So it was all the more strange that when--the next speaker having finished in a calculated chaos of words--Govind, the dissipated editor, who had yawned his tacit approval of Dilarâm the dancer, rose to denounce some trivial iniquity in the ruling race, his middle-school English, and cheap abuse, was received with just the same desultory applause. It seemed to Chris, listening impatiently, as if the faculty of criticism had been lost in its abuse, as if the one thing needful was antagonism _pur et simple_. The great event of all such meetings in Nushapore followed next--a paper by Râm Nâth. He spoke admirably, and if he wandered occasionally from the point, the vast scope of his subject, 'The Political, National, and Social aspect of Modern India,' must be held responsible for that! An Englishman listening would, of course, have challenged his facts and denied his conclusions; but Chris did neither. He gave an unqualified assent to many and many a point. And yet when he listened to the assertion that 'the cup of our political evils is so full, the burden of our social inequalities so intolerable, and the tyranny of custom stands out so red and foul, that some militant uprising has become essential to national salvation, and armed resistance the only hope of amendment,' he wondered with a certain shame how many of the millions of India would find a personal grievance in social equality or political evil. And as for the tyranny of custom? What militant uprising was possible among willing slaves? For all that he listened, not without an answering heartbeat, to the Lala's eloquence, as he skilfully fanned every burning question with a wind of words, and let the fretting fingers of subtle suggestion undermine the foundations of fact. He was specially bitter against the plague precautions, and his hints that there was more behind them than met the eye, aroused the only spontaneous applause of the evening. Yet once more, when the well-reasoned, admirably-delivered address was over, the audience listened with exactly the same receptive expression to the recitation, by its author, of a hymn for use in the approaching Congress in which delegates were told they should-- 'To croaking fools their folly leave, Their canting puerile rant; To noble mission steadfast cleave And sprouts devoutly plant.' It was a very long hymn, and it alluded, amongst other items, to the 'blazing sun of Western lore,' to 'duty's trumpet call,' to 'England, dear home of every virtue, sweet nurse to Liberty,' and to 'India's crying woes.'--It secured a rather more hearty meed of applause than anything else, possibly because the audience--being above all things scholastic--appreciated the difficulty of making English verse!