Baboo Jabberjee, B.A. by F. Anstey (books to get back into reading TXT) 📗

him for his Punica fides, informing him that I required a machine that would run with smooth progressiveness, precisely similar to those I beheld in motion around me. To which he replied that I must not expect to be able to ride impromptu as well as individuals who had only mastered the accomplishment by long continuity of practice and industry.

"Oh, man of wily tongue!" I addressed him. "Not thus will you bamboozle my supposed simplicity! For if the art were indeed so difficult as you pretend, how should it be acquired by so many timid and delicate feminines and mere nurselings? This machine of yours is nothing but an obsolete hors de combat with which it is not humanly possible to work the oracle!"

At which, waxing with indignation, he leaped upon it, and to my surprise, did easily propel it in whatsoever direction he pleased, and its motive power appeared to be similar in every respect to the rest; so, beguiled by his representations that, under his instructions, I should speedily become a chef-d'œuvre, I once more suffered myself to mount the machine; but whether from superabundant energy of my foot-paddling, or the alarming fact that we were upon the descent of a precipitous slope, I was soon horrified at finding that my instructor was stripped out, and I abandoned to the lurch of my Caudine fork!

Oh, my goodness! My heart turns to water at the nude recollection of such an unparalleled predicament, for the now unrestrained bicycle vires acquirit eundo, and in seven-league boots! While I, wet as a clout with anxiety and perspiration, did grasp the handles like the horns of a dilemma, calling out in agonised accents to the bystanders,—"Help! I am running away with myself! Half a rupee for my life-preserver!"

But they were all as if to burst with laughter, and none had the ordinary heroism to intervene, and I with ever increasing rapidity was borne helplessly down the declivity towards the gates of Hyde Park Corner, when, by the benevolence of Providence, the anterior wheel ran under a railing, and I flew off like a tangent into the comparative security of a mud-barrow!

On my return and solicitous inquiry for my fur-lined overcoat, I had the further shock to discover that it was solvitur ambulando!

After such a shuddering experience and narrow squeak of my safety, I confidently appeal to the authorities to extinguish this highly dangerous and foolhardy sort of so-called amusement, or at the very least to issue paternal orders that, in future, no one shall be permitted to ride upon any bicycle possessing less than three wheels, or guilty of a greater celerity than three (or four) miles per hour.

The fair Miss Mankletow amended this proposal by suggesting that the Public should be restricted at once to perambulators; but this is, perhaps, majori cautelâ, and an instance of the over-solicitude of the female intellect, for it is not feasible to treat an adult, who has assumed the toga virilis and tall hat, as if he was still mewling and puking in a tucker and bib.

[Pg 42] VI

Dealing with his Adventures at Olympia.

The dialoquial form is now become an indispensible factotum in periodical literature, and so, like a brebis de Panurge, I shall follow the fashion occasionally,—though with rather more obedience to a literary elegant style of phraseology than my predecessors in Punch have thought worth to practise.

Time: the other morning. Scene: the breakfast table at Porticobello House, Ladbroke Grove. Myself and other select boarders engaged in masticating fowl eggs with their concomitant bacon, while intelligently discussing topical subjects (for we carry out the poetical recipe of "Plain thinking and high living").

Miss Jessimina (at the table-head). The papers seem eloquent in laudation of the Sporting and Military Show at Olympia. How I should like to go if I had anyone to take me!

Mr Wylie (stingily). And I would be enraptured at so tip-top an opportunity, but for circumstance of being stonily broken.

[Helps himself to the surviving fowl egg.

Mr Cossetter (in sepulchral tone). Alack! that doctorial prescriptions do nill for me such nocturnal jinks; otherwise——

[He treats himself to a digestible pill.

Myself (taking a leap into the darkness and deadly breaches). Since other gentlemen are not more obsequious in gallantry, I hereby tender myself for honour of accompanyist and vade mecum.

