I 3 



THE TRIBES ON MY FRONTIER. 



of apples ; I have not met with any of those kinds. The 

 aroma which emanates from the varieties with which I am 

 acquainted is of a sort that would, I imagine, have made 

 Pharaoh succumb. Where they are collected in numbers 

 it is enough to breed a pestilence ; and on a calm monsoon 

 evening I have known some of the lanes round Dustypore 

 so barricaded with the dense stench, that nothing short of 

 a company of sappers, with picks and shovels, could have 

 opened a passage through it. A single individual is most 

 impressive when it is crushed, or tumbles into scalding 

 soup, I knew a promising young man who took one with 

 his soup ! I have felt ever since that I could give any 

 price for a Book of Manners that would tell what a gentle- 

 man at a dinner party should do under such circumstances. 

 It might not strike one at first sight, but there are, 

 nevertheless, degrees of abominableness, and I divide this 

 whole family of proboscis-bearing, triangular, particoloured, 

 and aromatic insects into three classes. The first place in 

 order of unmitigated nauseousness I concede to a small 

 black villain, with a glassy white patch on the tail, which, 

 after heavy rain, invades the house. The tablecloth takes 

 the colour of a flea-bitten grey, the lamp threatens to go 

 out with a fizz, dinner has to be abandoned as a chimera, 



