Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series by George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
page 38 of 171 (22%)
page 38 of 171 (22%)
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"Ho, you there! fetch us a pint of gin! and look sharp, will you!" For who, in time, knows whither we may vent The treasure of our tongue, to what strange shores This gain of our best glory shall be sent, To enrich unknowing nations with our stores! What worlds in the yet unformèd Orient May come refined with accents that are ours! But, dear Vanity, I can see that you are impatient of scenes whose luxuries steal, spite of yourself, too deep into your soul; besides, I dread the effect of such warm situations on a certain Zuleika to whom the note of Ali Baba is like the thrice-distilled strains of the bulbul on Bendemeer's stream. So let us electrify ourselves back to prose and propriety by thinking of the Political Agent; let us plunge into the cold waters of dreary reality by conjuring up a figure in tail-coat and gold buttons dispensing justice while H.H. the romantic and picturesque Raja, G.C.S.I., amuses himself. Yet we hear cries from the gallery of "Vive M. le Raja; vive la bagatelle!" So say we, in faint echoes, defying the anathemas of the Foreign Office. Do not turn this beautiful temple of ancient days into a mere mill for decrees and budgets; but sweep it and purify it, and render it a fitting shrine for the homage and tribute of antique loyalty--"that proud submission, that subordination of the heart which kept alive, even in servitude itself, the spirit of an exalted freedom." With tail-coat and cocked-hat government "the unbought grace of life, the cheap defence of nations, the nurse of manly sentiment and heroic enterprise is gone."--ALI BABA. |
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