A TIFFIN OF PARAGRAPHS.
How runs the Hindoo saw? "Are we not to milk when there is a cow?" When
India is giving down generous streams of paragraphy to all the greedy
buckets of the press, shall we not hold our pretty pail under? As our
genial young friend, Ensign Isnob, of the "Sappies and Minors," would
say,--"I believe you, me boy!"
Then come with us to Cossitollah, and we'll have a tiffin of talk; some
cloves of adventure, with a capsicum or two of tragic story, shall stand
for the curry; the customs of the country may represent the familiar
rice; a whiff of freshness and fragrance from the Mofussil will be as
the mangoes and the dorians; in the piquancy and grotesqueness of the
first pure Orientalism that may come to hand we shall recognize the
curious chow-chow of the chutney; and as for the beer,--why, we will be
the beer ourselves.
"Kitmudgar, remove that scorpion from the punka, before it drops into
the Sahib's plate.--Hold, miscreant! who told you to kill it?
"'Take it up tenderly,
Lift it with care,--
Fashioned so slenderly,
Young, and so fair!'
"For know, O Kitmudgar, that there is one beauty of women, and another
beauty of scorpions; and if the beauty of scorpions be to thee as the
ugliness of women, the fault is in thy godless eye.
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