Lamme

“ Lammeter's cows, I should like to know who does,—that's all. And as for the cow you bought, bargain or no bargain, I've been at the drenching of her,—contradick me who will.'
"The farrier looked fierce, and the mild butcher's conversational spirit was roused a little.
"'I'm not for contradicking no man,' he said; 'I'm for peace and quietness. Some are for cutting long ribs. I'm for cutting 'em short myself ”

“ THE BEAUTIFUL SWAN
All day she rules the pond from edge to edge,
Exerting Beauty's easy privilege;
Her world a mirror spread in each direction,
Where she reflects upon her own reflection.
THE VERY TAME LAMB All men, said the poet, are struck at a mint,
And some coins ring flat that the coiners embellish:
But the lamb is so tame he will pardon the hint—
He'd be best with a little mint-sauce for a relish! ”

“ Lamas, old and young, rushed to and fro out of their rooms, while a number of Chibbis or novices—boys between the ages of twelve and twenty—lined the banisters of the upper verandah with expressions of evident suspense and curiosity depicted on their faces. No doubt the Lamas had prepared a trap for us. I warned Chanden Sing to be on the alert, and set him on guard at the entrance of the temple, while I, depositing a few silver coins on the drum of the Lama to my right, took off my shoes in sign of respect and—much to the amazement of the monks—quietly entered the house of worship. ”

“ Such a shortcoming is the more marked, inasmuch as Lamb is so closely identified with the Town. Not one among the men of letters, whose shadows walk the London streets with us, knew them better, or loved them more, than he did. ”

“ When one Lama dies, another is chosen;—some little baby,—and he is placed in a very grand palace, and worshipped as a god all his life long. I have heard of one of these baby Lamas, who, when only eighteen months old, sat up with great majesty on his pile of cushions. When strangers entered, he looked at them kindly, and when they made a speech to him, he bowed his little head very graciously. What a sad fate for this poor infant! To be set up as a god, and taught to think himself a god—while all the time he is a helpless, foolish, sinful, dying creature! ”

“ The noise of these instruments is at times so great that the prayers themselves are quite inaudible. Unfortunately, I failed to see any of the awe-inspiring masks which are used by Lamas in their eccentric and mystic dances, during which, when the Lamas spend the whole day in the temple, they consume much tea with butter and salt in it, which is brought to them in cups by Lamas of an inferior order, acting as servants. ”

“ I inquired of the high Lama, who spoke a little Hindustani.
"Luxury, pride and envy," he replied.
"Do you ever expect to become a saint?" I asked him.
"Yes, I hope so, but it takes five hundred transmigrations of an uncontaminated soul before one can be one."
Then, as if waking to a sudden thought, he seized my hand impulsively and spread my fingers open. Having done this, he muttered two or three words of surprise. His face became serious, even solemn, and he treated me with strange obsequiousness. Rushing out of the temple, he went to inform the other Lamas of his discovery, whatever it was. ”

“ More even than every other man you meet is a lama, for it is estimated, by those who know the situation best, that five eighths of the men are lamas, red or yellow, and the evil is on the increase. At least, two generations ago Abbé Huc placed the proportion at one in three. But lamas are not all of one sort. There are those who live in community, permanently attached to some one of the hundreds of lamasseries. ”

“ The Lamas were angry at this, and one of them struck me violently on the head with the butt-end of his riding-crop. I pretended not to notice it, though it made my scalp ache and smart.
"Then we shall beat you and your man until you say what we want," the Lama exclaimed angrily.
"You can beat us if you like," I replied with assurance, "but if you punish us unjustly it will go against yourselves. You can tear our skin off, and you can make us bleed to death, but you cannot make us feel pain." ”

“ It is hard not to envy any one who had the happiness of giving fruit, or cheese, or pigs to Charles Lamb. How gladly would we all have brought our offerings to his door, and have gone away with bounding hearts, exulting in the thought that our pears would deck his table, our pictures his wall, our books his scanty shelves! "People seldom read a book which is given to them," observes Dr. ”

