479 



Cleanings from t\i Calcutta llarfcet. 



I DO not know what I should do in Calcutta, tied as I am 

 to the desk, and scarcely ever able to get away far enough to 

 find any decent shooting, if I had not the dear old market 

 to fall back upon. 



It is not handsome — its warmest admirers cannot pretend 

 that it is ; it is all points and angles, cross questions and crooked 

 answers, a thing of quips and querks, like that rumbustical, 

 talkative, argumentative Municipal Committee that manages, or 

 as some think, mismanage it ; but still it is the one place, where 

 daily hundreds, sometimes thousands, of wild birds, dead and 

 alive, are brought to help fill the craving maw of India's Metro- 

 polis, and where priceless specimens that may be searched for 

 vainly elsewhere throughout a lifetime, are, every now and then, 

 turning up. 



To me the market is as good as is the twelve million franca 

 lottery, now just drawn or drawing, to the Parisian. 



It is a never-ending source of pleasing but innocuous 

 excitement. 



Every morning, just at daylight, I am at the market ; each 

 day, I say, now I am going to make a great hit to-day. Gene- 

 rally I am disappointed, but then one can't always be in luck, 

 better luck to-morrow, and so on ; and just often enough to 

 keep up one's interest one does get a good bird, and once in a 

 way a very-rare and valuable one, and there is always the hope 

 and the chance that one may get something even better than 

 one has ever got before, and the morning's chance is something 

 to think of, as one falls asleep at night ; something to encourage 

 one to turn out of bed an hour before daylight ; something 

 outside the perpetual grind of the official mill ; a case not 

 tied up in red tape ; a matter in which one can really take an 

 interest, as one can manage it properly and in one's own way 

 without the interference of half a dozen other people who know 

 nothing about it. 



This is, in this respect, a delightful contrast to all one's 

 official work. The fundamental principle, as is well known, 

 of all public administration is to get hold of a man for a par- 

 ticular work, who knows something about it, and then to put 

 him under some other man or men, who know nothing about 

 it, but who, conscientiously anxious to earn their pay, " meddle 

 and muddle " in every case, and loyally take care that nothing 

 is done. 



The safe man, always the favorite of Government, is the 

 man safe to do nothing because he has no ideas, and it is the 



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