life which the spider leads, and it would drown itself in your milk
jug on the spot, unable to bear up under such a weight of care and
toil. In this parable the fly is Mukkun and the spider is Shylock,
and my sympathies are not wholly given to the former. I quite admit
that Shylock worries him cruelly, and if he had not given hostages to
fortune, he would abscond with a light heart to some distant station
where he might forget his old debts and contract new ones. But this
is not the alternative before him. The alternative is to take care
of his money, not to buy things which he cannot afford, to do without
the silver buttons, and postpone the velvet cap, all which would put
a strain on his mental and moral constitution, under which he would
wear out in a week. He must find some other modus vivendi than that.
If he had lived in the world's infancy, he would have sold himself
and his family to someone who would have fed him and clothed him, and
relieved him of the cares of life. But Britons never, never, never
shall be slaves, and under our rule Mukkun is forced to share that
disability; so he attains his end in an indirect way, and lives
thereafter in such happiness as nature has given him capacity to
enjoy. Shylock will neither put him into gaol nor seize his field.
We do not send our milch cow to the butcher. Shylock owns a hundred
such as he, and much trouble they give him.

Mukkun lives in dread of the devil. Nothing will induce him to pass
at night by places where the foul fiend is known to walk, nor will he
sleep alone without a light.



THE HAMAL