dogs to be found anywhere. I was not
disappointed. It proved a delightful place,
where one could do just as much work as one
pleased without fear of being called to
account. Like all Griffins, I at first
determined to go ahead with my business, and
push on the railway.

The line was completed the entire distance
from Calcutta to my station; where an ugly
swamp, of no great size, stood in the way,
and cut it off from another fifty miles of rail
beyond to the north, and which could not be
used until my swamp should be drained.
An application to the East Indigo government
for one of the small steam-engines from their
stores to drain this swamp had gone in three
years before, had been repeated at annual
intervals, but had remained unnoticed; owing,
it was supposed to the Burmese war, in the
first instance, and afterwards to the conversion
of the five-per-cent. government paper. For
the want of this small engine the railway,
already constructed over a large tract of the
Mofussil, could not be used.

I resolved to overcome this difficulty, and
accordingly, in all the vigour of verdant
Griffinism, penned an application to the
proper department on the subject of the
small steam-engine, which thus stopped the
way of the East Indigo Railway. I handed
the epistle to my neighbour, Mr. Deputy
Collector Mangle-Worzell, the son of a
director, and the representative of the
government in our district, though only
twenty-two years of age. Young Mangle-
Worzell was a capital fellow, and a good
friend of mine; so that I was not a little
disappointed to find that he thrust my
document amongst a heap of others, and
told me that it should take its turn with
the rest—that is to say, in about eighteen
months!

It was in vain I urged the great importance
of the matter; my friend was obstinately
cool and resolved. He was not only deputy-
collector, but assistant magistrate, poor-
rnaster, deputy-surveyor, and commissioner
of roads and public works for a district as
large as Scotland, with a population of several
millions, and could not be expected to move
along very fast.

"Besides," added Mangle-Worzell, junior,
"you'll do yourself no good by bothering the
government about swamps and steam-engines."
I called his attention to the contents of
Despatch Number Twenty-five thousand six
hundred and thirty-seven, in which all collectors
and their deputies were enjoined to aid the railway
engineers to the utmost of their ability.
"True," added my friend, " that certainly
was the substance of a despatch from the
Court of Directors, and it will read remarkably
well in the next East Indigo Blue-book. But
it happened that that despatch was accompanied
by a ' private and confidential ' one of
a precisely opposite character."

I was astounded; but I remember having
heard that statesmen carried on the chief
work of government by means of private notes
which are never placed on official record.
"Why," continued young Mangle-Worzell,
"when I first came into the Mofussil I was
as busy as you are, but very soon had a hint
from Calcutta to the effect that if I wished
for promotion I must keep things quiet and
not trouble the government with new ideas
and schemes. I have done so. My work is
sadly in arrears, but I have given the big
folks no trouble, and in a few months I
expect a good move to Assam on double my
present salary."

I dined with the deputy collector that day;
and, before going home, he convinced me of
the utter hopelessness of moving the
government. They wrote pretty despatches to
please the public, but secretly opposed all
real progress, knowing well how fatal to
misgovernment railways would be in the
Mofussil. Why how would it be possible to
conceal the real state of things if people from
England could travel through India as easily
as to Yorkshire? Railway communication
would give far too much trouble to East
Indigo officials to be tolerated by them
one day sooner than it can by any possibility,
or any extent of neglect, be postponed.
The swamp remains to this day. The
engine that might have drained it is rusting
in the government stores, and the railway is
still a disjointed affair,—a true type of official
progress in the Mofussil.

Amongst my many friends, official and
non-official, in this part of the country, is
Mr. Slasher, manager of the Bengal Mineral
Company, as knowing a hand, and as daring
and successful in Mofussil practices, as any in
the presidency. Bengalees are proverbial
for their acute cunning and sharp practice;
but not one amongst the lively practitioners
of the Mofussil courts are anything like a
match for the mineral manager. Thoroughly
versed in the intricacies of Company's Law,
and quite experienced in the chicanery of
official subordinates, and the ignorant
blunderings of Company's magistrates, Mr.
Slasher snaps his fingers at one, and sets the
other at open defiance. He can do this with
perfect impunity, for he is more powerful for
fifty miles around than the Governor-general.
He can levy black-mail, and often does so, on
the pig-headed officials when they thwart
him, which is pretty frequently.

It is the fashion amongst East Indigo civil
servants, high and low, to look upon planters,
merchants, and managers, as impertinent
interlopers; men who have no business
in India; who come between the wind and
their nobility, and who must accordingly be
scouted, frowned on, thwarted, bullied, and
put down, whenever opportunity offers.
Indeed Indian civilians of high rank have, at
various times, officially recorded their opinion
that the free ingress of Europeans to British
India would be dangerous to the peace and