went home, I have no doubt, but it is the gift of few to be at once so luminous and so forcible. Try handling your _Hamal_ in another way. Call him mildly—a mild tone thaws his understanding—and say to him, “Look here, my son. Do you see this gold writing on the backs of these books? For what purpose is it?” He will reply, “Who knows?” Then you can proceed, “That writing is the mark by which you may know the head of any book. Now consider, should a book stand on its head?” If he replies, “How should a book stand on its head?” then you are getting access to his intelligence, and may lead him on gradually to the conclusion that, whenever he puts a book into the shelves, he should make it stand so that the writing on the back of it may be uppermost. I tell you he will beam with intelligence, and rise earlier next morning to put his new learning into practice. After a few days he will forget and relapse into his old ways, but you must have patience. After all, I think we could put up with the _Hamal_ if only he would not try to think. This is his crowning vice. In vain I try to impress upon him that I engaged him to obey orders, and would rather do the thinking myself. Every now and then, at some particular phase of the moon, he sets his intellect in operations and the consequences are, as the Brahmin boy described the result of his examination, “appalling.” It was our _Hamal’s_ duty to fill the filter, and at a time when the water was very bad, orders were given that it should be boiled before being filtered. One day, my wife saw the _Hamal_ in the act of filling the filter, and it occurred to her to warn him to let the water cool first, lest he might crack the filter. “Oh yes,” said he, “I thought of that. After boiling the water, I cool it down by mixing an equal quantity of cold water with it, and then I put it into the filter.”