11. Some famous building.

12. An Indian tree.

13. In an Indian market.

14. What I see on my way to school.

15. A railway station.

16. A carpenter's workshop.

17. A bicycle.

18. Some musical instrument.

19. A piece of sugar cane and how it is eaten. 

20. Snake charmers and their performance.

21. A Mosque at prayer time.

22. A procession with elephants.

23. A camel and its uses.

24. Evening in a village.

25. A potter’s workshop.

26. The habits of some bird.

27. The monkey or the tiger.

28. The house I live in.

29. Our new neighbours.

30. The rose.

31. My school and why I am proud of it.

32. Describe a class-mate of yours.

33. The Indian policeman.

34. A clever dog.

35. Tea or coffee.

36. Describe some historical picture which has particularly pleased you.

37. A wedding you have attended.

38. Colombo or Kandy or Anuradhapura or Polonnaruwa or Dambulla / Bombay or Calcutta or Delhi or Agra.

39. A wedding procession.

40. A conjurer and his tricks.

A post office is a building where letters and parcels •are received for despatch and from which letters are delivered. From any post office in the world for less than four annas you can send a letter to any other place in the world where there is a post office. From your own post office in India you can send a letter to any other place in India for one anna. The cost is the same whether you send the letter to a shop in
your town, or to a friend over two thousand miles away.

In every post office there is a counter at which you may buy stamps, If you have a valuable letter or parcel to post you may register it. That is for three annas extra the postmaster or a clerk will give you a receipt for the letter. Then you can feel sure that the letter will be treated with special care until it is delivered. Registered letters should be sealed with sealing-wax.

You may also send money from a post office. You have to write on a special form your own name and that of the person to whom you wish the money to be sent. The postmaster sends that form to the nearest post office to where the person lives who is to receive the money. When the form arrives the money is sent by a postman, and he pays it to the proper person and gets a receipt for it. That receipt is sent to you by post and so you know that the money has been received.

Some post offices are very small, with only one man or woman in charge. Some are very large, and employ hundreds of clerks and postmen, with motor vans to take the bags of letters to and from stations or ships or aerodromes.

Iron is a very hard metal, of which so many useful things are made that the present age is sometimes called the Iron Age. A specially strong kind of iron is called steel, of which machines, tools and weapons of many kinds, including ships, locomotives, motor cars and bicycles, ploughs, knives and swords, are made. In recent times steel, along with cement, has been much used in constructing the largest buildings of our great cities.

India is famous for its iron and steel. Over two thousand years ago Alexander the Great received a gift of Indian steel from certain chiefs of the Punjab. About A.D. 415 the famous iron pillar now in Delhi was set up by Kumaragupta I. It is over 23 feet in height and weighs over six tons. Some Indian swords and daggers have been made from the iron found in fragments of meteors which have fallen on to the earth.

Iron is found in the earth in the form of iron ore. Before it can be used, this iron ore has to be smelted.
By this process the metal is melted away, and what is left is called slag. In districts where iron is found' we see great heaps of this dirty dark-coloured slag. Now-a-days it is used in making roads.

Since the invention of railways iron and steel have-been used for the making of rails. If you look at a map of India you will see how railways cross the country in many directions. From Trivandrum and Dhanushkodi in the far south to Chaman on the Afghan frontier and Tinsukia near the border of China, these railways run without a break. The rails are fastened together so tightly that even an earthquake does not always tear them apart. You can imagine what a great deal of labour has been required to make so many thousand miles of railroad.

The blood of human beings and animals contains a certain amount of iron, which is necessary to health. They obtain it from green vegetables, which absorb it from the earth. When people have too little iron in their blood, they have to take it in the form of medicine. So when we say that a man has a constitution of iron it is true in two ways,—he has much iron in his system, and his muscles are very strong and hard.

Very few people in I city or large town today would think of making a journey in a bullock cart. Bui although motor buses and cars travel all over the country in this great land of India, you may still see the bullock cart put to many uses.

We all know a bullock cart by sight. There are no springs to it, and it goes bumping over the roughest ground safely. The big carts drawn by a pair of bulls are used by the farmers for carrying grain to town, and by villagers for carrying wood. Potters load carts with earthenware of all shapes and sizes for market. It is a wonder how a cart loaded with grass or straw, slowly winding its way through a very narrow village street with its bulging sides nearly brushing the cottages, does not meet with any accident. Nothing worse seems to happen than a few tufts of grass being pulled out and eaten by the pair of bulls of the following cart.

Generally these carts travel in strings of a dozen or so from the grassy hills. At night, as you go along a lonely village road, you may see them with the shafts propped up and the bulls comfortably resting. The drivers will be cooking their evening meal, or lying curled up asleep under their carts.

The poor villagers use their carts as conveyances for their families. A wedding journey is a gay sight. The cart is decked and the bulls garlanded with bells, while inside ride the bride and her family in their gala robes. You see bright saris of gold and green or deep crimson, and the pale little bride is adorned with jewels and flowers. They are all packed tight, and every one is laughing and talking as merrily as can be, while the bells go jingle-jangle, and the cart wheel sings its own wedding hymn, crawling along the way that lies between the bride’s old home and her new one.

