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give the same results. The Collector began to think he had solved an ancient problem,

but Nemesis awaited him. When he got to business and asked them how many ploughs they would take for their own use at the moderate price of 58. 4d., they begged with one voice to be excused. How much did he suppose their ploughs cost? He happened to know and supposed they cost nothing, at least nothing in cash, since the village carpenter and blacksmith did the work between them as part of their caste duties and got so many sheaves off the ground when the crop was cut. "That is so," they said; "how can we pay four rupees for our ploughs? We are very poor men. And, O incarnate justice,1 there is another difficulty. You see the handle of your plough is so long that it takes two men to work it, one to guide the plough and another to twist the bullocks' tails. Now with our plough a man can guide with one hand and twist tails with the other." That settled the Collector, who retired to his tents to reflect on the essential relations of the tail of a plough to the tail of a bullock.

The speaker went on to shed some quiet but illuminating humour on the question of superior seed :

"In my experience I have had two cases of improved seeds to deal with, and with your Honour's permission I will mention both those cases. Many years ago it was attempted to intro

1 Dharmavatar.

duce the South Australian wheat. My father got a quantity from the Director of Land Records, and it was planted, watered, and tended. The plants grew up very healthy and strong. In fact the country wheat was absolutely nothing compared to these vigorous plants. But when the time for ripening came, unfortunately the climate of India was too hot for this wheat. The result was that although the grain was beautiful to look at there was nothing inside. Such was the crop that was gathered from the Australian wheat. In this connection there was a remark made by a Chamâr tenant of

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mine who came to take some wheat from my father's stores. My father said: 'Why don't you take the Australian wheat? It is larger and better than the Indian species.' 'No,' said the Chamâr, that wheat is only for the Sâhib-log to eat. Give me the Indian wheat.'

"Another experiment was with the maize crop. A lovely crop was raised. The cobs were large and long, and beautifully gold-coloured, and when they were dry the result was something astonishing. number of the grains in each cob was at most five. The experiment had to be given up."

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And so had the resolution for popularising improved methods of agriculture," which the mover discreetly withdrew.

Enough has perhaps been said to supply an answer to our critic's question, Comment se porte Madame la Constitution? The Proceedings of the four Councils, which space has permitted us to examine, exhibit all the symptoms of healthy life, constitutional activity, and, what is perhaps better still, stability of temFor the first time perament. in history India has been provided with a system of

2 Tanner and leather-worker caste.

political machinery carefully dignity of the Councils and

adapted to her needs, giving full play to all reasonable aspirations, and calculated to stand the wear and tear of everyday work. It now rests with the Indians to prove that they possess that rare quality of national characterthe capacity for applying and making the best of a given set of institutions, and that they will not lightly clamour for change whenever things seem to fall short of ideal perfection. That they will indeed act up to this lofty standard the results of the past session afford grounds for believing. They have striven honestly and creditably to maintain the

to establish cordial relations with their official colleagues. Where there have been departures from the tone of courtesy and distinction, of which Lord Minto has set so admirable an example, these have not been on the Indian side.

Let us hope no more will be heard of them. Sydney Smith's early Victorian bludgeon ought not to be borrowed for legislative use, nor is it altogether urbane (though the gibe of the Madras official was at least original) to suggest analogies between lawyers and liquor shops. Nothing hurts an Indian's feelings so much as sarcasm.

Printed by William Blackwood and Sons.

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PERCIVAL TWYMAN, when our story opens, had attained the considerable age of ten. He was in some ways even older than that, for he had been much in the company of his elders, and though not yet emancipated from all the restrictions of childhood he had left behind many childish things, and suffered some of the most symptomatic of the pains which accompany growth. He had long ago told his first lie-and confessed it almost immediately, for no reason known to himself- he had called his brother a fool, and lived for two days and nights in terror of hell-fire; he had read 'The Wandering Jew' in spite of strictest prohibition; fallen in love with a lady just

double his age, to whom he had never spoken; and finally, after learning mensa mensæ from an unusually capable governess, had been promoted to attend a tutor three times a week in the neighbouring town. But even after this ardently desired advancement his position was not completely satisfactory: several of his young friends already wore the trencher of Queen Mary's Grammar School, and if they still admitted him to their exclusively masculine amusements on equal terms, it was only because he was understood to be very shortly leaving his mother's protection for a sphere even more glorious than their own-a boarding-school "right away from home."

