Page:The Atlantic Monthly Volume 1.djvu/350

342 Now surely she who thus sings should be beautiful, after the Hindoo type;—that is, she should have the complexion of chocolate and cream; "her face should be as the full moon, her nose smooth as a flute; she should have eyes like unto lotuses, and a neck like a pigeon's; her voice should be soft as the cuckoo's, and her step as the gait of a young elephant of pure blood." Let us see.

Alas, no! She entertains a set of lazy bearers, smoking the hubble-bubble around a palanquin as they wait for a fare; and her buksheesh may be a cowry or two. By no means is she of the nautch-maidens of Lucknow, who were wont to lighten the hours of debauched majesty between the tiger-fights and the games of leap-frog; by no means is she ringed as to her fingers or belled as to her toes; and though she carries her music wherever she goes, she also carries a shiny brown baby, slung in a canvas tray between her shoulders.

No excessively voluminous folds of gold-embroidered drapery encumber her supple limbs; but her skirts are of the scantiest, (what Miss Flora MacFlimsey would call skimped,) and pitifully mean as to quality. By no means have the imperial looms of Benares contributed to her professional costume a veil of wondrous fineness and a Nabob's price; but a narrow red strip of some poor cotton stuff crosses her bosom like a scarf, and leaves exposed too much of the ruins of once daintier beauties. A string of glass beads, black and red alternate, are all her jewels,—save one silver bodkin, all forlorn, in her hair, and a ring of thin gold wire piercing the right nostril, and, with an effect completely deforming, encircling the lips. Her teeth and nails are deeply stained, and the darkness of her eyes is enhanced by artificial shadows.

And so, while that baby-Tantalus, catching glimpses, over the unveiled shoulder, of the Micawberian fount he cannot reach, stretches his little brown arms, bites, kicks, and squalls,—while a small female apprentice, by way of chorus, in costume and gesture absurdly caricaturing her prima donna, (a sort of Cossitollah marchioness, indeed, for some Dick Swiveller of the Sahibs,) shuffles rheumatically with her feet, or impotently dislocates her slender arms, or pounds insanely on a cracked tomtom, or jangles her clumsy cymbals, while the squatting bearers cry, "Wah wah!" and clap their sweaty hands,—our poor old glee-maiden of Cossitollah strums her two-stringed guitar, letting the baby slide, and creaks corkscrewishly her Chota, chota natchelee:—

Badi subå choo boog zuree,

Bar suri kove an puree,

Qassué Hufiz ush bigo,

Tazu bu tazu, nou bu nou!

Zephyrs, while you gently move

By the mansion of my love,

Softly Hafiz' strains repeat,

Ever new and ever sweet!"

Heaven save the key!

"Ka munkta, Bearer?—What is it, my gentle Karlee?"

"Chittee, Sahib!—chittee for Master."

"Note, hey? from whom? let us see!"

Pink paper,—scented with sandal-wood, pah!—embossed, too, with cornucopias in the corners,—seal motto, Qui hi? ("Who waits?")—denoting that the bearer is to bring an answer. Now for the inside:—

":—

"Insured of your pitiful conduct, your obsequious suppliant, an eleëmosynary lady of decrepit widowhood, throws herself at your Excellency's mercy feet with two imbecile childrens of various denominations. For our Heavenly Father's sake, if not inconvenient,—which we have been beneficently bereaved of other paternal description,—we humbly present our implorations to your munificent Excellency, if any small change, to bestow the same, winch it will be eternally acceptable to said eleëmosynary widow of late Colonel with distinguished medal in Honorable Service, deceased of cholera, which it was suddenly attacks, and as pretty near destitute. Therefore, hoping