Page:Adams - Essays in Modernity.djvu/208

196 'How he disendowed the Gaol—stopped at once the city drain;

Turned to beauty fair and frail—got his senses back again;

Doubled taxes, cesses, all; cleared away each new-built thana;

Turned the two-lakh Hospital into a superb zenana;

'Heaped upon the Bukhshi Sahib wealth and honours manifold;

Clad himself in Eastern garb—squeezed his people as of old:

Happy, happy Kolazai! never more will Rustum Beg

Play to catch the Viceroy's eye. He prefers the "simpkin" peg.'

A few samples of the wisdom, which either is or is not the product of more or less extensive experience of Anglo-India, may be given as completing the picture. They come to us under the guise of 'certain maxims of Hafiz.'

Thus does the Mohammedan poet and sage remark with a kindly charity on the ways of infidel officials, civil or military:

Hafiz has his own opinions as to the true nature of the foreign râj:

Yet let us beware of one of the methods in vogue for achieving this purpose: