In the middle of all this bustle of reform planned, achieved, frustrated and re-planned, and the never-ending underground warfare that surges in a Native State, moved the English officers--the irreducible minimum of exiles. As a caste, the working Englishmen in Native States are curiously interesting; and the traveller whose tact by this time has been Wilfred-blunted by tramping, sits in judgment upon them as he has seen them. In the first place, they are, they must be, the fittest who have survived; for though, here and there, you shall find one chafing bitterly against the burden of his life in the wilderness, one to be pitied more than any chained beast, the bulk of the caste are honestly and unaffectedly fond of their work, fond of the country around them, and fond of the people they deal with. In each State their answer to a certain question is the same. The men with whom they are in contact are “all right when you know them, but you’ve got to know them first” as the music-hall song says. Their hands are full of work; so full that, when the incult wanderer said--“What do you find to do?” they looked upon him with contempt and amazement--exactly as the wanderer himself had once looked upon a Globe-Trotter, who had put to him the same impertinent query. And--but here the Englishman may be wrong--it seemed to him that in one respect their lives were a good deal more restful and concentrated than those of their brethren under the British Government. There was no talk of shiftings and transfers and promotions, stretching across a Province and a half, and no man said anything about Simla. To one who has hitherto believed that Simla is the hub of the Empire, it is disconcerting to hear:--“O Simla! That’s where you Bengalis go. We haven’t anything to do with Simla down here.” And no more they have. Their talk and their interests run in the boundaries of the States they serve, and, most striking of all, the gossipy element seems to be cut out altogether. It is a backwater of the river of Anglo-Indian life--or is it the main current, the broad stream that supplies the motive power, and is the other life only the noisy ripple on the surface? You who have lived, not merely looked at, both lives, decide. Much can be learnt from the talk of the caste--many curious, many amusing, and some startling things. One hears stories of men who take a poor, impoverished State as a man takes a wife, “for better or worse,” and, moved by some incomprehensible ideal of virtue, consecrate--that is not too big a word--consecrate their lives to that State in all single-heartedness and purity. Such men are few, but they exist to-day, and their names are great in lands where no Englishman travels. Again the listener hears tales of grizzled diplomats of Rajputana--Machiavellis who have hoisted a powerful intriguer with his own intrigue, and bested priestly cunning, and the guile of the Oswal, simply that the way might be clear for some