C.I.E. he will laugh at nothing. The faculty must be wanting.

[The Raja of Fattehpur, Member of the Legislative Council, and
commonly known as "Joe Hookham," says that fossil Baboos have been
found in Orissa with the cuckoo-bone, everything that a schoolmaster
could wish. Now "Joe" is a palæontologist not to be sneezed at. This
confirms the opinion of General Cunningham that the mounted figure in
the neighbourhood of Lahore represents a Bengali washerwoman riding to
the _Ghât_ to perform a lustration. Because unless the _os coccyx_
were all right it would be as difficult to ride a bullock as to get
educated by the usual process.]

When Lord Macaulay said that what the milk was to the cocoanut, what
beauty was to the buffalo, and what scandal was to woman, that Dr.
Johnson's Dictionary was to the Bengali Baboo, he unquestionably spoke
in terms of figurative exaggeration; nevertheless, a core of truth
lies hidden in his remark. It is by the Baboo's words you know the
Baboo. The true Baboo is full of words and phrases--full of
inappropriate words and phrases lying about like dead men on a
battlefield, in heaps to be carted away promiscuously, without
reference to kith or kin. You may turn on a Baboo at any moment and be
quite sure that words, and phrases, and maxims, and proverbs will come
gurgling forth, without reference to the subject or to the occasion,
to what has gone before or to what will come after. Perhaps it was
with reference to this independence, buoyancy, and gaiety of language
that Lord Lytton declared the Bengali to be "the Irishman of India."

You know, dear Vanity, I whispered to you before that the poor Baboo
often suffers from a slight aberration of speech which prevents his
articulating the truth--a kind of moral lisp. Lord Lytton could not