Yesterday, while I was giving audience to my tenants, five or six boys
made their appearance and stood in a primly proper row before me. Before I
could put any question their spokesman, in the choicest of high-flown
language, started: "Sire! the grace of the Almighty and the good fortune
of your benighted children have once more brought about your lordship's
auspicious arrival into this locality." He went on in this strain for
nearly half an hour. Here and there he would get his lesson wrong, pause,
look up at the sky, correct himself, and then go on again. I gathered that
their school was short of benches and stools. "For want of these
wood-built seats," as he put it, "we know not where to sit ourselves,
where to seat our revered teachers, or what to offer our most respected
inspector when he comes on a visit."
I could hardly repress a smile at this torrent of eloquence gushing from
such a bit of a fellow, which sounded specially out of place here, where
the ryots are given to stating their profoundly vital wants in plain and
direct vernacular, of which even the more unusual words get sadly twisted
out of shape. The clerks and ryots, however, seemed duly impressed, and
likewise envious, as though deploring their parents' omission to endow
them with so splendid a means of appealing to the _Zamindar_.
I interrupted the young orator before he had done, promising to arrange
for the necessary number of benches and stools. Nothing daunted, he
allowed me to have my say, then took up his discourse where he had left
it, finished it to the last word, saluted me profoundly, and marched off
his contingent. He probably would not have minded had I refused to supply
the seats, but after all his trouble in getting it by heart he would have
resented bitterly being robbed of any part of his speech. So, though it
kept more important business waiting, I had to hear him out.