they heard that
a Collector was on the hill. They would ask what sort of a thing a
Collector was. The Press Commissioner would be sent to interview it.
The children at Peterhoff would send for it to play with. So the
clodhopping Collector goes to Naini Tal or Darjiling, where he is
known either as Ellenborough Higgins, or Higgins of Gharibpur in
territorial fashion. Here he is understood. Here he can bubble of his
_Bandobast_,[N] his _Balbacha_[O] and his _Bawarchikhana_;[P] and here
he can speak in familiar accents of his neighbours, Dalhousie Smith
and Cornwallis Jones. All day long he strides up and down the club
verandah with his old Haileybury chum Teignmouth Tompkins; and they
compare experiences of the hunting-field and office, and denounce in
unmeasured terms of Oriental vituperation the new sort of civilian who
moves about with the Penal Code under his arm and measures his
authority by statute, clause, and section.

In England the Collector is to be found riding at anchor in the
Bandicoot Club. He makes two or three hurried cruises to his native
village, where he finds himself half forgotten. This sours him. The
climate seems worse than of old, the means of locomotion at his
disposal are inconvenient and expensive; he yearns for the sunshine
and elephants of Gharibpur, and returns an older and a quieter man.
The afternoon of life is throwing longer shadows, the Acheron of
promotion is gaping before him; he falls into a Commissionership;
still deeper into an officiating seat on the Board of Revenue.
_Facilis est descensus, etc._ Nothing will save him now;
transmigration has set in; the gates of Simla fly open; it is all
over. Let us pray that his halo may fit him.--ALI BABA, K.C.B.

No. X

BABY IN PARTIBUS

[October 11, 1879.]

The Empire has done less for Anglo-Indian Babies than for any class of
the great exile community. Legislation provides them with neither
rattle nor coral, privilege leave nor pension. Papa has a Raja and
Star of India to play with; Mamma the Warrant of Precedence and the
Hill Captains; but Baby has nothing--not even a missionary; Baby is
without the amusement of the meanest cannibal.

Baby is debarred from the society of his compatriots. His father is
cramped and frozen with the chill cares of office; his mother is
deadened by the gloomy routine of economy and fashion; custom lies
upon her with a weight heavy as frost and deep almost as life; the
fountains of natura