1 Copyright, 1910, by Henry Newbolt, in the U.S.A. VOL. CLXXXVIII.—NO. MCXLII.

3 D

This change had been proposed by the mother herself: the son, little guessing what it cost her, had accepted it with characteristic readiness as an adventure proper to life, which he instinctively regarded as a kind of fairy-tale journey towards a kingdom and a princess of his own. But the step was one too momentous for a young widow, however courageous, to take without advice, and to-day was the day upon which her little council Was to meet. The other members were her husband's only brother, and an old friend requested rather than appointed to act in case of need as her fellow-guardian of the three children.

Percival meanwhile considered the future as settled, and for the present continued to think the thoughts that lay nearest him. He loved all games-cricket above the rest: but he had an equally strong taste for the reading of poetry, of which he assimilated enormous quantities, and the mysteries of heraldry, which expressed for him a whole rainbow of feelings and ideas, none the less brilliant because it would be many years yet before he possessed any spectroscope of his own capable of analysing them. Cricket was of course unorthodox in November, so that to-day, on his return from his tutor, he had only to decide whether he would use the hour before tea-time for reading or painting.

He was still dallying pleasantly with this choice as he left the town behind and en

tered the tiny suburb of a dozen houses which lay to the south of it along the Bromwicham Road. The last but one of these villas was his home: he entered quickly by a side door, tossed his cap on to the hall table, and turned into the dining-room.

It was empty, as he expected: the children would of course be in the schoolroom upstairs, and his mother busied elsewhere. The light was still good, for the French window looked out westward into a small garden with open fields beyond: it was illuminated at this moment by a pale gold sunset. Against the glass on one side of it hung two transparencies, presenting coats-ofarms, whose medieval design and rich colours produced a solemn and almost dignified effect, not common in suburban villas, but not altogether incongruous here. The room, it is true, was small, but the furniture was neither new nor cheap; it had the repose of old and experienced mahogany. The china too upon the mantelpiece was old; there were good engravings on the wall, and behind the glass doors of the bookcase shimmered, as Percival well knew, volumes which had once been finely bound, and had faded only to become still more attractive. Crabbe in old turquoise morocco, Cowper in black and gold, the early Waverleys in dark embossed blue: Rasselas with Westall's plates, Campbell with Turner's, Tennyson with Rossetti's-but this afternoon was not for any of them;

this afternoon was for the Middle Ages.

The boy took his paint-box from a corner and sat down to the table. Eager and active as he was out of doors, you must picture him now very quiet and concentrated, his slight figure bowed over the table in a rather rather cramped position, his bright keen eyes intently riveted upon his work -so intently that he never moves except to lay down a pencil or dip a brush, and is totally unconscious of the passing of time and the quick fading of daylight. But he is alive and alert in every fibre, every sense, and, above all, in the sense of hearing. Few sounds in that small house could escape his net; and now, even while his powers seemed wholly given up to laying on ultramarine in carefully ruled slabs, his sub-consciousness was aware of the distant tinkling of teacups in the pantry, and the still fainter sound of light, quick steps approaching from the drawing-room.

A frown clouded his face for a moment, but it passed away as he heard his mother enter the room. Her voice, though he did not realise the fact, was one of the satisfactions that never failed him. Even when it was complaining, controversial, corrective, it was a voice that to him could never be really antagonistic, and it had a timbre that was always true to itself. He knew, without knowing it, that pleasure of having one's expectation unfailingly realised, which is surely one of the main elements

of our delight in a marked personality.

"Well, my Old Perseverance," said the quick, friendly voice, "how are you getting on?" Then the tone changed suddenly. "Oh! Percy, you can't see in this light-you'll spoil your eyes."

Mrs Twyman was thirtythree-to Percy an immense age, the age of almost all grown-up people, and her conventions were those of Staffordshire in the seventies; but she had still, strangely enough, a youthful and easy manner with her children. She was now edging herself on to the corner of his chair and peeping over his shoulder.

"My dear mother, you're shaking me: I've just done." His tone was irritable but without ill-temper, and she seemed quite unaffected by it. He sat back from his work and looked at it critically, while he rattled his brush in the water- tin.

She looked, too,

but through and beyond the drawing, and her right hand passed from his shoulder to his head and lay caressingly on the short crisp gold of his hair.

"It is very nice," she said in a soothingly uncritical tone. "I can't think how you learned to do it."

He was pleased, but unconvinced. "No," he grumbled, "I'm no good at drawing: my lions wobble."

"But the other shield is beautifully done."

"Oh! that you see that's our own, and I've done it so often. Besides, it's all

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