Round the Camp Fire* 187 



resetting the edge of one's memory, or serving as a hint 

 to those whose c tender, trustful years' may render them 

 prone to appraise their Aryan brethren and some others 

 by their own standards. 



In order to appreciate the following remarks, it should 

 be remembered that the tiger that magnificent brute 

 the lustre of whose halo even the most fulsome panegyric 

 cannot dull, to whose pursuit even the jaded, blase sports- 

 man returns with a never-failing interest is a creature 

 of remarkably open modes of life. Under favourable cir- 

 cumstances his probable line of action can be previously 

 determined with almost monotonous certainty, especially 

 by those jungle- men or local native shikaris whose acquaint- 

 ance with a particular beast may almost partake of the 

 nature of personal acquaintance ; while on most occasions, 

 although one may be unable to encompass his undoing, 

 a practical certainty can be made of ensuring his flight to 

 other haunts in other words, of frightening him away. 



It is this power of a clever shikari to take the tiger, 

 with a little arrangement, in tha hollow of his hand, that 

 unfortunately makes it possible for the pampered guest 

 or courted globe-trotter to recline at his ease in a com- 

 fortable machdn (plush-lined and otherwise sumptuously 

 fitted in some instances 1 ), set down his half finished 

 champagne cup at a touch from his attendant, and, with the 

 4 well-bred gesture of ineffable boredom ' beloved of lady 

 novelists, murder the splendid brute that has been guided 

 within easy range of his post by an army of fawning 

 parasites, aided, in their turn, by the plucky unarmed 

 beaters assembled to cater for the " sport " of the " Burr<\ 

 Saheb ! " 



Meanwhile the hard-working resident shikari of small 

 means probably who, right or wrong, regards the denizens 



