I made very few rules, but gave many suggestions which they were very quick to take up. Once in our assembly under the big tree, one of the younger men wore a rather earthy looking coat. I suggested that he ask his wife to loan him her clean sari. He left at once and soon appeared with a nice clean coat to the amusement of the company. This little hint was enough, and they showed respect by appearing as cleanly as possible. I gave them a lecture on the impurities of water and showed them by means of a magnifying glass, first to the women and then to the men, what hideous creatures there were in foul water, to their great disgust, for I saw it in every face, and explained that when they drank such water, and all these clawing, wriggling creatures got into their insides, they would see bhuts, ghosts, even in the day time, and get fever, cholera and all other diseases. I may have magnified even the truth in this, but as it is what all medical men do when they wish to frighten their simple-minded patients, my little exaggeration was excusable. I talked very plainly to them of the nasty, filthy habit of the Hindus, washing their bodies and rinsing their mouths in the foul pools, and then using the water for drinking and cooking purposes. Of all the customs of the India people this is the vilest, and often have I seen these self styled holy Brahmins, so fastidious as not to drink water out of my clean glass, yet bathing in water so foul that I would not allow my dog to be washed in it, and then drinking the same water. The Government sends to Europe for learned Medicos to come out here at great expense and publishes octavos on the prevention of disease, and yet allows these talaos or cess-pools to exist near every village, the very hot walloes and breeding places of nearly every kind of disease. It is a very soft thing for these gentlemen to get such a pleasure trip, and that is about all there is in it, except the taxes on the people to pay the bills. I think my talks on this subject were a great success, as I saw afterward that the people were particular to get water for drinking and domestic purposes from the wells, and the water for bathing they carried away from the tank to use outside. All these things may be considered trifles by learned scientific minds; but no matter. Many a time in my life I have had to do with trifles. When that English gentleman, my father left us, and poor mama broke her heart, a trifle perhaps to him,—and little sister and I lived on a few handfuls of rice a day, given by the poor out of their scanty store, it was a mere trifle, and when the good old faqir gave us a few handfuls of parched grain, it was only a trifle, but life to us, and when Mr. Percy found us in the serai, only a trifle, but what would I have been if that trifling incident had never occurred? I do not think I am out of my sense in saying that the man who looks carefully after all the trifles may let the big things take care of themselves.