claps the hands of her heart, and crying, _Wah, wah!_ in all the
innocence of her philological deficiency, blesses the fine animal
spirits of her darling Hastings Clive.

"_Soono_, you _sooa_, _loom kis-wasti omara bukri_ not bring?" says
Hastings Clive, whose English is apt to figure among his Hindostanee
like Brahmins in a regiment of Sepoys,--that is, one Brahmin to every
twenty low-caste fellows.

_The Hon. Mrs. Wellesley Gough_.--Wellesley dear, _do_ listen to that
darling Hastings Clive, how sweetly he prattles! What _did_ he say then?
If one could _only_ learn that delightful Hindostanee, so that one could
converse with one's dear Hastings Clive! _Do_ tell me what he said.

_The Hon. Wellesley Gough, of the Company's Bad Bargains_.--Literally
interpreted, my dearest Maud, our darling Hastings Clive sweetly
remarked, "I say, you pig, why in thunder don't you fetch my goat into
the parlor?"

_The Hon. Mrs. Wellesley Gough, of the Hon. Mr. Wellesley Gough's Bad
Bargains_.--Oh, _isn't_ he clever?

_Hastings Clive_.--_Jou_, you _haremzeada_! _Bukri na munkta,
nimuk-aram_!

_The Hon. Wellesley Gough_.--My love, he says now, "Get out, you
good-for-nothing rascal! I don't want that goat here."

_The Hon. Mrs. Wellesley Gough_.--Oh, _isn't_ he clever?

What dreadful crime did you commit in another life, O illustrious
Moonshee, that you should fall now among such thieves as this horrid
Hastings Clive?

"Sahib, I know not. _Hum kia kurrenge? kismut hi_: What can I do? it is
my fate."

Hastings Clive has a queer assortment of pets, first of which are
the bushy-tailed Persian kittens, hereinbefore mentioned. When, in
Yankee-land, some lovelorn Zeekle is notoriously sweet upon any Huldy of
the rural maids,--when

"His heart keeps goin' pitypat,
And hern goes pity Zeekle,"--

when she is

"All kind o' smily round the lips,
And teary round the lashes,"--

it is usual to describe his condition by a feline figure; he is said
to "cuddle up to her like a sick kitten to a hot brick." But the sick
Oriental kitten, reversing the Occidental order of kitten things,
cuddles up to a water-monkey, and fondly embraces the refreshing
evaporation of its beaded bulb with all her paws and all her bushy tail.
The Persian kitten stands high in the favor of Hastings Clive.

Hastings Clive has a whole array of parroquets and hill-mainahs, which,
as they learned their small language from his peculiar scurrilous
practic