When you have made up your mind to study Balochí get so many days' leave if you can. If you cannot, well, no matter; one's sleeping hours are still to a large extent at one's own disposal. Two hours nightly stolen out of these have never yet been known to harm anyone. Your next step is to secure a servant, one who can speak Balochi only. The farther afield you go for him the better. The only point you need worry about is that his enunciation be clear and distinct. Make him your man Friday for as many months as you may require his services. We shall be much mistaken if you do not eventually become sorry to part with him. Have him with you on every possible and impossible occasion, going to your work, at your work, and coming from your work. Make no mistake about it, you will find in him an intelligent amusing human in nine cases out of ten. You will come to think of him and of his people as you have never thought before; you will begin to perceive in the East that indefinite attractive something; and more wondrous than all, you will come to know that you also possess the rare gift of being able to command and control thousands of Natives where hitherto you have found it a difficult matter to command and control your own small household. In saying this, we have no thought of sentiment.

Do not try to learn long lists of dry words by memorizing, but just a few at a time by using them. Your man Friday is with you. He is in your room. Point out to him your all too scanty pieces of furniture. Listen to what he calls them, imitate him, keep on imitating him until he stops smiling. From these to the house, from the house to the compound, from the compound to your animals, and so on. Friday is accompanying you on your way to office. You will see a number of ordinary things on the way there. Friday names them, you name them after Friday. You must not mind if Friday laughs, he generally will. That is why he is likeable. In a day or two adjectives will begin to attach themselves to these names, to these nouns, and still later verbs, adverbs, etc. You are now practically out of the wood, and able to see daylight on the other side. Words so assimilated you can hardly ever forget. They somehow become part of you. And that is just why we have used the term " assimilated". Language is a living thing.

Meantime, keep on revising your manual. However poor it may appear to you-and it is poor-you cannot revise it too often. Although we have endeavoured to put before you all the best known canons of the language and that in almost every sentence you should at the same time keep a notebook. You will find it invaluable. For one thing you cannot have too many examples. Strange as it may seem one can often conjure up an example without being able for the moment to conjure up the rule for its formation. It is what we understand that sticks. It is simply a case of the digger and the spade.

Just one word more : Drop your Oxford intonation when you seek to speak Balochí. We mean drop it for the time being, not for good. It is priceless, and as we are all well aware has won empires for us! But it cannot be used when speaking Balochí. Listen to your henchman Friday, and note how he fills his mouth with every word. It is exactly the same in the case of the Pathán.

Take comfort that once famous master of Eton, Mr. Oscar Browning, who passed away a few weeks ago, added to his various other achievements that of learning the Portuguese language at the age of 79 and Polish at the age of 80. Outside our lunatic asylums there are few, indeed, who are not capable of learning half a dozen languages in addition to their own if given good textbooks and shown how.

Great games have been played on this frontier. A much greater game than any of them will be played here shortly. So much is inevitable, unless human nature is to belie itself. Some 900,000 Baloches are behind us at this moment. Make it a pleasant duty to keep them there.

These remarks would be incomplete without recording our deep sense of obligation to Miss E. E. Bate, of 145 Portsdown Road, Maida Vale, London, daughter of the late Rev. John Drew Bate, the distinguished Hindí scholar, for the very great assistance rendered to us in putting the work into shape for the printers, and to the printers themselves for the praiseworthy way in which they have seen it through the press. THE AUTHORS.

SOUTH NORwood.

November, 1923.