him earnestly that all the district knows he is virtually the
Collector and whatever he recommends is done. Nor is the ayah
forgotten, for the ayah has access to the madam, and by that route
certain shameful matters affecting a rival candidate will reach the
saheb. Now, supposing that the sins of a former birth fail to
checkmate all these machinations, and that the new arrival actually
finds himself swimming in the unfathomed bliss of a belt with a brass
plate, and a princely income of seven Queen's rupees every month, who
could foretell that almost before a year has passed he will again be
floundering in the mire of disappointed ambition? Yet so it is. He
hears of another Chupprassee with only eleven months' service against
his twelve, who has been promoted to eight rupees, and immediately
the canker of discontent eats into his heart. Later on he finds that
the cup of his happiness will never be quite full until he gets ten
rupees a month, and when he has reached that giddy height, he will
see dawning on his horizon the strange and beautiful hope that he may
be a Naik. It is a desperate ambition--


"He who ascends to mountain tops shall find
The highest peaks most wrapped in clouds and snow;
He who surpasses or subdues mankind
Must look down on the hate of those below."


Subordinate Chupprassees will slight his authority, his fellow Naiks
will disparage him, disappointed rivals will send in anonymous
petitions accusing him of all manner of villanies of which he is not
guilty, and, worse still, revealing the little briberies and
oppressions of which he is not innocent. But who of us learns wisdom