his duty." That is to say, the more he is raised
above the brutes, the less he likes being reduced
to the position of a vegetable, and not even a
good sound vegetable, but one withering and
struggling for existence. As the men are now
lowered in vigour of mind, hope of promotion,
were it offered, would not rouse them. "Very
few men," says Sir John Lawrence, "ever look
forward for half a dozen years; I do not think
they feel that they have anything to look
forward to, and they are reckless and careless, and
doubtless there is a great deal in the system to
make them so."

No evidence whatever could be produced in
support of the superstition that men who leave
barracks in the heat of the day will get
sunstroke: while Colonel Greathed's evidence shows
how much health and self-respect come of a
reasonable amount of manly freedom. Wherever
he was stationed, he allowed men whose good
conduct entitled them to a pass, to go out shooting;
and his general experience, it may be
observed, is of a low mortality. Of his hottest
station, this officer says: "In the hottest station,
Deesa, where we were for three years, the
mortality in the regiment was extremely small, and
the general health of the men was excessively
good. I mean to say that they were able to take
the most active exercise there, without suffering
from the heat. We allowed them to go out shooting
as much as they liked all over the country, and
a man would go and walk fourteen miles on foot
from the barrack, and be back at night; their
health and spirits were excellent, and there never
was a single case of a difference between the
soldiers and the natives in the whole of the three
years, during which time we gave them unbounded
liberty; I mean, of course, to the good men."

Colonel Greathed would like also to see the
general introduction of a gymnastic parade in
loose dress, as in the French army, with little
prizes to stimulate the active men, and compulsion
enough to overcome the listlessness of the
lazy. Such gymnastics, he thinks, would be the
best thing ever introduced into the Indian
service. That is not saying much, perhaps.

It may be a necessary evil that there should
be grave discouragement of marriage in the army,
though the married soldiers are spoken of as the
best men, and a certain number of them at a
station are considered useful as examples to the
rest. Men get leave to marry, and have quarters
for wives, in the proportion of six to the hundred.
For the rest, it is more than enough to say that
in the Bombay and Bengal armies one man in
three—in the Madras army one man in four—is
tainted by disease consequent on vice. And when
the married soldiers are on duty, there is no
provision for the fit care of their wives. At
Dumdum, while their fathers and husbands were
fighting the battle of their country, seven
hundred and seventy soldiers' children, and one
hundred and seventy soldiers' wives, were so
huddled together, that one hundred and sixty-
six of the children and sixty-four of the wives
were destroyed by dysentery. The men fought,
but the women and the children fell.

The comprehensive thoroughness of the
mismanagement of health among our troops in
India is really almost too marvellous to be
believed, on less than the accumulation of
authority which it requires twelve pounds of
paper to set forth in print. No wonder that the
hospitals are full. Hospitals! We will take
only two glimpses of the institutions mocked
with such a name. And that we may not be
suspected of over-colouring, we will use the
exact words of the commissioners' report:

"The ablution and bath accommodation
consists occasionally of a 'tin pot' with which 'the
sick generally pour the water over themselves,'
as at Bombay.  Very frequently there is no
ablution room, and the patients wash themselves,
if at all, in the open verandahs in all weathers.
Generally there are no basin-stands: and the
sick have often to sit on the ground to wash
their faces. The only bathing is done in wooden
tubs, to which water is carried by bheesties;
and it is usually poured over the patients. There
are no warm baths, and indeed no baths at all in
the sense in which they are understood in all the
hospitals of Europe, and even in the military
hospitals at home. The means of cleanliness
for sick as sick, are, to sum them up, nil"

And here is a hint of the sick-beds to which the
thousands of men whose health has been actively
destroyed are sent to recover, or, at the rate of
nearly five regiments a year, to die:

"Hospital bedsteads are generally of wood,
sometimes of iron. Wooden bedsteads are at
all times, but especially in warm climates,
subject to vermin; and complaint is made of the
expense incurred by the men breaking the
bedsteads in their efforts to get the vermin out."

Stared in the face by a tale so horrible as this,
solemnly vouched for in all its particulars, and
in all its terrible details (necessarily too repulsive
for quotation here), by many witnesses, we are
not without hope that the English people will
exert themselves a little to compel the high
authorities who can right such intolerable wrongs,
to wipe this shameful stain out of our civilisation.
There is a something to do that MUST BE DONE,
and that WILL NOT BE DONE, if the men of routine
be suffered to explain to their own satisfaction
things as they are, and make the very magnitude
of the wrong a ground for suggesting to the
outer public scornful incredulity.

OLD FRIENDS.

WE just shake hands at meeting
   With many that come nigh;
We nod the head in greeting
   To many that go by,—
But welcome through the gateway
   Our few old friends and true;
Then hearts leap up, and straightway
   Keep open house for you,
                                      Old Friends,
   There's open house for you!

The surface will be sparkling,
   Let but a sunbeam shine;
Yet in the deep lies darkling
   The true life of the wine!