Page:Once a Week Volume V.djvu/651

 644 “An old bull, I should say,” put in Jephson, “or a jackal.”

“Perhaps a bit of elephant, or it may be venison; they are both sometimes to be procured I am told.”

“Hum!” said Dan, “fancy I know the flavour, too; rather ferretty; here, boy, take it away, and give me a long drink of beer.”

Just as we finished our dinner—to which, however, we had done full justice—the Doctor’s white robe crossed the threshold. We gave him hearty welcome, and handed him the tin of biscuits, of which he was excessively fond, and which, indeed, was the only thing he could touch, as he fancied there was nothing but flour and water in them, wherein he was much mistaken.

“Help yourself, Doctor, and thanks for your kind thought of the curry. What was it made of?”

“Ah!” said Dan, “What was it? Buffalo?”

“Oh, no!” replied the Doctor, “I thought you would have recognised the flavour; it was one of the big bats.”

Poor dog Tray! thought I; one of the thoughts which jerk suddenly across the brain.

There was a dead silence; a horrid pause. Dan looked queer and green: Jephson grew ashy pale; I felt all nohow. Dipping my hand into the hamper at my side, I pulled out the brandy-bottle, and took a good nip; then, hesitating for a moment as to whether I should brain the Doctor or not, passed it on to my friend.

Dan lit a cheroot, muttering something I cannot write down, but it ended with “No wonder I thought of those stinking ferrets.”

It really was no wonder.

As to Jephson, he had disappeared; from behind a clump of trees there came sounds of a strong man in travail and distress. He came back in a few minutes, and took some brandy, and to say the truth I envied him the confession. In the middle of the night I followed his example, and cast off the fœtid abomination. Dan, more ostrich-like, stood the test by dint of a heavy course of smoke. The poor Doctor, seeing he had made a mistake, quietly slipped away; and I must perforce tell the whole truth, and confess that we “condemned” him up hill and down dale with a startling gusto and emphasis. He said in explanation (so David told me) that he thought Christians ate anything!

My little party broke up next day, and I sadly returned to solitude and the theodolite; and here, save with one further remark, this little tale naturally concludes. Since that careless, happy, free-and-easy time of youth and adventure I have married a wife, and endowed myself with a mother-in-law! So have my friends, as well, and if ever this meets their eyes, will they not join with me in reversing the remark we passed on that much abused institution of wedlock? I, at any rate, must do my duty, and thank heaven! I may add that duty is a pleasure: happy the man, say I, who can cordially welcome the presence of his mother-in-law in his house; and whenever I see the cab with the huge black boxes which announce the visit of that venerable lady under my humble roof, I never fail to think of the Malabar doctor who showed us such strange sights in that immense colony of huge bats, which I have not untruly, yet fancifully christened, “The City of the Flying-fox.”

R. B. M.



—This question came recently in due legal form before one of the courts, if we remember right, in Ireland, and was strictly ruled in the negative, the judge deciding not by precedent but by common sense. Had they known it, however, they might have called in a precedent to their aid. The same appeal was once made to the late Bishop Majendie of Bangor, by a young clergyman, a popular preacher, who had become enamoured of a singer, a lady more than twice his own age, and scarcely his equal in position—in a word, such a person that his friends, one and all, declined to tie the wedding knot for him. In his difficulty the clerical Adonis went to the Bishop, and asked him “whether, if all his friends refused, he could marry himself?” “Young man, can you bury yourself?” was the bishop’s instant reply, in his deep, sepulchral voice, as he rose hastily and left the apartment.

.—Having found a German friend in the head-physician of the military hospital at Riga, I accompanied him one morning on his visit thither. On the way he told me how difficult it was to elicit from the men the real seat of their complaints, as every ailing in the upper part of the body, whether in the head, back, or stomach, they call pain in the heart; and those in the lower parts of the body pain in the leg. Having arrived at the hospital, all the patients that were able to do so arrayed themselves in a row, dumb and stiff as if on military parade. “How do you feel to-day, old man,” asked the doctor, of the first. “My heart pains,” was the expected timid reply. “Tongue out,” said the doctor, and out it was. Turning to the next, the same question, same reply, and same tongue operation. More than thirty in the row underwent the same medical inquiries and process. I was about leaving, when my friend told me to look round. To my utter astonishment I saw the whole lot still standing in military attitude, with their tongues wide out. We looked on for a while, when the doctor loudly gave the word, “Tongues in,” and all the articulating organs vanished in an instant. My risible faculties were so excited by the ludicrous scene, that it was some moments after we were in the open street ere I could, rather reproachingly, ask my friend how he could play such a trick on the poor fellows. “You must not judge,” said he, “by exceptions. I merely wanted to show you to what extent the blind spirit of discipline prevails among the Russian troops. Nor are the fellows,” added he, “the worse for the joke; on the contrary, they believe that the cure is greatly promoted by keeping the tongue out in the presence of the doctor, the longer the better.”—M.