Letters of Marque by Rudyard Kipling — Read

_Comes back to the Railway, after Reflections on the Management of / the Empire; and so Home again, with apology to all who have read / thus far._

In the morning the tonga rattled past Deoli Cemetery into the open, where the Deoli Irregulars were drilling. They marked the beginning of civilisation and white shirts; for which reason they seemed altogether detestable. Yet another day's jolting, enlivened by the philosophy of Ram Baksh, and then came Nasirabad. The last pair of ponies suggested serious thought. They had covered eighteen miles at an average speed of eight miles an hour, and were well conditioned little rats. "A Colonel Sahib gave me this one for _bakshish_," said Ram Baksh, flicking the near one. "It was his _baba's_ pony. The _baba_ was five years old. When he went away, the Colonel Sahib said: -- ‘Ram Baksh, you are a good man. Never have I seen such a good man. This horse is yours. " Ram Baksh was getting a horse's work out of a child's pony. Surely we in India work the land much as the Colonel Sahib worked his son's mount; making it do child's work when so much more can be screwed out of it. A native and a native State deals otherwise with horse and holding. Perhaps our extreme scrupulousness in handling may be Statecraft, but, after even a short sojourn in places which are dealt with not so tenderly, it seems absurd. There are States where things are done, and done without protest, that would make the hair of the educated native stand on end with horror. These things are of course not expedient to write; because their publication would give a great deal of unnecessary pain and heart-searching to estimable native administrators who have the hope of a Star before their eyes, and would not better matters in the least.