“According as there is,” he said, “without doubt they will give it,” and went on with his work. Here, if you like, was a person of short views and unvexed philosophy. A lecture upon the importance of copper coins trembled on my lips, but I held it back. A base aim is a poor exchange for a lesson in content, and I held it back, wondering whether my servant might not be better off than I, in all that he could do without. Alas for the poor people who have to pay at the rate of a dollar a day and mind their own business into the bargain! Never can they know one of the greatest pleasures of life, to be served by a serving people. There is a spark of patriarchal joy, long extinct west of Suez, in the simple old interpretation which still holds here, of the relation of master and servant, scolding and praise, favour and wrath; a lifelong wage and occasionally a little medicine are still the portion of the servant-folk, accepted as a matter of course, and “Thou wilt not hear orders?” ever a serious reproach. To all of us Outlanders of the East, it is one of the consolations of exile, and to some of us a keen and constant pleasure to be the centre and source of prosperity for these others, a simple, graphic, pressing opportunity to do justice and love mercy and walk humbly with their God. I, personally, like them for themselves--who could help liking Atma?--and of persons to whom they do not at all appeal I have my own opinion. It is the difference of race, no doubt, which makes this relation possible and enjoyable, the difference, and what we are accustomed to consider the superiority, of ours. At home all generous minds are somewhat tormented by a sense of the unfairness of the menial brand, and in the attitude of the menial mind there is nothing to modify that impression.