"
He worked brilliantly; but he could not accept any order without trying to
better it. That was the fault of his creed. It made men too responsible and
left too much to their honor. You can sometimes ride an old horse in a halter;
but never a colt.
McGoggin took more trouble over his cases than any of the men of his year. He
may have fancied that thirty-page judgments on fifty-rupee cases--both sides
perjured to the gullet--advanced the cause of Humanity. At any rate, he worked
too much, and worried and fretted over the rebukes he received, and lectured
away on his ridiculous creed out of office, till the Doctor had to warn him
that he was overdoing it. No man can toil eighteen annas in the rupee in June
without suffering. But McGoggin was still intellectually "beany" and proud of
himself and his powers, and he would take no hint. He worked nine hours a day
steadily.
"Very well," said the doctor, "you'll break down because you are over-engined
for your beam." McGoggin was a little chap.
One day, the collapse came--as dramatically as if it had been meant to
embellish a Tract.
It was just before the Rains. We were sitting in the verandah in the dead,
hot, close air, gasping and praying that the black-blue clouds would let down
and bring the cool.
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