UNDER THE PUNKAH. BY PHIL ROBINSON, AUTHOR OF "IN MY INDIAN GARDEN," ETC. BIELIOTHER MAY 1581 SODLEIANA London: SAMPSON LOW, MARSTON, SEARLE, & RIVINGTON, CROWN BUILDINGS, 188, FLEET STREET. 1881. [All rights reserved.] 270. g 872. By the same Author. IN MY INDIAN GARDEN. WITH A PREFACE BY EDWIN ARNOLD, M.A., C.S.I., F.R.G.S., ETC. Third Edition. "UNDER THE PUNKAH." PREFATORY MOTTOES, 3 BY WAY OF ARGUMENT. THE MAN-EATING TREE "But say, where grows this Tree, from hence how far?' "On the blasted heath Eve to Serpent. Fell Upas sits, the Hydra-tree of death."-Darwin. "Here the foul harpies build their nests with rueful sound, Perch'd in the dismal tree, they fill the air."-Dante. "Not a tree is to be found in the valley. Not a beast or bird, or any living thing, lives in its vicinity."-Foersch. MY WIFE'S BIRDS THE PARROT "That odious libel of a human voice."- Cowper. "His words, like arrows That know no aim beyond the archer's wit, Strike sometimes what eludes philosophy."-Shelley. THE BULLFINCH . "The mellow bullfinch."-Thompson. "Whistles soft his flute like note."-Savage. PAGE I 14 17 26 THE CANARY "A bird for thee in silken bands I hold, Whose yellow plumage shines like polished gold. THE LINNET "The warbling (Philips), chirping (Falconer), artless (Shenstone), merry (Scott), chanting (Burns), linnet, with unnumbered notes (Cunningham).” HUNTING OF THE SOKO "My lords, a solemn hunting is in hand." Titus Andronicus. "It is no gentle chase."-Venus and Adonis. "Whence and what art thou, execrable shape? "You do it wrong, being so majestical, To offer it the show of violence."-Hamlet. "God made him, and therefore let him pass for a man. Portia. "With a groan that had something terribly human in it, and yet was full of brutishness, the man-ape fell forward on his face."-Du Chaillu. LEGEND OF THE BLAMELESS PRIEST. PAGE 27 27 35 64 "We confess that beside the smell of species there may be individual odours. . . but that an unsavoury odour is gentilitious or national, if rightly understood, we cannot well concede, nor will the information of reason or sense induce it."-Sir Thos. Browne. 73 169 PAGE "A nose stood in the middle of her face."-Iago. "A good nose is requisite also, to smell out work for the other senses."-Autolycus. "The literature of Noses is extensive. Sterne has a chapter on them in 'Tristram Shandy,' and other authors have contributed respectively a Sermon on Noses ;' 'On the Dignity, Gravity, and Authority of Noses;' 'The Noses of Adam and Eve;' 'Pious Meditations on the Nose of the Virgin Mary; 'Review of Noses.' Shakespeare was never tired of poking fun at the nose or drawing morals from it, but what is more remarkable it might easily be proved constructively from what he has said that he believed with Professor Jäger that 'the nose is the soul.""-Orielana GAMINS "They are not dirty by chance- —or accident—say twice or thrice per diem, but they are always dirty." Christopher North. "O, for my sake do you with Fortune chide, Than public means, which public manners breeds. STONE THROWING "That trick of throwing a stone at a tree and attaching some mighty issue to hitting or missing, which you will find mentioned in one or more biographies, I well remember." Wendell Holmes. "Ist Serv.-Nay, if we be forbidden stones, we'll fall to it with our teeth."-Henry VI. "That boy, rather than not throw at all, would throw the corner-stone of his father's house, or his grandfather's gravestone, the Helga Feli sanctified to Norway by Thorolff or the black crystal of the Kaaba, the blarney stone, or the holy rocks of Stennis. Nothing would be sacred from him, |