“Then,” continued I, “what have you got to say, that I should not punch your head or kick your rascally shins, for conniving at the escape of yonder centipede that has just gained his crevice, and is, even now, making faces at me with impunity?”
The dobee drew himself up.
“Sahib,” said he, “you can kickee my head, you can punchee my shin—all same. Allah is good, and the Koran say, ‘Thou shalt not kill.’”
“Thou shalt not kill,” repeated I; “why, the man must have learned the ‘Shorter Catechism;’ he can’t be such a heathen after all.”
The dobee triumphed. I shook him by the hand, and he had my washing ever after.
Enter my servant one day. I was living in a room on shore at Bombay.
“Man come for your little ones, Sahib,” said he.
“Pandoo,” said I in a solemn voice, “what do you mean? I’m a respectable unmarried man, and never deserved any.”
The man, who entered behind Pandoo, carried a shovel, a brush, and a basket; and I soon discovered that my little ones meant all the earwigs, bugs, centipedes, and crickets, of which I had a fair sprinkling of each sort; and he came, not to destroy, but actually to carry them away. He swept my room and bed moderately clean, and I afterwards found that he had taken the contents of the basket to the corner of a field, and emptied them among some straw. For no true Buddhist takes life; and when cows and horses get infirm, they are regularly superannuated, and sent to an asylum where they may end their days in peace.
The scenes of cruelty to the lower animals, which one witnesses in the streets and lanes of our own country, are almost enough to make one doubt the goodness of God. In many cases, a person at all sensitive cannot refrain from interfering; and, unless he can show some proper authority for so doing, he will in most cases come off second-best, and do harm to the very victim he meant to protect. I have often constituted myself a sort of knight-errant to distressed quadrupeds; and I flatter myself I have at times done some good, either by going quietly up to the perpetrator of the cruelty and trying to reason with him, or, with a pretended show of authority, demanding his name and address. A man of this sort is always a coward, and usually “funks” at once. I once had my nose broken, though, in a row with a butcher about ill-treating a cow. That brought my knight-errantry to a bloody close for a fortnight; but, thanks to good surgery, the organ is none the worse.