g midst of fifteen hundred
wondering people we would find that little scrap of a creature
gesticulating like a spider with the colic, his black eyes snapping, his
fez-tassel dancing, his jaws pouring out floods of billingsgate upon his
gang of beseeching and astonished coolies.

I loved him; I couldn't help it; but the family--why, they could hardly
speak of him with patience. To this day I regret his loss, and wish I
had him back; but they--it is different with them. He was a native, and
came from Surat. Twenty degrees of latitude lay between his birthplace
and Manuel's, and fifteen hundred between their ways and characters and
dispositions. I only liked Manuel, but I loved Satan. This latter's
real name was intensely Indian. I could not quite get the hang of it,
but it sounded like Bunder Rao Ram Chunder Clam Chowder. It was too long
for handy use, anyway; so I reduced it.

When he had been with us two or three weeks, he began to make mistakes
which I had difficulty in patching up for him. Approaching Benares one
day, he got out of the train to see if he could get up a misunderstanding
with somebody, for it had been a weary, long journey and he wanted to
freshen up. He found what he was after, but kept up his pow-wow a shade
too long and got left. So there we were in a strange city and no
chambermaid. It was awkward for us, and we told him he must not do so
any more. He saluted and said in his dear, pleasant way, "Wair good."
Then at Lucknow he got drunk. I said it was a fever, and got the
family's compassion, and solicitude aroused; so they gave him a
teaspoonful of liquid quinine and it set his vitals on fire. He made
several grimaces which gave me a better idea of the Lisbon earthquake
than any I have ever got of it from paintings and descriptions. His
drunk was still portentously solid next morning, but I could have pulled
him through with the family if he would only have taken another spoonful
of that remedy; but no, although he was stupefied, his memory still had
flickerings of life; so he smiled a divinely dull smile and said,
fumblingly saluting:

"Scoose me, mem Saheb, scoose me, Missy Saheb; Satan not prefer it,
please."

Then some instinct revealed to them that he was drunk. They gave him
prompt notice that next time this happened he must go. He got out a
maudlin and most gentle "Wair good," and saluted indefinitely.

Only one short week later he fell again. And oh, sorrow! not in a h