Page:Malabari, Behramji M. - Gujarat and the Gujaratis (1882).djvu/45

Rh personal establishment in grand style, though he has just issued orders for shutting up a religious academy hitherto working under his auspices. This is false economy, to be sure; but what can you expect of a poor beggar like the Mohlá when the Imperial British Government practises, sometimes, a similar method of retrenchment? The Mohláji is looking up and about; and, with the help of a few friends from Bombay, may again "tide over." But there is little fear of the creditors being paid in full. The Mohláji and his family are too "civilised" for any such folly. His holiness, now over eighty, has married another "wife "—a buxom widow with thirty-five thousand rupees. I forget if this is the Mohlá's eleventh or twenty-first "wife." But what matters it? So long as there is money, the Mohlá thinks, "Let the cry be, still they come."

Only one more good Surti, my dear and honoured friend, Moonshi Lutfullah Khán. To my acquaintance with him and his, I owe much of my chivalrous respect for the Mahomedan character. Moonshi Lutfullah is "a noticeable man, with large grey eyes." As scholar, linguist, and author, Mr. Lutfullah is well-knownin these