in Asia; and is only unfitted for the office of
Governor-General of India from knowing too much.--ALI BABA, K.C.B.

No. XX

MEM-SAHIB

"Her life is lone. He sits apart;
He loves her yet: she will not weep,
Tho' rapt in matters dark and deep
He seems to slight her simple heart.

"For him she plays, to him she sings
Of early faith and plighted vows;
She knows but matters of the house,
And he, he knows a thousand things."

[December 20, 1879.]

I first met her shepherding her little flock across the ocean. She was
a beautiful woman, in the full sweetness and bloom of life. [The
mystery of early wifehood and motherhood gave a pensiveness to her
soft eyes; but her voice and manner disclosed the cheerful confidence
of perfect health and a pure heart.] Her talk was of the busy husband
she had left, the station life, the attached servants, the favourite
horse, the garden, and the bungalow. Her husband would soon follow
her, in a year, or two years, and they would return together; but they
would return to a silent home--the children would be left behind. She
was going home to her mother and sisters; but there had been changes
in this home. So her thoughts were woven of hopes and fears; and, as
she sat on deck of an evening, with the great heart of the moon-lit
sea palpitating around us, and the homeless night-wind sighing through
the cordage, she would sing to us one of the plaintive ballads of the
old country, till we forgot to listen to the sobbing and the trampling
of the engines, and till all sights and sounds resolved themselves
into a temple of sentiment round a charming priestess chanting low
anthems. She would leave us early to go to her babies. She would leave
us throbbing with mock heroics, undecided whether we should cry, or
consecrate our lives to some high and noble enterprise, or drink one
more glass of hot whiskey-and-water. She was kind, but not
sentimental; her sweet, yet practical "good-night" was quite of the
work-a-day world; we felt that it tended to dispel illusions.

She had three little boys, who were turned out three times a day in
the ultimate state of good behaviour, tidiness, and cleanliness, and
who lapsed three times a day into a state of original sin combined
with tar and ship's grease. These three little boys pervaded the
vessel with an innocent smile on their three little faces, their
mother's winning smile. Every m