Here are the quotations for the coming week (March 17th to 23rd):

 

1. He obtained great insight into the ways and thefts of saises—enough, he says, to have summarily convicted half the population of the Punjab if he had been on business. He became one of the leading players at knuckle-bones, which all jhampánis and many saises play while they are waiting outside the Government House or the Gaiety Theatre of nights ; he learned to smoke tobacco that was three-fourths cowdung ; and he heard the wisdom of the grizzled Jemadar of the Government House grooms. Whose words are valuable. He saw many things which amused him ; and he states, on honour, that no man can appreciate Simla properly till he has seen it from the sais’s point of view. He also says that, if he chose to write all he saw his head would be broken in several places.

 

2. There starts a caravan from Peshawar to Kabul in twenty days, Huzrut,’ said the Eusufzai trader. ‘My camels go therewith. Do thou also go and bring us good luck.’

 

‘I will go even now!’ shouted the priest. ‘I will depart upon my winged camels, and be at Peshawar in a day! Ho! Hazar Mir Khan,’ he yelled to his servant, ‘drive out the camels, but let me first mount my own.’

 

He leaped on the back of his beast as it knelt, and, turning round to me, cried: ‘Come thou also, Sahib, a little along the road, and I will sell thee a charm—an amulet that shall make thee King of Kafiristan.’

 

3. “A little dye-stuff and three yards of cloth to help out a jest. Is it much to ask?” “Who is she? Thou art full young, as Sahibs go, for this devilry.”

 

“Oh, she? She is the daughter of a certain schoolmaster of a regiment in the cantonments. He has beaten me twice because I went over their wall in these clothes. Now I would go as a gardener’s boy. Old men are very jealous.”

 

“That is true. Hold thy face still while I dab on the juice.”

“Not too black, Naikan. I would not appear to her as a hubshi” (nigger).

 

The sources of this week's extracts (March 1oth to 16th) are as follows: 

 

1.  ("Strong you think yourself? May your strength be a curse to you to dhrive you into the divil’s hands...)  This is from "The Courting of Dinah Shadd" in Life's Handicap.

 

2.  ("...why shouldn’t he slip on th’ ladder, wi’ my feet on his fingers till they loosed grip, and I put him down wi’ my heel? ")  This is from "On Greenhow Hill" in Life's Handicap.

 

3.  (‘I’m a Tommy—a bloomin’, eight-anna, dog-stealin’ Tommy, with a number instead of a decent name. Wot’s the good o’ me? …')  This is from "The Madness of Private Ortheris" in Plain Tales from the Hills.

 

Good spring-time wishes to all

 

John R