ck from
the hill on the Allabadd road from his father-in-law, old Mohammed
Mudd. They have cold weather up in Simla, and he knows of a certain
gown he is going to buy of a Chinaman in the bazaar. But his bullocks
lag, and he saws on the gamooty rope that is attached to their noses,
and beats them half consciously with his rattan whip. Ofttimes he will
stand stark upright in the cart for a full half-hour, with his rattan
held above his head in a threatening attitude, and talk on and on to
his animals, apotheosizing their strength and patience, telling them
how they are sacred to Buddha, how they are the companions of man, and
how they shall have an extra chupa of paddy when the sun goes down,
and he has delivered to the merchant sahib on the quay his load of
gambier; or he reproves them for their slowness and want of interest,
and threatens them with the rod, and tells them to look how he holds it
above them. If in the course of the harangue one of the dumb listeners
pauses to pick a mouthful of young lallang grass by the roadside,
the softly crooning tones give place to a shriek of denunciation.

The agile Kling springs down from his improvised pulpit, and rushes
at the offender, calls him the offspring of a pariah dog, shows him
the rattan, rubs it against his nose, threatening to cut him up with
it into small pieces, and to feed the pieces to the birds. Then he
discharges a volley of blows on the sleek sides of the offender, that
seem to have little more effect than to raise a cloud of tiger gnats,
and to cause the recipient to bite faster at the tender herbs.

As the bullock-cart that has blocked our way, and at the same time
inspired this description, shambles along down the shady road, and
out of the reach of the syce's arms, the driver slips quietly up the
pole of the cart until a hand rests on either hump, and commences
to talk in a half-aggrieved, half-caressing tone to his team. Our
syce translates. "He say bullock very bad to go to sleep before the
palanquin of the Heaven-Born. If they no be better soon, their souls
will no become men. He say he sorry that they make the great American
sahib angry."

The singular trio passes on, the driver praising and reprimanding
by turns in the soft, musical tongue of his people, the historic
beasts swinging lazily along, regardless of their illustrious past,
all unconscious of the fact that their names are embalmed in sacred
writ and Indian legend, and rounding a corner