s infernal nonsense, I'll
turn you out of the gaol neck and crop." This is a threat that never
fails to produce the desired effect. To be expelled from gaol and
driven, like Cain, into the rude and wicked world, a wanderer, an
outcast--this would indeed be a cruel ban. Before such a presentiment
the well-ordered mind of the criminal recoils with horror.
The Civil Surgeon is also a rain doctor, and takes charge of the
Imperial gauge. If a pint more or a pint less than usual falls, he at
once telegraphs this priceless gossip to the Press Commissioner,
Oracle Grotto, Delphi, Elysium. This is one of our precautions to
guard against famine. Mr. Caird is the other.
[I was once in a very small station where our Civil Surgeon was an
Eurasian. He was a pompous little fellow, but a capital doctor,
gaoler, and metereologist.
"Omnis Aristippum decint, color et status, et res."
We liked him so much that we all got ill; crime increased, the gaol
filled, and no one ever passed the rain-gauge without either emptying
it or pouring in a brandy-and-soda. With women and children he was a
great favourite; for he had not become brutalised by familiarity with
suffering in hospitals. His heart was still tender, his voice soft,
and he had a gentle way with his hands. I never knew anyone who was so
unwilling to inflict pain; yet he was not unnerved when it had to be
done. But, poor little physician! he was not able to cure himself when
fever laid her hot hand on him. He tried to go on with his work and
live it down; but the recuperative forces of Nature were weak within
him, and he died. "The good die first, and those whose hearts are dry
as summer dust burn to the socket." Our cow-buffalo doctor is still
alive, I fear.]--ALI BABA, K.C.B.
No. XVII
THE SHIKARRY
[November 29, 1879.]
I have come out to spend a day in the jungle with him, to see him play
on his own stage. His little flock of white tents has flown many a
march to meet me, and have now alighted at this accessible spot near a
poor hamlet on the verge of cultivation. I feel that I have only to
yield myself for a few days to its hospitable importunities and it
will waft me away to profound forest depths, to the awful penetralia
of the bison and the tiger. Even here everything is strange to me; the
common native has become a Bheel, the sparrowhawk an eagle, the grass
of the field a vast, reedy growth in which an elephant becomes a mere
field mouse. O
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