I have demoralized the whole running-gear of the best hotel in Rangoon—I'll be known among the hotel fraternity of Rangoon in future as the "ice man" who visited the town in 1914.
Becoming weary of watching that little nugget of ice in a large glass of tepid water, doing its best to chill the water as it rapidly diminished to the size of a two-carat diamond, finally to dissolve entirely in an heroic effort to make good, I called the table boy to me and ordered him to empty the glass and bring me the several receptacles in the dining room that held ice for all the guests. Fishing enough nuggets from the lot to pack the glass full of ice, I ordered it filled with water—looked up at the boy and said: "Savvy? Ice-water!"
I leave town today for Calcutta—that glass of ice water has jarred Rangoon.
XXV
THE CALCUTTA SACRED BULL AND HIS TWISTED TAIL
Did one of your old readers, kind friend (I think it was McGuffy's Second) way back in childhood days have a little poem in it all about a lot of little girls playing a wishing game? It's over forty years ago that I read that little poem, and I can only remember one little girl's wish.
She said: "I wish I were a flying fish, o'er ocean's sparkling waves to sail, a flying fish, that's what I wish, 'mid Neptune's blue to lave my tail."
Not having read that little poem for over forty years, and not having the book with me out here in Calcutta, I may not have quoted the lines verbatim, but as near as I can recall it, that's what she said.
That little girl didn't know what she was wishing for or she'd sooner have wished to be a devil bug.
The flying fish has got that old saying, "Between the devil and the deep sea," beaten to a frazzle.