to satisfy
himself that it was good drinking-water. He had previously been making
some inquiries about so-called "Palm-wine," which is merely the
fermented juice of the toddy-palm. We told him that some Travellers'
Palms produced this wine, and with a slight exercise of ingenuity we
induced him to tap one of the trees we had doctored with claret.
Naturally, a crimson liquid spouted into his glass in response to the
thrust of his pen-knife, and after tasting it two or three times, he
reluctantly admitted that its flavour was not unlike that of red wine.
It ought to have been, considering that we had poured an entire bottle
of good sound claret into that tree. The ex-M.P. possibly reflects now
on the difficulties with which any attempts to introduce "Pussyfoot"
legislation into India would be confronted in a land where some trees
produce red wine spontaneously.

On another occasion I was going by sea from Calcutta to Ceylon. On
board the steamer there were a number of Americans, principally ladies,
connected, I think, with some missionary undertaking. When we got
within about a hundred miles of Ceylon, these American ladies all began
repeating to each other the verse of the well-known hymn:

"What though the spicy breezes
Blow soft o'er Ceylon's isle,"

over and over again, until I loathed Bishop Heber for having written
the lines. They even asked the captain how far out to sea the spicy
breezes would be perceptible. I suddenly got an idea, and, going below,
I obtained from the steward half a dozen nutmegs and a handful of
cinnamon. I grated the nutmegs and pounded the cinnamon up, and then,
with one hand full of each, I went on deck, and walked slowly up and
down in front of the American tourists. Soon I heard an ecstatic cry,
"My dear, I distinctly smelt spice then!" Another turn, and another
jubilant exclamation: "It's quite true about the spicy breezes. I got a
delicious whiff just then. Who would have thought that they would have
carried so far out to sea?" A sceptical elderly gentleman was summoned
from below, and he, after a while, was reluctantly forced to avow that
he, too, had noticed the spicy fragrance. No wonder! when I had about a
quarter of a pound of grated nutmeg in one hand, and as much pounded
cinnamon in the other. Now these people will go on declaring to the end
of their lives that they smelt the spicy odours of Ceylon a full
hundred miles out at sea, just as the travelling M.P. will asser