Twenty-One Days in India; and, The Teapot Series

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Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot?by George Robert Aberigh-Mackay

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Title: Twenty-One Days in India; and, the Teapot Series
Author: George Robert Aberigh-Mackay
Release Date: July 31, 2004 [eBook #13068]
Language: English
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TWENTY-ONE DAYS IN INDIA
Or, The Tour Of Sir Ali Baba K.C.B.
and THE TEAPOT SERIES
by
GEORGE R. ABERIGH-MACKAY Sometime Principal of the Rajkumar College Indore
Ninth Edition with New Illustrations and Elucidations
1914

[Illustration: THE TRAVELLING M.P.--"The British Lion rampant."]

PUBLISHERS' PREFACE
In this edition it has been considered advisable to reproduce, verbatim, only the "Twenty-one Days" as originally published in Vanity Fair, the additional series of six included in several editions of the book issued after the Author's death being omitted.
The twenty-one papers in question have been supplemented by contributions to The Bombay Gazette, which appeared in that daily newspaper during the whole of the year 1880, the year before the Author's death, under the nom de plume of "Our Political Orphan;" and the Publishers beg to tender their best thanks to the proprietors of that newspaper for the permission thus generously accorded for their present reproduction.
In carrying out the work of revision many passages previously omitted have been restored to the text. To render such readily apparent to the reader, they have in every case been enclosed in [] brackets.
A new series of illustrations has been specially prepared for this edition by Mr. George Darby of Calcutta, and the Publishers venture to think he has succeeded in a marked degree in embodying in his sketches the spirit of the Author's subjects.
In conclusion it has been the aim of the Publishers to render this new edition of a great work by a very gifted writer as perfect as possible and worthy of acceptance as a standard Anglo-Indian classic.
LONDON
September, 1910.

CONTENTS
PREFACE
I. WITH THE VICEROY
II. THE A.-D.-C.-IN-WAITING, AN ARRANGEMENT IN SCARLET AND GOLD
III. WITH THE COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF
IV. WITH THE ARCHDEACON, A MAN OF BOTH WORLDS
V. WITH THE SECRETARY TO GOVERNMENT
VI. H.E. THE BENGALI BABOO
VII. WITH THE RAJA
VIII. WITH THE POLITICAL AGENT, A MAN IN BUCKRAM
IX. WITH THE COLLECTOR
X. BABY IN PARTIBUS
XI. THE RED CHUPRASSIE; OR, THE CORRUPT LICTOR
XII. THE PLANTER; A FARMER PRINCE
XIII. THE EURASIAN; A STUDY IN CHIARO-OSCURO
XIV. THE VILLAGER
XV. THE OLD COLONEL
XVI. THE CIVIL SURGEON
XVII. THE SHIKARRY
XVIII. THE GRASS-WIDOW IN NEPHELOCOCCYGIA
XIX. THE TRAVELLING M.P., THE BRITISH LION RAMPANT
XX. MEM-SAHIB
XXI. ALI BABA ALONE; THE LAST DAY
* * * * *
EXTRACTS FROM "SERIOUS REFLECTIONS AND OTHER CONTRIBUTIONS"
BY "OUR POLITICAL ORPHAN"
Bombay Gazette Press, 1881.

THE TEAPOT SERIES:
SOCIAL DISSECTION
SAHIB
THE GRYPHON'S ANABASIS
THE ORPHAN'S GOOD RESOLUTIONS
SOME OCCULT PHENOMENA
* * * * *
ELUCIDATIONS
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS:
THE TRAVELLING M.P.
THE A.D.C. IN WAITING
THE ARCHDEACON
THE BENGALI BABOO
THE POLITICAL AGENT
THE RED CHUPRASSIE
THE PLANTER
THE EURASIAN
THE OLD COLONEL
THE GRASS-WIDOW

No. I

WITH THE VICEROY
[August 2, 1879.]
It is certainly a little intoxicating to spend a day with the Great Ornamental. You do not see much of him perhaps; but he is a Presence to be felt, something floating loosely about in wide epicene pantaloons and flying skirts, diffusing as he passes the fragrance of smile and pleasantry and cigarette. The air around him is laden with honeyed murmurs; gracious whispers play about the twitching bewitching corners of his delicious mouth. He calls everything by "soft names in many a mused rhyme." Deficits, Public Works, and Cotton Duties are transmuted by the alchemy of his gaiety into sunshine and songs. An office-box on his writing-table an office-box is to him, and it is something more: it holds cigarettes. No one knows what sweet thoughts are his as Chloe flutters through the room, blushful and startled, or as a fresh beaker full of the warm South glows between his amorous eye and the sun.
"I have never known Praise of love or wine That panted forth a flood of twaddle so divine."
I never tire of looking at a Viceroy. He is a being so heterogeneous from us! He is the centre of a world with which he has no affinity. He is a veiled prophet. [He wears many veils indeed.] He who is the axis of India, the centre round which the Empire rotates, is absolutely and necessarily withdrawn from all knowledge of India. He lisps no syllable of any Indian tongue; no race or caste, or mode of Indian life is known to him; all our delightful provinces of the sun that lie off the railway are to him an undiscovered country; Ghebers, Moslems, Hindoos blend together in one indistinguishable dark mass before his eye,