IT may seem presumption in one whose acquaintance with India and its people only extended over a limited portion, and that chiefly in the South, to come forward as an author, when so many more gifted persons have written and are writing on subjects connected with the governing and governed classes. The younger Pliny in one of his letters quotes the dictum of his uncle, the naturalist, that no book was so bad, but that profit might be derived from some part of it. I take courage from this truism, and even if, as is most probable, the worthless far exceeds the good, yet I must throw myself on the clemency of my readers, and submit to the consequences. Without any Pretension to grandeur of diction, I have put together, sometimes in the shape of narrative, and at others in extracts from my Journals, such incidents, albeit trivial, as happened to me during my varied career, together with occasional remarks and anecdotes of the people with whom I lived. In every country which, like India, may be considered in a transition state, where, in spite of many conflicting interests, intellectual improvement is advancing with rapid strides, and where Progress is the watchword of the masses, it necessarily follows that new ideas and forms of thought must penetrate and mould themselves in the minds of men who are accepting the benefits of educational reform. In this case a new type of civilisation is grafted upon the effete superstitions and ignorance of the past; and antiquated customs, however quaint and barbarous, get lost and forgotten in the march of improvement and change. To preserve the interesting records of habits fast passing away, is one of the objects aimed at in these pages. And thus I launch my boat to swim or sink in the stream.
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