"If I can attain Heaven for a pice, why should you be
envious?
Kipling - Poems
There was no public
scandal.
A week later, Pack got his definite dismissal from Miss Hollis.
There had been a mistake in the placing of her affections, she said.
So he went away to Madras, where he can do no great harm even if he
lives to be a Colonel.
Churton insisted upon The Man who Knew taking the Bisara of Pooree as a
gift. The Man took it, went down to the Cart Road at once, found an ekka
pony with a blue head-necklace, fastened the Bisara of Pooree inside the
necklace with a piece of shoe-string and thanked Heaven that he was
rid of a danger. Remember, in case you ever find it, that you must not
destroy the Bisara of Pooree. I have not time to explain why just now,
but the power lies in the little wooden fish. Mister Gubernatis or Max
Muller could tell you more about it than I.
You will say that all this story is made up. Very well. If ever you come
across a little silver, ruby-studded box, seven-eighths of an inch long
by three-quarters wide, with a dark-brown wooden fish, wrapped in gold
cloth, inside it, keep it. Keep it for three years, and then you will
discover for yourself whether my story is true or false.
Better still, steal it as Pack did, and you will be sorry that you had
not killed yourself in the beginning.
THE GATE OF A HUNDRED SORROWS.
"If I can attain Heaven for a pice, why should you be envious? "
--Opium Smoker's Proverb.
This is no work of mine. My friend, Gabral Misquitta, the half-caste,
spoke it all, between moonset and morning, six weeks before he died; and
I took it down from his mouth as he answered my questions so:--
It lies between the Copper-smith's Gully and the pipe-stem sellers'
quarter, within a hundred yards, too, as the crow flies, of the Mosque
of Wazir Khan. I don't mind telling any one this much, but I defy him
to find the Gate, however well he may think he knows the City. You might
even go through the very gully it stands in a hundred times, and be none
the wiser. We used to call the gully, "the Gully of the Black Smoke,"
but its native name is altogether different of course. A loaded donkey
couldn't pass between the walls; and, at one point, just before you
reach the Gate, a bulged house-front makes people go along all sideways.
It isn't really a gate though. It's a house. Old Fung-Tching had it
first five years ago. He was a boot-maker in Calcutta. They say that
he murdered his wife there when he was drunk. That was why he dropped
bazar-rum and took to the Black Smoke instead. Later on, he came up
north and opened the Gate as a house where you could get your smoke in
peace and quiet. Mind you, it was a pukka, respectable opium-house, and
not one of those stifling, sweltering chandoo-khanas, that you can find
all over the City.
scandal.
A week later, Pack got his definite dismissal from Miss Hollis.
There had been a mistake in the placing of her affections, she said.
So he went away to Madras, where he can do no great harm even if he
lives to be a Colonel.
Churton insisted upon The Man who Knew taking the Bisara of Pooree as a
gift. The Man took it, went down to the Cart Road at once, found an ekka
pony with a blue head-necklace, fastened the Bisara of Pooree inside the
necklace with a piece of shoe-string and thanked Heaven that he was
rid of a danger. Remember, in case you ever find it, that you must not
destroy the Bisara of Pooree. I have not time to explain why just now,
but the power lies in the little wooden fish. Mister Gubernatis or Max
Muller could tell you more about it than I.
You will say that all this story is made up. Very well. If ever you come
across a little silver, ruby-studded box, seven-eighths of an inch long
by three-quarters wide, with a dark-brown wooden fish, wrapped in gold
cloth, inside it, keep it. Keep it for three years, and then you will
discover for yourself whether my story is true or false.
Better still, steal it as Pack did, and you will be sorry that you had
not killed yourself in the beginning.
THE GATE OF A HUNDRED SORROWS.
"If I can attain Heaven for a pice, why should you be envious? "
--Opium Smoker's Proverb.
This is no work of mine. My friend, Gabral Misquitta, the half-caste,
spoke it all, between moonset and morning, six weeks before he died; and
I took it down from his mouth as he answered my questions so:--
It lies between the Copper-smith's Gully and the pipe-stem sellers'
quarter, within a hundred yards, too, as the crow flies, of the Mosque
of Wazir Khan. I don't mind telling any one this much, but I defy him
to find the Gate, however well he may think he knows the City. You might
even go through the very gully it stands in a hundred times, and be none
the wiser. We used to call the gully, "the Gully of the Black Smoke,"
but its native name is altogether different of course. A loaded donkey
couldn't pass between the walls; and, at one point, just before you
reach the Gate, a bulged house-front makes people go along all sideways.
It isn't really a gate though. It's a house. Old Fung-Tching had it
first five years ago. He was a boot-maker in Calcutta. They say that
he murdered his wife there when he was drunk. That was why he dropped
bazar-rum and took to the Black Smoke instead. Later on, he came up
north and opened the Gate as a house where you could get your smoke in
peace and quiet. Mind you, it was a pukka, respectable opium-house, and
not one of those stifling, sweltering chandoo-khanas, that you can find
all over the City.