Last month I paid a visit to the Zoo at Mysore. I saw there many magnificent animals from various parts-of the world, and they were being most carefully looked after.

The lions and tigers are kept in large open enclosures, with trees for shade and pools of water. They have large cages built of rock to look like their caves in the jungle. The polar bears have an icy pool to lie in, and large blocks of ice are put into a cave for them to sit on. Inside the cave is dark, as they are not accustomed to the brilliant Indian sun. The brown Canadian bears are huge shaggy beasts, quite different from the little black Indian bears.

A large open space of tufts of grass burnt brown, and sandy patches, is enclosed by a railing for the kangaroos from Australia. These beasts are so strange. The female carries her young in a bag in her stomach. If you take them peanuts they will sit on their tails in a long row, just behind the railing, the great males grunting at you, and the babies peeping out of their mothers’ pouches. There are monkeys from all over the world, from the mighty gorilla that weighs as much as three men to the tiny marmoset of a few ounces. These monkeys are all clever at tricks, but some dislike being laughed at. A little boy who laughed at a grey-bearded old fellow got splashed with water.

The hippopotami are funny creatures too. You just see a huge mass of pink flesh under the water; but the moment you hold out a bunch of greens, out rushes the family,—father, mother, and baby hippo,—all grunting and squealing.

This zoo was one of the most interesting sights I have seen in India.

There is great beauty, as well as other kinds of pleasure, in a well-arranged fruiterer’s shop-window.

Here are the round piled-up oranges, deepening in colour till some are almost red, and heavy with juice; the apple, with its brown-red cheek, as if it had slept in the sun ; the pear, swelling downwards, and tempting us to take a huge bite from the side; clustering grapes, like so many tight little bags of wine; the peach, whose handsome coat strips off so finely; red little strawberries in round, woven baskets; large purple plums, with soft bloom; the swelling pomp of melons; the rough hard coconut, milky inside; the quaint, curving cashew nut; almonds, figs, tamarind pods, and many more with foreign names.

When you are writing a Descriptive Essay you are simply describing something. It may be a place, large or small; a scene of nature such as a landscape or view of the sea or sky; a mountain or valley; a tree or an animal; a work of art or a ruin; an aeroplane on the ground or in flight; a meeting of two people or a gathering of ten thousand.

Write short Narrative Essays of not less than twenty lines each on the following subjects:

1. A visit from a friend.

2. A motor accident.

3. A happy holiday.

4. A house on fire.

5. A cricket or hockey match.

6. A journey by train or steamer.

7. A visit to a hill-station or to the sea-side.

8. A storm.

9. A party or picnic.

10. Some battle of which I have read.

11. An amusing story.

12. How I spent the last vacation.

13. Some event in history.

14. A brave deed.

15. A walk in the country.

16. A kind action.

17. A harvest scene.

18. A market day.

19. A journey in a bullock cart.

20. My first ride on a bicycle or in a motor car.

21. A trip in an aeroplane / airplane.

I think the finest film I ever saw was Elephant Boy. It was up at Ootacamund, in the Blue Mountains, away above the forests which are the home of hundreds of wild elephants. A few days before the film came a planter told me he had counted seventy three elephants outside his compound at the foot of the mountains. And some of my friends actually knew the best of the elephants we saw' on the screen ; they belong to the Mysore Government.

To me it was wonderful to see those noble beasts roaming through the woods and fording rivers, and to hear their strange squealing in that dim hall. And if I had liked I could have gone among them the next morning, by leaving before daylight and motoring forty miles towards Calicut. Many people do that, and the forest officers arrange for elephants to be waiting for them at a certain place. There they leave their cars and mount the elephants and go for a long ride in the forest, where they may see deer and boar and maybe a panther or a python.

Some people are not so fortunate. One morning two of my friends had just mounted an elephant when a motor-horn tooted. The elephant took fright and ran off. It would not stop, and as it crashed through

the trees some low branches swept my friend and his wife off its back. They were not badly hurt, but one of (hem was covered with scratches. About a month ago there was an auction of elephants at Nilambur, still further towards Calicut. Many people went from Ootncamund and had an interesting time. On their way back, one old lady was in her car climbing a ghat with a very steep hill side on each side of the road. Suddenly a big tusker came sliding down the slope. He could not stop, but ran across the road and wen* sliding down the hill below. The driver .stopped the car only six feet from the elephant as it rushed in front of them. If they had been one second sooner, the car would surely have been smashed to bits, and the people killed. It was a very narrow escape.

One day, nearly two hundred years ago, in a town in the middle of England, a man was standing bareheaded in the street. The rain was pouring down, but he took no notice of it. He just stood there as if he were deep in thought. Then, after a long time, he walked away quietly down the street. All the time he had not spoken to a soul.

His name was Dr. Samuel Johnson, and he was one of the most famous writers and talkers of his time. And what he had done was an act of self-punishment. For many years before he had been too proud to help his father, a poor bookseller, and stand there selling books, for everybody to see. He had never forgotten that, and so at last he had stood there, where everybody could see him, thinking of his dead father.