Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editorial Practice
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- The Tragedy of Crusoe, C.S.
- Twenty Years After
- Dis Aliter Visum
- De Profundis
- The Unlimited “Draw” of “Tick” Boileau
- My Christmas Caller
- The History of a Crime
- Prisoners and Captives
- “From Olympus to Hades”
- “Les Miserables.”
- A Nightmare of Rule
- What Came of It
- An Official Secret
- Le Roi en Exil
- A Scrap of Paper
- The Mystification of Santa Claus
- “Love in Old Cloathes”
- The Case of Adamah
- A Tale of ’98
- A Rather More Fishy Case
- The House of Shadows
- The Confession of an Impostor
- The Judgment of Paris
- Five Days After Date
- The Hill of Illusion
- Le Monde ou L'On S'Amuse
- An Intercepted Letter
- The Recurring Smash
- How Liberty Came to the Bolan
- “Under Sentence”
- The Dreitarbund
- In Memoriam
- On Signatures
- The Great Strike
- “The Biggest Liar in Asia”
- Deputating a Viceroy
- A Merry Christmas
- The New Year's Sermon
- New Year's Gifts
- Mister Anthony Dawking
- “The Luck of Roaring Camp”
- The Wedding Guest
- The Tracking of Chuckerbutti
- “Bread upon the Waters”
- A Free Gift
- A Hill Homily
- The “Kingdom” of Bombay
- Bombaystes Furioso
- A Day Off
- The Unpunishable Cherub
- In Gilded Halls
- “Till the Day Break”
- The Fountain of Honour
- The Burden of Nineveh
- His Natural Destiny
- That District Log-Book
- An Unequal Match
- A Horrible Scandal
- An Exercise in Administration
- My New Purchase
- Exercises in Administration
- The Dignity of It.
- Exercises in Administration
- In Wonderland
- In the Year ’92
- “A Free Hand”
- Susannah and the Elder
- The Coming K
- What the World Said
- An Interesting Condition
- The Comet of a Season
- Gallihauk's Pup
- The Inauthorated Corpses
- One Lady at Wairakei
- The Princess in the Pickle-Bottle
- Why Snow Falls at Vernet
- The Cause of Humanity
- appendices
- Glossary
A Tale of ’98
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 November 2018
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Editorial Practice
- Abbreviations
- Introduction
- The Tragedy of Crusoe, C.S.
- Twenty Years After
- Dis Aliter Visum
- De Profundis
- The Unlimited “Draw” of “Tick” Boileau
- My Christmas Caller
- The History of a Crime
- Prisoners and Captives
- “From Olympus to Hades”
- “Les Miserables.”
- A Nightmare of Rule
- What Came of It
- An Official Secret
- Le Roi en Exil
- A Scrap of Paper
- The Mystification of Santa Claus
- “Love in Old Cloathes”
- The Case of Adamah
- A Tale of ’98
- A Rather More Fishy Case
- The House of Shadows
- The Confession of an Impostor
- The Judgment of Paris
- Five Days After Date
- The Hill of Illusion
- Le Monde ou L'On S'Amuse
- An Intercepted Letter
- The Recurring Smash
- How Liberty Came to the Bolan
- “Under Sentence”
- The Dreitarbund
- In Memoriam
- On Signatures
- The Great Strike
- “The Biggest Liar in Asia”
- Deputating a Viceroy
- A Merry Christmas
- The New Year's Sermon
- New Year's Gifts
- Mister Anthony Dawking
- “The Luck of Roaring Camp”
- The Wedding Guest
- The Tracking of Chuckerbutti
- “Bread upon the Waters”
- A Free Gift
- A Hill Homily
- The “Kingdom” of Bombay
- Bombaystes Furioso
- A Day Off
- The Unpunishable Cherub
- In Gilded Halls
- “Till the Day Break”
- The Fountain of Honour
- The Burden of Nineveh
- His Natural Destiny
- That District Log-Book
- An Unequal Match
- A Horrible Scandal
- An Exercise in Administration
- My New Purchase
- Exercises in Administration
- The Dignity of It.
- Exercises in Administration
- In Wonderland
- In the Year ’92
- “A Free Hand”
- Susannah and the Elder
- The Coming K
- What the World Said
- An Interesting Condition
- The Comet of a Season
- Gallihauk's Pup
- The Inauthorated Corpses
- One Lady at Wairakei
- The Princess in the Pickle-Bottle
- Why Snow Falls at Vernet
- The Cause of Humanity
- appendices
- Glossary
Summary
Published: Civil and Military Gazette, 18 July 1887.
Attribution: In Scrapbook 3 (28/3, p. 133).
Text: Civil and Military Gazette.
Notes: Unrecorded and unreprinted. Complaints about the Indian rail system were endemic. From Bombay, Lahore was served by the Rajputana Line, about which RK wrote a few days after this item: We are told that the damage [to the line at Ajmere] consisted only of the ‘washing away in two places of a few yards of ballast’. Nevertheless,
we in Lahore know that the delivery of last week's Home mail was delayed for fourteen hours on account of a few yards … What would the Rajputana line do if it were breached in earnest?
(CMG, 21 July 1887).It was growing monotonous, and His Excellency began to complain. The Easily Interfered-with, the Gone Immediately Phut, and the Burat Bund and Cracked Irrigation-cut Railways, had split themselves into half-mile lengths, and were swimming about their respective provinces like dominoes in a puddle. The Not Worth Running Railway shut up all its bridges with a click, and retired from business after the first five inches were recorded. As long as the papers could struggle on without any Home news or exchanges, they said that the interruption to traffic was very serious, but they had no doubt that the zeal and energy of the nearest C.I.E. would mend matters shortly.
Then the telegraph-posts began to fall out of the hill-sides like old teeth; all the Simla communications were interrupted. No one knew what His Excellency was saying or thinking, for there was a mile and a half of raving, roaring Gugger between the nearest Telegraph-Engineer and the first broken telegraph-post. The Council were shut up with His Excellency, and Naini Tal was cut off from Allahabad.
The newspapers led a hand-to-mouth existence for another fortnight, on fragments of old reports, and then they went out – reluctantly and apologetically – one by one. The True Briton, Last Week's Information and the Politician vowed that, if the Government had stayed in Calcutta, this abnormal monsoon would never have occurred; and the “fatuous folly of a crassly unsympathetic administration was absolutely and solely responsible.” They subsisted on Police Reports and Municipal Meetings for a few days after the others had ceased from troubling.
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- Chapter
- Information
- The Cause of Humanity and Other StoriesThe Cause of Humanity and Other Stories Uncollected Prose Fictions, pp. 105 - 108Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2018