BABY IN PARTIBUS



[October 11, 1879.]

The Empire has done less for Anglo-Indian Babies than for any class of
the great exile community. Legislation provides them with neither
rattle nor coral, privilege leave nor pension. Papa has a Raja and
Star of India to play with; Mamma the Warrant of Precedence and the
Hill Captains; but Baby has nothing--not even a missionary; Baby is
without the amusement of the meanest cannibal.

Baby is debarred from the society of his compatriots. His father is
cramped and frozen with the chill cares of office; his mother is
deadened by the gloomy routine of economy and fashion; custom lies
upon her with a weight heavy as frost and deep almost as life; the
fountains of natural fancy and mirth are frozen over; so Baby lisps
his dawn pæans in soft Oriental accents, wakening harmonious echoes
amongst those impulsive and impressionable children of Nature that
masque themselves in the black slough of Bearers and Ayahs; and Baby
blubbers in Hindustani.

These Ayah and Bearer people sit with Baby in the verandah on a little
carpet; broken toys and withered flowers lie around. They croon to
Baby some old-world _katabaukalesis_, while beauty, born of murmuring
sound, passes into Baby's eyes. The squirrel sits chirruping
familiarly on the edge of the verandah with his tail in the air and