s.]

[But let us return to the prisoner in the dock] I have said that the
Secretary is clever, scornful, jocose, imperfectly sinful, and nimble
with his pen. I shall only add that he has succeeded in catching the
tone of the Imperial Bumbledom; and then I shall have finished my
defence.

This tone is an affectation of aesthetic and literary sympathies,
combined with a proud disdain of everything Indian and Anglo-Indian.

The flotsam and jetsam of advanced European thought are eagerly sought
and treasured up. "The New Republic" and "The Epic of Hades" are on
every drawing-room table. One must speak of nothing but the latest
doings at the Gaiety, the pictures of the last Academy, the ripest
outcome of scepticism in the _Nineteenth Century_, or the aftermath in
the _Fortnightly_. If I were to talk to our Secretariat man about the
harvest prospects of the Deckan, the beauty of the Himalayan scenery,
or the book I have just published in Calcutta about the Rent Law, he
would stare at me with feigned surprise and horror.

"When he thinks of his own native land,
In a moment he seems to be there;
But, alas! Ali Baba at hand
Soon hurries him back to despair."

ALI BABA.

No. VI

H.E. THE BENGALI BABOO

[Illustration: THE BENGALI BABOO--"Full of inappropriate words and
phrases."]

[September 13, 1879.]

The ascidian[B] that got itself evolved into Bengali Baboos must have
seized the first moment of consciousness and thought to regret the
step it had taken; for however much we may desire to diffuse Babooism
over the Empire, we must all agree that the Baboo itself is a subject
for tears.

The other day, as I was strolling down the Mall, whistling Beethoven's
9th Symphony, I met the Bengali Baboo. It was returning from office. I
asked it if it had a soul. It replied that it had not, but some day it
hoped to pass the matriculation examination of the Calcutta
University. I whistled the opening bars of one of Cherubini's
Requiems, but I saw no resurrection in its eye, so I passed on.

[I have just procured an adult specimen of the Bengali Baboo (it was
originally the editor of the _Calcutta Moonshine_), and I have engaged
an embryologist, on board wages, to examine and report upon it.

I once found George Bassoon weeping profusely over a dish of
artichokes. I was a little surprised, for there was a bottle close at
hand and he had