The zemindars are the drones of India, the dissipated idlers. They should be exterminated by the workers or by the government, and the industry and progress of India be rid of its greatest curse.
We might learn many a lesson from the industry of the bees, when we poor mortals get tired or lazy. To make one pound of clover honey, bees must deprive sixty thousand clover blossoms of their nectar, and to do this they have to make three million seven hundred and fifty thousand visits to the blossoms. That is, if one bee alone collected the pound of honey it would have to make that many journeys back and forth from the hive to the flowers. When we consider that the distance traveled is often from one to three miles in a journey, how can we compute the miles this little toilsome creature has to make to collect the pound of honey that we consider of so little worth? Surely there is many an open bible in nature, from which we could gather many a lesson if we were not so bigoted, proud and stupid. I am reminded of a remark of Charles Kingsley’s, “Ere I grow too old, I trust to be able to throw away all pursuits save natural history, and die with my mind full of God’s facts instead of men’s lies.”
Another item of interest. There is no king or emperor among the bees, as Shakespere states in his play of King Henry the Fifth, nor a queen. Theirs is a democratic government without even a leader, the worker bees each attending to their own business, all acting together on some general principle for the common welfare. The queen, so-called by men, is only such in name, as she does nothing but her duty, as the only mother, to provide for the increase and continuance of the family. There is no ruler with a royal squad of idle relatives to live in dissipation and luxury on the industry of the laborers, no blathering parliament, no judges, no high or low courts, no big salaries, no legal members to fleece the innocent, no policemen, for there are no evil-doers, no annual budgets to provide for from the increased taxation of the poor, no expense of any kind whatever, as there are no idlers except a few drones kept in case of a paternal necessity, the most being killed,—no criminals, no poor, no rich, no castes! What a lesson a nation of bees can teach the most exalted human nation on earth! And yet humanity in this nineteenth century boasts itself as being civilized, enlightened and Christian, and having been created in the image of God!
The old station life again. The blessed books, the gardens and the duties of each day occupied my attention.
One day I received a note, asking me to meet a committee. A new road was to be opened, and as it affected my property, I was to be consulted. I went at the appointed time. A friend introduced me to several I had not met before, and then “Mr. Smith, this is Mr. Japhet.” “O, yes!” said he, “I have seen Mr. Japhet, and gad! I never hear that name, but I am reminded of the story, ‘Japhet in search of his father!’” and he chuckled at his bright saying. I replied, “Mr. Smith, I have heard you make that reference several times. Once you asked me if I was in search of my father, and I told you I was, and wished you to help me find him. Now I can tell you that I have found him, and perhaps you would like to see his photograph, here it is.” And I pulled the picture out of my coat pocket, and held it up for him to see. “I have lately been down to Jalalpur to see him. He is Mr. H. J. Smith, the commissioner, and may be some relation of yours?” The fellow turned white, then red. There was a tableaux, a quiet scene for some moments, when one of the party blustered out, “Come fellows, let’s get to work, as I have got to go to Mrs. Tinkle’s to see about some confounded party.”
Our business was soon finished, and as I was going out through the yard my friend remarked, “I say, Japhet, what was that deuce of a joke you got off on Smith?” “Joke?” said I, “There was no joke at all.” “Great Scot!” he exclaimed, “you don’t mean to say that you and Smith are half brothers?” “I have said nothing of the kind,” I replied, “only I know this, that H. J. Smith, commissioner at Jalalpur, is my father, and if he is also this Smith’s father, you can draw your own conclusions, I am not bound to make any statement.” He fairly shouted, “Great heavens! you don’t tell me! Well, ta, ta, I must hurry, or the devil will be to pay with Mrs. Tinkle.”
We had no newspaper in our station. A paper is an expensive luxury to the publisher, and besides we didn’t need any. Mrs. Tinkle, the wife of the colonel, was our newspaper and news-carrier all in one, a host in that direction. If we had anything good, bad or indifferent, that we wanted to circulate, and there were many things that no living man would dare to print unless he was prepared for death, we got them all to Mrs. Tinkle, and they went with the wind, or as fast as her ponies could take her. When my friend said he was going to Mrs. Tinkle’s, I knew and could have sworn to it, that before they had closed their eyes in sleep that night every one in the station would learn that Smith and Japhet were half brothers! Confound the impudence of the fellow! If he had only treated me with the least respect I would have never given a hint, but his continued bullying I could not endure. I felt as badly about the relationship as he possibly could. It would not be a credit to either of us. I will say, however, that he never troubled himself about “Japhet in search of his father” again. Some one told me that Smith had denounced the story as a red-hot lie, and asked if they would take him to be a fool. Yet everybody believed the story, for they knew the character of old Smith too well to doubt it, and probably believed young Smith to be a fool. About that photograph, how did I happen to have it in my pocket just at the right time?
I knew that Smith as a magistrate was on that committee, that he couldn’t well turn his back on me, as he had before done, that if he noticed me at all he would give me a shot or a thrust of some kind, so with deliberate forethought, or malice prepense, if that is a better term, I put the photograph in my pocket, ready for I knew not what, anything that might come. In time of peace, prepare for war. So did I.
It may be thought that I had some streaks of wickedness in me. I have often thought that myself. I have gone through enough ill-usage in my life to make a saint profane and revengeful. As I do not believe in any erasing or washing away of sins or forgetting them, I try to be as good as I can be under adverse circumstances, and never sin unless I am absolutely compelled to. I have ever desired to live a life of peace and righteousness, if only others would let me do so. If a dog snarls or bites at me, when I am quietly passing, I feel like striking him, or when a fellow mortal deliberately hurts me, I am inclined to give him one in return, treating him as I do the dog. The many kicks and insults that have come to me along the way have reminded me that Cain and I were alike in this respect, that we both had a mark put upon us, but with this difference, that his mark was that any one seeing him should not kill him, and my mark was to let any one who saw me wipe his feet on me if he could, or give me some mean thrust. But who is there that has not a mark of some kind?