Judge — January 18, 1890 — page 7: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

HAIDERABAD, Bompay, Early in the morning. UDGE, New York— If you ever saw a polar bear inspecting the workings of a.cre- matory you have an accurate idea of my condition on reaching this place. At Balagansk, on the Irish river Irkoutsk, 1 took a severe cold while pressing my ear to the ground in an effort to hear the Bligh footsteps reverberating on the other side of the mount- ains, and my Cossack guide insisted on my putting on a bale of furs and drinking copious draughts of hot hemp as a counteractive. “It'll do yez no har-rm,” he said in the liquid dialect of the steppes, ‘an’ phin we reaches Haddybad, yez'll be cured, so yez will.” He was right. We traveled by exile-train that night and I had a whole charcoal-wagon to myself at the rear of the procession. It was so comfortable that I bought it when the balance of the party diverged at Kizll Jilga to be shot. The weather was bitter cold and the Maud S. and Dexter at the pole kicked their breaths away ahead of them in great chunks as we plowed along. Curling myself up in a corner, as I used to do in the office when our chief went out to buy—well, opera-tickets for instance, I was soon in a deep sleep. Frozen snores were soon dropping off of the tail-board and the gentle of their pit-a-pat put me into a regular trance. To quote a little, “ How long I slept I know I awakened with the idea that I had been taking an excursion trip with Dante, and pushing aside the back curtains saw two men in red uniform sitting under the shade of a banyan-tree sipping orange-shrub, while strange-looking orientals were loafing about dressed for the most part in simply the idea that shame is a crime. “Is this William's bridge?” I asked confusedly of one of the gentlemen under the tree. He did not reply immediately, but turning to his companion re- “| marked, “Another bloomin’ spy, Lionel. I'll take the first shot at him, d'y’know, and you settle him with the elephant-gun if he don’t come down.” I came down at this, intro- duced myself, and asked permission to drink a bucket of ice-water and disrobe, which was cheerfully granted. As deer-skin after bear- skin and wolf-skin after mink came off, and I gradually got down to normal, Colonel Reginald Honkey-Honkey Luders of her majesty’s Indian reserve (for it was he) ad- justed his glass and observed, “It’s lucky we didn't waste ammunition, me boy; there isn’t enough of him to shoot at, and the place I should have aimed at to hit the heart was about a foot and a half to the left of his left shoulde: Hot! Why, the binding-room in the JUDGE building basement is a refrigerator compared with Haiderabad on a cool day, and the Russian-bath treatment I had undergone weakened me so that I could not resent the slur on my personal appearance. The officers, however, had hearts of their own a little more centrally located, and they have made my stay here very pleasant. I attended two nautch-dances, a widow-burning, and a crocodile-feed last evening, and to-day we saw one of the finest examples of East Indian juggling you could imagine. One little act struck me as being about as neat as anything Hermann ever said he did. A long, lean fakir unwound a few hundred yards of his turban and asked me to place my hand on his bald skull. I did so. He then asked me to think of something and think it hard. I did so. In an instant, without the least hesitation he exclaimed, “The sahib is respectfully informed that the hole in the top of Hemfretta’s head was caused by a kick received while Hemfretta was milking a sacred cow." How he ever knew that I was thinking as to what made that tea-cup-shaped hole I never shall know. I tell you it was wonderful. I have seen the head of the make-up department borrow a silver quarter and after snapping it up his sleeve declare that he had forgotten the rest of the trick and that the coin was lost; but this performance pales before that of the unlettered and un- washed juggler of western India. I have kept time right by the throat so far, and — == UNDER THE manacemenT of Judges” = = “1 saw two men in red uniform.” “For Bierat on camel-back.” “Thad a whole charcoal-wagon to myself.” leave a little later for Bierat on camel-back. A rich English banker and his daughter who. are on their way home from Calcutta are to join me, and I have bought a new necktie so as to keep up the dignity of the paper. Please send me a copy of the Christmas number to meet me at Naples. I want to see who you caught to do your sign-painting while I was away. The sun has edged around the rim of the punkah, and I must close. Yours with deep sympathy and condolence, ZIM. HELEN’S SPECULATIONS. [PETte HELEN, three years old, wakes up in the night and asks her mother to light the gas to see if it is daylight. Recently she went to buy Christmas presents, and at night she said to her father, “Papa, I will not tell you what I bought for you to-day; I bought you a scrap-basket, but T am not going to tell you about it. This same little girl wants to know if her mamma bought her at the store, and if she was a toy, and if she was wrapped up in a paper or done up in a box. PRETTY FAR GONE. Mr. CARRAWAY (who has strolled into the free-thinkers’ meeting)—" By take up collections.” inks! they even have th’ old Nick here to comicbooks.com