144 HOURS WITH NATURE. 



He has sailed many seas, and seen many lands, and 

 is a mine of useful information. He is altogether an 

 original character, and, like many other original charac- 

 ters, is at times eccentric and irritable. While ever 

 ready to do a good turn to the deserving and needy, he 

 has no patience with impostors and evil-doers. Un- 

 scrupulous petty landholders given to tyrannizing over 

 their poor tenants, and unfortunately there are many 

 such, he detests, I have seen him greatly agitated 

 with rage and scorn at the mention of the name of a 

 certain individual, who, by birth a Brahman and by 

 profession a clerk, is at heart a ruffian and a knave, 

 and who lately cheated an old widow of her homestead 

 lands. Rajaram would think nothing of travelling 

 six miles in rain and storm to succour a poor peasant 

 who may have a calf or a cow ailing. This puts me 

 in mind of his treatment of his cattle and farmstock. 

 For every one of them he has a name, and they share 

 his affection and attention with his children. He is 

 never weary of impressing upon the minds of his children 

 the necessity of kindness towards our domestic animals, 

 and rightly holds that those who are unable or unwilling 

 to treat them well ought not to possess cattle. <f It is 

 sinful," says he, "to keep animals for our profit or pleasure 

 and yet not to study their comfort and well-being." 

 One can hardly imagine what an amount of time and 

 trouble he bestows upon his domestic pets. Up at 

 five, in the early morning he regularly employs him- 

 self, with the help of his equally willing and industrious 



