Is there a hunt? No, of course not!
A race-course? Ditto, ditto!
Is there a cricket-club? Yes. If you wish to become a member you will be admitted readily enough; you will pay four shillings per mensem for the honour, but you will not play at cricket.
A library? There are two: one in the Club, the other kept by a Mr. Warren: the former deals in the modern, the latter in the antiquated style of light—extremely light—literature. Both reading-rooms take in the newspapers and magazines, but the periodical publications are a very exclusive kind of study, that is to say, never at home to you. By some peculiar fatality the book you want is always missing. And the absence of a catalogue instead of exciting your industry, seems rather to depress it than otherwise.
Public gardens, with the usual “scandal point,” where you meet the ladies and exchange the latest news? We reply yes, in a modifying tone. The sum of about 200l., besides monthly subscriptions, was expended upon the side of a hill to the east of Ooty, formerly overrun with low jungle, now bearing evidences of the fostering hand of the gardener in the shape of many cabbages and a few cauliflowers.
Is there a theatre, a concert-room, a tennis, a racket, or a fives-court? No, and again no!
Then pray what is there?
We will presently inform you. But you must first rein in your impatience whilst we enlarge a little upon the constitution and components of Neilgherry society.
Two presidencies—the Madras and Bombay—meet here without mingling. Officers belonging to the former establishment visit the hills for two objects, pleasure and health; those of the latter service are always votaries of Hygeia. If you ask the Madrassee how he accounts for the dearth of amusements, he replies that no one cares how he gets through his few weeks of leave. The Bombayite, on the contrary, complains loudly and bitterly enough of the dull two years he is doomed to pass at Ooty, but modesty, a consciousness of inability to remedy the evil, or most likely that love of a grievance, and lust of grumbling which nature has implanted in the soldier’s breast, prevents his doing anything more. Some public-spirited individuals endeavoured, for the benefit of poor Ooty, to raise general subscriptions from the Madras Service, every member of which has visited, is visiting, or expects to visit, the region of health. The result of their laudable endeavours—a complete failure—instanced the truth of the ancient adage, that “everybody’s business is nobody’s business.” Besides the sanitarians and the pleasure-seekers, there are a few retired and invalid officers, who have selected the hills as a permanent residence, some coffee-planters, speculators in silk and mulberry-trees, a stray mercantile or two from Madras, and several professionals, settled at Ootacamund.