The audience is complete in all the picturesqueness of mixed baba-logue. In the front row, chattering brown ayahs, gay with red sarees and nose-rings, sit on the floor, holding in their laps pale, tender babies, fair-haired and blue-eyed, lace-swaddled, coral-clasped, and amber-studded. Behind these, on high chairs, are the striplings of three years and upward, vociferous and kicking under the hand-punkahs of their patient bhearers. Tall fellows are these bhearers, with fierce moustaches, but gentle eyes,—a sort of nursery lions whom a little child can lead. On each side are small chocolate-colored heathens, in a sort of short chemises, silver-bangled as to their wrists and ankles, and already with the caste-mark on the foreheads of some of them,—shy, demure younglings, just learning all the awful significance of the word Sahib, who have been brought from mysterious homes by fond ayahs, and smuggled in through back-stairs influence, or boldly introduced by the durwan under the glorifying patronage of that terrible Hastings Clive.
Back of all are Dhobee, the washerman, and Dirzce, the tailor, and Mehter, the sweeper, and Mussalehee, the torch-boy, and Metranee, the scullion,—and all the rest of the household riff-raffry. There is much clapping of hands, and happy wah-wah-ing, wherefrom you conclude that Hastings Clive's birth-day is at least one good result of his being born at all.
The Sahib baba-logue have a lively share in several of the native festivals. The Hoolee, for instance, is their high carnival of fun, when they pelt their elders and each other with the red powder of the mhindee, and repel laughing assaults with smart charges of rose-water fired from busy little squirts. During the illumination of the Duwallee, they receive from the servants presents of fantastic toys, and search in the compounds by moonlight for the flower of the tree that never blossoms, and for the soul of a snake, whence comes to the finder good luck for the rest of his life.
These are the traditional sports of the baba-logue; but they are ingenious in inventing others, wherein, from time to time, the imitative faculty, of the native child especially, is tragically manifested.
When the Nawab, Shumsh-ud-deen, was hung at Delhi for hiring a sowar to assassinate Mr. Fraser, the British Commissioner, the country population round about were seized with the news as with the coming of a dragon or a destroying army; and the British Lion was the Bogy, the Black Douglas, in whose name poor ryots' wives scared refractory brats into trembling obedience. Not far from Delhi was a village school, where were many small boys,—so many Asiatic frogs-in-a-well,—to whom "the news of the day" was full of terrible portent. Once, when they were tired of foot-ball, and the shuttlecock had grown heavy on their hands, the cry was, "What shall we play next?" And one daring little fellow—whose father had been to Delhi with his rent, and had told how the Nawab met his kismut (his fate) so quietly, that the gold-embroidered slippers did not fall from his feet—cried, "Let us play hanging the Nawab! and I will be the Nawab; and Kama, here, shall be Kurreim Khan, the sowar; and Joota shall be Metcalfe Sahib, the magistrate; and the rest of you shall be the sahibs, and the sepoys, and the priests."
Acha, acha!—"Good, good!" they all cried. "Let us play the Nawab's kismut! let us hang the Nawab! And Mungloo—he that is more clever than all of us—he that is cunning as a Thug—Mungloo shall be the Nawab!"
So they began with the murder of the Commissioner; and he who personated Kurreim Khan, the assassin, played so naturally, that he sent the Commissioner screaming to his mother, with an arrow sticking in his arm. Then they arrested Kurreim Khan, and his accomplice, Unnia, a mehwatti, who turned king's evidence, and betrayed the sowar; and having tried and condemned Kurreim Khan, they would have hung him on the spot; but, being but a little fellow, he became alarmed at the serious turn the sport was taking, although he had himself set so sharp an example; so he took nimbly to his heels, and followed his young friend, the Commissioner.
Then Unnia told how the Nawab had paid Kurreim Khan blood-money, because Shumsh-ud-deen did so hate Fraser Sahib. Whereupon Metcalfe Sahib, a little naked fellow, just the color of an old mahogany table, sent his sepoys and had the Nawab dragged, in all his ragged breech-cloth glory, to the bar of Sahib justice. In about three minutes, the Nawab was condemned to die,—condemned to be hung by an outcast sweeper. But, in consideration of his exalted rank, they consented that he should wear his slippers, and ride to the place of execution, smoking his hookah; and Mungloo acknowledged the Sahib's magnanimity by proudly inclining his head, like a true Nawab, with a dignified "Acha!" Then two members of the court-martial, who lived nearest at hand, ran home, and quickly returned, one with his father's slippers, the other with his mother's hubble-bubble; and having tied the slippers, that were a world too big, on Mungloo's little feet, and lighted the hubble-bubble, that he might smoke, they mounted him on a buffalo, captured from the village hurkaru, who happened, just in the nick of time, to come riding by, on his way to Delhi, with the mail. And they led out the prisoner, smoking his hubble-bubble,—and looking, as Metcalfe Sahib said of the real Nawab, "as if he had been accustomed to be hanged every day of his life,"—to the place of execution, an old saul-tree with low limbs. Then, having taken the rope with which the hurkaru's mail-bag was lashed to his buffalo, they slipped a noose over the Nawab's head, made the other end fast to the lower limb of the saul-tree, and led away the buffalo.
Little Mungloo, who was cunning as a Thug, acted with surprising talent; in fact, some of the Sahibs thought he rather overdid his part, for he dropped his hubble-bubble almost awkwardly, and even kicked,—which the real Nawab had too much self-respect to do,—so that he sent one of his slippers flying one way, and the other another. But he choked, and gasped, and showed the whites of his eyes, and turned black in the face, and shivered through all his frame, so very naturally, that his admiring companions clapped their hands vehemently, and cried, Wah, wah! with all their little lungs. Wah, wah! they screamed,—Wah khoob tamasha kurta hi! Phir kello, Mungloo! Bahoot ucchi-turri nuhkul, kurte ho toom! "Bravo! Bravo! Such fun! Do it again, Mungloo,—do it again! it takes you!" Certainly Mungloo did it to the life,—for he was dead.
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