rough the long heats of the
day he will be the life and soul of the hunt, urging on the beaters
with voice and example, climbing trees, peeping under bushes, carrying
orders, giving advice, changing the line, until that supreme moment
when shots are fired, when the rasping growl tells that the shots have
taken effect, and when at length the huge cat lies stretched out dead.
And all this on a handful of parched grain!

[Is this nothing?
Why then the world, and all that's in't, is nothing;
The covering sky is nothing, Ali Baba's nothing.]

My friend the Shikarry delights to clothe himself in the coarse
fabrics manufactured in gaol, which, when properly patched and
decorated with pockets, have undoubtedly a certain wild-wood
appearance.

As the hunter does not happen to be a Bheel with the privileges of
nakedness conferred by a brown skin, this is perhaps the only
practical alternative. If he went out to shoot in evening clothes, a
crush hat, and a hansom cab, the chances are that he would make an
example of himself and come to some untimely end. What would the
Apollo Bundar say? What would the Bengali Baboo say? What would the
sea-aye-ees say? Yes, our hunter affects coarse and snuffy clothes;
they carry with them suggestions of hardship and roughing it; and his
hat is umbrageous and old.

As to the man under the hat, he is an odd compound of vanity,
sentiment, and generosity. He is as affected as a girl. Among other
traits he affects reticence, and he will not tell me what the plans
for the day are, or what _khabbar_[W] has been received. Knowing
absolutely nothing, he moves about with a solemn and important air,
[as if six months gone with a _bandobast_[X]]; and he says to me,
"Don't fret yourself my dear fellow; you'll know all about it time
enough. I have made arrangements." Then he dissembles and talks of
irrelevant topics transcendentally. This makes me feel such a poor
pen-and-ink fellow, such a worm, such a [Famine-commissioner, such a]
Political Agent!

With this discordant note still vibrating we go in to breakfast; and
then, dear Vanity, he _bucks_ with a quiet, stubborn determination
that would fill an American editor or an Under-Secretary of State with
despair. [His lies are really that awful (as the Press Commissioner
would say) which you couldn't tell as what he was joking, or
inebriated, or drawing your leg.] He belongs to the twelve-foot-tiger
school; so, perhaps, h