" These men are enthusiasts. Pinecoffin belonged to
their class. He knew a great many facts bearing on the cost of bullocks and
temporary wells, and opium-scrapers, and what happens if you burn too much
rubbish on a field, in the hope of enriching used-up soil. All the Pinecoffins
come of a landholding breed, and so the land only took back her own again.
Unfortunately--most unfortunately for Pinecoffin--he was a Civilian, as well as
a farmer. Nafferton watched him, and thought about the horse. Nafferton said:--
"See me chase that boy till he drops!" I said:--"You can't get your knife into
an Assistant Commissioner." Nafferton told me that I did not understand the
administration of the Province.
Our Government is rather peculiar. It gushes on the agricultural and general
information side, and will supply a moderately respectable man with all sorts
of "economic statistics," if he speaks to it prettily. For instance, you are
interested in gold-washing in the sands of the Sutlej. You pull the string, and
find that it wakes up half a dozen Departments, and finally communicates, say,
with a friend of yours in the Telegraph, who once wrote some notes on the
customs of the gold-washers when he was on construction-work in their part of
the Empire.
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