CHAPTER XVI.
My home was lonely. The light that once shone so brightly in it had gone out, as I might say, in darkness. I took to my books, but I had no purpose or pleasure in reading. I improved my own grounds, and my property in the station. I often went to my villages and spent weeks among them, having good wells dug, a large tank, covering an acre of ground constructed to contain water for irrigation, built roads, made drains, planted good fruit and timber trees. I took much pleasure in all this, and had great satisfaction in doing my duty to the poor people. I was not satisfied to squeeze every pice of my rent out of them and give them nothing in return. The results were better than I anticipated. There was scarcely any sickness or disease among the people, owing to the good water and drainage. They became healthy and more able to labor, and, having abundant water in the tank for irrigation, they raised extra and improved crops. The people had plenty to eat, and the cattle were well fed. They had gardens, for which I supplied imported seeds, so they had vegetables the year round, of which formerly there was a scarcity except during the rains. In a few years there was plenty of fruit, and the branches of the trees supplied the villagers with fuel, so they could save the refuse, that was formerly burned, for their land. I considered all the expenditure I had made, enhanced the worth of my property. The ryots did not fail to realize the value of the improvements to them, and gave me not only my legal rents most willingly, but in their generosity gave me something of their products and would have provided for me as their guest while I was with them.
They always received me with pleasure, not as their landlord, to make demands upon them, but as their best friend. They ever had some present for me. The largest melon, the ripest fruits, the finest flowers, were kept for the sahib. I encouraged them to cultivate flowers, giving them seeds, and sending them various kinds of plants and shrubs. I offered prizes for the best flower beds kept by the women, and appointed a committee of five to decide upon the awards. This was such a success, and gave so much pleasure, that I offered other prizes for the planting of trees, for the best productions of their gardens, and the best crops, the finest looking cattle, and the cleanest, neatest houses and yards. Twice a year we had our little fairs, gala days, on which the prizes were distributed. The amounts I offered were not large, but the emulation they excited was very great. They stimulated industry and induced the people to work with pleasure, and gave them a taste for beautiful and useful things.
My villages soon became the envy of all around them; my people, my friends, took pride in speaking of me as “their sahib” and telling what he had done for them. Need I say that I was pleased, for what is there to produce greater happiness than in doing good and making others happy? I might have skinned these people, and drained every pice I could out of their poverty, but thousands of rupees accumulated would have been only blood money and a curse compared to the pleasure I received from the contented happiness of these once impoverished serfs.
I ventured on another experiment. I built a cheap school-house in each village, and surrounded them with trees and flowers, planted by the villagers themselves. I always got the people to be my partners in everything. A teacher was engaged for each school-house, and every girl and boy was asked to attend, and they were all there. I had no thought of encouraging that Oxford and Cambridge fad of giving the higher education to people to whom it is more of a curse than a blessing. I have often thought of writing a book denouncing the government scheme of giving the sons of the rich natives a classical education at the expense of taxing the groans, sweat and life blood of the poor to pay for it. These upstarts are impudent and mean enough in their natural condition, but with the nonsensical crammed education they get, they are still worse. But I have never found a pen sharp enough, so my book is still in embryo.
In these schools, reading, writing, and the simplest figures were taught; nothing more from books, but a great deal as to morals, manners, health, about their houses, their fields, their cattle, about the birds, the flowers and trees.
I put the girls first, as I always do. If we educate any let it be first the girl, for as the girl is, so will be the mother and the coming man. “A clever mother makes a clever man.” One might as well suppose a stream to rise above its source, as to expect a nation to rise above its mothers. An English writer says, “No great general ever arose out of a nation of cowards; no great statesman or philosopher out of a nation of fools; no great artists out of a nation of materialists; no great dramatist, except when the drama was the passion of the people.” And I will add, no great, good men without good mothers. Therefore, I say, educate the girls! Sometimes the whisper of a mother, in the ear of a child to-day, becomes the boom of a cannon a century hence. The people of India are utterly blind in this respect. No matter what else they do, they will never become a people among the great nations of the earth until they educate the women.
I visited these schools often, gave the children treats, and offered prizes. I gave little lectures to little people, and being only “That Eurasian,” I had their language probably better than they could speak it themselves, so had no difficulty in reaching them.
On the lecture prize days, the work in the fields was stopped, the gardens neglected, and the holiday clothes taken from the earthen jars. The people were all there, and not even a zanana woman or baba left behind. The walls of the little school-house were too near each other, so we had our School Jama’at under the big tree, with mats all around on the ground for the people to sit upon. The result in a few years—for I am looking back now—was that there was not a girl or boy in the villages but could read and write fairly well. They were eager to read, and begged for books and papers, so that I never made a visit that I did not carry out a supply to them. It was interesting, to me at least, to see frequently a little tot of a girl standing up and reading to a number of grown men.
All the teaching was in their own language, of course, as I was not an enlightened fool enough to introduce English among them.