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Baboo Jabberjee, B.A., a fiction by F. Anstey |
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Chapter 23. Mr Jabberjee Delivers His Statement Of Defence... |
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_ XXIII. Mr Jabberjee delivers his Statement of Defence, and makes his preparations for the North. He allows his patriotic sentiments to get the better of him in a momentary outburst of disloyalty--to which no serious importance need be attached
(N.B.--I have thought it advisable here and there to translate the legal phraseology into more comprehensible verbiage.) Now such a claim is to milk a ram, or _prendre la lune avec les dents_, seeing that I am not a proprietor of even one thousand rupees. Nevertheless (as I have informed Mr SMARTLE), my progenitor, the Mooktear, will bleed to any reasonable extent of costs out of pocket. I have held frequent and lengthy interviews with the said SMARTLE, Esq., who is of incredible despatch and celerity--though I sometimes regret that I did not procure a solicitor of a more senile and sympathetic disposition. Assuredly had I done so, such an one would not, after perusing my Statement of Defence--a most magnificently voluminous document of over fifty folios, crammed and stuffed with satirical hits and sideblows, and pathetic appeals for the Bench's indulgence, and replete with familiar quotations from best classical and continental authors--such an one, I say, would not have split his sides with disrespectful chucklings, thrown my composition into a wasted paper receptacle, and proceeded to knock off a meagre substitute of his own, containing a very few dry bald paragraphs, in the inadequately brief space of under the hour. Such, however, was Mr SMARTLE'S course; and the sole consolation is that, owing to his unprofessional precipitation, the action was set down for trial previously to the commencement of the Long Vacation, and my case may come on some time next Term, and I be put out of my misery at the close of the year. My aforesaid legal adviser, finding that I adhered with the tenacity of bird-slime to my determination to conduct my case in person, did hint in no ambiguous language, that it might perhaps be even better for me to do the guy next November to my native land, and snip my fingers then from a safe distance at the plaintiff. But it is not my practice to exhibit a white feather (except when prostrated by severe bodily panics), and I am consumed by an ardent impatience to air my fluencies and legal learnedness before the publicity of a London Law Court. Now, begone dull care! for I am to dismiss all litigious thoughts till October or November next, and become a _Dolce far niente_, chasing the deer with my heart in the Highlands. My volunteering acquaintance, by the way, has declined to lend me his rifle, on the transparent pretence that it was contrary to regulations, and that it was not the _bon ton_ to pursue grouse-birds and the like with so war-like a weapon. So, on young HOWARD'S advice, I made the purchase from a pawnbroker of a lethal instrument, provided with a duplicate bore, so that, should a bird happen by any chance to escape my first barrel, the second will infallibly make him bite the dust. I have also purchased some cartridges of a very pleasing colour, a hunting knife, and a shot belt and pouch, and if I can only procure some inexpensive kind of sporting hound from the Dogs' Home, I shall be forewarned and forearmed _cap a pie_ for the perils and pleasures of the chase. Miss WEE-WEE did earnestly advise me, inasmuch as I was about to go amongst the savage hill tribes of canny Scotians, to previously make myself acquainted with their idioms, &c., for which purpose she lent me some romances written entirely in Caledonian dialects, also the compositions of Hon. Poet BURNS. But hoity-toity! after much diligent perusal, I arrived at the conclusion that such works were sealed books to the most intelligent foreigner, unless he is furnished with a good Scotch grammar and dictionary. And _mirabile dictu!_ though I have made diligent inquiries of various London booksellers, I have found it utterly impossible to obtain such works in England--a haughty and arrogantly dispositioned country, more inclined to teach than to learn! How many of your boasted British Cabinet, supposed to rule our countless millions of so-called Indian subjects, would be capable to sit down and read and translate--_correctly_--a single sentence from the Mahabharat in the original? Not more, I shrewdly suspect, than half a dozen at most! So it is not to be expected that any more interest would be displayed in the language and literature of a country like Scotland, which is notoriously wild and barren and less densely populated and productive than the most ordinary districts of Bengal. Oh, you pusillanimous Highland chiefs and other misters! how long will you tamely submit to such offhanded treatment? Will the day never come when, with whirling sporrans and flashing pibrochs you will rise against the alien oppressor, and demand Home Rule, together with the total abolition of present disdainful British _insouciance_? When that day dawns--if ever--please note this piece of private intelligence from an authorised source: _Young Bengal will be with you in your struggle for Autonomy._ If not in body, assuredly in spirit. Possibly in _both_. I say no more, in case I should be accused of trying to stir up seditious feelings; but, as a patriotic Baboo gentleman, my blood will boil occasionally at instances of stuck-up English self-sufficiency, and the worm in the bud, if nipped too severely, may blossom into a rather formidable serpent! As, for instance, when, in the course of an inoffensive promenade, I am addressed by an underbred street-urchin as a "blooming blacky," and cannot induce a policeman to compel my aggressor to furnish me with his name and address or that of his parents, or even to offer the most ordinary apology. Enough of these rather bitter reflections, however. I omitted to mention that I am also the proprietor (at the same pawnbroker's where I bought my breeches-loader gun) of a very fine second-hand salmon-rod, a great bargain and immense value, with which I hope to be able to catch a great quantity of fishes. For there is, according to young HOWARD, good fishing in a burn adjoining the Manse, so I shall follow King Solomon's injunctions, and not spare the rod and spoil the salmons, though if I should happen to "spoil" my rod, the salmons would inevitably in consequence be "spared." This is a sample of the kind of verbal pleasantries in which, when in exhilarated high spirits, I sometimes facetiously indulge. _ |
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