REMINISCENCES OF JUSTICE. 



217 



always cools the blood, and secures peace and quiet 

 for the future. Moreover, the busy peacemaker here 

 often shares the fate of M. Porceaugnac, and earns 

 the reward of those who, according to the proverb, 

 in quarrels interpose. It is vain to investigate, 

 where all is lie, the origin of the squabble. Nothing 

 easier, as the Welsh justice was fond of declaring, than 

 to pronounce judgment after listening to one side of the 

 question ; but an impartial hearing of both would strike 

 the inquiring mind with a sense of impotence. Perhaps 

 it is not unadvisable to treat the matter after the fashion 

 adopted by a " police-officer," a certain captain in the 

 X. Y. Z. army, who deemed it his duty to discou- 

 rage litigiousness and official complaints amongst the 

 quarrelsome Sindhi population of Hyderabad. The 

 story is somewhat out of place ; though so being, I will 

 here recount it. 



Would enter, for instance, two individuals in an 

 oriental costume considerably damaged ; one has a 

 cloth carefully tied round his head, the other has arti- 

 ficially painted his eye and his ear with a few drops 

 of blood from the nose. They express their emotions 

 by a loud drumming of the tom-tom accompanying 

 the high-sounding Cri de Haro — Faryad ! Faryad ! 

 Faryad ! — 



" I'll < Faryad ' yer, ye " 



After these, the usual appellatives with which the 

 " native " was in those days, on such occasions received^ 

 the plaintiff is thus addressed : — 



" Well, you — fellow ! your complaint, what is it ? " 



" Oh, Sahib ! Oh, cherisher of the poor ! this man who 

 is, the same hath broken into my house, and made me 

 eat a beating, and called my ma and sister naughty 

 names, and hath stolen my brass pot, and — " 



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