“ Now poor Charles Lamb, now dear Charles Lamb, “Saint Charles,” if you will! Our hearts go out to him; we would comfort him if we could. But read slowly one of the finest letters in all literature: a letter in which he accepts defeat instantly, but with a smile on his face; tears there may have been in his eyes, but she was not to see them. See Lamb in his supreme rôle—of a man. How often had he urged his friends to play that difficult part—which no one could play better than he. The letter reads:—
Dear Miss Kelly,—
Your injunctions shall be obeyed to a tittle. ”

“ And there are men still living who would like to have known Charles Lamb himself in the flesh. There is one man still living, in Princeton, New Jersey, who, when he has kissed his Father and his Mother—in the spirit— when he has patted his dogs, and has talked with his friends, is going to hang around the Golden Staircase until he can catch the eyes of Charles Lamb, and of Mary Lamb, the Sister of Charles! ”

“ The lamb—a white, dainty creature whose flesh was soft and warm as a bird’s—had fallen into that raging torrent, had been swept down the stream, and as if by a miracle had been hurled into a thatch of dead sticks and driftwood that had been wedged between some of the great bowlders of the river bed. ”

“ The sheep was skinned with admirable celerity. Meantime the mother of the Lama had made the two pots boil. She now took the entrails of the sheep, washed them pretty clean, and then, with the blood which she took from the interior of the sheep by means of a large wooden spoon, prepared some puddings, the basis of which was the never-failing oatmeal. “Sirs Lamas,” said the little layman, “shall I bone the sheep?” Upon our answering in the affirmative, he had the animal hooked upon the tent, for he was not big enough to perform that operation himself ”

“ Of Lamb he writes that 'his taste acts so as to appear like the mechanic simplicity of an instinct—in brief, he is worth a hundred men of more talents: conversation with the latter tribe is like the use of leaden bells, one warms by exercise, Lamb every now and then irradiates.' In the best letters of this remarkable group we perceive the exquisite sensitiveness of open and eager minds, giving free play to their ideas and feelings, their delight and disgust, so that their life and thoughts are mirrored in their correspondence as in their conversation. ”

“ The Lamas are said to have a great craving for human blood, which, they say, gives them strength, genius and vigour. When sucking wounds that are not poisoned, they drink the blood, and also on certain occasions wounds are inflicted for the sake of sucking the blood. At other times the cups cut from human skulls, found in all monasteries, are filled with blood, and the Lamas in turn satisfy their thirst out of them. ”

“ Lammy was not so happy as her sister that night; the vicar had tried almost in vain to induct her into the art of fishing up-stream, and her casts across, on wet fly principles, while not so very bad for a beginner, were so obvious a contrast to those of Blind that she was not eager to dwell too much upon the wonderful luck that had befallen. ”

“ Anxious that our readers should see Lamb from as many angles as possible, we have obtained from an old friend of his a memorial—slight, but such as the circumstances allowed—of an evening spent with Charles and Mary Lamb, in the winter of 1821-22. The record is of the most unambitious character; it pretends to nothing, as the reader will see, not so much as to a pun, which it really required some singularity of luck to have missed from Charles Lamb, who often continued to fire puns, as minute guns, all through the evening. ”

“ The Lamas mistook me for a Hindoo doctor, owing to the color of my face, which was sunburnt, and had long remained unwashed. I wore no disguise. They thought that I was on a pilgrimage round the Mansarowar Lake. They appeared anxious to know whether illnesses were cured by occult science in India, or by medicine only. I, who, on the other hand, was more interested in getting information than in giving it, turned the conversation on the Lamas themselves.
There are sects of red, yellow, white, and black Lamas. The red ones are the older and more numerous throughout the country. ”

“ Thereupon, some member of the family brings out a small roll of butter, which, without saying a word, he deposits in a bag, suspended from the saddle of each Lama’s horse. The Lamas never once alight, but content themselves with riding up to each tent, and announcing their presence to the inmates by the sound of the shell.
As we advanced, the country became more fertile and less mountainous, until at length, we reached the vast and magnificent pasturage of Koukou-Noor. There vegetation is so vigorous, that the grass rose up to the stomachs of our camels. ”

