by Ruskin Bond
It was passed to him.
'Have I your permission to put it into this mortar and pound it to pieces?' he asked savagely.
The Quick Man nodded and smiled.
The conjurer threw the watch into the mortar and grasped a sledge-hammer from the table. There was a sound of violent smashing, 'He's—slipped—it—up—his—sleeve,' whispered the Quick Man.
'Now, sir,' continued the conjurer, 'will you allow me to take your handkerchief and punch holes in it? Thank you. You see, ladies and gentlemen, there is no deception; the holes are visible to the eye.'
The face of the Quick Man beamed. This time the real mystery of the thing fascinated him.
'And now, sir, will you kindly pass me your silk hat and allow me to dance on it? Thank you.'
The conjurer made a few rapid passes with his feet and exhibited the hat, crushed beyond recognition.
'And will you now, sir, take off your celluloid collar and permit me to burn it in the candle? Thank you, sir. And will you allow me to smash your spectacles for you with my hammer? Thank you.'
By this time the features of the Quick Man were assuming a puzzled expression. 'This thing beats me,' he whispered, 'I don't see through it a bit.'
There was a great hush upon the audience. Then the conjurer drew himself up to his full height and, with a withering look at the Quick Man, he concluded:
'Ladies and gentlemen, you will observe that I have, with this gentleman's permission, broken his watch, burnt his collar, smashed his spectacles, and danced on his hat. If he will give me the further permission to paint green stripes on his overcoat, or to tie his suspenders in a knot, I shall be delighted to entertain you. If not, the performance is at an end.'
Amid a glorious burst of music from the orchestra the curtain fell, and the audience dispersed, convinced that there are some tricks, at any rate, that are not done up the conjurer's sleeve.
Llanfairpwllgwyngillgogerchwyrndrobwllllandysiliogogogoch
BY ROBERT LYND
That, according to a Welsh Member of Parliament, is not the right way to spell it. Two syllables of the name, he told the House of Commons, are here placed in the wrong order. Perhaps it was the misspelling that made the House so hilarious, when the name of the village was mentioned in a question addressed to the Postmaster-General. Every reader of Punch knows how funny even the most trifling mistake in spelling can be. At the same time, I suspect that in its correct spelling the name of Llanfairpwllgwyn, etc., would have seemed equally comic to Englishmen, and possibly to Welshmen. It is a dachshund of a word elongated almost to infinity, and even an ordinary dachshund is funny.
It is difficult to say at what point a word begins to grow funny because of its length. Remove one letter after another from the end of this Welsh word, and at what point will it cease to be funny? Take away the entire second half of the word, and it will still be ridiculous.
The Welsh are a race of bards, but I doubt if they have ever invented a metre which could contain the name of this village, the postmaster of which has given notice of his resignation. Even in free verse the word would look a little absurd. It scarcely looks right in a page of common prose.
The Welsh, I fancy, have preserved it mainly as an attraction for tourists. I am sure that no Welshman talking to another Welshman ever rolls out that horrid and disordered alphabet. No nation could survive which in its ordinary speech gave places names like that. In these days of keen competition, it is the race with the short words that wins. Names of undue length are an obstruction to business whether on the railways, in the post office, or in the houses of commerce. If you were ordering bulbs, and you were hesitating whether to order them from Tring or Llanfair, etc., etc., you would end by ordering them from Tring merely in order to save trouble.
Presumably, then, it was a Welsh humorist who invented the name in order to give visitors something to wonder at. If I remember right, when I was in Wales many years ago, you could buy the name on a sheet of paper for a penny, and, if you were a stranger, you did. It was a curiosity, worthy of being added to the seven wonders of the world. It was more astonishing than Snowdon and more difficult to master.
