just as purely an economic business as cooking. You do not cook your
own dinner: why? Because you desire to devote your time to something
better and higher. So we do not collect taxes and lay them out for the
public convenience, because there are other things we prefer to do. I
am amazed at the modern ideas of government: it is looked upon as an
end, as an objective result in itself, whereas it is really only
the merest of means toward leaving a man at leisure to attend to his
private affairs. The time will come"--and here the Hindu betrayed more
energy than I had hitherto ever seen him display--"when the world will
have its whole governing work done upon contract by those best fitted
for it, and when such affairs will be looked upon as belonging simply
to the police function of existence, which negatively secures us from
harm, without at all positively touching the substantial advancement
of man's life."

The next day we fared northward toward Agra, by Duttiah, Gwalior and
Dholepore. Learning at Agra that the northward-bound train--for
here we had come upon complete civilization again in the East Indian
Railway--would pass in an hour, we determined to reserve the Taj
Mahal (the lovely Pearl Mosque of Agra) until we should be returning
from Delhi to Calcutta. Bhima Gandharva desired me, however, to see
the Douab country and the old sacred city of Mattra; and so when we
had reached Hatras Station, a few miles north of Agra, we abandoned
the railway and struck across to the south-westward, toward Mattra, in
a hired carriage.

We were now veritably in ancient Hindustan. It was among these level
plains through which we were rolling that the antique Brahmins came
and propounded that marvelous system which afterward took the whole
heart of the land. Nothing could have been more striking than to cast