of course declined, and the Santhals,
although quiet for the moment, are yet
unsubdued. Those who know the mineral
manager will believe that he would have
done what he undertook.

Whatever one may find to condemn in
Slasher's proceedings, or in those of the many
Indigo planters of the Mofussil, may be fairly
laid at the door of the government. The
Lynch law, the lattists, or affrays respecting
boundaries of estates, in which many lives
have been lost by planters and Zemindars, the
dacoity of Mofussil, are all attributable to the
utter inefficiency of the service, and the
rottenness and iniquity of the police. And
what is the Santhal rebellion, but a huge
lattist springing from the same causes!
The Indigo planter, knowing full well the
hopelessness of a recourse to law, falls back
on brute force, and sends forth his lattists
armed with clubs to enforce his case against
his neighbour, whilst he himself remains
quietly at home. The Santhals have done no
more; excepting that they went forth
themselves and shared the danger.

The spinners of Manchester and many of
our merchant-princes in the old country have,
for the last quarter of a century, puzzled
themselves to account for the utter failure of
all attempts to improve the cotton culture of
British India. Men are equally at a loss to
know how it is that India does not produce
flax and other fibres so much needed at
home? and why—whilst all other countries
have moved so fast in the great race of social
and industrial progress—India alone has
remained all but stationary? I will tell those
gentlemen how it is. So long as the courts
of the Mofussil are courts of iniquity; so
long as capitalists can find no protection, no
security for their investments—so long will
India remain what it was, and worse than
what it was, when Druids cut mistletoe at
Stonehenge, and Britons painted their skins
a dainty blue.

I write advisedly when I say that, if in
one of the great and fearful struggles of
the element with which this country is
sometimes visited, the earth should open
and swallow every judge, magistrate, moonsitf,
magistrate's clerk, interpreter, and
policeman throughout the length and breadth
of the land, India might hope for better
days, and merchant, and planter, Zemindar
and ryot might fall on their knees and put
forth their thanks for the mighty and happy
deliverance. Here and there a good man and
true, would no doubt be lost; but regret for
him would be forgotten in the great emancipation
of the people.

CHIP.

THE FAIRY PUFF-PUFF.

I BEG to acknowledge, in this age of
plagiarism, that the word Puff-puff, which I
now apply to a train or a railway, is
borrowed from my eldest daughter, a lexicographess, eighteen months of age. To her,
a yellow cow is not only a yellow cow, and
nothing more, but a moo-cow; a horse is a
gee-horse, and a cat is a puss-cat; and when
she says papa, she has a difficulty in stopping
herself at any particular syllable, and
bursts into papapapapapap, as though
intense pleonasm were the best proof of filial
affection. I use the word fairy advisedly,
as referring to a line of railway of a
graceful and exquisite character, taking her
course, whatever be the obstacles, in the
wilfullest but prettiest possible manner,
through the fairy-land of South Devon, and
without, as I should certainly imagine, the
faintest hope of remuneration. If there
happens to be a flower-show in her
neighbourhood, or an archery-meeting, or
fireworks, or a regatta (a regatta is the very
thing for her) she gets quite a quantity of
passengers sometimes; and there is, I believe,
some nominal value attached to their tickets;
but as for the Fairy Puff-puff taking gold or
silver for the transaction, it must be simply put
out of the question. Her shareholders have
their reward in other ways, no doubt:—in
the satisfaction arising from benevolence, and
in the calm approval of the first-class
passengers; but not in pecuniary profit.
There is just such another bit of rail in the
glorious north; " the Line of Beauty " it is
called by the chairman of directors; where
the neat little guard cries " Off! " (as in a
child's foot-race) and down we go, without
an engine, Youth in the Van and Pleasure
at the Brake—past town and castle, farm
and upland, church and river,—to the
greenest valleys in the world, and the fairest
lakes.

Such flowers as these I have myself discovered
in the wilderness of Bradshaw; and
there are, doubtless, more than they; but, to
my mind, the Fairy Puff-puff beats them still.
Along her line, at every station, elegant and
lofty towers have been built, with nothing
a-top of them, at an expense of more than
twelve thousand pounds a-piece, and merely to
throw a charm over the landscape. Now and
then a carpet-bag is lowered into the
luggage-box, or a hair trunk (camels' hair) laid
softly within for a travelling artist, with
nature for his guide; and there a young
invalid in search of roses for her cheeks, may
join us; but there is no noise, no bustle, no
confusion. By the bank of the winding
river (she loves rivers) glides the Fairy Puff-
puff, where the barges are lazily drifting, and
the swan peers forth from her nest; where
the fisherman waits with the casting-net
over his shoulder, warily, in the shadow of
the far-spanning bridge; where the song and
the laugh commingle from the pleasure-
boats sailing with the tide; where the eel-
pots are hanging over the lasher, and the
bye-stream runs swiftly to the mill. She is
a virgin Fairy (courted long ago in vain by the