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Baboo Jabberjee, B.A.

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<h2 class="roman">XXVI</h2> Mr Jabberjee expresses some audaciously sceptical opinions. How he secured his first Salmon, with the manner in which he presented it to his divinity. Owing mainly to lack of opportunity, invitations, et cætera, I have not resumed the offensive against members of the grouse department, but have rather occupied myself in laborious study of Caledonian dialects, as exemplified in sundry local works of poetical and prose fiction, until I should be competent to converse with the aborigines in their own tongue. <div class="figcenter"> <ANTIMG src="images/p209.jpg" width-obs="430" height-obs="700" alt="Whether he had wha-haed wi' hon'ble Wallace?"> "WHETHER HE HAD WHA-HAED WI' HON'BLE WALLACE?" </div> Then (having now the diction of Poet Burns in my fingers' ends) I did genially accost the first native I met in the street of Kilpaitrick, complimenting him upon his honest, sonsie face, and enquiring whether he had wha-haed wi' Hon'ble Wallace, and was to bruise the Peckomaut, or ca' the knowes to the yowes. But, from the intemperance of his reply, I divined that he was totally without comprehension of my meaning! Next I addressed him by turns in the phraseologies of Misters Black, Barrie, and Crockett, Esquires, interlarding my speech with "whatefers," and "hechs," and "ou-ays," and "dod-mons," and "loshes," and "tods," ad libitum, to which after listening with the most earnest attention, he returned the answer that he was not acquainted with any Oriental language. Nor could I by any argument convince this beetle-head that I was simply speaking the barbarous accents of his native land! Since which, after some similar experiments upon various peasants, &c., I have made a rather peculiar discovery. There is no longer any such article as a separate Scottish language, and, indeed, I am in some dubitation whether it ever existed at all, and is not rather the waggish invention of certain audacious Scottishers, who have taken advantage of the insular ignorance and credulity of the British public to palm off upon it several highly fictitious kinds of unintelligible gibberish! Nay, I will even go farther and express a grave suspicion whether the Scotland of these bookish romances is not the daring imposture of a ben trovato. For, after a prolonged residence of over a fortnight, I have never seen anything approaching a mountain pass, nor a dizzy crag, surmounted by an eagle, nor any stag drinking itself full at eve among the shady trunks of a deer-forest! I have never met a single mountaineer in feminine bonnet and plumes and short petticoats, and pipes inserted in a bag. Nor do the inhabitants dance in the street upon crossed sword-blades—this is purely a London practice. Nor have I seen any Caledonian snuffing his nostrils with tobacco from the discarded horn of some ram. Finding that my short kilt is no longer the mould of national form, I have now altogether abandoned it, while retaining the fox-tailed belly-purse on account of its convenience and handsome appearance. Now let me proceed to narrate how I became the captor of a large-sized salmon. Having accepted the loan of Mister Crum's fishing-wand, and attached to my line certain large flies, composed of black hairs, red worsted, and gilded thread, which it seems the salmons prefer even to worms, I sallied forth along the riparian bank of a river, and proceeded to whip the stream with the severity of Emperor Xerxes when engaged in flagellating the ocean. But waesucks! (to employ the perhaps spurious verbiage of aforesaid Poet Burns) my line, owing to superabundant longitude, did promptly become a labyrinth of Gordian knots, and the flies (which are named Zulus) attached their barbs to my cap and adjacent bushes with well-nigh inextricable tenacity, until at length I had the bright idea to abbreviate the line, so that I could dangle my bait a foot or two above the surface of the water—where a salmon could easily obtain it by simply turning a somersault. However, after sitting patiently for an hour, as if on a monument, I could not succeed in catching the eye of any passing fish, and so, severely disheartened by my ill-luck, I was strolling on, shouldering my rod, when—odzooks! whom should I encounter but Mister Bagshot and a party of friends, who were watching his keepers capture salmons from a boat by means of a large net, a far more practical and effectual method than the cumbersome and unreliable device of a meretricious fly with a very visible hook! And, just as I approached, the net was drawn towards the bank, and proved to contain three very large lively fishes lashing their tails with ungovernable fury at such detention! Whereupon I made the humble petition to Mister Bagshot that, since he was now the favourite of Fortune, he was to remember him to whom she had denied her simpers, and bestow upon me the most mediocre of the salmons, since I was desirous to make a polite offering to the amiable daughter of my host and hostess. And with munificent generosity he presented me with the largest of the trio, which, with great jubilation, I endeavoured to carry off under my arm, though severely baffled by the extreme slipperiness with which (even after its decease) it repeatedly wallowed in dust, until someone, perceiving my fix, good-naturedly instructed me how to carry it by perforating its head with a piece of string. I found Miss Wee-Wee in a secluded garden seat at the back of the Manse, incommoded, as usual, by the society of Mister Crum. "Sir," I said, addressing him politely (for I was extremely anxious for his departure, since I could not well present my salmon to Miss Wee-Wee and request the quid-pro-quo of her affection in his presence), "accept my gratitude for the usufruct of your rod, which has produced magnificent fruit. You will find the instrument leaning against the palings of the front garden." And with this I made secret signals to Miss Wee-Wee that she was to dismiss him; but she remained bashful, and he seemed totally unaware that he was the drug of the market! At last, weary of concealing my captured salmon any longer behind the small of my back, I was about to inform Mister Crum that he had Miss Louisa's permission to absent himself, when she broke the silence by informing me that, as the old familiar friend of both parties, I was to be the first to hear a piece of news—to wit, that Donald (Mister C.'s baptismal appellation) and she were just become the engaged couple! I was so overcome by grief and indignation at her perfidious duplicity (since she had frequently encouraged me in my mockeries of her admirer's uncouthness and rusticity), that I stuck in the throat, and then flung the salmon violently across a boundary hedge into a yard of poultry. "Madam," I said, "that fish was to have been laid at your feet as the visible pledge of my devotion. You have not only lost the gift of a splendid salmon, but have thrown away the heart of a well-educated native B.A. and Member of the Bar! And you have gained—hoity toity! What? Why, a Scotch Bun!" But almost immediately I was taken by violent remorse for my presumption, and shed the tears of contrition, entreating forgiveness—nay, more, I scrambled through a hole in a very thorny hedge, and, recovering the salmon (which had not had time to become very severely henpecked), I begged them to accept it between them as a token of my esteem and good wishes, which they joyfully consented to do. I had expected that my worthy host and hostess would have shared my astounded disappointment on hearing of their daughter's engagement; but, on the contrary, they received the news with smiling complacency. It appears that Mister Crum, though endowed with a somewhat sheepish and bucolical exterior, is of tip-top Scottish caste and lineage, and the landed proprietor. I am not to deny the attractiveness of such qualities, though I had hitherto been under the Fool's Paradise of an impression that they would have infinitely preferred this humble self as a son-in-law. However, I am now emerging from my doleful dumps, with the reflection that, after all, it is contrary to common-sense to drain the cup of misery to the dregs for so totally inadequate a cause as the ficklety of any feminine! <hr style="width: 65%;"> [Pg 216] <div style="break-after:column;"></div>

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