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write excellent English, but also prepare admirable notes on the papers with which they have to deal. There is, however, a large body of clerks on small pay in every part of India who have only the most imperfect acquaintance with English, though most of their work is carried on in that language, and it is these men who are responsible for the comical blunders of which one hears, and have created what is popularly known as Babu English. The word Babu, in its proper meaning, is a title used in addressing all Bengalis of a respectable position in life, but has come to be accepted by Anglo-Indians in Bengal and Upper India as signifying much the same as the word clerk.

is one that is shared by other races of India, and it finds scope in many unexpected ways. A young Maratha Brahmin, who had taken a good degree at the Bombay University, and secured a high place in the public service examination, was given a superior grade appointment in the Post-Office; but within the first year of his service was detected in sending in a travelling allowance bill, supported by a false diary, for a journey which he had never performed. In his defence he wrote sheet after sheet of impassioned English, and surrounded this journey with a wealth of imaginative detail. One part of it was said to have been made at night, and he described how the moon was high, and how he had lingered Of mere Babu English I do at a particular point of the not propose to give any speci- road, where an old Maratha mens, as I cannot help thinking fort stood out in dark outline that this vein has been more in the distance, in order to than sufficiently worked; but enjoy the romantic scenery. it may be said with safety This young Brahmin that the Bengali Babu is still to Calcutta when his case the chief master of this new was being finally dealt with ; medium of expression. He is and after I had gone through endowed with "a bright, soar- all the circumstances ing" imagination, and pos- him, practically admitted that sesses, moreover, plenty of the journey had been made self-confidence and a natural only in fancy, though, of disinclination to descend to course, he was perfectly famildetails and verify facts. When iar with the scene in which these qualities are united with it was laid. The real facts that proverbially dangerous were that he had gone by possession, a little knowledge railway to his native town, of the language which he pro- and remained there for three fesses to speak or write, it days without permission; and hardly be a matter for this journey was invented to surprise that he should play account for his absence, and fantastic tricks with the Eng- not with any desire to make illicit gain, as the amount in

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lish tongue,

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volved was quite insignificant.

In consideration of his youth he was allowed to resign, so that he might not be debarred from making a fresh start in life under happier auspices, and it may be hoped that he had learnt a lesson as to the necessity of controlling the play of his imagination.

But it is the desire to be idiomatic, in an imperfectly acquired language, to use phrases and expressions which are not really understood, that is the most fruitful cause of ludicrous mistakes, just as the same desire is the parent of numerous malaprops in all countries. The American lady who accounted for the successful decoration and furnishing of her rooms by assuring a friend that she had given a well-known London firm bête noire in the matter, was making exactly the same kind of mistake as the native of India who said that Bangalore was forty miles away as the cock crows. As the phrase carte blanche carried no precise significance to her mind, so the expression "as the crow flies had no real meaning to him; and another expression with a crow" in it came with equal readiness to his lips. Moreover, the line between the correct use of an idiom, or the correct application of a simile, and the ludicrous, is often a very narrow one, as the following story will serve to illustrate. A Bengali clerk who had been transferred, at his own request, from my office to another Government office in Calcutta, was anxious to return, and wrote to me person

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ally on the subject. Although not a Christian himself he was evidently acquainted with the familiar lines of Bonar's hymn

"I was a wandering sheep,
I did not love the fold;"

and this is how he applied them to his own case: "It is true I have wandered from the fold, i.e., the Director-General's office, but I trust that your Honour will be merciful and receive back an old sheep."

The desire to be eloquent, like the desire to be idiomatic, is a great snare to the youth of India. The young men who leave our schools and colleges have made acquaintance, in however slight a degree, with some of the great writers of English, and have learned by heart passages from Shakespeare and other English poets. In the majority of cases, however, they have not learnt to write plain, straightforward English, and in their desire to be eloquent they pelt their official superiors with quotations (I should be afraid to say how often "to err is human, to forgive divine," has adorned appeals which have come before me), or they rush into poetry, and strive to reproduce the grand style. This may be due in part to temperament, but it points also to something defective in the method of teaching. A young Englishman beginning life in a French business house would not dream of embellishing an explanation, to be submitted to the head of the firm, with lines from Molière or phrases from

Victor Hugo's 'Les Misérables' because he had read these books at school.

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Parsee Inspector, who had been deputed to the scene of a highway robbery of the mail, met As an example of the grand with a railway accident on the style I give an extract from way. The train in which he an application received by me was travelling was literally on returning to India after blown over by the force of the being absent on leave in wind on an exposed part of the England. The writer was a Kathiawar coast, and he deyoung Hindu clerk belong. scribed the occurrence in the ing to Northern India, and following telegram to me: the request he had to make "Train upset near G by was that the orders, passed in heavy gusts, myself hurled, his case during my absence, proceed scene robbery to-morshould be re-considered. The row." The accident was application began as follows: unusual one, and the word "As the rising of the glorious "upset" was not, perhaps, the sun is welcomed by shipwrecked right word to use in describing sailors, so is your Honour's it, while the epithet "heavy return hailed by the members was misplaced. was misplaced. The telegram, of this Department." The however, gave a vivid account man who wrote that sentence of what had occurred, and for was clearly familiar with ex- graphic force the two words tracts from Shakespeare, but "myself hurled" could hardly had never been schooled to be bettered, bringing up, as understand that such flights of they still do, before my mind's fancy were entirely out of eye a vision of a stout man, place in official or even in ord- with flying skirts, shot through inary correspondence. The text space and sprawling on the ure, indeed, of English, and sand. I will give only one especially of literary English, other instance, and that a is rich with the images and generic one, of mistakes of this the thoughts and the language character. The word "drown" of Shakespeare, but none the is constantly used by natives less is it true, despite Words- of all parts of India for the worth's noble line, that the sinking of a boat, and I tongue that Shakespeare spoke have myself received nuis not always the tongue we speak in everyday life. Other mistakes are of fre- or mails had been drowned quent occurrence which, though at sea or in rivers. The misnot necessarily ludicrous, have take, which has a comical sound an interest of their own, as to English ears, is instructive. showing the difficulties which In Urdu, and in several of the natives of India have to convernacular languages of the

