Now we know that
Otis Yeere had showed Mrs. Hauksbee his MS notes of six years' standing on the
same Gullals. He had told her, too, how, sick and shaken with the fever their
negligence had bred, crippled by the loss of his pet clerk, and savagely angry
at the desolation in his charge, he had once damned the collective eyes of his
"intelligent local board" for a set of haramzadas. Which act of "brutal and
tyrannous oppression" won him a Reprimand Royal from the Bengal Government;
but in the anecdote as amended for Northern consumption we find no record of
this. Hence we are forced to conclude that Mrs. Hauksbee "edited" his
reminiscences before sowing them in idle ears, ready, as she well knew, to
exaggerate good or evil. And Otis Yeere bore himself as befitted the hero of
many tales.
"You can talk to me when you don't fall into a brown study. Talk now, and talk
your brightest and best," said Mrs. Hauksbee.
Otis needed no spur. Look to a man who has the counsel of a woman of or above
the world to back him. So long as he keeps his head, he can meet both sexes on
equal ground--an advantage never intended by Providence, who fashioned Man on
one day and Woman on another, in sign that neither should know more than a
very little of the other's life.
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