_This is the trouble, Sahib. My brother who holds his land and works mine, outside Amritsar City, is a fool. He is older than I. He has done his service and got one wound out of it in what they used to call war--that child's play in the Tirah years ago. He thinks himself a soldier! But that is not his offence. He sends me postcards, Sahib--scores of postcards--whining about the drouth or the taxes, or the crops, or our servants' pilferings or some such trouble. He doesn't know what trouble means. I want to tell him he is a fool.... What? True! True! One can get money and land but never a new brother. But for all that, he is a fool.... Is he a good farmer? Sa_-heeb! _If an Amritsar Sikh isn't a good farmer, a hen doesn't know an egg.... Is he honest? As my own pet yoke of bullocks. He is only a fool. My belly is on fire now with knowledge I never had before, and I wish to impart it to him--to the village elders--to all people. Yes, that is true, too. If I keep calling him a fool, he will not gain any knowledge.... Let me think it over on all sides! Aha! Now that I have a bazar-writer of my own I will write a book--a very book of a letter to my fool of a brother.... And now we will begin. Take down my words from my lips to my foolish old farmer-brother:--_ * * * * * "You will have received the notification of my wounds which I took in Franceville. Now that I am better of my wounds, I have leisure to write with a long hand. Here we have paper and ink at command. Thus it is easy to let off the fumes of our hearts. Send me all the news of all the crops and what is being done in our village. This poor parrot is always thinking of Kashmir.