TENT CLUBS 211 



of chenna chebenna (gram and sugar), they will 

 come for considerably less. If you want to win 

 your coolies' hearts the surest way is through their 

 children. Have little races and scrambles. A few 

 annas go a long way, and the children never forget. 



Do what you can to help them with medicines. 

 In the Meerut Tent Club we generally have a lot 

 of sick up every evening, and we are often so lucky 

 as to have a doctor out. I have never met a doctor 

 who would not give up a couple of hours of his 

 leisure to doing good. We have very complete 

 medicine chests, of a large size, partly for this very 

 reason. 



The number of sick about is a sad sight. Travel- 

 ling dispensaries as yet hardly touch the fringe of 

 the work. The natives of the countryside will not 

 trust the native assistant surgeons ; they will go 

 any distance to see a white man. Disease of the 

 eyes is terribly prevalent. We try and get the cases 

 that have a chance of recovery to go into Meerut, 

 where are the best of eye surgeons ; but when we have 

 a doctor out with us there are few afternoons in the 

 Tent Club that you will not hear the bitter sentence 

 of blindness pronounced on some poor fellow. 



If you are to have the villagers and zamindars 

 on your side you must treat their crops with almost 

 as much respect as you would a farmer's wheat in 

 England. You will often in India see a man ride 

 through a field because he is too lazy to go round. 

 Natives, however, are the worst offenders. One 

 of them will always wilfully do as much damage 

 as any three white men. A line of coolies each 

 breaking off several succulent sticks of sugar-cane 

 will hardly convert the owner into an enthusiastic 

 supporter of pig-sticking. 



