find that every lady's programme is a sealed book to him. At the dinner he is driven by the rules of precedence to enter the dining-room last and probably alone, and the banquet is, for him, about as lively as the entertainment of cake and wine provided for mourners at a funeral. Those who are of 'society' have pleasant gatherings where form and

Mr. Paikast are both absent-cheerful early morning breakfasts (chota hazrees) in the verandah of the collector's bungalow, evening croquet meetings in the judge's compound (or grounds about a house, the term compound being derived from the Portuguese campana), tiffins, small dinners, riding parties, paper-hunts, shikar parties, and so forth, of which he may hear, but in which he is not asked to join. His is, indubitably, an uncomfortable position. He may not become one with the better class, and he cannot very well associate with the Jew shopkeeper, or Eurasian clerks. He cannot, any more than other Anglo-Indians, make any social capital out of the native aristocracy; and he may be, and often is, the sole representative of his small sphere.

We have spoken of balls as though the internal resources of these small stations were equal to festivities on a large scale, and it must be explained that, on occasion, several adjoining stations unite in some great effort for general entertainment. When some Hindoo or Mohammedan festival releases civilians from their labours in cutcherry, or the Christmas week or other English holiday affords the opportunity, a small station bursts out in the direction of general hospitality and merry-making, and every desirable person, male and female, is summoned from every point within a day's journey. Marvellous are the makeshifts to find accommodation for the visitors; verandahs are turned into bed-rooms for bachelors, who are supposed to be superior to the trials of rheumatism and catarrh; tents, erected near the houses, are furnished as dormitories for others who cannot be put up within doors, and all the dwelling-places of the world become, for the time being, so many hostelries. If a dance be on the tapis, great are the exertions to enlist, from far and near, the assistance of proficients in waltz and

galop. To secure the attendance of the agile Mrs. Hoppington, the gentlemen of a saltatory turn will send all their horses out upon the road to bring her carriage in some forty or fifty miles (laying a dawk this is called); and to induce Captain Saraband to put in an appearance, the dancing ladies will do anything, from writing to the Commander-inChief to foregoing a new bonnet. In the cold season the society collected may be entertained in a variety of ways. Sky races, pic-nics, and cricket-matches, keep the merrymakers employed during the day; and the small station, for a time, has a very pleasant carnival in full swing.

And it is well that this should be so, for were it otherwise the Anglo-Indians of small stations would, in many instances, become creatures of one idea, wholly unfit to hold their own in the wider streams of society. As it is, the intercommunication of ideas is singularly restricted. 'Shop' is the only theme that possesses a lasting interest. A dispute as to the construction of some section of the code of civil procedure, or an argument as to whether Ram Chunder Ghose should have been committed to the sessions for lurking house trespass with intent to steal, or convicted by the magistrate of simple theft, will keep a party of men conversationally employed where all the affairs of Europe and America would fail to excite any interest. The wreck of matter and the fall of worlds are to the zealous magistrate trifles light as air compared with the reversal of one of his decisions, and the fall of the roof of his jail. And official conversation is often interlarded by technical terms in the vernacular of Hindostan, which might just as well be expressed in English had not custom made the native terms more familiar. Ex. gr. Brown, the collector, loquitur : Well, you know, Ram Bux got the

6

In these smaller stations there is often a great deal of sociability among those who are recognised as being of society. Those of the community who are of the monde are driven by the exigencies of their position to combine for the common weal. In the absence of professional butchers and a local meat market the world has to assume the character of amateur butchers and supply its own requirements. The mutton club is an institution in nearly every small station; one member, like Norval's father feeds the flock, and four or five members share the slaughtered animals; hind quarters, fore quarters, and saddles being distributed with fair alternation-save when a station dinner involves a departure from the ordinary sequence of joints. During the hot weather, there is the ice club-ice, wrapped in blankets, being brought many miles by coolies, and as much of it as does not melt divided among the members. Then there is the book-club, an institution that frequently indulges in a short literary debauch, ordering every new book that comes out, and then undergoes a protracted literary Ramadan during which subscribers are compelled to satisfy their craving for letters by absorbing the pages of the cheap monthlies or reading over again what they have read before. And there may be cheese clubs, bread clubs, draft beer clubs, and other similar institutions of combination.

