when I say that this Englishman toiled for us day and night without any payment. He was always on the typewriter till twelve or one o’clock at night. Symonds would carry messages and post letters, always with a smile curling round his lips. His monthly income was about forty-five pounds, but he spent it all in helping his friends and others. He was about thirty years of age. He was unmarried and wanted to remain so all his life. I pressed him hard to accept some payment, but he flatly refused and said, ‘I would be failing in my duty if I accepted any remuneration for this service.’ I remember that on the last night he was awake till three o’clock while we were winding up our business and packing our things. He parted with us the next day after seeing us off on the steamer, and a sad parting it was. I have often experienced that benevolence is by no means peculiar to the brown skin.
For the benefit of young aspirants after public work, I note down the fact that we were so punctilious in keeping the accounts of the deputation that we preserved even such trifling vouchers as the receipts for the money spent in the steamers upon, say, soda water. Similarly we preserved the receipts for telegrams. I do not remember to have entered a single item under sundries when writing the detailed accounts. As a rule, sundries did not figure in our accounts at all, and if they did they were intended to cover a few pennies or shillings the manner of whose spending we could not recall at the time of writing the accounts at the end of the day.
I have clearly observed in this life the fact that we become trustees or responsible agents from the time that we reach years of discretion. So long as we are with our parents, we must account to them for moneys or business they entrust to us. They may be sure of our rectitude and may not ask us for accounts, but that does not affect our responsibility. When we become independent householders, there arises the responsibility to our family. We are not the sole proprietors of our acquisitions; our family is a co-sharer of them along with ourselves. We must
