In his absence his office was being administered by the Assistant Commissioner, a courteous young Englishman, who gave me my first experience of the Civil Service.

I could not but envy the position of this young fellow, and marvel at the success which attends our method of administering the Indian Empire.

Here was a young man of twenty-four, acting as governor with large powers over a tract of country of hundreds of square miles--a new country requiring for its proper administration a knowledge of law, of finance, of trade, experience of men, and ability to deal with the conflicting interests of several native races.

Superior to all other authorities, civil and military, in his district, he was considered fit to fill this post--and success showed his fitness--because a year or two before he had been one of forty crammed candidates out of 200 who had taken the highest places in a series of examinations in Latin, English, mathematics, &c.

With the most limited experience of human life, he had obtained his position in exactly the same way that a Chinese Mandarin does his--by competitive examination in subjects which, even less than in the case of the Chinese, had little bearing upon his future work; and now, like a Chinese Mandarin, "there are few things he isn't." On the face of it no system appears more preposterous; in its results no system was ever more successful.