Nor does this system end with the application of private resources to the general welfare through the medium of clubs. If Mrs. A. wants to give a ball, she thinks nothing of asking for the use of Mrs. B's. house, which is the one in the station best adapted to the purpose, or the loan of Mr. C.'s dinner-service, or Mrs. D.'s épergne for the furnishing of

E.'s carriage-horses being lame, she will indent upon the stable of a neighbour to fill the vacancy in the shafts of her carriage. And, in fact, everybody, within certain limits, looks upon the property of society generally as his own temporarily when occasion requires him to use it.

This is all very pleasant for those who are of the monde, but the position, in a small station, of those who are out of it, or who only hold an uncertain status on its outskirts, is by no means so agreeable. Mr. Paikast, the deputy collector, is in the unenviable position of hanging suspended, like a social Mahomet's coffin, somewhere between that aristocracy of which the judge is the head, and a commonalty that has no head at all. No one of the upper ten (upper four or five more correctly) would, on the occasion of a station ball, use Mr. Paikast's house if it were large enough (which it is not), or borrow his épergne, supposing the improbability of his having one. If fortune favour him, he may obtain a position in some or all of the station clubs. He may divide a sheep with the judge, the collector, and joint magistrate; he may pore over those pages of the cheap magazines that have been skimmed by his official superiors, and he may enjoy other corporate privileges. He may be invited to station dances, or unexclusive dinner-parties, as a matter of form, but though joining in these festivities he is but a passive actor in them. He goes to the ball to find that every lady's programme is a sealed book to him. At the dinner he is driven by the rules of precedence to enter the dining-room last and probably alone, and the banquet is, for him, about as lively as the entertainment of cake and wine provided for mourners at a funeral. Those who are of 'society' have pleasant gatherings where form and

Mr. Paikast are both absent-cheerful early morning breakfasts (chota hazrees) in the verandah of the collector's bungalow, evening croquet meetings in the judge's compound (or grounds about a house, the term compound being derived from the Portuguese campana), tiffins, small dinners, riding parties, paper-hunts, shikar parties, and so forth, of which he may hear, but in which he is not asked to join. His is, indubitably, an uncomfortable position. He may not become one with the better class, and he cannot very well associate with the Jew shopkeeper, or Eurasian clerks. He cannot, any more than other Anglo-Indians, make any social capital out of the native aristocracy; and he may be, and often is, the sole representative of his small sphere.

We have spoken of balls as though the internal resources of these small stations were equal to festivities on a large scale, and it must be explained that, on occasion, several adjoining stations unite in some great effort for general entertainment. When some Hindoo or Mohammedan festival releases civilians from their labours in cutcherry, or the Christmas week or other English holiday affords the opportunity, a small station bursts out in the direction of general hospitality and merry-making, and every desirable person, male and female, is summoned from every point within a day's journey. Marvellous are the makeshifts to find accommodation for the visitors; verandahs are turned into bed-rooms for bachelors, who are supposed to be superior to the trials of rheumatism and catarrh; tents, erected near the houses, are furnished as dormitories for others who cannot be put up within doors, and all the dwelling-places of the world become, for the time being, so many hostelries. If a dance be on the tapis, great are the exertions to enlist, from far and near, the assistance of proficients in waltz and

galop. To secure the attendance of the agile Mrs. Hoppington, the gentlemen of a saltatory turn will send all their horses out upon the road to bring her carriage in some forty or fifty miles (laying a dawk this is called); and to induce Captain Saraband to put in an appearance, the dancing ladies will do anything, from writing to the Commander-inChief to foregoing a new bonnet. In the cold season the society collected may be entertained in a variety of ways. Sky races, pic-nics, and cricket-matches, keep the merrymakers employed during the day; and the small station, for a time, has a very pleasant carnival in full swing.