It was Wales, too, in an ingratiatingly comic mood—Wales all but Rabelaisian. Presumably, it is the longest word in the world, and the longest word in the world is in its own way as interesting as the longest river in the world or the highest mountain or the largest lake. If you were told that the tallest tree in the world was in a Surrey wood, you would drive out to see it with the liveliest curiosity You and thousands of others would stand gazing at it simply through a passion for the superlative. The superlatively big and the superlatively little—each of them stirs us into wonder. We should admire equally a Bible so huge that one had to climb a ladder to reach the top of the page, and a Bible so tiny that it could be fitted into a thimble. We are all victims of the love of the odd, and many people would go farther to see a man ten feet high or with three eyes than to talk with Socrates.
Yet always in the end we return for repose to the normal. An excess of excess wearies us. If all places had names like that of the unpronounceable Welsh village, we should be bored and not interested. The truth is, the name has no virtue but uniqueness. It is, as Johnson said of Gray, merely dull in a new way. It is as though a painter exhibited a picture which had no claim on our interest except that it was the largest picture, or the smallest picture, in the world. We might go to see it once, but not twice. We cannot say exactly what is the right size for a picture, but we know that there are limits of size in both directions beyond which a painter cannot go without peril of freakishness. It is the same with books. Some years ago writers discussed the question, 'What is the right length for a novel?' and many people thought the question ridiculous. But it would have been ridiculous only if it had implied that an exact length could be discovered to which all novels should be expected to conform. In point of fact, it is clear that, in regard to the length of his novels, the novelist is bound by rules, however impossible these rules may be to formulate. It is safe to lay it down as a principle that no novel may be as long as the Encyclopaedia Britannica or as short as an ordinary postcard. At what point excessive length or excessive brevity begins, however, it is impossible to determine. Many people thought, probably rightly, that the novel in the nineties was becoming too short. Many people think, probably rightly, that the novel to-day is becoming too long again.
Even in our sentences we are bound by rules that forbid alike excessive length and excessive brevity. If a newspaper were written in sentences each of which ran to a column, I doubt if it would have a single subscriber after the first number. If it were written in sentences none of which was more than three words long, it would be scarcely less tedious. The eye is comfortable only in travelling over normal stretches of words. It is as easily bewildered and confused by too many full-stops as by too few. Somewhere, but indefinable, are the limits of the normal, and between these exists all excellent writing.
And, as with sentences, so with words. At least, it is obvious that words cannot be too long without exciting the ridicule of ordinary human beings. I have heard it said that the longest word in the English language is 'disestablishmentarianism', but I doubt if this is true. I am sure the vocabulary of science contains worse examples of multiliteralism. If the jargon of science has often been ridiculed by comic writers, it is because men of science have been given to the use of words so long as to be meaningless to the ordinary eye. What can an ordinary man make of such a sentence (written by a botanist) as: 'The hydroid of a Pteridophyte or of a Phanerogram is characteristically a dead, usually elongated cell containing air and water, and either thin-walled with lignified (woody) spiral, or annular, thickenings, or with thick lignified walls, incompletely perforated by pits (usually bordered pits) of various shapes, e.g. the pits may be separated by a network of thickenings when the tracheid is reticulate or they may be transversely elongated and separated by bars of thickening like the rungs of a ladder (sculariform thicke
nings)'? What is to be made of 'microsporophylls' and 'macrosporopylls', of the 'parenchymatous cortex' or a 'hydrom-stereom strand somewhat like that of the rhizome in other Polytrichaceae'? Such a battery of long words stuns all but the determined student, and terrifies common men from approaching the domain of science. It is possible that a private jargon is necessary for every science, and that this is no more essentially ridiculous than foreign words, which frequently seem absurd to those who do not understand them. At the same time, I am sure the philosophers and men of science have used them oftener, than was necessary. They are like men taking pride in a national language. There is a vanity of language that expresses itself in polysyllables. Every science has its Llanfairpwllgwyngillgogerchwyrndrobwllllandysiliogogogochs and is proud of them.
