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all-pervading air of discipline in the family. I was treated as one of its members, and when, eighteen months after, I left Mr. Ely's house to live in lodgings, we parted with mutual regret. I worked hard and passed the Open Competitive Examination for the Indian Civil Service in 1869.

Within a few weeks after the publication of my name in the list of successful candidates my troubles began. In filling up the form required by the Calcutta University (of which I was a graduate) I had put down sixteen years as my age when I appeared for the Matriculation Examination of that University in December, 1863. The regulations for the Open Competitive Examination for the Civil Service of India then in force required that a candidate should be above nineteen, and below twenty-one, years of age. If I were sixteen in 1863, I would be above the required limit of age in 1869 and would be disqualified on that ground. The difference, however, was easily explained. Born in November, 1848, I was fifteen and not sixteen years of age when I went up for my Matriculation Examination, and if I were fifteen years at the time, I was within the limit of age prescribed by the regulations. How, then, came I to state in my Matriculation form that I was sixteen years? The truth is, that the Indian method of reckoning the age of a man is different from that followed among Englishmen. We reckon the age not from the time of one's birth, but from the time of the conception of the child in the mother's womb, and, accordingly, when the boy has completed his fifteenth year, he would be known as sixteen years old and would describe himself as such. Among Englishmen his age would be only fifteen.

It may here be mentioned that the school records fully bore out that I was only fifteen years old, according to the English method of calculation, at the time I appeared for the Matriculation Examination. These records were based upon information obtained from home. The entry in the Matriculation form was made by me and I naturally put the age down as I knew it according to our way of reckoning.

However that may be, this apparent discrepancy between my age as given in my Matriculation form and as stated in the certificate submitted to the Civil Service Commissioners was well known to my Indian friends in London (for we were a handful at the time) and nobody thought that there was anything in it or that it was likely to be used for the purpose of removing my name from the list of selected candidates. But a few weeks after the declaration