your munificent and respectable Excellency will not order, being scornful, your pitiful Excellency's durwan to disperse us; but five rupees, which nothing to Excellency's regards, and our tenacious gratitude never forget; but kissing Excellency's hands on indifferent occasions, and throwing at mercy feet with two imbecile, offsprings of different denominations, I shall ever pray, &c."
"P.S. If not five rupees, two rupees five annas, in name of Excellency's exalted mother, if quite convenient."
There now! for an imposing structure in the florid style of half-caste begging-letters, Mrs. Diana Theodosia Comfort Green flatters herself that is hard to beat.
"'Qui hi?'—Karlee, who is at the gate?"
"Mem Sahib! one chee-chee woman wanch look see Master, ispeakee Master buksheesh give; paunch butcha have got."
"Paunch butcha!—five children! why, Karlee, there are but two here. But remembering, I suppose, that my Excellency has but two 'mercy feet,' and with an eye to symmetry in the arrangement of the grand tableau of which she proposes to make me the central figure, she has made it two 'imbecile offsprings' for the looks of the thing. Do you know her, Karlee?"
"Man, Sahib! too much quentence have got that chee-chee woman; that chee-chee woman all same dam iscamp; paunch butcha not have got,—one butcha not have got. Master not give buksheesh; no good that woman, Karlee think."
"Very well, old man; send her away; tell the durwan to disperse Mrs. Diana Theodosia Comfort Green; but let him not insult her decrepit widowhood, nor alarm her imbecile offsprings of various denominations. For the 'Eurasian' is a great institution, without which polkas at Coolee Bazaar were not, nor pic-nics dansantes at Chandernagore."
But now to tiffin. I smell a smell of curried prawns, and the first mangoes of the season are fragrant. Buxsoo, the khansaman, has cooled the isherry-shrob, as he calls the "green seal," and the kilmudgars are crying, "Tiffin, Sahib!" The Mamoul of meal-time knows no caste or country.
Bur zi hyat ky kooree!
Gur nu moodum, mi kooree!
Badu bi koor bu yadi o,
Tazu bu tazu, nou bu nou!
"Gentle boy, whose silver feet
Nimbly move to cadence sweet,
Fill us quick the generous wine,
Ever fresh and ever fine!"
BOOKS.
It is easy to accuse books, and bad ones are easily found, and the best are but records, and not the things recorded; and certainly there is dilettanteism enough, and books that are merely neutral and do nothing for us. In Plato's "Gorgias," Socrates says, "The ship-master walks in a modest garb near the sea, after bringing his passengers from Ægina or from Pontus, not thinking he has done anything extraordinary, and certainly knowing that his passengers are the same, and in no respect better than when he took them on board." So is it with books, for the most part; they work no redemption in us. The bookseller might certainly know that his customers are in no respect better for the purchase and consumption of his wares. The volume is dear at a dollar, and, after reading to weariness the lettered backs, we leave the shop with a sigh, and learn, as