And the curious thing is that these long words seldom mean anything half so important as ordinary people express in words of four or five letters. You can spell 'man' in three letters, but, if you want to name some invisible microbe lurking under his finger-nail, you will probably need a word containing twenty. Llanfairpwllgwyngillgogerchwyrndrobwllllandysiliogogogoch, which is an obscure village, has a name containing fifty-seven letters: Rome, a great and ancient city, is content with a name containing four. There is a moral in this. I wish I knew what it is.
The Kidnapping of Major Mulvaney
BY C.A. KINCAID*
In his comfortable room on the first floor of the Bombay Secretariat offices, sat one January afternoon in the middle eighties the Honourable Mr. George Massena Robinson, C.S.I., I.C.S., member of the Council of H. E. the Governor of Bombay. As he sat he swore horribly, and as he swore he read over and over again an official letter just received from the Political Agent of Kathiawar, a province divided up into a number of Indian States on the western seaboard of India. Then it was little known, but since it has become famous as the birthplace of the immortal "Ranji".
The letter ran as follows:
26th January 1885
From Major Mulvaney,
Assistant Political Agent of Jetalsar.
To:
The Secretary to the Government of Bombay,
Political Department.
Sir,
In continuation of my letter of the 11th instant, I have the honour to inform you that since you sent no reply to it, the dacoit Naja Wala has cut off my right ear. I have the honour to send it, herewith enclosed. He further threatens to cut off my left ear if the rupees thirty thousand demanded are not paid within a fortnight. He will follow up this outrage by cutting my throat. In these circumstances I sincerely hope that His Excellency in Council will pay my ransom and rescue me from my present unenviable situation.
I have the honour to be,
Sir,
Your most obedient servant
Patrick Mulvaney,
(Major)
One enclosure—the right ear of Major Mulvaney, in sealed envelope.
Submitted through the Political Agent.
Forwarded with compliments. The Undersigned trusts that Government will take the necessary steps to release this unfortunate officer.
John Haslop,
Political Agent.
Kathiawar, 27th January.
Mr. Robinson looked back through the file and discovered the letter to which Major Mulvaney had referred. It had come when Mr. Robinson had been on tour and had been kept several days to await his return and was marked "Immediate". The letter stated briefly that Major Mulvaney had been touring in the Jornagar State on inspection duty. As he was riding in that part of the great Kathiawar forest known as the Gir, that lay in Jornagar State, a certain Kathi outlaw called Naja Wala, accompanied by ten or twelve kinsmen, had surrounded and kidnapped him. Naja Wala was holding him to ransom for thirty thousand rupees. Failing the payment of the ransom, the outlaw threatened to cut off Major Mulvaney's right ear and send it to the Bombay Government to show that he meant business. Major Mulvaney trusted that the said Government would pay the money and secure his release, since he had been on duty when captured. On this letter the office had noted that they had consulted the Accountant General's office, but had learnt that no fund existed for the payment of ransom for British officers. No action, therefore, seemed called for. The Under Secretary agreed and added that Major Mulvaney might be informed that although the Government could take no action, His Excellency in Council would hear with pleasure that Major Mulvaney had been able to raise the ransom among his friends and brother officers. The Secretary would gladly have concurred but he had recently been warned that it was his duty to record his own opinion and not merely to initial his subordinates' remarks. He therefore struck out an independent line. He suggested that the thirty thousand rupees earmarked in the budget for four bridges and a resthouse in the Dharwar district should be reappropriated towards payment of Major Mulvaney's ransom.
The Honourable Mr. Robinson minuted that nothing could be done for Major Mulvaney and that he should be so informed on the lines so well indicated by the Under Secretary. Having disposed of this "immediate" file the Honourable member took up his favourite newspaper, the Bombay Gazette. To his utter disgust he read in the first leading article an account of Major Mulvaney's misfortunes. At its close the editor asked rhetorically how long that gallant officer would have to await his liberation. He had lost one ear, the editor understood, was he to lose the other ear and his eyes and nose as well?
"The cowardly poltroon!" groaned Mr. Robinson. "Not satisfied with getting himself kidnapped, he is now raising a press campaign against the Government!" Then he looked disgustedly at the ear which he had taken out of its envelope and muttered: "It's quite black: the fellow's nothing but a damned halfcaste!"
