always remain the fun of inventing imaginary adventures), and, as Lurgan Sahib had said, to work. As if any one but a fool of a Sahib would show his method!
Of all the boys hurrying back to St. Xavier's, from Sukkur in the sands to Galle beneath the palms, none was so filled with virtue as Kimball O'Hara, jigetting down to Umballa behind Hurree Chunder Mookerjee, whose name on the books of one section of the Ethnological Survey was R.17.
And if additional spur were needed, the Babu supplied it. After a huge meal at Kalka, he spoke as a stranger. Was Kim going to school? Then he, an M. A. of Calcutta University, would explain the advantages of education. There were marks to be gained by due attention to Latin and Wordsworth's Excursion (all this was Greek to Kim). Also a man might go far, as he himself had done, by strict attention to plays called Lear and Julius Caesar, both much in demand by examiners on the Bengal side. Lear was not so full of historical allusions as Julius Caesar; the book cost four annas, but could be bought second-hand in Bow Bazar for two. No one should waste his money on new books. Still, more important than Wordsworth, or the eminent authors, Burke and Hare, was the art and science of mensuration which included trigonometry and the survey of land. A boy who had passed his examination in these branches—for which, by the way, there were no cram-books—could, by merely marching over a country with a compass and a level and a straight eye, carry away a picture of that country which might be sold for large sums in coined silver. But as it was occasionally inexpedient to carry about measuring-chains, a boy would do well to know the precise length of his own foot-pace, so that when he was deprived of what Hurree Chunder called 'adventitious aids' he might still tread his distances. To