“ It is in this enclosure that the Lamas of the Faculty of Prayers assemble at the lecture hour, which is announced to them by the sound of a marine conch; here they sit, according to their rank, upon the bare stones, undergoing, in winter, the cold, the frost, and the snow; and in summer, the rain and the sun’s heat. The professors alone are under shelter; they sit upon a sort of platform, covered with a tent. It is a singular spectacle to see all these Lamas with their red scarfs and great yellow mitres, so huddled together that you cannot see the flagstones on which they sit. ”

“ Up came the sun, streaming all over London, and in its glorious impartiality even condescending to make prismatic sparkles in the whiskers of Mr Alfred Lammle as he sat at breakfast. In need of some brightening from without, was Mr Alfred Lammle, for he had the air of being dull enough within, and looked grievously discontented.
Mrs Alfred Lammle faced her lord. The happy pair of swindlers, with the comfortable tie between them that each had swindled the other, sat moodily observant of the tablecloth. ”

“ Lamb owned ten acres of cleared land and a hundred and fifty of primeval bush, two pigs, five cows, three horses, sundry chickens, and now a choreboy. Strode was left in no doubt as to this last item. Lamb was quite nice about it, but he had views on choreboys—even unpaid ones. He was a worker himself, and expected others to fall into the same category. Life, as far as he was concerned, consisted of a pitched battle against time and circumstance. ”

“ Lammy, on the contrary, was hard to coach; that is her nature, too; she always was so impetuous. From the bare line they advanced to a gut cast and hackled fly with filed-off barb, and Blind could deftly drop the palmer into the saucer at twelve yards days before her sister could get out the line with anything like an approach to straightness.
The time arrived for applied science, and cousin director bade the girls don those waders which they had clamoured to use even on the lawn, and come away to the stream. ”

“ The young Lama who had sold us the sheep, spent a great part of the day in telling us anecdotes, more or less piquant and curious, about the veterinary science in which he seemed to be very skilful. Moreover, he gave us important instructions concerning the road we had to pursue. He settled the stages we ought to make, and indicated the places where we should encamp, so as to prevent our dying from thirst. We had still before us in the country of the Ortous, a journey of about fourteen days; in all that time we should find neither rivulet, nor spring, nor cistern ”

“ But while horses and oxen were at work in the fields, the stable ram walked about in the barnyard. He was newly clipped and touchy, knocked over the small boys, chased the shepherd dog into his kennel, and then strutted about as though he alone were lord of the whole place. "Rammie, rammie, what have you done with your wool?" asked the wild geese, who rode by up in the air. "That I have sent to Drag's woollen mills in Norrköping," replied the ram with a long, drawn-out bleat. ”

“ The Lama of the kingdom of Oui dismounted, took off the girth of his saddle, and gave it to the young man, saying, “Your father gave me this strap, but, since he regrets the gift, carry it back to him; old men are fanciful, but we must, nevertheless, respect them, and carefully avoid occasioning them any annoyance.” The Lama took off his own girdle, made a saddle-girth of it, and departed, the young man returning in all haste to his tent. ”

“ In the winter, indeed, at the time of the more intense cold, the water is frozen solidly enough to enable the shepherds around to repair in pilgrimage to the Lamasery. They bear to the contemplative Lamas their modest offerings of butter, tea, and tsamba, and receive in exchange, benedictions and prayers for good pasturage and prosperous flocks. ”

“ The only one of the family that could not be made fashionable was the retired butcher himself. Honest Lamb, in spite of the meekness of his name, was a rough, hearty old fellow, with the voice of a lion, a head of black hair like a shoe-brush, and a broad face mottled like his own beef. ”

“ Barbecue your whole hogs to your palate, steep them in shalots, stuff them out with plantations of the rank and guilty garlic, you cannot poison them or make them sharper than they are—but consider he is a weakling—a flower."
Lamb gives his opinion that you can no more improve sucking pig than you can refine a violet.
Thus he proceeds along his sparkling road—his humour and poetry gleaming one through the other, and often leaving us in pleasant uncertainty whether he is in jest or earnest. ”