After this outburst the Honourable Mr. Robinson re-opened the Major Mulvaney file, scored through his previous minute and wrote that he approved the admirable suggestion of the Secretary. The Dharwar district had waited so long for the bridges and the resthouse that it could well wait another year. A telegram should be sent to the Political Agent and he should be instructed to inform Naja Wala that the ransom would be paid at the earliest opportunity, provided that no further injury were done to Major Mulvaney. The Political Agent sent the contents of the telegram to the Jornagar State, who contrived to communicate them to Naja Wala.
At the close of the day's work the Honourable Mr. Robinson wrote to the private secretary and asked him with His Excellency's permission to put a black mark against Major Mulvaney's name. He should be told that he could expect no further promotion in view of the expense to which he had put the Bombay Government through his carelessness and indifference to their interests. Having written this vicious little note, the Honourable Mr. Robinson forgot his worries and went back happily to his house on the ridge of Malabar Hill.
Now let us leave the Honourable Mr. George Robinson and introduce ourselves to Major Mulvaney, Assistant Political Agent of Jetalsar and the cause of so much annoyance to the Bombay Government. Originally a lieutenant in the 160th Marathas, he had grown tired—for he was extremely lazy—of the routine of an Indian regiment and had used such influence as he possessed to get himself posted to the Bombay political department. He had now been some twelve years a political officer and in his new career, as it must be admitted, he had succeeded quite well. He had not disposed of many cases, but that did not matter much; for no litigation in Kathiawar is ever finally decided. On the other hand he had an Irishman's pleasant manner and his uncanny knack of understanding the Indian, a gift usually denied to the Englishman. If the Political Agent found one of his chiefs difficult or obstinate, he had only to send Major Mulvaney to see him. That gallant officer would invariably worm out of the chief his real objections and meet them. The Political Agent had in fact a warm regard for Major Mulvaney and was shocked to think that his valuable subordinate was in the hands of a Kathi brigand and in mortal peril.
He need not, however, have felt as anxious as he did. Major Mulvaney was in no danger; for the facts that underlay his capture by the Kathi Naja Wala wer
e as follows:
Like most Irishmen Major Mulvaney was fond of horses and of horse races. Some two years before the date of his capture he had gone to Bombay to stay with his friend the Editor of the Bombay Gazette for ten days. He had attended the Bombay race-meeting and had betted at first in moderation. He was an excellent judge of horseflesh and by sheer good judgment had spotted half a dozen winners in succession. So elated was the gallant Major that he backed his opinion recklessly. On one animal he staked no less than ten thousand rupees. To Mulvaney's experienced eyes it seemed the best horse in the paddock and indeed so it was. Unfortunately he reckoned without its owner. The latter had praised it to all his friends as a "dead cert" and then had secretly laid against it for all he was worth. Under his instructions the jockey skilfully lost the race. Nowadays owner and jockey would have been warned off for pulling; but in the eighties the stewards were neither so strict nor so competent. The owner collected his ill-gotten gains and left Bombay hurriedly. The unfortunate Mulvaney found himself some nine thousand rupees down at the end of the meeting and his total assets did not exceed five hundred. There was nothing for him to do but to go to a firm of Marwadis, the moneylending caste of India, borrow the money and pay the bookies. Mulvaney was no fool and he borrowed the money with great reluctance, for he guessed that the door of the Marwadi's shop was the first step on the road to ruin. Still there was no other course open to him. He borrowed nine thousand rupees, signed a document for twelve thousand, a reference to two arbitrators and finally a decree embodying their decision. The meaning of these various papers was that if Major Mulvaney did not pay back twelve thousand rupees at the end of a year, the Marwadis would have ready to their hand a consent decree for that sum. They would not have to sue their debtor. They would merely have to execute a consent decree against him. Marwadis do not lend money as an ordinary business transaction, but to squeeze their debtors dry.