It was a bad situation. He hadn’t even looked love at Sarah. ‘I had no idea of’—— he began; when she held up her hands saying: ‘I know you hadn’t; but it’s all right. With your wages and what the boarders bring in, we shall get along as snug as possible. All I ask is that you be good to her; Sarah has a tender heart, and if you should be cross and ugly, it would break her down in a week.’
The young man’s eyes stood out like cocoa-nuts in a shop-window, and he rose up and tried to say something.
‘Never mind about the thanks,’ she cried; ‘I don’t believe in long courtships. The eleventh of January is my birthday, and it would be nice for you to be married on that day.’
‘But—but—but’—— he gasped.
‘There, there! I don’t expect any speech in reply,’ she laughed. ‘You and Sarah settle it to-night, and I’ll advertise for twelve boarders straight away, I’ll try to be a model mother-in-law. I believe I’m good-tempered and kind-hearted, though I did once follow a young man two hundred miles and shoot off the top of his head for agreeing to marry my daughter and then quitting the county.’ She patted him on the head and sailed out. And now the young man wants advice. He wants to know whether he had better get in the way of a locomotive or slide off the wharf. If ever a young bachelor was ‘sold,’ Sarah’s young man was in that predicament.
ELEPHANT GOSSIP FROM RANGOON.
We have much pleasure in laying before our readers the following interesting particulars regarding the elephant, and the way in which the physical strength of that sagacious animal is turned to account in the timber-trade of Rangoon. The notes are contained in a letter from a resident in that town to his brother in England, who has kindly placed it at our disposal. After describing some phases of every-day social life, the writer thus proceeds: ‘The elephants I go daily to see are beauties, fine powerful well-trained animals, and strange to say, the mahout (driver) of one of them is an old servant of my own. It is both interesting and amusing to watch them working the timber. The government have nine elephants employed at the depôt, and there are other animals belonging to natives at work there also. I often take my seat on a teak-log, picking out the cleanest and softest for the purpose, light a cheroot, and watch the performance. Elephants are pretty much like men; I don’t mean in personal appearance, but in character. I can pick out “characters I have met” quite easily among the group of sixteen or eighteen all working there together sometimes. There are willing workers, and there are skulkers; there are gentle tempers, and there are others “as dour as a door-nail.” Some of them will drag a log two tons in weight without a groan; while others, equally powerful but less willing, will make a dreadful fuss over a stick that is, comparatively speaking, nothing.
‘There are a good many female elephants employed. Some belong to the government; but most of them are owned by Karens, who bring them in from the jungle when work is obtainable. They are not so powerful as the males; and the want of tusks is rather against them, because they have to do the pushing or “ounging” part of the work, as the natives call it, with their trunks. These they roll up in a coil, and just at the place where the trunk and the head unite, they press against the log and roll it over.
‘I saw the legs very nearly knocked from under a man two days ago by a lively female who was rolling over a log in this way. She had discovered by experience that it was easier to move a heavy log by a violent jerk than by slow steady pushing; and when the man on her neck called out “Oung!” and pushed her ear forward with his foot—the equivalents in elephant-driving for “Go along, old lady!”—she stood for a moment motionless, then in an instant up coiled the trunk, down went the head, and away rolled the log, one end of it coming round with a sweep which all but made an “Aunt Sally” of the innocent spectator. He sprang from the ground as if he had received an electric shock, and saved himself; after which he received the congratulations of the by-standers for being an ass to stand in the way of an elephant like that.