merous reports by telegram and letter that mail - boats

tend with in learning English, country, the same word is used or the manner in which they for the drowning of a man and acquire their English vocabu- the sinking of a boat, and it is lary. On one occasion a burly only natural, therefore, that it

should be a common mistake nagar, though, to do the Jam

to use the same English word in both cases.

I close the present article with an account of one of the quaintest incidents in my own experience, a tête-à-tête dinner which I had some years ago with the old Jam of Jamnagar in his fortress palace on the coast of Kathiawar. The Jam at that time, though no longer young, was still vigorous, a Rajput of the old school, with some eccentric hobbies of his own, and closely wedded to the routine of life which he had laid down for himself, but always glad to welcome an English officer.

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I arrived at the the palace shortly before six o'clock in the evening, and was ushered into a small room, where the Jam was seated in the midst of a wonderful array of cheap, modern clocks, the collection of these articles being one of his hobbies. Then as the hour of six was "clashed and hammered' from a dozen clocks, all striking at once in that confined space, he lifted to his lips from a table at his side a small silver cup, and with an apology to me, drank off the contents, a strong infusion of native spirit scented with roses. Having done this, he explained with some pride that it was his invariable custom to take his first dram for the day precisely at that hour,a statement which was received with a chorus of approval from the kinsmen and others who were present. To drink by the clock had evidently been raised to the dignity of a virtue in Jam

justice, he was just as methodical in his early rising and his morning orisons, as he was in his evening potations. A short conversation followed, and then the Jam took me by the hand and, followed by the kinsmen, we passed hand-in-hand into a long, dimly-lit corridor where dinner was served. The Jam sat at a small table towards one end of the corridor, with a cluster of kinsmen and attendants behind him, while facing his table a separate table had been placed for me about ten yards away. As a high-caste Hindu, the Jam was precluded from taking his meal at the same board as his guest, and I was provided with an excellent dinner cooked in the European fashion. The corridor was bare of hangings, but down one side, half in shade and half in light, were ranged the picturesque figures of the Jam's bodyguard, fierce-looking Rajputs, armed with shields and spears; from outside came the wailing of native music, and amid these strange surroundings we sat down to dinner.

During the early stages of the meal the Jam sent his private secretary several times to ask whether everything was to my liking, but later he began to call out his own genial inquiries across the intervening space, inquiries which might, perhaps, have been embarrassing if other Europeans had been present: "Sahib, is your Highness's stomach wellfilled?" To which, with due gravity, I replied: "By your Highness's favour, my stomach

is exceedingly well-filled." Still later, he ventured on his one English phrase: "Sahib, are you 'appy?" To which, again with due gravity, I replied: "Thank you, Jam Sahib, I am quite happy." Then he sent me a glass of his own special liquor, and was delighted when I told him that the drink was very well for Rajputs, but was far too strong for Englishmen; and certainly it came nearer to the Irish member's description of the House of Commons whisky, that it went down your throat like a torchlight procession, than anything I had previously tasted. Finally the old Chief rose, and with all dignity and decorum proposed the health of Queen Victoria, who was then on the throne: "Rani Sahib Mubarik!" May the Lady Queen be blessed! I stood up at once, and we two loyally drank the toast, which was acclaimed by the kinsmen and retainers, while the men of the bodyguard clashed their shields and spears together. After that, dinner being over, the Jam and I passed out of the corridor together, the Jam leaning on my arm, and he insisted on accompanying me to my carriage, where we parted on terms of great good-fellowship.

The next morning, before leaving Jamnagar, I received,

as a parting present, a noble basket of fruit, flanked by several bottles of the Jam's own redoubtable liquor, and built up on a substantial basis of neatly fastened packets in dark-blue paper, which somehow seemed familiar even while they excited my curiosity. They proved to be packets of candles from a well-known London manufacturer, and later I learnt that these candles had been for some years a distinctive feature of the parting presents given by the Jam to his visitors and guests. Why this particular product of the West should have been included as a regular part of the customary gift of fruit and flowers from a Rajput Chief no one quite understood. But it was believed that at an earlier period the Jam had bought up a large consignment of these candles, which formed part of the cargo of a vessel which had been wrecked on the Kathiawar coast, and that he had subsequently conceived the novel idea of dispensing them in this way. At any rate, the candles which fell to my lot served for many a day as tapers in my study; and I never lit them without thinking of the kindly old Raja, and recalling that memorable evening at the palace in Jamnagar.

VOL. CLXXXVI.—NO. MCXXV.

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