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 PREFACE.

THE success of "Hindustani Stepping-Stones" has induced the author to bring out the present Manual, which is merely a revised edition of the former work with some useful additions. The "Stepping-Stones" was intended to be read in conjunction with certain portions of Forbes' Manual. As, however, students have complained of the inconvenience of using two books, the present Manual has been made complete in itself; no reference to Forbes' Manual is now necessary.

In the present work no word or phrase is used that an uneducated but intelligent native of Delhi does not use ; further, no word or phrase is used that an uneducated but intelligent Muslim of the Punjab does not understand. The author, after completing the work, tested every sentence with an illiterate Punjabi bearer, from the Murree Hills, who has been in his service for more than twenty years ; and any word or phrase not readily understood, was at once erased. Still, the student that masters this little book will be possessed of a vocabulary sufficient for all practical purposes and will have acquired a wealth of idiom that will carry him through even the exercise for the "Proficiency." Special attention has been paid to the many idiomatic meanings of the common every-day verbs, and in the examples given, their meanings are nearly, if not quite, exhausted. The student should master the shades of meaning in the various compound verbs, Lessons, 21, &c., and, in his written exercises and in his