AN INDIAN SCHOOL Charles Johnston. Early November 1889. We came back to our tents after a gallop in the cool of the morning, and found the little All at once the minas are silent, peering about in suspicious alarm; then, scolding shrilly, they rise and whirr away past our tent to a deeper shade, the grey squirrels seek safety in an upper branch, and even the busy woodpecker pauses for a moment to peep down into a glade beside us. The cause of this woodland panic was soon disclosed in the appearance of a Bengali village school of Pathshala, headed by a spectacled busybody.
THE PHANTOM PALKI. Charles Johnston. Late November 1889. I remember a certain camping ground in the cool heart of a mango grove. The lucid air was They were very respectful, nay, deferential, for all their kidnapping, and if I had had some breakfast, say some good coffee and rolls, it would not have been half bad. But I was beastly hungry and getting hungrier. What had become of Punaswami of the scarlet turban, I could not even speculate on.
ON THE FIELDS OF PLASSEY Charles Johnston. November 1889. In one of the camping expeditions of the cold season we visited Plassey, on the Ganges Everyone knows that a prophecy was one of the chief causes of the Indian mutiny the prophecy that the East India Company’s rule should end just 100 years from the decisive victory in 1757, but very few realize that this prophecy was literally fulfilled, and fewer still know that the first flames of the mutiny broke out, in 1857, within twelve or fifteen miles of the spot where the battle of Plassey made the English practical lords of the land, just one century before.
Johnston tells us that one day during camp the Nawab sent a messenger to extend an invitation to the palace, to visit the treasury. The Particularly entrancing to her were the good prince’s personal adornments, kept here for safety; aigrettes of table diamonds and rubies, a set of emerald buttons, each as large as one’s finger-nail, a full score in number; and, final glory, three huge table emeralds, each as large as Verochka’s visiting card, which the good prince wore as belt buckles one at a time, of course