Miss Jess. (lowering the silken curtains of her almond-like orbs). Oh, really, Prince! So very unexpected! I must obtain the expert opinion of my Mamma.

Mistress Mankletow did approve the jaunt on condition of our being saddled by a select lady boarder of the name of Spink as a tertium quid to play at propriety; at which I was internally disgusted, fearing she would play the old gooseberry with our tête-à-tête.

Having arrived at Olympia, we perambulated the bazaar prior to the commencement of the shows, and here (after parting with rs. 8 for three seats on the balcony) I did bleed more freely still, for Miss Jessimina expressed a passionate longing to possess my profile, snipped out of paper by the scissors of a Silhouette, for which I mulcted one shilling sterling.

And, after all, although it proved the alter ego and speaking likeness of my embossed Bombay cap and golden spectacles, she found the fault that it rendered my complexion of a too excessive murksomeness; not reflecting (with feminine imperceptivity) that, the material being black as a Stygian, this criticism applied to the portraitures of all alike!

Farther on I presented her and the female gooseberry with a pocket-handkerchief a-piece, interwoven by a mechanism with their baptismal appellation (another rupee!).

Then we arrived at a cage containing an automatic Devil revealing the future for a penny in the slit, and Miss Jessimina worked the oracle with a coin advanced by myself, and the demon, after flashing his optics and consulting sundry playing-cards, did presently produce a small paper which she opened eagerly.

Miss Jess. (after perusal). Only fancy! It says I'm "to marry a dark man, and go for a long journey, and be very rich." What ridiculous nonsense! do you not think so, Prince?

Myself (with a tender sauciness). Poet Shakspeare asserts there are more things in Heaven and earth than the Horatian philosophy. I am not a superstitious—and yet this mechanical demon may have seen correctly through the brick wall of Futurity. Have you not a worshipful adorer who might be described as dark, and to whose native land it is a long journey?

Miss Jess. (with the complexion of a tomato). It's time we took our seats for the performance. And you are not to be a silly!

It is notorious that the English female vocabulary contains no more caressing and flattering epithet than this of "a silly," so that I repaired to my seat immoderately encouraged by such gracious appreciation.

Of the show, I can testify that it was truly magnificent, though the introductory portion was somewhat spoilt by the too great prevalence of the bicycle, which is daily increasing its ubiquity, nor do I see the rationality of engaging a sais in topped boots to attend upon each machine, under the transparent pretentiousness of its belonging to the equine genus, since it can never become the similitude of a horse in mettlesome vivacity.

My companions marvelled greatly at the severe curvature of the extremities of the cycle-track, which were shaped like the interior of a huge bowl, and while I was demonstrating to them how, from scientific considerations and owing to the centrifugal forces of gravitation, it was not possible for any rider to become a loser of his equilibrium—lo and behold! two of the competitors made the facilis descensus, and were intermingled in the weltering hotchpot of a calamity.

But on being disentangled they did limp away, and it is allowable to hope that they suffered no serious dismantling of their vital organs. Still, I cannot approve of these bicycle contentions, which are veritable provocative flights at the providential features.

After the termination I conducted my protégées to the Palmarium, where we sat under a shrub imbibing lemon crushes, brought by a neat-handed Phyllis in the uniform of a house-maid intermixed with a hospital nurse.

Here occurred a most discomposing contretemps, for presently Miss Jessimina uttered the complaint that two strangers were regarding herself and Miss Spink with the brazen eyes of a sheep, and even making personal comments on my nationality, which rendered me like toad under a harrow with burning indignation.

At length, being utterly beside myself with rage, I summoned one of the Phyllises and requested her to take steps to abate the nuisance, being met with a smiling "Nolo Episcopari." So, entreating my companions not to give way to panic and leave their cause in my hands, I went in search of a policeman.

Unfortunately some time flew before I could find one at liberty to understand my crucial position, nor could I obtain from him a legal opinion as to whether I could administer a cuff or a slap in the ear to my insulters without incurring risk of retaliation in kind.