And it is well that this should be so, for were it otherwise the Anglo-Indians of small stations would, in many instances, become creatures of one idea, wholly unfit to hold their own in the wider streams of society. As it is, the intercommunication of ideas is singularly restricted. 'Shop' is the only theme that possesses a lasting interest. A dispute as to the construction of some section of the code of civil procedure, or an argument as to whether Ram Chunder Ghose should have been committed to the sessions for lurking house trespass with intent to steal, or convicted by the magistrate of simple theft, will keep a party of men conversationally employed where all the affairs of Europe and America would fail to excite any interest. The wreck of matter and the fall of worlds are to the zealous magistrate trifles light as air compared with the reversal of one of his decisions, and the fall of the roof of his jail. And official conversation is often interlarded by technical terms in the vernacular of Hindostan, which might just as well be expressed in English had not custom made the native terms more familiar. Ex. gr. Brown, the collector, loquitur: 'Well, you know, Ram Bux got the

izara (farm) of Bugglinuggur from the zemindar (landlord) at a jumma (rental) of 2,000 rupees, paying 5,000 rupees peshghee (premium), and a nuzzur (gift) of 500 rupees; but when he came to settle with the ryotts (cultivators) half of them put in claims to hold their lands lakhraj (rent free), or at a low jumma upon istumrare pottas (leases in perpetuity), and he had to put them into court. Then the rubbee and khurreef (cold weather and rain crops) were got in before he could collect his rents, and he had to make any bundo bust (settlement) he could to carry on.' These terms find their way into official reports, and these papers being further embellished by sundry Latin and French phrases are often very polyglot indeed in their character.

Apropos of reports we may observe that the Anglo-Indian official is constantly employed in the preparation of a report upon something or other. There are those departmental reports, administrative, judicial, revenue and executive, that recur at fixed periods, and there are those which are called into existence upon exceptional occasions. The latter class constitutes the great bulk of these public papers, for the Indian civilian is called upon to report upon anything and everything, however trivial the subject may be, or however little he may know about it. Famines, inundations, insufficient falls of rain, the prevalence of epidemics, the feelings of the natives towards British rule, the condition and progress of trade, arts, and manufacture, the nature of certain soils, irrigation, cultivation, or any other matter, may have to be reported upon, and

a

certain minimum number of sheets of foolscap occupied by it, whether the writer knows anything about it or not. It is not very long since, in a certain province, all the collectors of districts upon the Ganges were

called upon to report upon the Gangetic dolphin, a creature of which many of them knew as much or as little as they did of the habits of the plesiosaurus. Something very closely approaching universal knowledge is required to carry the Indian civilian through these reporting duties in a satisfactory manner; but this fact does not prevent the sciolist from acquitting himself in the legitimate number of paragraphs upon political economy, meteorology, sanitation, natural history, geology, or any other subject. In justice to the Indian civilian, however, it must be stated that, in most cases, he does possess some amount of practical knowledge upon many subjects. He may not be intimately acquainted with the nature of the Gangetic dolphin; but, as a district officer, he is compelled to acquire some information upon many more important matters to which we have alluded. Meteorological observations and the nature of agriculture are forced upon him by his official duties. Having charge of the district roads he is, in some degree, a civil engineer. He is generally doctor enough to cure the natives about him of fever, or other ordinary ailments to which Hindoo flesh is peculiarly heir, and, while on tour, his medicine chest is resorted to as the public dispensary. Six to ten hours a day spent in cutcherry may not leave him much time to acquire scientific lore from books; the many hours spent in the saddle when he visits different parts of his territory do not tend to literary advancement; but, with his eyes open and his wits about him, he picks up a great deal of useful knowledge nevertheless.

We have hitherto spoken of the Moffussil life of stations, but there are many Anglo-Indians who for some portion, or perhaps all their career live isolated from all their kind. Indigo planters, zemindars, and other European non-officials, civi