to nothing but how to give the words effect as they existed, I was feeling the chilling consciousness, that they might have been, and ought to have been, a great deal better. However, we kindled up at last when we got to the East Indies, although on the mention of tigers, an old lady, whose tongue had been impatient for an hour, broke in with, “I wonder if Mr. Croftangry ever heard the story of Tiger Tullideph?” and had nearly inserted the whole narrative as an episode in my tale. She was, however, brought to reason, and the subsequent mention of shawls, diamonds, turbans, and cummerbands, had their usual effect in awakening the imaginations of the fair auditors. At the extinction of the faithless lover in a way so horribly new, I had, as indeed I expected, the good fortune to excite that expression of painful interest which is produced by drawing in the breath through the compressed lips; nay, one Miss of fourteen actually screamed.
At length my task was ended, and the fair circle rained odours upon me, as they pelt beaux at the Carnival with sugarplums, and drench them with scented spices. There was “Beautiful,” and “Sweetly interesting,” and “O Mr. Croftangry,” and “How much obliged,” and “What a delightful evening,” and “O Miss Katie, how could you keep such a secret so long?” While the dear souls were thus smothering me with rose leaves, the merciless old lady carried them all off by a disquisition upon shawls, which she had the impudence to say, arose entirely out of my story. Miss Katie endeavoured to stop the flow of her eloquence in vain; she threw all other topics out of the field, and from the genuine Indian, she made a digression to the imitation shawls now made at Paisley, out of real Thibet wool, not to be known from the actual Country shawl, except by some inimitable cross-stitch in the border. “It is well,” said the old lady, wrapping herself up in a rich Kashmire, “that there is some way of knowing a thing that cost fifty guineas from an article that is sold for five; but I venture to say there are not one out of ten thousand that would understand the difference.”
The politeness of some of the fair ladies would now have brought back the conversation to the forgotten subject of our meeting. “How could you, Mr. Croftangry, collect all these hard words about India?—you were never there?”—”No, madam, I have not had that advantage; but, like the imitative operatives of Paisley, I have composed my shawl by incorporating into the woof a little Thibet wool, which my excellent friend and neighbour, Colonel Mackerris, one of the best fellows who ever trode a Highland moor, or dived into an Indian jungle, had the goodness to supply me with.”
My rehearsal, however, though not absolutely and altogether to my taste, has prepared me in some measure for the less tempered and guarded sentence of the world. So a man must learn to encounter a foil before he confronts a sword; and to take up my original simile, a horse must be accustomed to a feu de joie, before you can ride him against a volley of balls. Well, Corporal Nym’s philosophy is not the worst that has been preached, “Things must be as they may.” If my lucubrations give pleasure, I may again require the attention of the courteous reader; if not, here end the
THE END
The Keepsake Stories
MY AUNT MARGARET’S MIRROR
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