Letters of Marque by Rudyard Kipling — Read

_The Comedy of Errors and the Exploitation of Boondi. The Castaway / of the Dispensary and the Children of the Schools. A Consideration / of the Shields of Rajasthan and other trifles._

It is high time that a new treaty were made with Maha Rao Raja Ram Singh, Bahadur, Raja of Boondi. He keeps the third article of the old one too faithfully, which says that he "shall not enter into negotiations with anyone without the consent of the British Government. " He does not negotiate at all. Arrived at Boondi Gate, the Englishman asked where he might lay his head for the night, and the Quarter Guard with one accord said: -- "The Sukh Mahal, which is beyond the city," and the tonga went thither through the length of the town, of which more presently, till it arrived at a pavilion on a lake -- a place of two turrets connected by an open colonnade. The "house" was open to the winds of heaven and the pigeons of the Raj; but the latter had polluted more than the first could purify. A snowy-bearded chowkidar crawled out of a place of tombs which he seemed to share with some monkeys, and threw himself into Anglo-Saxon attitudes. He was a great deal worse than Ram Baksh, for he said that all the Officer Sahibs of Deoli came to the Sukh Mahal for _shikar_ and -- never went away again, so pleased were they.