We have thrown these interesting facts together not only in the interest of bird-keepers, but for the sake of inculcating kindness to animals.
W. C.
MY KITMITGHAR ‘SAM.’
For nearly three years my Kitmitghar, as that functionary is called, was cook, butler, and factotum of my then small bachelor establishment in India. A cunning concocter of mulligatawnies, curries, and chutnies—as cunning a hand too in ‘cooking’ his daily bazaar accounts, adding annas and pice, for his own particular benefit, to the prime cost of as many articles as possible. Mildly remonstrated with, and petty larceny hinted at, his honest indignation would be aroused. ‘Master tink I cheat,’ he would say; ‘master can inquire bazaar-mans;’ well knowing, the rogue, the moral and almost physical impossibility of ‘master’—a swell in his way—going to the distant market in a broiling sun, and finding out the ruling prices of flesh and fowl.
This worthy, whose original cognomen of Mootoosammy was shortened into ‘Sam’ for convenience and euphony sakes, was a Tamil from the Malabar Coast. Au reste, a dark, handsome, stoutly-built, clean-looking native, on whose polished skin water and coarse country soap were evidently no strangers. In his early youth, fated to earn his own living, he had been ejected from the paternal hut and placed as a chokerah or dressing-boy to a fiery and impecunious lieutenant of infantry; and under the fostering care of that impetuous and coinless officer, his indoctrination into the art and mystery of a valet had been advanced and improved by sundry ‘lickings,’ and by frequent applications to his ebon person of boot-heels, backs of brushes, and heavy lexicons of the English and Hindustani languages. This education completed, and when he had learned to appreciate the difference between uniform and mufti, mess-dress and parade-dress, and indeed to master the intricacies of his employer’s scanty wardrobe—non sine lacrymis, not without ‘howls’—then he emerged from dressing-boyhood, was promoted matie or under-butler, and got translated into more pretentious bungalows than those of indigent subalterns. By-and-by further preferment awaited him; he became kitmitghar (major-domo) in the households of unmarried civilian or military swells, and thenceforward led a life free from kicks and cuffs, canes and whips, and impromptu missiles snatched from toilet or study tables. I have said advisedly ‘unmarried,’ for except under financial difficulties, Sam would not take service with the Benedicts of Indian society, and the actual presence or possible advent of a wife was the signal for his departure. ‘Plenty too much bodder wid lady; too much want ebery day, ebery day measure curry stuff, oil, ghee [butter]; too much make say always dis ting too dear, dat ting too dear; too much trouble take count. Now, Colonel Sahib he good man; he call, he say: “Sam! how much this week you eespend? [spend].” He just look book; he give rupee; no one single word bobberee [fuss] make.’ And so, for a palpable reason, my worthy cook-butler eschewed those households where a better-half took the reckoning.
English, after the rickety fashion of a Madrassee, Sam spoke fairly enough; he also read and wrote the language, the latter accomplishment phonetically, but yet sufficiently near to the rules of orthography to make you fully understand and pay for ‘tirty seers wrice’ as thirty seers (measures) of rice. What if he did elect to spell rice with a w? Is it not recorded that an eminent member of a large mercantile firm, in days long gone by, invariably included an h in the word sugar? And is it not also chronicled how he chastised almost to the death his son and heir for omitting that letter when invoicing a cargo of best Jamaica moist? If then Blank Blank, Esq. of the city of London opined that sugar required an h, why not the same liberty as regards the w to Mootoosammy of the city of Madras?
A sad waverer in religious opinions Master Sam, I fear. A very Pharisee of a Hindu, a rigid stickler for the worship of Vishnu or Siva on the high-days and holidays of those deities, when his forehead and arms would be spotted and streaked with coloured ashes, his garments would smell of saffron and sandal-wood, his English diminutive name would be put aside for its more lengthy and sonorous native patronymic, and he would be off to the temple to make poojah (prayer) to his swamis (gods). But yet, somehow or other, all these symptoms and signs of Hinduism would disappear at Christmas, Easter, or Whitsuntide. At those seasons of the Christian year, Sam was no longer Mootoosammy, but Sam pure and simple. No more the believer he in the Vedahs and Shastras, but a pinner of faith on Aves and Credos; no poojah for him now in the temple, but crossings and genuflections in the little chapel of the station. Not a trace in these days of idolatrous scents clinging to cloths and turban, or of ‘caste’ marks disfiguring brow or limb. Dole in hand—obtained either from pickings at master’s ’counts or from bazaar-man’s dustoor (custom)—he is off to join Father Chasuble’s small flock, and to bow down and formalise with the best or worst of that good priest’s congregation. I really think and believe, that to secure a holiday and an ‘outing,’ Sam would have professed himself a Mohammedan during the Ramadan, a Hebrew during the Passover, a Heathen Chinee during the feast of Lanterns, and a Buddhist during the Perihara or other high-jinks of the yellow-robed priests of Gautama Buddha.
I never before or since met any man into whose household death was so constantly making inroads, and strange to say, carrying away the same individual. I suppose that, on a rough estimate, all Sam’s kith and kin died at least twice during the thirty months or so that he was in my service.