Nor did I ever hear a syllable from the brave, unselfish man of disappointment at the way in which his worldly prospects were never advanced in the slightest by the nobly adventurous work he had done. By nature he was too bent on doing the work in hand to theorise about anything. By character he was too loftily absorbed in loyalty and reverence for the law of obedience as a root-principle of his life, to deplore any want of appreciation of his worth on the part of the Government which he had so loyally served. It is true, as the "Pioneer" points out, that on the Russian side such a man would have had honours and distinctions showered upon him. He would have been dragged out of his retirement and made to feel he was the favourite of the monarch, for the risk to life he had undertaken in spontaneous devotion to the State. Not only is such warmth and enthusiasm not the English method, but the Indian Government is a huge machine which goes grinding on in its mechanical way, and is besides, a bureaucracy which has a good deal of pride in regarding any new departure as a dangerous token of disrespect to its old and consecrated tradition of simple obedience to written orders and codified instructions. The highest originality is smothered in a secretariat as its fitting cabinet. McNair knew these attributes of the Indian Government, and never troubled his head about preferment or official promotion. It is said he was on the eve of it, and the State is believed to somewhat deplore the loss of an opportunity for rewarding a servant it prized, doubtless, in its own dull, routine sort of way. But he is now beyond earthly rewards or distinctions, and neither the praise nor the blame of men can touch him. In life he was very sensitive to kindness or coldness, but he was of too masculine a fibre to allow the natural sweetness and contentment of his disposition to be alloyed or marred by any such influence from without. He loved his work for its own sake. It became his sole occupation and serious aim in life. He deplores the weather in his very last letter to me, most characteristically, because it interfered with his "observations," which, with "the change" he hoped for and partly realized, he would "_push_ along."