They always received me with pleasure, not as their landlord, to make demands upon them, but as their best friend. They ever had some present for me. The largest melon, the ripest fruits, the finest flowers, were kept for the sahib. I encouraged them to cultivate flowers, giving them seeds, and sending them various kinds of plants and shrubs. I offered prizes for the best flower beds kept by the women, and appointed a committee of five to decide upon the awards. This was such a success, and gave so much pleasure, that I offered other prizes for the planting of trees, for the best productions of their gardens, and the best crops, the finest looking cattle, and the cleanest, neatest houses and yards. Twice a year we had our little fairs, gala days, on which the prizes were distributed. The amounts I offered were not large, but the emulation they excited was very great. They stimulated industry and induced the people to work with pleasure, and gave them a taste for beautiful and useful things. My villages soon became the envy of all around them; my people, my friends, took pride in speaking of me as “their sahib” and telling what he had done for them. Need I say that I was pleased, for what is there to produce greater happiness than in doing good and making others happy? I might have skinned these people, and drained every pice I could out of their poverty, but thousands of rupees accumulated would have been only blood money and a curse compared to the pleasure I received from the contented happiness of these once impoverished serfs. I ventured on another experiment. I built a cheap school-house in each village, and surrounded them with trees and flowers, planted by the villagers themselves. I always got the people to be my partners in everything. A teacher was engaged for each school-house, and every girl and boy was asked to attend, and they were all there. I had no thought of encouraging that Oxford and Cambridge fad of giving the higher education to people to whom it is more of a curse than a blessing. I have often thought of writing a book denouncing the government scheme of giving the sons of the rich natives a classical education at the expense of taxing the groans, sweat and life blood of the poor to pay for it. These upstarts are impudent and mean enough in their natural condition, but with the nonsensical crammed education they get, they are still worse. But I have never found a pen sharp enough, so my book is still in embryo. In these schools, reading, writing, and the simplest figures were taught; nothing more from books, but a great deal as to morals, manners, health, about their houses, their fields, their cattle, about the birds, the flowers and trees.