"He would spend hours in praising the good men who rebelled and fought and got Magnum Charter and disrespected the King and cheeked the Government and Members of Council. We knew all about Oliver Cromwell, Hampden, Pim, and those crappies, and many a boy who had never heard of Wolsey and Alfred the Great knew all about Felton the jolly fine patriot who stabbed the Member of Council, Buckingham Esquire, in back.
"We learnt whole History book at home and he spent all History lessons telling us about Plots, all the English History Plots and foreign too, and we knew about the man who killed Henry of Navarre, as well as about the killing of French and American Presidents of to-day. He showed always why successful plots succeeded and the others failed. And he gave weeks to the American Independence War and the French Revolution.
"And all the Indian History was about the Mutiny and how and why it failed, when he was not showing us how the Englishes have ruined and robbed India, and comparing the Golden Age of India (when no cow ever died and there was never famine, plague, police nor taxes) with the miserable condition of poor bleeding India to-day.
"He was a fine fellow and so clever that we were almost his worshippers. But I am not writing his autobiography but my own, so let him lapse herewith into posterity and well-merited oblivious.
"At the College when we could work no longer, we who had never learnt crickets and tennis and ping-pongs, would take a nice big lantern with big windows in four sides of it, and sit publicly in the middle of the grass at the Gardens (with our books for a blind) and make speech to each other about Mother India and exhort each other to join together in a secret society and strike a blow for the Mother, and talk about the heroes who had died on the scaffolding for her, or who were languishing in chokey and do poojah to their photos. But the superior members did no poojah to anything. Then came the Emissary in the guise of a holy man (and I thought it the most dangerous disguise he could have assumed, for I wonder the police do not arrest every sannyasi and fakir on suspicion) and brought us the Message. And he took us to hear the blind Mussulman they call Ilderim the Weeper.
"All was ready and nothing lacked but the Instrument.
"Would any of us achieve eternal fame and undying glory by being the next Instrument?
"We wouldn't. No jolly fear, and thanks awfully.
"But we agreed to make a strike at the College and to drop a useless Browning pistol where it would be found, and in various other ways to be unrestful. And one of us, whom the Principal would not certify to sit for his F.E. and was very stony hard-up, joined the Emissary and went away with him to be a Servant and perhaps an Instrument later on (if he could not get a girl with a good dowry or a service of thirty rupees a mensem), he was so hungry and having nothing for belly.
"Yes, as Mr. Ganeshram Joshibhai used to say, that is what the British Government does for you—educates you to be passed B.A. and educated gent., and then grudges to give you thirty rupees a mensem and expects you to go searching for employment and food to put in belly! Can B.A. work with hands like maistri?